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Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

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This book is a great read! While much of the content has appeared in other places, the simplicity of the style and the power of the logic are compelling. I was reminded again and again of what Luke says about Stephen as he disputed with the Freedmen in the synagogue: "But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking" (Acts 6:10). Truly, the Lord has raised Wayne Grudem up "for such a time as this."

As a pastor, I especially liked the analogies and breakdowns Grudem sprinkled throughout, which will help laypeople understand confusing feminist arguments. I also liked the way he kept hammering the nail at the end of each chapter: "...another step on the path to liberalism." That refrain gained power as the book proceeded, culiminating in the last chapter. I applaud the decision to name names, and to call out those (like the Kroegers) who have done shoddy and/or misleading work. An interested layperson reading this will "get it." And at 263 pages, it is much less intimidating than his longer works, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth. Sometimes less is more.

Egalitarians will not like this work. They will deny that their works in any way undermine biblical authority. But I would urge them to read this book with humility rather than to bluster over it, and to think what effect their arguments will have upon the generation following after them, who might not share their conservative evangelical upbringing.

Dr. Grudem is to be commended for addressing such a controversial issue in such a clear yet gracious way. Highly recommended for everyone who cares about the health of the evangelical church in America.

Wayne Grudem's Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2006) is a welcome addition to a plethora of scholarship that has been done in the area of biblical gender studies in recent years. However, this book is quite different than previous work in this area. In Evangelical Feminism, Grudem sounds a clear and explicit warning to his evangelical feminist friends: the presuppositions upon which evangelical feminism are founded necessarily lead to liberalism.

Grudem's approach in proving such a thesis is to show the connections between evangelical feminism and liberalism in the local church in recent decades (Part 1: 23-30); the views of evangelical feminists that undermine the authority of the Bible (Part 2: 31-150); and the views of evangelical feminists that are based upon "untruthful or unsubstantiated claims" (Part 3: 151-220). In the last section of the book, Grudem lays out the direction where evangelical feminism is taking evangelical Christians, which he contends is a slippery slope toward liberalism (Part 4: 221-263). Ultimately at stake in the gender debate, according to Grudem, is Holy Scripture itself (261-263).

The strengths of this book are its ample documentation, both in terms of Scripture references and contemporary scholarship; its accessibility and usefulness for any Christian who is either quite familiar with the current complementarian/patriarchal-egalitarian debate or any believer in Christ who is just coming into contact with the discussion, and who would like to know more; and the tone in which Grudem writes, which is clear and forthright. Grudem does not caricaturize evangelical feminists, but rather deals with the best of their scholarship, showing it to be lacking when viewed up against the biblical text.

As a side note, many of the criticisms in the review below from "Kidmugg" are guilty of misleading his readers, the very thing he accuses Grudem of doing in this book. For example, Grudem clearly does not claim that there have "only been discrepancy on gender readings of the Biblical texts since the 1970's," as he deals with feminist revisions of orthodox teachings before this time, and his point in this regard is to show that such a reading of the text comes from liberal/unorthodox presuppositions (on which the 19th century or Quaker arguments that Kidmugg only generally references are surely built). Grudem also does not present his so-called "demanded reading of the text" to show that Jesus and Paul could not have served as elders, since they had not wives. In fact, he references his argument against such a view, a view he states "very few" Christians hold today (p. 96, n. 18). In addition, to claim that a weakness of the book is Grudem's presupposition of sola Scriptura, when the book is clearly and explicitly written for evangelical Christians (who themselves hold to sola Scriptura), seems a bit misguided. More criticisms of Kidmugg's review are warranted, but that is not the purpose here.

The book, Evangelical Feminism does an excellent job of showing the liberal outworking of the presuppositions upon which evangelical feminism is based. In fact, some of Grudem's conclusions are so convincing and powerful that perhaps future editions and revisions of this book will contain a different subtitle than the one it has currently. For it may be true that Grudem is wrong when he asserts that evangelical feminism is the new path to liberalism. Surely Grudem and his fellow complementarians would admit as much.

Instead, it may be time for orthodox Christians to continue to examine anew the presuppositions upon which evangelical feminism is built. Perhaps this movement has so altered the truths of Scripture that there is little semblance of the biblical evangel to which Christians have witnessed for nearly two millennia.

