What is your position on women’s equality within the church? It seems strange to claim that Christianity is the best basis for women’s equality when churches are perhaps the strongest proponents of the view that women are ideally not equal to men and the church, in particular, is one of the main places where women should not be equal.
As regards racial or economic justice, I think we should note that white and black, or rich and poor, do not need to be equally morally culpable for social injustice in order for us to see both groups as possessing human dignity and human flaws. The Bible is pretty clear that rich people are likely to be in a dire spiritual condition; it’s almost impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Clearly, if we’re using the Bible as our moral example, it is not wrong to point the finger at rich people in particular for certain kinds of sin. The phrase “moral equality” could be taken to imply otherwise, and I think some of your wording does fall into that trap.
On the latter point, I didn't mean to say that everyone is equally culpable for each particular sin or injustice. I meant that, broadly, we must recognize all people, of all races/kinds/groups, as subject to mixed motivations, pride, self-deception, and so on. Any ideology that makes out sin to reside in only some human beings (and definitely not *us*) fails by this standard.
On the first, I take your point. I myself am still held back by the explicit biblical statements - "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man." (1 Tim 2) Yikes! Come on, Paul! But there it is. And then in recent experience, pushing for female eldership is pretty closely associated with left-wing forms of feminism that I don't hold. So I'm reticent.
Is that inconsistent with what I argued? I don't think so. I believe in the moral equality of men and women. That is not incompatible with different callings or roles, especially with explicit divine command. At the same time, I do think we need to take the priesthood of believers so seriously that we are hearing from men and women as our spiritual equals, even if they are not officially elders. See my first two podcasts on preaching and elders. Thanks!
I should say that I did listen in particular to that podcast episode on elders, and that it has been a source of a great deal of fruitful reflection for me, so thank you for that.
With that said, on the subject of hearing from men and women as spiritual equals, let me just give you at outtake from King Laugh, beginning at 40:57, where he says:
"What the church needs in elders is not incredibly educated men. It needs incredibly wise men. It needs men competent at life, there where they live. And what I have experienced is that most of seminary training is learning, even in low church protestant environments, all of the dance that goes into what people expect on Sunday morning, whether it's the Eucharist every single time that you gather, or it's once a quarter. It's the same kind of, you know, learn what people expect to not tick off the old lady who remembers how they did it back then."
I found that statement to be a little bit amusing, in a sad kind of way. So many of the old church ladies that I know are, regardless of their level of education, very wise, very competent at life, there where they live. Whether or not they are "elders" in the definition of some church or other, in ordinary English parlance they certainly are your elders -- of all three of you on that podcast -- and you might learn a fair bit from them. I do not think it would harm you spiritually if you did.
"I would have thought that the proper response to rejecting the racial right would be to reject that premise. Instead, the cultural left has assumed the truth of that premise and banked their moral worldview on a falsifiable empirical claim: That human beings, in a utopian, newly-reconstituted Rousseauian state of nature, would have equal group averages on accidental features."
My own theory is that social scientists went strongly in this direction after WW2 because they had no answer why, in a new post-Christian morality, groups should be treated equally if they are inherently different. And frankly, they still don't. They could have been working on this issue for decades, but instead their only argument is that all groups should be treated equally because they are indeed 100% biologically equal. Now they are painted into a corner.
The best path forward is what you suggested:
"We need a moral doctrine that is a substantive alternative to that of proponents of DEI. And that doctrine should retain an “E.” The E should not be understood as implying a mathematical equality between groups, but a moral equality across races as members of the human species, as people."
Thank you, Justin! That theory about after WW2 makes a lot of sense. But it requires a kind of empiricism/scientism. Only empirical equality could ground human equality. They should have read some Kant! (John Rawls and others did.)
"All men are created equal" doesn't even necessarily yield "all men should be treated the same legally."
Non-citizens have different rights than citizens through an "accident of birth."
In Singapore those with extreme natural academic talent are identified as children and fast tracked onto a path where they get far more academic resources than others, through an accident of birth.
One could go on.
It's not clear to me how this "moral equality" is supposed to be actualized as a matter of action. Even Charles Murray admits that Open Borders, a natural response to the doctrine of legal moral quality between all peoples, would be a disaster.
I'm not sure where this idea of moral equality gets us in practice. It's still going to be prudent to treat different people differently through accidents of birth they can't control.
