Hard Complementarian, Fighting Words

His teaching may disempower women. It may hurt emotionally. It may lead to gifts given by God to the Body of Christ not being used to their full extent. It may even lead to some women making choices in life to forgo education and live a life that is more hemmed in and constrained than necessary...
But none of these things, bad as they are, are abuse, oppression or misogeny. Tragic, yes. Misogeny, no.

That having been said, Mark Driscoll is a male chauvinist. He frequently uses "feminine" as a derogatory. His version of manhood is becoming more of a ridiculous charicature every day. I have sat in the room with him and been told "If your wife is working, you are a selfish bastard. How dare you make her shoulder her half of the curse and part of yours as well." In addition to being erroneous theology (it really, really is), this kind of talk has some far reaching consequences, and communicates a lot of things that have the potential to really screw people up (guys- it's all on you! Perform! Women, hold back... don't shine too brightly!)

Mark is not a complementarian. He's a Hard Complementarian, who borders on a heirarchicalist. He gives lip service (I know he would say it's more- but actions and outcomes speak louder than words) to equal value of men and women, but effectively negates this as he teaches a view of headship that has some women promising to "obey" in their wedding vows, and seeking the "covering" of a fill-in dad when theirs is unavaliable and they would like to date.

Mark needs to smarten up and his elders need to kick his arse hard enough to help him smarten up. He needs to re-assess some of his views and soften how he presents others.

The elders of Mars Hill (IMHO) need to see at this point that Mark's blog, Mark's comments and rants, is/are a net-negative to their church community, and they need to shut it down for the time being. The best known church in the Acts 29 network, other than Mars Hill, has left the organization, in part in an effort to distance themselves from the blowback from Mark's comments. There are still personal friendships there, to be sure. But when people have to start organizationally moving away from each other- that's a sign to me that something is amiss. And it wouldn't surprise me if other A29 churches weren't moving in the same direction.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again- Mark is at a crossroads. What I'm seeing now is that a lot of people, his entire church community, and the leadership in particular, are there with him.

As his apparent pride grows, so does the danger- the danger of his words hurting, the danger of other emulating him, and the danger when/and if someone that big, and that prideful, takes a fall.

[via bob.blog, HT: TallSkinnyKiwi]

And from the comments:

The problem attitudes regarding women extend to the elder board of the church, AND, in my opinion, the purveyors of various complementarian materials, such as the CBMW.
Mark Driscoll and Leif Moi do not produce new ideas. They rehash, without any tact or restraint, ideas that are coming out the complementarian movement, stating bluntly the things that are carefully veiled by more experienced speakers and writers....

I think Mark Driscoll is a very intense, serious and sincere Christian. However, he has a huge weakness in terms of his Wayne-Grudem-meets-drunken-frat-boy attitude towards women. It is his Achilles heel, and it will be his downfall if he cannot get it under control.

If the protests about his recent indiscretions provoke him to either rethink his attitude or restrain his expression of it, or both, then it will be the best thing that ever happened to him, and Mars Hill.