ABOVE: Image: ERLC
Russell Moore, Sam Allberry, Rosaria Butterfield, and Christopher Yuan have endorsed the Nashville Statement.
COMPLEMENTARIANS ISSUE NEW MANIFESTO
ON GENDER IDENTITY
CBMW’s Nashville Statement addresses shifting notions of sex and sexuality.
BY KATE SHELLNUTT
SEE: http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/august/complementarians-new-gender-identity-lgbt-cbmw-nashville.html;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
America’s top complementarian leaders have
shifted their focus from gender roles to gender
identity.
On Tuesday, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) released
a new declaration that reasserts the significance of biological sex and
traditional marriage over society’s growing LGBT acceptance.
“We are persuaded that faithfulness in our generation
means declaring once again the true story of the world and of our place
in it—particularly as male and female,” according to the group’s Nashville Statement.
At the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and
Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) national conference in Nashville
last week, it was endorsed by about 150 conservative Christian
leaders—many of them male, Baptist, and Reformed. (The mayor of
Nashville, though, was not happy about the name.)
Initial signatories include many CBMW and ERLC leaders;
pastors like J. I. Packer, Francis Chan, John MacArthur, and James
MacDonald; and authors Rosaria Butterfield and Christopher Yuan.
At its founding by theologian Wayne Grudem 30 years ago,
CBMW issued the Danvers Statement, which affirmed the complementary
differences between the genders. It came in response to an increasingly
feminist society (and church), where conservative leaders feared men and
women were losing their biblical distinctions.
That foundational document, often seen as the textbook
definition of complementarian convictions, critiques “feminist
egalitarianism” and women rising in church leadership, and upholds
“vocational homemaking” and wives’ submission in marriage.
The 2017 Nashville Statement, instead of outlining how
the genders should live in relation to one another, makes several points
defending the existence of two genders in the first place. CBMW upholds
“God’s design for self-conception as male or female” in the face of new
conversations over transgender identity, gender fluidity, and
homosexual relationships.
John Piper called the document—which contains 14 points, each affirming and denying a belief about sex and sexuality—“a Christian manifesto concerning issues of human sexuality.”
“There is no effort to equivocate for the sake of wider,
but muddled, acceptance,” he said. “It touches the most fundamental and
urgent questions of the hour, without presuming to be a blueprint for
political action.”
The new statement affirms that people with same-sex
attraction can have “a rich and fruitful life pleasing to God through
faith in Jesus Christ, as they, like all Christians, walk in purity of
life.” But in another point, it critiques those who would self-identify
as gay.
Christians who affirm same-sex relationships have pushed
back against the statement—particularly a line that says approving of
homosexuality and transgenderism “constitutes an essential departure
from Christian faithfulness and witness.” (In the words of Baptist Press,
no more “agreeing to disagree” on LGBT issues.) The Liturgists, founded
by musician Michael Gungor and podcaster “Science Mike” McHargue, released a counter-statement in solidarity with LGBT Christians.
The Nashvile Statement also suggests that people who
identify as transgender can and should accept the “God-ordained link
between one’s biological sex and one’s self-conception as male or
female,” while acknowledging the dignity of those who are born with
physical conditions related to their sex.
It’s hard to capture the complexities of transgenderism
in a concise declaration, but CBMW has approached the issue from a
theological, biblical standpoint, relying on what researcher Mark
Yarhouse calls an “integrity lens,” or concern for the integrity of sex
and gender as created by God.
“It makes sense that faithful Christians would start there,” said Yarhouse, author of Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture
and director of the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity at
Regent University. “It’s trying to signal what’s going to be within the
bounds of evangelicalism, and it will be interesting to see how
evangelicals respond to that.” (For more on his research, see Yarhouse’s
2015 CT feature, Understanding the Transgender Phenomenon.)
Some conservative Christians criticized the CBMW’s
narrow focus on homosexuality and transgenderism, rather than the
underlying gospel issues that have led to a distorted view of “bodily
and sexual life” among Christians.
“The spectacles and obvious disputes this statement
responds to are the sideshow, not the main action,” wrote Matthew Lee
Anderson, in a Mere Orthodoxy post
about why his name would not appear among the signatories. “Those
obvious manifestations of the ‘spirit of our age’ are not the ones we
should worry about; it is those that are not obvious, the subtle
temptations that lure us in without us realizing their deadly force.”
The Nashville Statement, with its clear stances on such
topics, explicitly expands the CBMW’s central concerns beyond what it
had long been known for addressing: women’s roles in the home and the
church.
“They seem to have won the battle on women’s ordination,
at least in the Southern Baptist and Presbyterian church,” said Wendy
Alsup, who was among the female complementarian bloggers who spoke out
against CBMW’s theological emphases during last summer’s Trinity debate.
“This may be a new iteration of CBMW, but I don’t think it will define
them” in the same way as the Danvers Statement did, she said.
Though she had significant concerns about some points in the new declaration, Alsup, author of the new book Is the Bible Good For Women?, said that overall, “This is not a knee-jerk reaction to liberal ideas; this is a thoughtful and biblical statement.”
Aimee Byrd, who raised the issue of the Eternal Subordination of the Son
as it relates to complementrian theology, took issue with what the
Nashville Statement left out. Not only did it not clarify that
particular debate, she wrote,
but it doesn’t address her questions on authority and submission;
feminine and masculine stereotypes; and the relationships between men
and women outside of marriage.
The new statement comes about a year after Denny Burk, a professor at Boyce College, replaced Owen Strachan as CBMW president.
“The spirit of our age does not delight in God’s good
design of male and female. Consequently, confusion reigns over some of
the most basic questions of our humanity,” said Burk. “The aim of the
Nashville Statement is to shine a light into the darkness—to declare the
goodness of God’s design in our sexuality and in creating us as male
and female.”
