Proclaimer Blog
Why do evangelicals never get fairly represented?
David Aaronovitch wrote a very pejorative article in yesterday's Times about women bishops. Sadly (or perhaps, fortunately) it's behind a paywall. But he managed to dismiss proper biblical arguments with one clean sweep of the pen:
Objection in the Anglican church usually boils down to these essential propositions: first, we are part of a bigger Christendom and can’t just alter stuff like this on our own. In any case, second, we don’t want to because Jesus was a bloke in the image of God (also a bloke) and his word was passed on to the Apostles who were all blokes. This was no accident — it was deliberate on the part of God. He could have chosen women and didn’t. Third, even if you want to argue about that, we’ve done it this way for 2,000 years and the very fact that we’ve done it this way for so long suggests that this what God wants. If he hadn’t, he would have moved us to change it. [So far, evangelicals will not recognise any of these arguments as having weight]
And that, plus a few quotations from St Paul about how women shouldn’t talk in church, is what the argument amounts to. There’ll be letters after this column suggesting other abstruse doctrinal reasons. Ignore them. Jesus was a chap. Since him we haven’t had women bishops. Therefore God doesn’t want women bishops.
It's amazing how he's managed to reduce important biblical arguments down to nothingness. If this is our case, then I'm all for women pastors/bishops. How could I not be? But it's not and I'm not. It gets worse. Commenting on a petition organised by some brave women we know arguing against women bishops, he concludes:
There is a word for this. It is “backward”. It belongs in the realm of beating children at school, imprisoning homosexuals, arguing that “blacks” are like infants or that masturbation makes you blind.
Just like being against gay marriage is homophobic? This article got Mrs R raving (and she a lifelong Baptist). She even penned a letter to said venerable institution, but decided, in the end, against sending it.
I'm not particularly surprised. For some while now, evangelicals have not been fairly represented. Perhaps, in a sound bite world, our biblical arguments are too hard for people? There may be something in that. And perhaps we do need to try to present more simply what we believe without watering down the content. But you do get the feeling that whatever our arguments, they would receive similar short shrift. I suppose, listening to Jesus, we shouldn't be surprised. But, as Carson has pointed out in his latest cracker – it's all symptomatic of the amazing intolerance of a society which prides itself on being supremely tolerant.