R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has announced the appointment of Mary Kassian as Distinguished Professor of Women’s Studies.

Kassian, one of the foremost scholars and theologians on issues of feminism and biblical womanhood will begin teaching at Southern Seminary during the spring semester of 2006.

She is a council member for The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) and is author of numerous books on feminism and gender issues including two recently-released works: "The Feminine Mistake" (Crossway, 2005) and "In My Father’s House" (Broadman & Holman, 2005). Kassian’s other works include "The Feminist Gospel" (Crossway, 1992) and "Women, Creation, and the Fall" (Crossway, 1990). 

A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Kassian founded Alabaster Flask in 1999. Alabaster Flask is a ministry aimed at strengthening Christian women and families. Kassian annually speaks and teaches women in seminaries, Bible colleges, and churches around the world.

"We’re absolutely thrilled to have the person I consider to be the premier evangelical scholar and writer in the area of gender roles join the Southern Seminary faculty," said Mohler, himself also a CBMW council member.

"As distinguished professor of women’s studies, Mary Kassian brings an international reputation combined with deep biblical convictions and a tremendous ability to communicate, to teach and to share her passion for a biblical understanding of these issues.

"This is a great development for Southern Seminary and another representation of what God is giving us in this faculty. We look forward to having Mary join us in the classroom, on the faculty and as a part of the Southern Seminary family."

Kassian will be teaching classes within Southern’s Women’s Ministry Institute on such topics as prayer, gender roles within the church and family, and feminist theology. Part of Kassian’s role at Southern will be to assist new Director of Women’s Programs Jaye Martin in developing a long-term vision for the school’s women’s program.

They hope to put in place a center for women’s leadership that is known across the globe.

"What attracted me was the opportunity to develop a vision and direction for where the program is going," Kassian said.

"Our longer-term vision is to develop a center for women’s leadership and to bring the various elements of the program under one umbrella and to develop it into a world-renowned center where women can go for training and continuing education."

Kassian is a veteran analyst of the trends within culture as they relate to gender issues. Over the past two decades, Kassian says she has witnessed a full embrace of feminism in both the home and the church that mirrors the culture.

Whereas Christians 40-50 years ago virtually assumed that the husband was the God-ordained leader of the home, today egalitarianism is the assumption, Kassian said. Dealing with this issue biblically is part of her vision for teaching women at Southern Seminary.

"Even now in Christian homes, women and men come into the churches and do not have that understanding (of male leadership in the home)," she said. "Their default setting I believe really is for the most part egalitarian rather than complementarian.

"So there is a whole lot of careful teaching and convincing and persuading and expositing of the Scriptures that needs to be very intentionally done . . . in order to build healthy marriages, healthy relationships and healthy church bodies."

Women need to be teaching women the great truths of biblical womanhood in line with the Titus 2 model, Kassian says. This too is part of the broader vision for equipping women she brings to Southern.

"I think that women are the ones that need to be teaching women on this issue," Kassian said. "It is very difficult, particularly in our culture, for a man to be coming in and teaching a woman these things. There is a resistance. It certainly is important for church leaders to be teaching that sound doctrine, so I am not saying that men ought not to be teaching, they ought to be teaching it.

"But it is also important that women be reinforcing that and for women to be teaching women and for women to be modeling biblical womanhood."

Kassian and her husband Brent have been married for nearly 23 years. They live near her hometown and have three sons. Brent Kassian served as a bi-vocational pastor for several years and for the past six years has served as chaplain for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. Their 18-year-old son Matt is an amateur hockey player who is expected to be selected by a professional team in the upcoming National Hockey League draft.

While contemporary culture is awash in gender confusion, Kassian says she sees hope in a younger generation of women for whom feminism has become a broken cistern.

"A lot of the young women I speak to are really disillusioned with the path their mothers have gone down in terms of feminism," she said.

"They see that that really hasn’t provided the answers. The questions they are really asking are, ‘How do I make my marriage work? How do I make my family work? How do I make my relationship work?’ I believe if we point them back to the Word of God and have them believe it and live by it and have men and women together daring to take God at His Word, then I believe there will be hope."

