The Gospel Coalition Endorses Women’s Ordination

TL;DR summary:

Why? Because of “racial reconciliation.”

Supporting racial reconciliation means supporting the ordination of women.

Thabiti Anyabwile, Doug Wilson’s good buddy, and one of the stars of The Gospel Coalition, held a recent conference during which the audience cheered as a panel of women openly called for evangelical and Reformed churches to start ordaining women as elders, pastors, and teachers. Here’s a direct quote from one of the panelists:

God’s kingdom needs ALL of his people empowered to pastor and shepherd one another.

So, I think, one of my hopes is, one, that brothers, pastors, elders would really feel this burden, to figure out what do you do with women who are gifted to lead, to teach, to preach, who aren’t called to women’s ministry and aren’t called to children’s ministry. What do you do with them? (Loud assents and amens from audience)

This event was sponsored by The Gospel Coalition and Crossway Books. Reformed Theological Seminary had a booth at the conference. None of these parties have said a word about this heresy, let alone apologized for it, or criticized Thabiti Anyabwile for organizing the conference and propagating it. The Gospel Coalition not only sponsored Just Gospel 17, they live-streamed the conference on their website.

The choice is clear – you can have racial reconciliation, or you can have orthodox Christianity. But you can’t have both.

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Full article:

The Just Gospel 17 Conference was held March 16-18 in Atlanta, Georgia. It was put on by The Front Porch, a website/organization devoted to “conversations about biblical faithfulness in African-American churches and beyond.” The Front Porch is run by three black men: Louis C. Love Junior, the pastor of New Life Fellowship Church in Vernon Hills, Illinois; Anthony Carter, lead pastor of East Point Church in East Point, Georgia (and one of R.C. Sproul Sr.’s favorite black preachers); and Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church and Doug Wilson’s favorite black preacher. (His obsequious fawning over Anyabwile sickens even many of Wilson’s own fans.)

Anyabwile is probably the best known of the three. He’s increasingly influential – one of the main reasons Doug Wilson made a complete fool of himself groveling to Anyabwile over the past year is that he recognizes just how influential Anyabwile is becoming. Anyabwile has his own blog at The Gospel Coalition, and is regularly quoted in the media, both Christian and secular, on various topics. He’s one of the best-known promoters of the racial reconciliation poison in the evangelical world.

I take it Front Porch holds a conference every year, but by many accounts this one was bigger and more “important” than previous ones, with many attendees saying that this year’s conference felt like a tipping point, and predicting that future Front Porch conferences are going to be major events in the Christian world. (Unfortunately, they’re probably right.) This year’s conference had some well-known Christian sponsors – Crossway Books and The Gospel Coalition, among them, and Reformed Theological Seminary set up an exhibit there. The Gospel Coalition thought so much of the conference that they live-streamed the entire event on their website.

What was the conference about? Ostensibly, it was about the relationship between the gospel and “justice.” This is the description of the conference on the Front Porch’s website:

African-American churches are gospel churches. One of the greatest miracles of Christianity is that those once cuffed in oppression found in the Good News a path to faith, hope and love in a dark world. Those who once suffered injustice at the hands of professing Christians saw beyond their injustice to a God who reigns in justice.

Yet to remedy injustice today, many folks say, “Just preach the gospel.” That’s the solution they give to African-American Christians calling for justice in the criminal system, education, and a host of other social problems. But does the biblical gospel have anything to say about biblical justice in the face of these continuing social problems? Should we “Just preach the gospel” or “Preach a just gospel”?

So the conference was about “justice,” huh? Hmm… Suffice it to say that the traditional Christian understanding of “justice” is radically different from the perverted meaning of “justice” used in the racial reconciliation movement. However, today isn’t the day to delve into every aspect of the conference. Instead, let’s focus on one particular noteworthy and starkly undeniable fact of the conference— it was a blatant call for the “empowerment” and ordination of women as officers of the church – elders, teachers, and pastors.

