» News: Friday Blogosphere Roundup

In this weekly column, we will be reviewing the week in Reformed blogging, giving you, the reader, a sense of the general subject matter that has been of interest to Reformed bloggers.

Gender Roles: The issue of gender roles in the Reformed church is getting a lot of discussion this week. Long known for being concerned about the issue of the roles of men and women in the PCA, pastor Tim Bayly discusses his wish that the PCA would leave aside the Federal Vision controversy and focus on what he sees to be a growing movement of pastors who are bending the rules. He writes, "Over the long haul, the prevalence within PCA churches and presbyteries of egalitarian views is as great a danger as FV theology to our spiritual well-being." In a more recent post, Bayly specifically targets City Presbyterian Church (PCA) of Denver, Colorado and its Pastor's argument in favor of referring to an unordained, female member of the staff as a "minister of congregational life". If you have time, by the way, check out the work that City Pres is doing in Denver, as well as the outreach ministry to prostitutes that the Pastor Downing's wife, Leanne, established - Street's Hope. The discussion group "bbwarfield" discussed the motions concerning the use of the title "minister" brought up by Bayly's critique. In the background of this discussion over gender is the now year-ago movement out of the PCA into the RCA of the City Church in San Francisco. In other gender discussions, Mark Traphagen, a Westminster Seminary student, discusses a recent article by Carl Trueman that discusses some of the more cultural expectations that are imposed upon women in the conservative Reformed church.

Federal Vision (FV): This controversy appears to be at its peak in the PCA; the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) issued its report on the matter last year, and the PCA is now looking to consider its committee report at the General Assembly in June. This week's main blogosphere event was the publication by PCA Pastor Jeffrey Meyers of a document providing 30 reasons to oppose the committee report's adoption. Some of the blogosphere commentary relates to the fact that both the committee report and Meyers's response are long and technical - hard to imagine that every presbyter will have the time or inclination to work through them both. It is not incorrect to generalize that the more FV-friendly blogs seem to regard Meyers's response as "devastating" while the places less friendly to the FV perspective tend to view Meyers's response as unsuccessful. Doug Wilson, for instance, writes "In my view, you could summarily throw any fifteen of his reasons out the window before you start reading, and his response is still devastating." Most of the discussion of Meyers's response is occuring in the following places, if you care to listen in: Green Baggins (post 1, post2), Meyers's own blog, The Puritan Board, and there has been limited interaction on the BBWarfield list. As for private lists, we rely on news tips, but we understand that the OPC discussion group has been having a lively discussion of the report and the response from Meyers. In other denominations, an Australian minister reports his disappointment at the failure of a motion to condemn the FV in the Presbyterian Church of Victoria.

Emerging Church: On this front, the Acts 29 church planting network has received some discussion. The Acts 29 network tends to be conservative and reformed, and one of its distinctives - male ordination only - has been generating negative responses from other parts of the emerging movement (for convenience, we are thinking of the Acts 29 network as part of the emerging movement, but it is arguably a sui generis enterprise). Traphagen's blog discussed a new video titled "With Weeping for my Sisters" that contrasts quotes from various reformed authorities (including from Mark Driscoll of the Acts 29 network) with photographs of the church life of intelligent and reformed women known by the director of the video. The director writes in "the point in making this video was that I wanted a way for my friends to understand the grief I was experiencing as I have been taking a class on the history of Christianity. I wanted to share my emotional experience with them of what its like to realize how all these quotes (and soooo many others I left out!) affect me today." The video may be viewed at YouTube. Driscoll's controversial church planting video ran into distribution problems, and he discusses the matter on his own blog.

Roman Catholicism: Because of the conversion of the president of the Evangelical Theological Society to the Roman Catholic Church, the blogosphere contained many discussions of what Berkouwer called "the Riddle of Roman Catholicism" - what is the ongoing reason for the split between protestants and Catholics? R. Scott Clark, minister in the URC and professor at Westminster California asks Why Can't Evangelicals See the Canyon? and Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary reflects on the Beckwith departure in a very irenic way. Trueman's article generated discussion at the blog Barlow Farms that included interaction with Trueman from Philosopher Bryan Cross, himself a convert from PCA membership to Roman Catholicism. Cross's own blog advocates church unity.

Other Reviews and Miscellaneous Items of Note: Paul Helm, no not this one, the professor of philosophy critiques John Franke's approach to systematic theology. Books and Culture reviews Wilson's new response to Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation." The Work Research Foundation (neo-Calvinist) published a new edition of their Comment magazine that covered the business world, calling, etc. We at RN are impressed by the design and layout of their print version of the same and look forward to reading it each month. Covenant Seminary's magazine "In Covenant" for Summer (Download PDF) featured a fascinating interview with PCA minister Marcus Toole who currently ministers among First Nations people in Alberta. The interview is a fascinating portrait of someone who is pouring himself out for his people. Blogger Jonathan Barlow proclaims that The Kinists are Back in a lengthy post that offers a critique of the Kinist philosophy. By "back" Barlow seems to mean back online after an absence. (Background: Kinism is a kind of racial separatist sociology combined with a reformed Christianity; a throwback to the non-egalitarian consensus of Southern Presbyterian culture in the style of Dabney or Thornwell).

Bloggers and discussion list participants discussed many other things this week - politics, the abortion stance of various politicians, whether Christians should vote for a Mormon candidate, gas prices, the situation that remains in New Orleans, the tragedies in Kansas, etc. But our journey must end somewhere. RN