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Driscoll disses Calvin, plus Esther, Vashti & Lisbeth

Driscoll disses Calvin, plus Esther, Vashti & Lisbeth

Last updated on: January 12, 2012 at 4:08 pm by Fred Clark

Driscoll disses Calvin, plus Esther, Vashti & Lisbeth 2012-01-12T16:08:42-05:00 Fred Clark

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The Rev. Mark Driscoll has taken his all-American style of d-bag theology to the UK, telling British Christians to “man-up.”

Let’s just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don’t have one – that’s the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren’t telling the truth.

Well, I suppose N.T. Wright might not count as young, but …

Young men, Driscoll says, won’t go to church in Britain because it’s nothing more than “guys in dresses preaching to grandmas.”

Somehow that made me think of Slim Charles lecturing his soldiers in The Wire for violating the Sunday truce by shooting the hat off of Omar’s grandmother.

Joel Watts at Unsettled Christianity has a more pertinent reaction. He notes that the neo-Calvinist Driscoll, by mocking robes and vestments as supposedly effeminate, apparently doesn’t realize John Calvin’s role in that tradition.

* * * * * * * * *

Calulu: “The Barbie Syndrome: Interchangeable Fundamentalist Wives Easily Replaced by the New Model”

Sarah Styles Bessey: “Gratefully, Disillusioned”

John Shore: “An Open Letter From Christians to Gay People”

“… we try to avoid physical and sexual.” (The key word there is “try.”)

American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer: The solution to sexual assault is to get rid of all the victims.

* * * * * * * * *

Rachel Held Evans: “Esther and Vashti: The Real Story“

In their attempts to try and bend the stories of an ancient near eastern culture to fit into the dynamics of a modern-day, Western, nuclear family, [these evangelical authors] have dismissed the actual story of Vashti and Esther and replaced it with one of their own making.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the Bible was written at a time in history when most women were owned by their husbands.

Technically speaking, it is biblical for a woman to be sold by her father to pay off debt (Exodus 21:7), biblical for her to be forced to marry her rapist (Exodus 22:16-17), biblical for her to remain silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-35), biblical for her to cover her head (1 Corinthians 11:6), and biblical for her to be one of many wives (Deuteronomy 21:15-17).

With this in mind, I don’t know anyone who is actually advocating a return to biblical womanhood. What most in the “biblical womanhood” movement are advocating instead is a return to the June Cleaver culture of pre-feminist America, a culture that looked nothing like that of Vashti and Esther, Leah and Rachel, Tamar and Bathsheba, Mary and Martha.

Sarah Sentilles: “The Harlot Shall Be Burned with Fire: Biblical Literalism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“

The plot revolves around a missing girl and the serial killer believed to have murdered her who uses the Bible like a handbook. He takes passages from Leviticus — 21:9 for example: “The daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, she profanes her father. She shall be burned with fire” — and enacts them on women’s bodies. On Jewish women’s bodies.

… I must admit that part of me is relieved to have these disturbing passages out in public. These bloody verses that insist women be punished with violent death — often for perceived or imagined sexual transgressions — are usually overlooked, downplayed, skipped over, ignored. Most people like to pretend they aren’t really in the text. Especially people who claim to take the Bible literally.

Passages like these should render biblical literalism impossible.

* * * * * * * * *

Warren Throckmorton: “Alan Chambers: 99.9% have not experienced a change in their orientation”

Alan Chambers is president of Exodus International, an organization that long billed itself as an “ex-gay ministry.” In December, the conservative World magazine awarded Chambers its “Daniel of the Year” title for having “the strength to stand up against ungodly trends.”

World’s cover story on the award said:

But there’s something that angers Chambers’ opponents as much as his belief that homosexuality is wrong: His message that homosexuals can change. That’s not a new teaching in evangelical Christianity, but it might be one of the most radically unpopular messages in America today.

Pressed on that point at the Gay Christian Network on Friday, Chambers himself said this:

The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say that they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.

Throckmorton asks: “Will this news be reported by Christian media, or become part of the evangelical blackout?”

B. I’m answering, “B.: It will become part of the evangelical blackout.”

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