This is to be expected, of course. The “racial reconciliation” movement is simply black liberation theology wrapping itself in the language of traditional, orthodox Christianity in order to seduce gullible Christians. (And it has worked very well, seducing millions with its false gospel.) However, while black liberation theology may currently be the main thrust of the racial reconciliation movement, black liberation theology has always walked hand in hand with other forms of liberation theology, just as the Civil Rights Movement paved the road for feminism and homosexual rights. Just as Black Lives Matter and gay marriage and trannies in the restroom and women marching for abortion are all part and parcel of the same thing, a war on the white race and the Christian religion, so is “racial reconciliation.”

That’s why things are moving so rapidly leftward in evangelicalism. Thirty years ago, while the vast majority of white Christians wouldn’t have approved of burning a cross in someone’s yard, or assaulting someone because of his race, they certainly had no desire to live around blacks, go to church with blacks, or let their kids attend school with blacks, let alone date blacks, God forbid. And they felt no guilt about this whatsoever; if someone had called them racist for these things, they would’ve laughed or told them to go jump in the lake.

But those days are long gone. Starting in the early to middle 1990s, “important” Christians began to lecture us about the evils of liking our white Christian way of life and wanting to preserve it. Bill McCartney, the white college football coach who let his daughter get knocked up not by one, but by two of his black football players, teamed up with James Dobson and many other Christian “leaders” to organize huge Promise Keepers rallies all over the country. At these rallies, which were supposedly to bring men of all races together, the audiences were overwhelmingly white. In cities all over America, tens of thousands of white men came together to be hectored, denounced, berated, shamed, and condemned for making their families the focus of their lives, and not black people.

It’s only gotten worse since, of course. And things have turned so completely around that now millions of Christians believe that not only is interracial marriage a good thing, it’s even better than a Christian marriage. But while most Christians have gotten on the “racism is a sin” bandwagon, until quite recently, many of them would have denied that “sexism” is a sin, and would have insisted that a war on “sexism” was actually a war on nature and God-ordained sex roles. See, evangelicals always like to have no more than one “ism” or “phobia” separating them from radical leftists, or they feel like knuckle-dragging troglodytes, like their parents. Back when “homophobia” was the latest thing the SPLC and the New York Times were going on about, life was fairly good for evangelicals. They could still hold on to some of their old-fashioned notions about sex roles, because they had gotten on board the Antiracism train, leaving them with only one verboten belief – “sexism.”

But when the war on “transphobia” came along, destroying everything in its path, suddenly Christians had a dilemma – they now had two forbidden isms/phobias between them and SJWs – sexism and homophobia,. But the limit is one. With one, you can claim your heart’s in the right place, but your convictions come first. But with two, well, it’s pretty clear you’re just a vile hater like all our white ancestors were. So something has to give, and most evangelicals still aren’t real crazy about homos, so they’re giving in on the other one. So a war on “sexism” in the church will soon be trendy.

And the “racial reconciliation” crowd will be leading the charge. For instance, twenty years ago Doug Wilson mocked “Christian rap” as infantile, idiotic, and an oxymoron. Now he’s a big fan, and even has a favorite Reformed rapper, “Propaganda.” Wilson really, really likes Propaganda.

So much so that Propaganda is the star of The Hound of Heaven, a short movie directed by Wilson’s son, ND Wilson.

Never mind that the Bible says long hair is a disgrace to a man, and Propaganda has hair down to the middle of his back. So what? He’s black, so what the Bible says doesn’t matter. Plus, Doug would tell you, “Prop” may need a haircut, but he’s good on the big issues, like what the Bible says about women preachers. That’s pretty important, and Prop’s got Doug’s back on that. Right, Prop?

Oops. Here’s a tweet from Propaganda on January 21st.

https://twitter.com/prophiphop/status/822872675324293120

So Prop’s telling everyone he knows that they need to read a certain book. Is it Southern Slavery As It Was? Nope. How about Reforming Marriage? Uh, no. Actually, the book is by a woman named Sarah Bessey, called Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women. As you can guess, it’s a call for evangelicals to start ordaining women.

