o1mnikent

Since 1995, my denomination (the Christian Reformed Church) has allowed space for two interpretations of scripture regarding women in ministry. Those who thought “women should submit” could peacefully co-exist with those who believe Paul’s assertion that Christ ushered in a new covenant, in which gender (male/female), social rank (slave/free), and ethnicity (Jew/Gentile) are only secondary identity markers to our oneness in Christ.

Those who thought that hierarchy in the Trinity implied hierarchical gender relations could now break bread together with those who understood the Trinity in more perichoretical (literally “dance around”) and – I don’t know – Nicene terms.

Those who thought that the curse of sin forced Eve to submit to Adam’s authority (as both John Elderedge and several synodical delegates argue) could now be at peace with those for whom gender relations are based on the order of God’s goodness in creation and not the disorder of sin initiated by the fall.

Last summer, in order to preserve our peaceable co-existence, Synod 2006 proposed a Sabbath – seven years, for the sake of the church, where we refrain from arguing, debating, or discussing the matter. A friend of mine quipped that Synod should instead have called it a seven-year siesta, because then we would all realize how ridiculous it actually would have been.

Fortunately, this year, twelve years after 1995, Synod has finally exercised a bit more authority on the matter. I’m all for unity, and I fully believe that we must make space in the church for those with whom we disagree. But we cannot make space for everyone. Synod has decided, with that in mind, that we can no longer make space for the continued oppression of individuals, or space for the suppression of gifts, or space for the arbitrary limitation of ordination, or space for forced silence, or space for what a majority of our denomination believes to be a wrong interpretation of scripture, or space for the exclusion of anyone with whom we share our primary identity – as brothers and sisters, males and females, one in Christ.

Except, of course, at classical meetings.

Word around the denominational building this afternoon is that synod is discussing women tonight at 7:00.

This past weekend I’ve been attending a conversation in Seattle between leaders in the Emergent Church. For whatever reason, this conversation has included Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church here in Seattle. He believes in scriptural inerrancy, practices believer baptism (which implies un-Reformed assumptions about God’s sovereignty), takes an approach to integrating faith and politics that doesn’t differ much from Pat Robertson, and claims that his acceptance of “drinking beer and dancing” distinguishes him from fundamentalism.

Driscoll’s sentiments aren’t that unusual. Probably a majority of Christians in the United States would agree with him. What surprised me, however, was that after his litany of assumptions about the church, Driscoll called himself Reformed. But nothing about Driscoll is Reformed! Why would he call himself this?

It occurred to me that Driscoll probably would have defined himself as an evangelical only five or six years ago, but the political atmosphere has shifted enough in the past few years that being an evangelical isn’t as trendy as it once was. Or maybe because he strongly believes that Christians ought to engage culture. Engaging culture is trendy these days, and what better place to look for an impetus to engage culture than a robust doctrine of creation in the Reformed tradition.

But in the middle of all the name-swapping, people like Driscoll aren’t changing much more than their names. If he and others want to call themselves Reformed, they cannot simply pick the parts of Reformed theology they like – the parts that are trendy or meet needs for church growth or popularity. Doing so is disingenuous to the history or theology of the Reformed tradition. I fear that, by changing what they call themselves, these leaders will hijack Reformed Christianity for their own purposes and mar the tradition of which they claim to be a part. In the process, they’ll do for Reformed Christians in America what their predecessors did to evangelicalism in the 1970s.