Evangelical Feminism in Europe

https://evangelicalfocus.com/=life-tech/24403/spanish-baptist-faculty-of-theology-includes-feminism-in-its-curriculum

Building bridges to society is basically another way of saying – find as much common ground as you can and try to redeem what you can. It sounds noble and well-intentioned but history demonstrates it's a formula for compromise and eventually capitulation.

Evangelicalism has (since the 1990's) been engaged in a revisionist project with regard to feminism. In terms of the wider culture, the ideology had clearly won the day by the dawn of that decade and the Evangelical shift was underway. As I have repeatedly argued, any church that makes a strong Biblical stand against feminism, divorce, and psychology (what I have called the Accommodationist Triad) will quickly be emptied. The culture has moved on from these topics and only those with strong conviction are going to make counter-cultural stands on these issues.

Evangelicalism (or Neo-Evangelicalism as it used to be known) arose after World War II and in many respects defined itself by means of contrast with Fundamentalism and its ethos of separatism and cultural marginalisation. For the American Evangelical movement, the first few decades were marked by disunity reflecting the old North-South divides in American politics. The 1960's changed that and with the mass exodus of old Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, the movement was able to coalesce by the mid-to-late 1970's and played a key role in getting Reagan elected.

In Europe, the story is different. Evangelicals 'broke' into the continent (in earnest) during the mid-1970's with the Lausanne Movement. At that point in time, many (maybe even most) European Evangelicals tended to be Left-leaning and during the course of subsequent decades there has been a steady shift to the Right that has been greatly aided by grass roots frustrations with entities like the EU and the growing tide of immigration.

And yet like their American cousins, these Evangelicals may embrace certain ideologies connected to capitalism, immigration, NATO, and the like and yet they're not going to take hard cultural stands.

And so (as in America) certain cultural ships have sailed – the issues are no longer up for debate. And one of these is certainly feminism. If anything it's more robust within the EU where there are actual corporate and governmental quotas and the like.

The Spanish Evangelical school in question, (linked in the article) is simply an expression of this compromise. And one of the means of compromise is the tool of revision. A generation ago, conservative Christians frowned at feminism in all its forms. Today, feminism is embraced by imposing a revisionist narrative on the subject and its history. There are 'good feminists' and 'bad feminists' as it were. As such the Evangelical movement wants to celebrate the good – as they see it.

One means of revision is to cast the Seneca Falls movement associated with figures like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as 'good' and Christian. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would encourage these people to visit Seneca Falls, NY and closely examine the monuments and the words they express. They are not Christian. At best these women were already (and fully) under the spell of Scripture-denying theological liberalism. Their views are heterodox and that needs to be stated without any kind of hesitation or apology. They are not to be celebrated. Contrasting them with later twentieth-century forms of feminism is misleading and the arguments fallacious. It's arguing that 'bad' isn't bad simply on the basis that there's something worse.

By distorting the teachings of the New Testament, it's clear enough these people are on the road to women's ordination – if they're not there already. In fact I firmly believe that before the decade has ended it's going to be increasingly difficult to find an Evangelical church without women pastors (de facto or de jure). Many are already doing it by means of sleight-of-hand polity tricks and game-playing nomenclature.

Needless to say, this entire revisionist approach will also take place in another generation (or less) with regard to issues like fornication, cohabitation, and the host of sins found within the sodomite spectrum. There's already a great deal of evidence to point to this and I've seen a good deal of it with my own eyes.

The Biblical response being advocated for here (with the school in Spain) has nothing to do with Scripture. It involves the selected use of a few verses wed to a narrative about Roman society – and in terms of contemporary Western society the solution involves the repeated moving of the goalposts. As long as there's a more radical feminism to be found in the secular realm they can use it as a foil and appear conservative – even though just a generation ago they would be considered radical liberals.

Berrocal may claim the label 'Reformed' but he argues like an Evangelical. Rather than make a claim wed to revelation and morality, the compromise positions of Evangelicalism are marketed and presented as a sales pitch. Do what God wants and you'll have this....

In this case it's a sales pitch for Christian feminism and one that will certainly tickle ears as all those mammon-enslaved families are looking for vindication and many women are looking for expiation. They feel guilty and with this kind of Evangelical repackaging they don't have to anymore. They can have their cake and eat it too.

What a sad tale of compromise. One wonders if in another generation or two there will be anyone within the Lausanne Movement that will wake up and realize the magnitude of their error and how they sowed the seeds for their own destruction?