The foreword is by Rachel Held Evans, the evangelical radical feminist Doug is always denouncing for stuff like……..calling for women to be ordained to preach. And this is the book that Doug’s favorite “Reformed rapper” told all his fans to read. But Rachel Held Evans is white, so when she writes a foreword to a book urging Christians to start ordaining women, she’s a rebel against God’s word. But Propaganda is black, so when he sends a tweet praising the very same book and urging all his fans to read it, Doug doesn’t say a word. (And, yes, Doug is aware of the tweet – someone left a comment about it on his site a few months back.)

And note the #womensmarch hashtag at the end of the tweet. Propaganda was endorsing this radical leftist march for abortion, sodomy, and trannies that took place that day. Doug Wilson denounced the march strongly, but still refuses to say a word about Propaganda endorsing both the book and the abortion/tranny march. (Something tells me that Wilson and his son are now wishing they’d been a little bit “racist” and hired a white man to narrate the movie. Denounce “racism” all you want, but there’s no denying it prevents a lot of problems and saves people a ton of heartache and embarrassment.)

Similarly, Wilson cussed Rachel Held Evans up one side and down the other when she said a Christian could vote for Hillary in good conscience, but he fawned over and praised Thabiti Anyabwile just a few weeks later when he said he was planning to vote for Hillary. But, once again: Rachel Held Evans is white, so she’s pretty much an apostate for endorsing Hillary. Thabiti Anyabwile is black, so he’s a deep and courageous thinker for voting for Hillary. The first rule of Racial Reconciliation Club isn’t that you don’t talk about Racial Reconciliation Club. No, the first rule of Racial Reconciliation Club is that a white person must never ever denounce a colored person, I mean person of color, or a Jew. (The second rule of Racial Reconciliation Club is that you never STOP talking about Racial Reconciliation Club.)

Thabiti Anyabwile brings us back to the conference. It may be hard for younger Christians to believe, but it wasn’t that long ago that all the speakers at Christian conferences were male. Since conferences were about teaching, and women are forbidden to teach men, all the speakers had to be men. But then came Elisabeth Elliot, who started being invited to conferences to “share her testimony” about the attack by colored savages who murdered her husband. Then we got Joni Eareckson Tada, the paraplegic painter. Now we’ve got Joyce Meyer and Beth Moore, and who knows how many others. But, still, mainstream evangelicals tend to have the female speakers talk to women’s-only sessions, not the entire crowd of men and women.

But that’s not how Thabiti Anyabwile rolls. He invited Karen (K. A.) Ellis to “speak” to the entire conference, for around 90 minutes. You can watch it here.

Go ahead and watch it. You can just skim it; there’s no need to watch the whole thing to see that she’s clearly teaching. And preaching. On Twitter, during the livestream of the conference, many people tweeted that she was “bringing truth”, etc. The Bible says women aren’t to preach to or teach men. But never mind that part of the Bible. It’s evidently now one of those hateful passages we don’t dare read aloud or mention in public. In fact, Thabiti Anyabwile’s wife, Rev. Kristie Anyabwile, is a preacher herself. Here she is preaching last year at a conference (her husband preached there, too).

And Karen Ellis was just the warm-up act. The really good stuff came later, when a panel of wannabe women preachers were asked to give “Women’s Voices on Issues of Justice.” And lo and behold, it turns out that one of the biggest injustices in the church today is “sexism,” which keeps women from being pastors and elders simply because they’re not men.

You can watch it here: (You’ll have to rewind it if you want to watch the whole thing; for some reason, the 42 minute video starts at around 37 minutes.)

Things got off to a good start at 4:12 when Rev. Zakiya Jackson said, “The purity culture is the greatest injustice against women in the church.” Nice, real nice. In the Bible, IIRC, sexual purity is kind of a big deal. But, rates of sexual immorality among blacks are sky-high, so now it’s racist to care about sexual purity, I guess. Or at least sexist. Probably both.

Of course, it wasn’t just women’s issues. This is the Front Porch, after all, and the audience has certain expectations. At 9:17, Rev. Christina Edmondson gave ‘em that old-time religion with the obligatory Hate Whitey message, and said that a big problem today is that white Christians refuse to listen to black Christians, and so blacks are in a “perpetual state of re-traumatization.” Yeah, that’s actually what she said – nobody in evangelicalism listens to blacks these days! I know when I look at evangelical websites and conferences today, it seems like only about half the authors and speakers are black. Apparently as long as one white preacher still has a job, blacks will remain in a “perpetual state of re-traumatization.”

