The Supreme Court Oct. 10 declined to hear a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, letting stand a law that gives states the option of banning "gay marriage."

Without comment, the high court refused to take up the lawsuit, Smelt v. Orange County, filed by two California homosexual men who sought to overturn both the Defense of Marriage Act and California's laws banning "gay marriage." They lost last year at the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before appealing to the Supreme Court.

It marked the first time the high court has been asked to consider the constitutionality of the law.

DOMA, signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, helped spark a nationwide movement to pass laws and constitutional amendments protecting the natural definition of marriage. In addition to giving states leeway on the issue of "gay marriage," it also prevents the federal government from recognizing "marriage" between homosexuals.

Congress passed DOMA during a time when Hawaii's Supreme Court appeared on the verge of legalizing "gay marriage." But before the state high court could do so, Hawaii's voters passed a constitutional amendment giving the state legislature the authority to ban "gay marriage," which it did.

Massachusetts' highest court legalized "gay marriage" more than two years ago, and New Jersey's Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the issue this month. If DOMA is overturned, then all 50 states presumably would be forced to recognize "gay marriage."

Despite the DOMA victory, Christian legal groups cautioned conservatives against celebrating. One reason is that the major liberal and homosexual activist groups -- such as ACLU and Lambda Legal -- didn't support the lawsuit because they feared the legal timing wasn't right and they wanted instead to focus on state-level suits. Secondly, five states -- California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland and New Jersey -- remain involved in "gay marriage" suits.

"Americans must continue to remain vigilant in the defense of marriage, especially since the attacks come from numerous directions," Glen Lavy, an attorney with the Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund, said in a news release.

"Hundreds of leading marriage opponents have stated that their goal is to eliminate any difference in gender and eliminate marriage completely," he added, pointing to a document, "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," issued by liberal and homosexual activists in July.

Liberty Counsel President Mathew Staver said the plethora of lawsuits point to the need for constitutional marriage amendments. Both ADF and Liberty Counsel were involved in the suit defending DOMA.

"The success in the courtrooms must become enshrined in our state and federal constitutions, so that we will never have to wonder whether some judge will undermine marriage with the stroke of a pen," Staver said in a news release.

Last May a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit tossed out the lawsuit, ruling that the two men who brought the case lacked standing because they had no valid marriage license.

"Were they to change their residence to Massachusetts, their situation might change, but they have placed nothing before us to suggest that they have gone, or intend to go, to that state," Judge Ferdinand F. Fernandez, a nominee of President George W. Bush, wrote for the majority. The other judges were nominated by Presidents Carter and Clinton.

After five years of wrangling with the issue of precisely where women fit into the ministry of the local church and the denomination, The Vineyard USA has officially adopted a policy that opens the door of leadership to women in every office, including that of senior pastor.

The Vineyard’s governing board met last month and adopted a statement that is a unambiguously egalitarian in its inclusion of women at every level of leadership. It also makes clear that local churches, as autonomous bodies, are free to dissent from the denominational position.

The two-paragraph statement reads:

"In response to the message of the kingdom, the leadership of the Vineyard movement will encourage, train, and empower women at all levels of leadership both local and trans-local. The movement as a whole welcomes the participation of women in leadership in all areas of ministry.

"We also recognize and understand that some Vineyard pastors have a different understanding of the scriptures. Each local church retains the right to make its own decisions regarding ordination and appointment of senior pastors."

The position was announced in an open letter to Vineyard pastors on the denomination’s website by National Director Berten A. Waggoner. The letter details Vineyard leadership’s five-year investigation of the leadership and expresses empathy for the many voices within the denomination that openly oppose the ordination of women and hold an overall complementarian view of women in the church.

The Vineyard includes churches with female pastors and in the end, the need for those and other women to be affirmed in their calling won the day, Waggoner says.

In the letter, Waggoner gives five reasons why the issue has needed a definitive answer within The Vineyard. One reason was that several women had expressed to Waggoner that they felt like "unwanted step children" because they were not "empowered" in ministry.

Waggoner admits that he and the board members have struggled with the issue, but Waggoner says he has leaned toward the decision of full empowerment of women because he sees it as the responsibility of national leadership to do so.

"…many Board members felt conflicted on the issue," he writes. "On the one hand they believed that women should be empowered to do ministry at all levels. On the other, they did not want to be offensive to those who believed differently.

"I personally felt this. I believed, and continue to believe, that the Lord placed me as the National Director to lead the movement at this time. I also believe strongly that, though I have great respect for those who disagree with me, some women are called and gifted to provide leadership at both the local and trans-local levels of the church. To refuse to do this violated my convictions.

"I was responsible to empower, but I was not intentionally doing it. If I did not have the responsibility to empower, then my conscience could be clear before God and others. But if I had that responsibility, it became a violation of conscience. Both the Board and I had that responsibility and we were conflicted."

The letter from Waggoner is available in its entirety at www.vineyardusa.org.

Is evangelical feminism the slippery slope that bottoms out at liberalism?

In his new book Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism (Crossway) theologian Wayne Grudem answers that question in the affirmative and seeks to show the historical and theological connections between feminism and its logical end, liberalism.

Grudem argues that methods of biblical interpretation that evangelical feminists employ to arrive at their conclusions utterly undermine the authority of Scripture.

