CBE’s Orlando 2003 Conference -- Celebrating the Priesthood of All Believers: Serving Christ as a Global Community By Carol and Jon Trott First published online at www.cornerstonemag.com. Reprinted with permission from the authors.

We were deeply blessed by Christians for Biblical Equality’s eighth international conference, held August 7 through 10 in Orlando, Florida. Unlike the 2002 CBE Marriage Conference, in which we participated as speakers and so were a bit more nervous, we were able to relax and let others feed us with their wisdom.

Like almost all evangelical events (including our own Cornerstone Festival), there were less minorities, oppressed people groups, and internationals represented than the ideal, though some did attend and did speak. But gender-wise, the balance was wonderful. A very healthy balance between the charismatic and non-charismatic, the cerebral and the intuitive, the abstractly doctrinal and embodied experiential, was – simply put – the way the Church ought to be.

The Seminars (Jon’s Faves)

Of the seminars I attended (and there were over thirty to choose from), three bear special mention.

Professor Linda Belleville of Northpark University opened the conference. Her topic, “Women Leading Men: Seven Biblical Observations,” examined leadership and gender through the biblical lens, finding no role distinctions regarding leadership in either old or new testaments. Her only somewhat rhetorical question, “Is it tradition speaking or the bible speaking?” became the basis for many discussions over the next few days. Though I did not attend her seminar on 1 Timothy 2:11-15 here, I did attend an expanded version of it at Cornerstone Festival 2003. Her expertise in New Testament Greek and straightforward, easily accessible approach enlightened CBErs I’m sure as it did those at Cornerstone.

John Kohlenberger’s seminar, “God Said: ‘I Am Not a Man,’” offered a position not entirely agreed-upon even within the ranks of those supporting women in ministry and mutually-submitted marriages. Yet his seminar was less about needing to agree or disagree with all his conclusions than it was about pondering the nature of God, our relationships to God, and His love for us. It was a profoundly moving, even devotional hour as Kohlenberger took us through various scriptures using both feminine and masculine terms and images to describe God. The punchline wasn’t that God was a goddess or some such foolishness. “All of creation is used to image Who God is,” noted Kohlenberger, “but there is no total transfer.” That is, to image God as “merely” male due to masculine pronouns being used in Scripture is to ignore the fact that God is Spirit, and is not ‘sexed’ in any human understanding of that term.

The single most fascinating seminar I attended – and I could only attend a few out of the over thirty offered – came from Australian vicar Kevin Giles. A small and wirey man with a wicked sense of humor, he laced his highly theoretical seminar, “The Trinity and the Subordination of Women,” with plenty of zingers. Essentially, he took to task none other than Wayne Grudem, the man widely viewed as being the foremost evangelical opponent of women as pastors and as equal partners in marriage.

Grudem, it turns out, offers teachings regarding the Trinity which are almost always rejected not only by his contemporary theologians but also by the vast majority of theologians both Protestant and Catholic. Those teachings center on the nature of the Trinity itself, and especially upon the nature of the Son as related to the Father. Grudem insists that the Son is “subordinate” to the Father in function – and not just temporarily, as in the Phillipians description of Jesus emptying Himself for the sake of humankind. This subordinate role is permanent, according to Grudem.

Now the above may seem abstract. But it most certainly is not abstract in the slightest as regards the results. Grudem and others use this alleged inequality within the Trinity to underscore the alleged inequality of women to men.

Giles – and in his book The Trinity and Subordination (IVP) the point is more fully expounded – uses Church history to make two incredible points.

First, virtually no theologian of note supported Grudem’s claim, and many of them condemned it as heretical or erroneous. That included Athanaseus, the theologian who battled the Arius and the Arians over the Trinity and Jesus’ role within the Trinity, the Cappadocian Fathers, John Calvin, and theologians today including Rahner and Barth.

Second, the historical waters from which Grudem dips emanate from one primary source: Charles Hodges. Hodges, it turns out, used many of the same arguments of subordinationism to support not only gender inequality, but more importantly in his time, slavery. He was a southerner, with a southerner’s cultural blinders. And the result was a twisted theology in support of slavery that as Giles points out, practically no evangelical would echo today even though there is more support for it than for gender equality, Scripturally speaking.

In reality, then, Giles presented us with the fascinating scenario of “defenders of the faith” and “biblical truth” becoming so enamoured of their cultural biases that they teach doctrines not in keeping with the bible they’re protecting!

I left Giles’ seminar with my head happily spinning, and promptly purchased his book from CBE’s bookstore. (A plug for CBE, check out their website at www.cbeinternational.org for membership information, free articles, and book sales online to name a few items of interest.)

The Seminars (Carol’s Faves)

Jon and I are bookends in many ways, him with all the tattoos and shaved head and piercings and tendency to like wilder ideas, and me a more typical lady with a more cautious attitude. But I have my adventurous side, and besides, this was a conference on women’s equality! So it figures that I’d attend different seminars than Jon did; we compared notes afterward and edified each other.