The event's name sounded like something straight out of the defunct World Wrestling Federation: "Patriarchy Slam." However, had any of the WWF's male stars shown up, they would likely have found themselves hammered to the mat.

Sponsored by the Feminist Action League (FAL), "Patriarchy Slam" stormed onto the campus of the University of New Hampshire last spring heralded by flyers depicting a woman grasping a hammer emblazoned with "FEMINISM" on the handle.

An accompanying female symbol was adorned with clenched fists and the ad’s copy read: "If I had a hammer…I’d SMASH Patriarchy." A comic book bubble by the woman’s face said, "I FOUND IT!"

Indeed.

What "Patriarchy Slam" lacked in subtlety and decorum, it more than made up for in sheer venom.

According to a report filed by the school’s newspaper, some 40 women attended the event which was officially aimed at providing a platform for women who had been abused and otherwise oppressed by men. However, the event turned into an open forum for virulent male-bashing.

UNH’s newspaper reported that "Patriarchy Slam" included poetry readings, skits, and monologues against men. One woman read a saucy poem in which she articulated the depth of pride she takes in hating men.

Other word creations alluded to castration and many participants wore scissors around their necks—an obvious ode to the carrying out of the procedure. At one point the audience lifted up their voices and sang in unison "lightheartedly about castration," the newspaper reported.

FAL’s hatred for what it termed a "male-ruled society" was colorfully affirmed with 10 hanging balloons each adorned with one letter of the word "patriarchy." The balloons were popped one at a time throughout the evening to symbolize the eradication of "male patriarchy."

Not everyone in attendance affirmed FAL’s fowl message. David Huffman, a contributor for the university’s conservative publication was the only person to be ejected from the event. FAL henchwomen gave him the heave-ho during an open microphone session.

Huffman told the campus newspaper that he arrived at the meeting hoping to learn more about the genuine problem of female abuse, but left deeply disturbed by the poisonous rhetoric of "Patriarchy Slam."

"It was advertised as a public event, nowhere did the posters say 'Women Only,'" Huffman said. "They excluded me from a public event based upon my gender. There were a few other men there who were allowed to stay, but I was singled out in particular.

"[This] was an evening of man hating. This is no different than any other extremist organization that...promotes stereotypes…How is this any different than hating African-Americans or Jews? What I heard last night was not feminism; it was a hate rally."

In her 1992 book The Feminist Gospel, Mary Kassian examined the cultural tsunami of feminism, showing the rise of a radical ideology that sought to redefine the very nature of gender itself.

Thirteen years later, Kassian, a council member for The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), has witnessed cataclysmic fallout from the waves of feminism that have crashed hard upon the shores of both the church and contemporary society.

In her latest book, The Feminist Mistake: The Radical Impact of Feminism on Church and Culture (Crossway Books, 2005), Kassian provides a wholesale update to The Feminist Gospel, only this time she examines the seismic impact of feminism on both the church and culture. The book includes the earlier material that traces the rise of feminism through its incubation period from 1960 until 1990.

Kassian identifies three distinct stages of development in the history of feminism:

In part two of the book, Kassian examines the aftereffects of the great quake of feminism including the shock waves that continue to wash over religious and secular culture. Here, she examines select events such as the 1993 "Re-Imagining Conference" that have helped feminism to gain broad acceptance in the mainstream culture and the church.

She also analyzes the relationship of conservative evangelical feminism (egalitarianism) to the more liberal forms of religious feminism and examines how—if at all—egalitarianism relates to the overarching historical progression of feminist philosophy. The book concludes by attempting to answer the question of whether an emphasis on women’s "rights" and functional equality of the sexes ought to be embraced or rejected by evangelicals.

In the end, Kassian deems the feminist project a gargantuan failure, one that has left in its wake a broad and easily discernable path of destruction.

"Feminism has failed miserably, and ironically it has exacerbated the very problem it set out to resolve," she writes. "Instead of promoting healthy self-identity for women or contributing to a greater harmony between the sexes, it has resulted in increased gender confusion, increased conflict, and a profound destruction of morality and family.

"It has left in its wake a mass of dysfunctional relationships and shattered lives. People of this culture no longer know what it means to be a man or a woman or how to make life work. What has been lost will not easily be regained. Though feminist theory has progressed just about as far as it can, the practical outworking of that theory has not. Feminism will dramatically affect our society and churches for years to come."