At that point, Christians may say stop and say, "Evangelical feminism is no slippery slope toward liberalism. Rather, the slope has already been slid."

Finally a book that is easy to read and concise that clearly outlines the faults of egalitarians. Conservatives everywhere should applaud Grudem for his unapologetic stand on the Bible's ultimate authority and traditional interpretation. Grudem warns us against taking small steps down the path towards liberalism which ultimately could result in out right heresy.

Grudem is not trying to explain what women's roles actually are in the church, but rather he is defending, argument by argument, why evangelical feminism is not only dangerous but incorrect. In a culture that demands equality, our natural inclination is to side with the egalitarians however Grudem clearly shows us from scripture the compromises that must be made in order to draw these conclusions.

All Christians that believe the Bible is true and accurate need to read this book to see how evangelical feminism is distorting the truth of God's work. This is not an issue that we can remain silent about or hope that it will go away. The logical conclusions of this kind of compromise to the text are scary!

Egalitarians that read this book must remember Grudem's statements in the introduction and conclusion of this book:
"I have a number of egalitarian friends who have not moved one inch towards liberalism in the rest of their doctrinal convocations, and who strongly believe and defend the inerrancy of the Bible." (p.20)
"Of course nobody adopts all of the arguments I have listed... but every evangelical feminist author I know of adopts at least some of [them]." (p.262)
Do not take this book as a personal attack on your beliefs, or the beliefs of some scholars you may respect. But rather humbly consider the warnings Grudem makes about where some of these small compromises are leading.

Don't let the title or the author scare you. I have read much larger tomes of Grudem's and what I have found with this book is that it is surprisingly accessible, straight to the point, and fairly quick to read. I highly recommend this book to EVERY Christian.

The underlying concern that drives Grudem is that followers of Christ are in danger of slipping into the subtle error of "Theological Liberalism" (the undermining of the authority and truthfulness of the Bible). He begins the book with a few examples in history where this has already happened, pointing out both the cause of the shift and the ease with which it happened. Thus Grudem states his deep concern for the church, that "Evangelical Feminism" (AKA "Egalitarianism"), which is saturating our seminaries and church bodies more and more today, is leading and will lead many believers down the path to theological liberalism. The reason why, according to Grudem, is that developing and supporting the egalitarian position requires undermining God's Word in frightingly outrageous ways.

There are some outrageous examples of undermining Scripture that sadly and surprisingly, are being successfully propagated by well-known and well-respected theologians to those who don't know better or haven't been careful to test their words with God's Word.

Some examples include denying the historical account of Genesis 1-3 with the absurd notion that Adam was not created before Eve, or suggesting that the Apostle Paul spoke wrongly in some passages as he was tuning his theology, or that the New Testament did not present an ultimate ethic, but that it was merely pointing us to a better way of life that the Bible does not explain because it was written in a patriarchal culture. The frightening thing is that some of these views are becoming mainstream in several denominations and Christian circles.

Other examples look at situations where egalitarians change the meaning of Scripture by inventing situations around the writing or untrue word meanings. For example, in regards to some of Paul's teaching to those in the churches at Ephasus or Corinth regarding men's and woman's roles, some have proposed that women were being loud or they were uneducated or they were teaching specific heresies. All of these situations are pure invention for the purpose of explaining why none of those commands apply to Christians today. So, for example, when Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:34 that "As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says," the egalitarian argument says that the women were being loud so this was only talking about loud women in Corinth, and isn't relevent to us today. Never mind that Paul says "As in ALL the congregations" or appeals to "as THE LAW SAYS." Rather than looking at the context of the passage which is clearly discussing who has authority to weigh prophesies in the gathered assembly, they simply deem the instruction irrelevant to us. This happens to passage upon passage and teaching upond teaching, and this is ultimately Grudem's point, that supporting the egalitarian position requires such blatent undermining of Scripture, bringing many down the path to theological liberalism.

This is part wake-up call, part education, and part admonition to those who should know better than to treat God's Word with such distrust. For those who think this is not so big a problem as to make a big deal out of it, read this book for a wake-up call. For those who did not know this issue existed or what's at stake, read this book to educate yourself. For those who staunchly support the egalitarian position, read this book with consideration of what is being done to God's Holy and perfect Words in order to support it.

