There are some issues it’s not OK to disagree on.

That poor misguided dear Suzanne McCarthy has got her bloomers in a twist again, insisting that the girls should be able to play in the treehouse. Luckily we have the likes of Michael Heiser and John Hobbins to slap her down. Hobbins writes:

Said [“complementarian“, ptui] churches motivate their position with care and acumen, as anyone familiar with the debate knows.

The slave-owners of the antebellum south likewise motivated their position “with care and acumen”, basing their position — that persons of African descent were fit only to slaves — on the carefully exegeted Biblical principle of the curse on Ham’s children.

The sin of “complementarians” is the greater in that they condemn not merely a significant fraction of the human race, but precisely one half, to a lifetime of slavery.

Absolute literal slavery. For one human being to be subordinate to another in every aspect of behavior and dependent upon his merest whim for her status before God Almighty is to be worse than a slave.

There are some issues where it is NOT all right to agree to disagree.

To argue that those men who abuse their wives are misusing their God-given authority and do not represent the ideal is like arguing that Stalin and Mao do not represent the ideal socialist. That may be true, but it is irrelevant. By their fruit you shall know them, and those who espouse and transmit an ideology are responsible for the fruits of their teaching.

Hobbins makes much of the Christian-sounding ideal of “tolerating” complementarians. Just like we need to tolerate slavers. And the priests of Huitzilopochtli‘s quaint custom of disencardiacizing a couple dozen peons before breakfast.

He also makes much of the desire of complementarians to follow “tradition”. Much like the church before William Wilberforce followed tradition.

There are no words vile enough to express my disgust.

5 thoughts on “There are some issues it’s not OK to disagree on.”

  1. I must admit I am confused. Isn’t John Hobbins’ wife an ordained minister and pastoring a church?

  2. Hi, found your site from Suzanne’s.

    I couldn’t agree more that some things cannot be “live and let live” or “agree to disagree”. Slavery, in whatever form, is one of those things. I’ve decided that in addition to continually exposing those who would promote slavery in the Body of Christ to begin constructing a positive, proactive presentation that first of all teaches the scriptural model for Christian life, and then treats aberrant, harmful teachings such as male supremacy for what they are. We can’t just say what’s wrong without offering to tell what’s right; we need to give a place to “land” for those who jump the male supremacist ship.

    Thanks for being one of the “few brave men”!

  3. Hear, hear.

    To both the above article and the comment that you are one of the “few brave men”…

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