Latest on the Driscoll.

So- quite the conversation in the thread below on the planned protest of Driscoll! Thanks, everyone- my mom reads this blog! Sheesh! It got a bit, uh... for Mature Audiences Only there.

In any case, here's where I'm at.

The planned protest is going ahead, but they've moved the date...

A number of questions posed by me have been answered on the blog attached to this event (as well as the helpful tidbit that endfundamentalism.org was started because "Fundamentalism in all faiths is a Bad Thing. This site represents a new group; we’re starting small with Christian Fundamentalism"... why do I have a feeling that this group won't be protesting any mosques where the women are required to cover their entire bodies any time soon???)

Here are some more Q&A's from the site:

Why disrupt a worship service? We have no intention of disrupting the service. We’ll be outside the church, not inside. We will not block anyone from going in, nor harass anyone attending the service; we aren’t conducting an Operation Rescue, after all! The Mars Hill service will be able to go on as it normally does within the building.

No it won't. "Normal" presupposes the complete absence of protestors out front waving placards. Normal is people being able to worship God without the distraction of wondering what is happening out front. To say that you won't be a disruptive presence is ridiculous. This is highjacking the worship of God to make a point. It may or may not be a point that needs to be made, but there are better times/places than a worship service.

Would you be willing to have a private meeting with Mark and his elders in lieu of a protest? As noted above, this has been tried without success. If Mark were to publicly denounce his prior actions, publicly beg forgiveness of all the women he has abused over the years (personally and corporately through his writings, sermons, etc), and outline the steps he was taking to change his ways, and then actually live out those steps, then I’d consider it.

So... that's a no? In other words, what would be needed would be to see the best possible outcome of any meeting with Mark before any meeting with Mark could actually take place. At which point said meeting would be superfluous. Just ridiculous.

Aren’t Both you and Mark Christians, on the same team? Shouldn’t Christians seek a different way? Well, maybe. Ostensibly there were Christians on both sides of the American Slavery issue, and on the Civil Rights issue. Yet just talking in private did not resolve the injustice. It took physical conflict and civil disobedience to bring some measure of justice (not that I desire either of those methods!). Similarly, since we are on opposite sides of justice, I am not able to mince words after years of oppression. And again, when a leader in the Christian Church very publicly oppresses women, that oppression must be publicly denounced.

I consider this my most successful question. I got a "well, maybe." Which being translated means, "You're right, but..." I recognize how huge this issue is right now, the emotion that has gone into it and the horror stories that some people have told. But I want to be clear here- Mark's Hard Complementarianism (and that's what it is, a hardened version of a very ubiquitous view... more on this in a bit) is not in any way, shape or form analogous to slavery. You may not like the version of marriage and church leadership at Mars Hill, but no one is being killed, tortured or otherwise enslaved there... and making comparisons like that is spurious, and simply devalues the struggle for freedom in the 1800s and the struggle for civil rights in the last century. Yes, some of the stories in the blogosphere right now detail real, serious, emotional hurt. I don't want to downplay that. But I will resist and resist strongly attempts to make Mark Driscoll out to be some Pol Pot running his own version of the killing fields up there in Seattle. It just ain't so, folks! The women of Mars Hill love Mars Hill. And those who don't end up leaving. And yes, there may be women who hate it, but whose husbands love it... and that's where you start praying that God injects some wisdom into their heads and wises those husbands up to how their wives are feeling.

Okay- more on this in a bit- I need some tie with God before the kids wake up...

Comments

[Paul]

Bob -- thanks for getting the word out on the Dec 3 protest that People Against Fundamentalism is doing ;-)

And thank you for--as a man with power--standing up on the side of women against Mark Driscoll's disturbing and damaging remarks.

My "Well, Maybe" was not a "You're right". People who are Christians should generally find ways other than a public protest to work through differences.

However, over the years, many many people(including you) have approached Mark privately. Yet he persists in his disgusting and demeaning remarks about women.

So when the injustice is so glaring, so unrepentent as in the persistent case of Mark degrading and demeaning women, sweeping things under the rug, hugging it out in the back room, just don't cut it.