What is your position on women’s equality within the church? It seems strange to claim that Christianity is the best basis for women’s equality when churches are perhaps the strongest proponents of the view that women are ideally not equal to men and the church, in particular, is one of the main places where women should not be equal.
As regards racial or economic justice, I think we should note that white and black, or rich and poor, do not need to be equally morally culpable for social injustice in order for us to see both groups as possessing human dignity and human flaws. The Bible is pretty clear that rich people are likely to be in a dire spiritual condition; it’s almost impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Clearly, if we’re using the Bible as our moral example, it is not wrong to point the finger at rich people in particular for certain kinds of sin. The phrase “moral equality” could be taken to imply otherwise, and I think some of your wording does fall into that trap.
Gemma,
On the latter point, I didn't mean to say that everyone is equally culpable for each particular sin or injustice. I meant that, broadly, we must recognize all people, of all races/kinds/groups, as subject to mixed motivations, pride, self-deception, and so on. Any ideology that makes out sin to reside in only some human beings (and definitely not *us*) fails by this standard.
On the first, I take your point. I myself am still held back by the explicit biblical statements - "I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man." (1 Tim 2) Yikes! Come on, Paul! But there it is. And then in recent experience, pushing for female eldership is pretty closely associated with left-wing forms of feminism that I don't hold. So I'm reticent.
Is that inconsistent with what I argued? I don't think so. I believe in the moral equality of men and women. That is not incompatible with different callings or roles, especially with explicit divine command. At the same time, I do think we need to take the priesthood of believers so seriously that we are hearing from men and women as our spiritual equals, even if they are not officially elders. See my first two podcasts on preaching and elders. Thanks!
I should say that I did listen in particular to that podcast episode on elders, and that it has been a source of a great deal of fruitful reflection for me, so thank you for that.
With that said, on the subject of hearing from men and women as spiritual equals, let me just give you at outtake from King Laugh, beginning at 40:57, where he says:
"What the church needs in elders is not incredibly educated men. It needs incredibly wise men. It needs men competent at life, there where they live. And what I have experienced is that most of seminary training is learning, even in low church protestant environments, all of the dance that goes into what people expect on Sunday morning, whether it's the Eucharist every single time that you gather, or it's once a quarter. It's the same kind of, you know, learn what people expect to not tick off the old lady who remembers how they did it back then."
I found that statement to be a little bit amusing, in a sad kind of way. So many of the old church ladies that I know are, regardless of their level of education, very wise, very competent at life, there where they live. Whether or not they are "elders" in the definition of some church or other, in ordinary English parlance they certainly are your elders -- of all three of you on that podcast -- and you might learn a fair bit from them. I do not think it would harm you spiritually if you did.
Excellent speech.
"I would have thought that the proper response to rejecting the racial right would be to reject that premise. Instead, the cultural left has assumed the truth of that premise and banked their moral worldview on a falsifiable empirical claim: That human beings, in a utopian, newly-reconstituted Rousseauian state of nature, would have equal group averages on accidental features."
My own theory is that social scientists went strongly in this direction after WW2 because they had no answer why, in a new post-Christian morality, groups should be treated equally if they are inherently different. And frankly, they still don't. They could have been working on this issue for decades, but instead their only argument is that all groups should be treated equally because they are indeed 100% biologically equal. Now they are painted into a corner.
The best path forward is what you suggested:
"We need a moral doctrine that is a substantive alternative to that of proponents of DEI. And that doctrine should retain an “E.” The E should not be understood as implying a mathematical equality between groups, but a moral equality across races as members of the human species, as people."
Thank you, Justin! That theory about after WW2 makes a lot of sense. But it requires a kind of empiricism/scientism. Only empirical equality could ground human equality. They should have read some Kant! (John Rawls and others did.)
"All men are created equal" doesn't even necessarily yield "all men should be treated the same legally."
Non-citizens have different rights than citizens through an "accident of birth."
In Singapore those with extreme natural academic talent are identified as children and fast tracked onto a path where they get far more academic resources than others, through an accident of birth.
One could go on.
It's not clear to me how this "moral equality" is supposed to be actualized as a matter of action. Even Charles Murray admits that Open Borders, a natural response to the doctrine of legal moral quality between all peoples, would be a disaster.
I'm not sure where this idea of moral equality gets us in practice. It's still going to be prudent to treat different people differently through accidents of birth they can't control.