I went to John (we call him Jay) Phelan’s seminar for a few reasons. First, he’s the president of Northpark Seminary, the national school for our parent denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. Second, his topic interested me: “Teaching Biblical Equality in the Local Church.”

Jay offered the basics of the discussion. He talked about the difficulty of doing biblical interpretation. “Everyone reads texts with their own lenses,” he said, “and that’s a lot of baggage we’re each carrying into the task.” He suggested we especially needed to pay attention to what the text meant in the past vs. what it means in today’s situation.

Jay focused on history, especially Greco-Roman, in regard to women. And he then turned us toward our biblical heritage: Israel, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul. And through and in all of this he suggested humility is the order of the day. “Biblical interpretation,” he argued, “is a community process. If we listen to the godly voices of all types, intellectuals to the simplest, we are more likely to hear the Spirit Who lives in the Church.” The more we listen, the more easily we can let go of our own prejudices.

Our biblical heritage can be summarized this way: “All God’s people are holy. All God’s people have the Spirit. All God’s people are priests.”

From there it is easy to make the case for biblical equality. “Look at the whole story of what God is doing,” Jay said. “Declare the kingdom with God’s point of view.”

My next seminar – “The Dreaded T-Word: Theology, and Why Women Avoid It” – hit at something Jon and I have discussed between us. While Jon is fascinated by abstract stuff in the original Greek, I’m a little nervous. Part of that has to do with, in my past, being told I didn’t have what it takes to think about “intellectual” things. And it is true I have to work hard at some things… but who doesn’t?

Carolyn Custis James, who taught the seminar, got right to some good reasons why this is important. “When you’re going through a crisis,” she said, “you need to understand your theology – your understanding of God. Questions we ask about God are theology questions.” Sure, some of you are thinking I’m dumb now if this was news to me. Well, for the ones who don’t think so, keep reading.

When you ask ‘Why?’ of God or about God that is a theological question, Carolyn suggested, citing none other than J. I. Packer. “We are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing God.”

Mary of Bethany was the first theologian of the new testament, according to Carolyn. She knew how important it was, and Jesus blessed her desire to develop a theology. I’ve always been a great Martha, but not so great at being Mary. Carolyn comforted us by noting that we need to be both. “Theology is about my relationship with God.”

It is when we experience a crisis that many women turn toward our theology. “Every struggle that we encounter, we face our theology. When we don’t get to know God in a deeper and deeper way, we become a stranger. God’s invitation is to go deeper, and in our struggles to know what we believe.”

Finally, in one statement she made, she shocked me. I’ve always depended on my husband to be the so-called “theologian” of our house. But Carolyn reminded me that I am a theologian to my husband. It made me remember the many times he’s told me that I embody the Lord to Him, that I bring the Word to Him in his moments of doubt and crisis. I told him of this later, and he merely shook his head like “I told you so.” I was deeply blessed by this message, and need to keep working on my theology.

Last but certainly not least, a second Carolyn’s seminar has to be mentioned. Carolyn Gordon’s humor and humility helped me broaden my vision of just what CBE and biblical equality really are. “Communication Equality: How to Get the Message Across” was even more powerful coming from this African American woman, who works against two sets of social barriers. The things I wrote from her seminar read like sound bites, but deep sound bites:

“What you believe in your heart will be communicated.”

“If we’re going to advocate equality in the church then we also must advocate equality outside the church.”

“If we can change our own attitudes, we can change the world’s.”

“There are a lot of invisible people in the world.” I had to write that one down, as Carolyn talked a bit about one of my husband’s favorite books, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Carolyn gently reminded us that CBE isn’t just for women’s equality, but the equality of all people, regardless of class barriers, economic barriers, or ethnic barriers.

I thought about my own work with the homeless women at our Leland Project in Chicago and wondered if I came off like a Christian or just a social worker. I’m so ignorant of their world, and it is so easy to come off like I know more than I do and not really “see” these women and their problems. I have to not think I know so much….

My husband smiled grimly when I told him my thoughts later. “Well, at least you’re not having to deal with whiteness and maleness--you're white but I'm both! Those are two sets of cultural blinders I have to try to peel off before I can see others properly.” Oh, does this almighty arbiter of western culture want a sad song from a very small violin, or what? I gave him a kiss instead.

Jon and Carol’s Wrap-Up

We believe that the 2003 Orlando conference underscores the importance of CBE to the entire Church body. For too long the church has been hung up on an issue that is robbing it of many gifted leaders. Meanwhile, the fields are white and ready for harvest. The invisible continue to remain so. We encourage any who would be interested to browse CBE’s website for free articles on various topics regarding mutual submission, subscription info for their magazines, and membership.

The next conference? Rumor has it England is up for invasion….

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