Anne Eggebroten visited Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and what she found there shocked her. As a matter of fact, she was so shocked that she wrote about that experience in the July 2010 edition of Sojourners magazine. Readers of her article are likely to experience a shock of their own — they will be shocked that Eggebroten could actually have been surprised by what she found there.
In “The Persistence of Patriarchy,” Eggebroten writes about “the wide reach” of complementarian views of manhood and womanhood among conservative Christians. Her article is subtitled: “Hard to believe, but some churches are still teaching about male headship.” Hard to believe?
Can anyone really be surprised that this is so? In some sense, it might be surprising to the generally liberal readership of Sojourners, but it can hardly be surprising to anyone with the slightest attachment to evangelical Christianity. Nevertheless, Anne Eggebroten’s article represents what I call a “National Geographic moment” — an example of someone discovering the obvious and thinking it exotic and strange. It is like a reporter returning from travel to far country to explain the strange tribe of people she found there — evangelical Christians believing what the Christian church has for 2,000 years believed the Bible to teach and require. So . . . what is so exotic?
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2 comments:
Robin,
When Mr. Nixon was first elected, Dorothy Parker remarked that she was shocked because she did not know anyone who would vote for him. I think she was spot on -- liberals in New York actually do not know conservatives or for that matter moderates especially if they live in the sticks -- anywhere West of the Hudson.
So this is hardly surprising, except that it is in the internet age. One effect of the net has been to expose the cleavages between various viewpoints.
I recall when +Robinson was first elected a priest telling me that any conflict would subside in 6 months. To say the least, when I sent him the URL's for some conservative blogs his view changed!
We all I think, are inclined to think of ourselves as the center of the bell curve. Wrong. My co-liberals are often the worst offenders. We just assume everyone with a brain thinks like us. Then we are shocked, Shocked I Tell You(!) when someone suggests we are arrogant.
We really do not mean it, we are simply making some wrong assumptions. But then, conservatives do too.
FWIW
jimB
Except that conservatives have for the most part the Bible behind them. The "liberals" want to throw out the parts they don't like, which is the point of Mohler's article.
It's not about bell curves. It's about right and wrong.
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