Wayne Grudem has written a great deal about biblical manhood and womanhood. Besides articles in periodicals, he has written Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism which he co-authored with John Piper. He has written Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions and then two collections of essays he edited, Biblical Foundations for Manhood and Womanhood and Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and Womanhood.

The latest addition to this list is Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?. Grudem describes this book as "an expression of deep concern about a widespread undermining of the authority of Scripture in the arguments that are frequently used to support feminism. It is also a way of posing a question: can a movement that espouses this many ways of undermining the authority of Scripture possible be right?" The book's argument, then, is that evangelical feminism sets those who affirm it on a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to liberalism.

It is important to define terms and Grudem, always a deliberate author, does just this. By theological liberalism he refers to "a system of thinking that denies the complete truthfulness of the Bible as the Word of God and denies the unique and absolute authority of the Bible in our lives." And by evangelical feminism he means "a movement that claims there are no unique leadership roles for men in marriage or in the church." Leadership in both the home and the church is to be shared equally between men and women according to their gifts and desires. He leads readers through five points:

1. Liberal Protestant denominations pioneered evangelical feminism and now evangelical feminists have adopted many of the arguments earlier used by theological liberals to advocate women's ordination and to reject male headship in marriage.
2. Many prominent evangelical feminist writers advocate positions that either deny or undermine the authority of the Bible. Other egalitarians endorse books written by these people without taking a stance against those who deny Scripture's authority.
3. Recent trends show that evangelical feminists are heading towards the denial of anything uniquely masculine and some now even refer to God as "our Mother in heaven."
4. The history of others who have adopted these positions shows that the next step is the acceptance of homosexuality.
5. The common thread running through these trends is a rejection of the authority of Scripture in people's lives--the very bedrock principle of theological liberalism.

These dire predictions aside, Grudem is careful to affirm that there are some egalitarians who continue to uphold the authority of Scripture (men like Roger Nicole, Walter Kaiser, Jack Hayford, etc) but warns that, while these men may remain orthodox, those who follow them will likely drift further and further from affirming the authority of Scripture, for this is a common pattern in the church. These men, despite their good intentions and their love for the Bible, may be inadvertently leading the next generation astray.

Grudem provides a short chapter liberalism and women's ordination, showing that there is no theologically liberal denomination or seminary in the United States today that opposes women's ordination. This proves that liberalism and the approval of women's ordination go hand in hand.

The heart of the book is contained in two sections. The first, with fifteen short chapters, examines evangelical feminist views that undermine or deny the authority of Scripture. These range from saying that Paul's teaching on women's roles was just plain wrong, to suggesting that women may preach or teach men as long as they are under the authority of a pastor, to relying on experience as the arbiter of what is right and true. The second section, with ten short chapters, examines evangelical feminist views that are based on untruthful or unsubstantiated claims. These include those who teach that Paul told the women in Corinth to "keep silent" because they were disrupted church services, that the word "head" actually means "source," and that the Son is not subordinate to the Father in the Trinity. Grudem concludes "I cannot say for sure. But I can think of no other viewpoint or movement within the whole history of the Christian church (except theological liberalism itself) that has generated so many novel and ultimately incorrect ways of interpreting the Bible."

Having provided the facts and having provided brief analysis, Grudem finally seeks to understand where evangelical feminism is taking the church. He concludes that the next step is to deny anything distinctly masculine. At the foundation of evangelical feminism, he feels, is a dislike of manhood itself. This will lead to a denial that there is anything uniquely masculine about God and allow people to refer to God as Mother. The danger here, of course, is that calling God "Mother" "is changing God's own description of himself in the Bible. It is calling God by a name that he has not taking for himself. Therefore it is changing the way the Bible teaches us to think of God. It is thus changing our doctrine of God." The final step along this trajectory is the widespread acceptance of homosexuality. Those who advocate the morality of homosexuality within a biblical context are using the very same arguments used by evangelical feminists. Churches that accept the arguments of evangelical feminists will have very little ground to stand on when they attempt (or if they attempt) to uphold the biblical condemnation of homosexuality.

