A little background. The PCUSA is a liberal presbyterian church. The PCA is a conservative church that broke off in the 1970s (actually its a merger of others, but close enough for our purposes). Tim Bayly makes a call for church discipline to be applied to feminists within the PCA and explicitly makes the analogy with the debate on homosexuality within the PCUSA. What's unusual is that he aggressively makes the argument against friendly debate. Pastors who disagree with his view of god/scripture are simply criminals and should be excommunicated not people of different opinions.
I'm curious as to whether this attitude applies to membership and I intend to ask.
7/3/07 As a follow up I did ask. Bayly indicated (see bottom of the comments on link post) that yes the membership can be disciplined for holding this opinion. This is actually one of the most aggressive doctrines of heresy I've encountered. In general if something is disputed you would generally need a church council to rule against it before it became a heresy. Otherwise you would have people excommunicating one another during disputes about things being actively disputed. A process that would throw church discipline into disrepute.
Monday, July 2, 2007
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3 comments:
I think you might have to ask him again if this applies to the membership when it comes to "feminism" and father-rule?
Is there room for disagreement on what father-rule means and how that is to be applied within the family? I happy to be, for lack of a better word, complementarian but I do not agree with how a lot of people teach the concept of "father-rule".
The emphasis, as Jesus so clearly put it, was on serving and not authority.
It seems that even if a person like me disagrees with his own definition of what that means even if they agree with him concerning women in the church, they are considered to be feminists and seemingly worthy of church discipline.
It is a scary thing to have such a formless and void definition of what constitutes a "feminist" in his eyes. It appears his definition is anyone who disagrees with him.
At least that is what my own personal experience shows me.
Well I've tried asking again. As for your general complaint about feminism being vague.... That's actually would be a defense in a discipline case. A church is obligated to clearly articulate and define a doctrine which is being declared heretical. So if they are going to argue that "feminism" is a heresy then failure to define it carefully means they aren't entitled to convict.
As for them being mean to you because you don't support patriarchy, there isn't much I can say. Hamas has managed to get Christian woman to start wearing Islamic veils using the same kind of social pressure. There is no no natural stopping point and good luck on fighting the battle at whatever point you are willing to fight it.
" So if they are going to argue that "feminism" is a heresy then failure to define it carefully means they aren't entitled to convict. "
I agree and that is very well said.
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