Similitudes - Volume 7, Issue 5

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TFOE & PITC

Douglas Wilson

Dear Paul,

Your work has recently been brought to the attention of the chairperson of our taskforce, who took the liberty of passing copies of your letters on to me. I am the chair of the subcommittee working on what we consider to be the quite serious problem of religiously-based bigotry and sexism. And, speaking quite frankly, some on our committee thought your letters were quite a specimen of what we are up against.

I am writing you in the hope that I might confirm your meaning at several points. As we read through these passages, we thought it impossible for anyone in this enlightened age to hold to the sentiments you apparently expressed, and sometimes expressed quite blatantly. If you feel we have misread you at any point, could you please respond immediately? A detailed complaint has already been filed with the Committee of Discipline, so it would behoove you to reply as soon as possible. As you well know, no church can function without disciplineI trust that you will prove to be more compliant than the authoritarian tone of your letters makes you sound.

In the letter you wrote to the fundamentalist assembly at Ephesus, you appeared to say that a womyn should obey her domestic equal as though he were the Lord. Womyn are really supposed to treat their domestic equals like they were little gods ? Our subcommittee was thunderstruckare you prepared for the flood of domestic equal abuse this teaching will bring about? Really. . . And when you wrote to the Corinthians (already well-known for their sexual abuse of womyn), you added to the degradation of the womyn in that city by saying that they were created for their domestic equals. Surely you know that all such intolerance and domineering were banned at the General Assembly of 57?

This same pervasive "maleness" can be seen in your insistence upon logical reasoning and systematic analysis of Holy Scripture. Your reputation for scholarship used to be considerablewhat are you doing among such doctrinal mossbacks!and so you should know that the new hermeneutic of tolerance is firmly established in every respected seminary and graduate school.

In contrast, throughout your letters you consistently use the masculine case endings when referring to our Lord. Perhaps this was an oversight on your partbut the General Assembly settled this issue a decade ago. In all theological writing, at least half the references to Christa must use the feminine ending, and use the feminine pronouns in referring to Her. Paul, God is bigger than the little male box you want to put Her in. The consensus of our subcommittee was that your grandiose expressions of sovereignty actually betray a clear desire on your part to limit God. He is infinite, and this means Her mind is filled with infinite grays. Paul, imitate us as we imitate our loving and accepting Christ; we must all learn to live in the dynamic tensions of the grays. We trust we will hear back from you soon .

For a fair and just church,

Marsha Mann, M. Div., Th.D.

TFOE&PITC is committed to a radical discipleship which calls upon professing Christians everywhere to break with the oppression of all forms of unscriptural patriarchy. The Taskforce does not discriminate based upon race, age, sexual preferences, national origin, body weight or size, hair color, religion (intolerant religion excepted), shoe size, intelligence, body odor, or anything else.