What is ultimately at stake in evangelical feminism is the Bible itself. I appreciated Grudem taking his argument to its fullest extent and showing what is truly at stake here. Too often arguments about issues like evangelical feminism can proceed no further than the doctrine itself. I think Grudem has done the church a great service in showing and proving that this discussion is not merely about how particular churches operate. Rather, based on this discussion we can see which churches can remain faithful in the future and which will inevitably drift further and further from the authority of Scripture and thus further and further from God himself. If evangelical feminism is, indeed, a new path to an old problem, Grudem has shown just how seriously we need to take it.

I've read a number of books by Grudem and John Piper, as well as Groothius, Fee and others. Having done my share of debating the subject of "evangelical feminism," I can only say that while Grudem appears clearly to go to the Scriptures to determine exactly what they say (exegesis), evangelical feminists (also known as "egalitarians"), go to Scripture to prove their point (eisegesis).

The reality is that Scripture must be allowed to speak for itself and Grudem shows that this is absolutely possible. As much as God has created humanity - "male and female He created them - God has also ordained different and specific roles for each gender, while not impinging upon the true equality that both genders share.

Grudem's points are clear, concise and Scripturally based. He has done his research and it shows.

Evangelical feminism - a true oxymoron if ever there was one - seeks to replace what God has ordained into something that is humanistic at best and sinful at worst.

Wayne Grudem has produced a timely wake up call to evangelical believers. With grace, but relentless logic, he shows the slip-shod arguments that evangelicals are using to overturn the clear teachings of Scripture in regard to male leadership in the church. I write as one who studied at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the the mid-80s. I had selected Gordon-Conwell partly because I was very open to egalitarian views. However the weakness of the egalitarian view became clear as I listened to brilliant men, notably Roger Nicole, break basic hermeneutical principles in order to support their chosen view. The Bible simply does not support the egalitarian position. Since returning to my homeland, Australia, and now having ministered for more than a decade in New Zealand, I have seen the slide Dr. Grudem is warning about taking place. New Zealand Christianity was devastated by liberalism in the first half of last century and then again by the charismatic movement in the second half of the century. In that part of the Christian church which remains evangelical feminism is a major force leading believers away from trust in God's Word. There are only small groups of reformed and some fundamentalist believers who continue to teach what is recognizably the gospel of Jesus Christ. Most evangelicals are being entertained to death by leaders, male and female, who have little regard for what Scripture teaches. Dr Grudem writes on the basis of very thorough research and his conclusions are irrefutable.
My prayer is that his writings will be read, taken to heart and that repentance will result in a return to diligent, expository preaching of the whole counsel of God. For countries like New Zealand the hour is very late. Please pray for this needy nation.

The focus of this book by Wayne Grudem is his concern that evangelical feminism will prove, over time, to draw people into theological liberalism. By liberalism, Grudem is referring to a system of belief that does not accept the Bible as the supreme authority in the lives of believers, or accept the absolute truthfulness of what is written in it.

Grudem bases this concern of his in many of the arguments made in support of egalitarianism. They are, he says, often exactly the same arguments used first in liberal Protestant denomination--arguments that deny (although sometimes in subtle ways) that the text of scripture is completely error free, and that what we find written there is the final arbitrator of things in a believer's life and in the life of the church.

Grudem's first argument is from history. He makes the case that, generally speaking, denominations that ordain women are also denominations that at least tolerate liberalism. The lists are interesting, and it does seem that the ordination of women and a denial of the inerrancy of scripture (or at least a tolerance of those who deny the inerrancy of scripture) tend to go hand in hand within denominations. I'm ot sure exactly what this proves, but the correlation is worth noting.

The second section of the book is a collection of short chapters (fifteen in all), with each one examining a single argument put forward by evangelical feminists. Each arguments examined is one that Grudem believes undermines the authority of scripture. I won't run through the various arguments, but I will give you one example, and a summary of Grudem's reasoning for his charge that this particular argument undermines scripture.

The first chapter in this section deals with a couple of arguments that put forward the idea that the account of creation given to us in Genesis 1-3 is not exactly accurate. One of the arguments, made by William Webb, is that the priority of Adam's creation, with instructions given by God to Adam alone, is not the way things really happened; but rather, is a literary device, perhaps used to foreshadow the curse, or used by Moses to make things easier for people of his time and culture to understand the story, or used to anticipate life in an agrarian society. The point of denying the historicity of the text that says that Adam was created first is that this makes it possible to argue that when Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:13, where he argues from Adam's creation before Eve that women are not to exercise authority over a man, the argument he uses is merely a cultural one, and not one rooted in the actual events of creation. At the very least, it's an odd way for someone with a high view of scripture to handle the text; but further, it seems a little like toying with the evidence for the purpose of coming to one's desired conclusion. Grudem's point is that this argument iss a step on the road to denying the inerrancy of scripture by denying that the Genesis account represents the historical events of creation.