And Rev. Trillia Newbell aired out some dirty laundry at 11:44, talking about sexual assault. It seems that in the black church, a male church member sexually assaulting a female member is not that uncommon, and the pastor often covers it up by convincing the woman not to go to the authorities. Keep that in mind the next time someone talks about the joys of diversity, interracial dating, and racial reconciliation. (Of course, you’re white, so when you bring it up, you’ll be racist.)

You know that verse where Paul says women are to keep silent in church? You have to admit – that verse is kind of vague and obviously very hard to interpret. I mean, come on – it’s not at all clear what Paul way trying to say by saying women should keep silent in church. But thankfully, Rev. Jadine Johnson, a member of Thabiti Anyabwile’s church, was on the panel to help clear up the confusion, by explaining that “having women’s voices heard on Sunday morning” is “really important.” (22:00). (I can’t wait for that new Racial Reconciliation Study Bible from Thomas Nelson!)

At 23:10, Rev. Dennae Pierre, who’s also married to a preacher, talked about being called to preach as a young girl. She says her husband’s TGC-affiliated church is complementarian, but she’s clearly not happy about that. She says that many men are afraid that that there’s only so much leadership to go around, so if they share it with women, men won’t have much left. But Rev. Pierre assures the men that there are plenty of leadership roles in the church for both men and women. Then she pretty much just lays it all on the line – it’s time to start ordaining women for the pastorate (I’m sure glad her husband’s church is “complementarian”!):

God’s kingdom needs ALL of his people empowered to pastor and shepherd one another.

So, I think, one of my hopes is, one, that brothers, pastors, elders would really feel this burden, to figure out what do you do with women who are gifted to lead, to teach, to preach, who aren’t called to women’s ministry and aren’t called to children’s ministry. What do you do with them? (Loud assents and amens from audience)

And the crowd really came alive when she said, “You shouldn’t have to be a pastor’s wife to have a leadership voice in the church.”

At 29:29, Rev. Edmondson explains that since both women and men receive their gifts from the Holy Spirit, and they’re the exact same gifts, we’ve got to figure this thing out “while still honoring the Bible,” wink, wink. In other words, we need to come up with some sort of way to justify ignoring God’s clear commands in this area, but so far we’ve failed.

At 37:06, Rev. Zakiya Jackson stated that in the complementarian/egalitarian debate, “I’m egalitarian.”

She later tweeted, “All of these women teach, preach, consult and speak. And there are so many more that I can highlight. This is just a snapshot.”

All of these women teach, preach, consult and speak. And there are so many more that I can highlight. This is just a snapshot.

— Ms. Zakiya Jackson is Afrofuturism (@ZakiyaNaemaJack) March 18, 2017

Nice of Thabiti to invite so many women with such a high view of Scripture!

It’s clear where this panel stands – it’s sexism to refuse to ordain women to the ministry. And these women all appeared at the invitation of Thabiti Anyabwile and The Front Porch. And all weekend Anyabwile was tweeting about how great the conference is, and has never said a negative word about this panel, let alone try to shut it down, or apologize for hosting it. Nor has the The Gospel Coalition condemned it or apologized for livestreaming it.

Clearly, female pastors is an idea whose time has now come to evangelicalism.

And it’s in large part due to this poison of “racial reconciliation.” As you can see from this conference, the lie of racial equality just leads to even more insane ideas about equality. Which is why we’ll soon have women preachers, and a few years after that most churches will embrace gay marriage, and one of these days the PCA and the SBC will offer formal apologies for having separate restrooms for men and women for decades.

So women preachers it is. From now on we need to judge a person’s fitness for the pulpit by the content of their character, not by a solitary letter on their birth certificate.

The choice is clear – you can have racial reconciliation, or you can have orthodox Christianity. But you can’t have both.