"Can a movement that espouses this many ways of undermining the authority of Scripture possibly be right?" Grudem writes. "If God had wanted to teach us an egalitarian position, would he have made it so hard to find in Scripture that it would require this many incorrect methods to discover and defend it?"

In Part I, Grudem examines the historical paths that some in recent church history have taken to liberalism. In this section, Grudem develops a connection between liberalism and the endorsement of women’s ordination in the church.

In Part II, the author analyzes various views that undermine the authority of Scripture. These dangerous views include the denial of the truthfulness of the first three chapters of Genesis, the assertion that the apostle Paul was wrong in his view of women in the church, and the so-called "redemptive movement" hermeneutic of William Webb, among several others.

"In a surprising number of evangelical feminist writings, the authors have published statements that either deny the complete truthfulness of Scripture or else deny the full authority of Scripture as well as the Word of God for us today," Grudem writes.

In Part III, Grudem exposes many of the unsubstantiated or untruthful arguments that evangelical feminists make to buttress their theology. Among the fallacious claims that Grudem unmasks is the notion that women homeowners also served as elders in early churches, that female deacons had governing authority in the early church, and that the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father within the Trinity is contrary to historic doctrine, among numerous other claims.

In Part IV, Grudem assesses the expanding landscape of evangelical feminism and seeks to show where the movement will go from its current position. The next step, he argues, is the denial of anything uniquely masculine.

"The egalitarian agenda will not stop simply with the rejection of male headship in marriage and the establishment of women as pastors and elders in churches," he asserts. "There is something much deeper at stake. At the foundation of egalitarianism is a dislike and a rejection of anything uniquely masculine. It is a dislike of manhood itself."

Grudem is a board member of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood’s (CBMW) and serves as research professor of Bible and theology at Phoenix Seminary in Scottsdale, Ariz.

He is also the author the massive 2004 volume from Multnomah entitled Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions. He also served as co-editor with John Piper of the seminal complementarian work Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which was recently re-released by Crossway with a new cover and new preface.

Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? is available through the CBMW webstore.

In his 1999 work, Podles, a senior editor for "Touchstone" magazine, argues that Western Christianity has become increasingly feminized in recent years, precipitating a mass exodus of men from local congregations.

Podles, who appeared with a panel of fellow Touchstone editors Sept. 14 on the campus of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says men continue to abstain from church attendance and involvement in record numbers.

"It has gotten worse," he said. "All the polls say that male attendance continues to fall. A lot of it in the Catholic Church was a result of the pedophilia scandal. Men said, ‘I want nothing to do with this nor do I want my sons to have anything to do with this.’ It continues to fall as a greater percent of the clergy in mainline churches are female the churches are more feminized and become more of a women’s club."

He estimated that between 80-90 percent of church workers in Roman Catholic congregations are women and said Protestant congregations are largely populated by female workers as well. Podles called on pastors to bring men back into the church because their biblical leadership is desperately needed in local congregations as well as in homes.

"The pastor should think of himself as pastoring the men and then the men are pastoring their families," he said. "For many good reasons, he (the pastor) should not be the women’s direct spiritual counselor because the husband (often) resents the spiritual influence the pastor has on the wife.

"So he should first of all try to think of himself as the pastor of the men. If they are not there, go out and meet them. Wherever the men are, if they are not in church, go out and find them. If they won’t come to you, go to them."

Podles bemoaned the eclipse of a vigorous Christianity that views the daily Christian life in the militaristic terms of warfare that Scripture employs. Only a muscular Christianity will be able to contend earnestly in the marketplace of faiths with such a literally militaristic religion as Islam, he said.

"Our Christian culture is feminized and it is not combative and it cannot meet the challenge of Islam," he said. "I’m not saying we should fight them . . . but in Africa, Islam is violently persecuting Christians and our country does nothing about it. Islam has bloody borders all around it and Christians in general don’t care about the sufferings of their compatriots.

"We have lost both in the visible realm and in our internal lives the sense that life is a battle, that it is a warfare, and that military virtues are a necessity . . . [the Christian has to] have enormous courage, he’s got to have enormous resistance of the powers of evil and temptation, but the masculine virtues continue to evaporate from almost all modern Christian churches. I really see no recovery. Perhaps the challenge of Islam and the prospect of martyrdom will strengthen our backbones."

CBMW board member and evangelical scholar Wayne Grudem addressed the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., on the subject of biblical manhood and womanhood Sept. 8-9.

Grudem spoke to students of the the Torrey Institute on topics that included the key issues in the manhood and womanhood controversy, women in ministry, and responding to egalitarian objections. The sessions on Sep 9 were held on Biola's campus, while the Sep 8 session was held at Grace Free Evangelical Church where Dr. Erik Thoennes, professor of theology at Biola and a CBMW council member, serves as elder.

Grudem is the author of Evangelicalism and Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Questions among other books. He is also author of the forthcoming book Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism? set for release this month by Crossway.

The Torrey Honors Institute is a program in the liberal arts and biblical studies for undergraduates at Biola University. The institute includes undergraduate students that possess outstanding academic ability, Christian character, and potential for leadership. For more information on the Torrey Honors Institute, please see www.biola.edu/academics/torrey.