There are many more troubling arguments in this section. Some, like the example above, deny the authority of scripture by claiming that the text is wrong in some way. Other arguments simply claim that there are certain things that trump the authority of scripture, like experience, or "calling" or individual circumstances.

The next section of Evangelical Feminism deals with arguments that are based on claims that come mostly from conjecture, either about what a certain word really means, or what the particular circumstances surrounding a text really were. These conjectures allow for whole new interpretations of some passages, but the unsubstantiated nature of the claims upon which these interpretations are made make the interpretations themselves speculative at best, and yet the claims are not presented as speculations, but as already proven facts.

There are ten chapters in this section dealing with various unsubstantiated claims. You've heard some of them, I'm sure. There's the claim, for instance, that the women in the church of Corinth were particularly unruly or disruptive. Did you know there is really no evidence, either internal to the text of 1 Corinthians or historical, that this was so? Yet you will hear it repeated--I certainly have--as if it were historical fact/

Have you heard that the women of Ephesus were uneducated, so that's why Paul forbids them to teach? There is no historical evidence that this was the case, and what historical evidence there is points to the existence of educated women there--like Priscilla, for one. Nevertheless, you will hear this unsubstantiated theory bandied about as if there were something more than guess work behind it.

That last section of the book deals with Grudem's prediction of where it is that evangelical feminism is leading: toward the denial of the uniquely masculine (or feminine) except the physical differences; toward a God whom we can address as "our Mother", even though he never describes himself this way; and toward an approval of homosexual practice.

The last chapter is a summary of the argument of this book: that the evangelical feminist arguments persistently undermine the authority of scripture, and ultimately, it is the high view of scripture that is at stake in this debate. Perhaps you are thinking, as I was, that there must be egalitarians who do not use any of these sorts of arguments. Grudem's response is that every egalitarian author that he knows uses at least some of these arguments.

It should be noted that Grudem is not saying that all (or even most) egalitarians are liberals, or moving personally toward liberalism. What he is saying is that, while many egalitarians may affirm the authority of scripture, many of their arguments undermine scripture's authority, so that it is toward liberalism that egalitarianism is likely leading, with each successive generation going further in that direction.

Like all of Grudem's books, there are extensive footnotes that allow you to check out everything he says to see if his claims are really so. I also appreciate his care in presenting the arguments of those whose ideas he is opposing. He seems to go out of his way to get their position exactly right without any exaggeration, and I like that.

Even though I've written reviews of a couple of books on the subject of egalitarianism, this is not a subject I am naturally interested in. I'm a complementarian, and I know why I believe what I believe, but I've not been fascinated by the ins and outs of all the arguments. But I do think it's an important subject, perhaps more important than I understood previously, and Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? is an important book on the subject, and one that is easily read and understood by a non-expert reader like me.

A great book, with all of the usual academic and theological rigor that you would expect from Wayne Grudem.

Dr Grudem's work on the issue of Evangelical Feminism is superb! It is clear, accessible and while not mincing words, fair, even to his critics. Dr Groothius' review here seems to betray the very attitude that Dr Grudem complains about even wrt those on the other side...that is, they apparently do not want to hear any criticism, write it off, (even when Dr Grudem clearly admits in the INTRODUCTION that he is not saying that ALL evangelical feminists have gone far down the pathways of liberalism, but that their arguments make the journey possible and few if any are warning their comrades about this danger, publically (cf pages 20 and 22), and seemingly continue on their merry way. This book will be very frustrating for many, because they do not want to discuss the issues at hand, but would rather, it seems, leave matters obscure and uncertain. In fact, as Dr Grudem ably points out, uncertainty and obscurity are one of the arguments used to support the position of evangelical feminists.

This book is a must read for all who are interested in having a discussion about what the Bible says about the roles of women and men in family and church life. To Dr Grudem, thanks!