Abuse: The Elephant in the Sanctuary
From the very beginning Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) has endeavored to understand why so many Christian women have encountered abuse, and how the church might become agents of healing and reconciliation. Catherine Clark Kroeger, CBE founder and president emerita, vigorously addressed the challenge of abuse which she encountered early on. As president of CBE, Cathie directed a significant portion of CBE's energies to this challenge. In 1994, CBE held a conference themed "Women, Abuse, and the Bible." We were overwhelmed by the number of people who attended this event, and who had experienced abuse in a Christian marriage, family, or church. Within several years of this conference, we had enough material to publish three separate volumes on abuse, gender, and faith. Ultimately, when Catherine Kroeger retired as the first president of CBE, she went on to become founder and president of Peace and Safety in the Christian Home (PASCH), a nonprofit organization devoted to address domestic violence and abuse.
While CBE was established largely by academics to explore the biblical, theological, and historical material on gender, we were inevitably faced with the challenge of addressing abuse as well, simply by sheer numbers of individuals who called upon us for help. Had we been more alert to the prominence of abuse in culture we would not have been caught unaware. Certainly this is the point James Gilligan, a professor of medicine at Harvard, makes in his very helpful book entitled "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic". The prevalence of abuse is likewise noted in Jackson Katz's book "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help".
Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Catherine Clark Kroeger
[Reproduced from the CBE International Website]
To our great surprise, our first president, beloved leader, and founder of Christians for Biblical Equality, Dr. Catherine Clark Kroeger, contracted pneumonia and died suddenly on Monday, February 14, 2011. If you are like me, you may find this news entirely out of character with Cathie. For so many of us, Cathie was the embodiment of unsinkable human vitality.
Read more: Honoring the Legacy of Dr. Catherine Clark Kroeger
The Girl Effect
The recent Pulitzer Prize winning book, Half the Sky, suggests that ideas have profound consequences. The idea that females are less valuable than males has not only led to an indifference to their abuse and suffering worldwide, but gender prejudice has itself fueled the global abuse of girls and women. Yet there is a redemptive, irrepressible truth this book points to. It’s called the “Girl Effect.” What does this mean?
The “Girl Effect” is a phenomenon noted by relief organizations that when you educate a female, or invest in her business, she in turns shares the benefits with her family and wider community. Some organizations are now suggesting that the most powerful means of growing a community’s welfare is by investing in the lives of its females. Scripture tells us that woman was created to be a strong helper, or in Hebrew, ezer (Genesis 2:18). The “Girl Effect” noted at the creation of woman is a truth often overlooked.
Mimi Haddad
President CBE International
Equal and Complementary
One of our members, Elizabeth Culhane, has posted a comment on the recent Equal and Complementary Symposium on her blog - on December 31, 2010. It also includes a link to a response by CBE committee member Kevin Giles.
You might also be interested in Prof John Stackhouse's blog entry of Jan 2, 2011 where he discusses his "conversion" to egalitarianism.
What does Submit in Everything Really Mean?
THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF
MARITAL SUBMISSION
STEVEN R. TRACY*
I. INTRODUCTION:
WHY ANOTHER PAPER ON MARITAL SUBMISSION?
For several decades evangelicals have wrestled with the issue of gender roles, including marital submission. Thus, the
question arises: Do we really need another article on marital submission? An evaluation of the current evangelical literature
in fact reveals that very much and very little has been written.
In terms of sheer volume, hundreds of books and numerous ministries address the subject of marital submission; in that
way much has been written.2 But a closer inspection of the literature and a careful assessment of contemporary culture
reveal that very little has been written which addresses the parameters of marital submission in terms of the specific issues
that are increasingly confronting Christian women.
Read More... >>