The Feminist Mistake is available in the CBMW webstore at www.cbmw.org/cgi-bin/store?show|534|Gender_Issues.

What do biblical manhood and billiards have in common?

Mark Chanski says there are essentially two types of Christian men: those who, like the purple number four ball, in life’s circumstances get passively knocked around the table by all the other pool balls, and then there are those who are like the cue stick; they do the knocking around.

In his new book Manly Dominion in a passive-purple-four-ball world (Calvary Press, 2004), Chanski calls Christian men who are prone to pusillanimity to reclaim the biblical roles to which God has called them in the home, the church, the workplace and all of creation.

In the opening chapters, Chanski, pastor of Reformed Baptist Church of Holland, Mich., since 1994, analyzes the unbiblical mindset into which many Christian men have fallen. Many men have embraced the pathetic victim mentality that so thoroughly pervades our modern-day, therapeutic culture, and in so doing, they have abdicated their roles as husbands, fathers, churchmen, laborers in the marketplace, decision makers, and as, well, just plain men, he asserts.

This ethos has left men anemic and paralyzed--unwilling to assert authority in the many spheres in which God has called them to do so, he argues. Chanski compares these men to the purple four ball in the game of pool which is passive and exists merely to be pushed into a corner pocket by the one wielding the cue stick.

Chanski is not calling men to a chest-thumping Neanderthal ideal of manhood; rather, he points out that God has called man to exercise dominion over creation in the early chapters of the Bible. He shows that this is a mandate that serves as a foundational principle for authentic biblical masculinity.

"Man is to aggressively dominate his environment, instead of allowing his environment to dominate him," Chanski writes. "I am not to be a passive-purple four-ball! I am rather to be a stick-carrying player! In the spheres of my life, I must subdue and rule, and not permit myself to be subdued and ruled.

"We have been commissioned by God to go out and aggressively assert ourselves as masters over every realm of our lives. I have not been assigned to stare out my bedroom, living room, or office widow, passively daydreaming about what I might do, if only there weren’t so many obstacles. Rather I am to get out there, so help me God, and plan it, clear it, and do it, with all my might, to the glory of God."

Chanski’s work is rife with biblical exposition and gives scores of biblical examples of men of God who took their God-assigned dominion in every sphere. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul is one clear example, he says, but it is the Lord Jesus Christ who provides the ultimate example of one who exercises manly dominion to the nth degree in his life and atoning death.

"In the Lord Jesus Christ, the Christian finds his ultimate model for subduing and ruling over the opposing circumstances of our sin cursed world," he writes.

"In Him, we find a hand to put over our mouths when we begin to spout rationalizations and blame-shiftings. In Him we find a holy rebuke to our every excuse for not doing our biblical duty in every difficult situation. In Him, we find a sacred reprimand to our cowardly claims of ‘I’m a victim, so I can’t.’"

Manly Dominion provides biblical insight the Christian man and his calling to action within vocational labor, husbanding, church leadership, child rearing, spiritual living, decision-making, and romance.

Manly Dominion as available through The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood webstore at http://www.cbmw.org/cgi-bin/store?show|535|Men.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BP)--An historic vote to legalize "gay marriage" in California has ended in initial defeat for homosexual activists in the legislature, although they vow to bring the bill back up quickly and try again.

Needing 41 votes for passage in the assembly, the bill received support from only 35 members in two separate votes June 1 and 2. Thirty-seven assembly members opposed it while eight members abstained. All of the abstentions were Democrats. Another vote is scheduled for June 3. It must pass by the end of the week to stay alive.

It was the first time a legislative body in the United States voted on a bill legalizing "gay marriage."

Opponents say the bill violates both the will of the people and the California constitution. In 2000 California voters passed an initiative--Proposition 22--explicitly banning "gay marriage." It passed by a margin of 61-39 percent. The state constitution prohibits the legislature from overriding a voter-backed initiative.

Glen Lavy, an attorney with the pro-family legal group Alliance Defense Fund, described the initial votes as significant.

"This defeat shows that even the homosexual-friendly California assembly is not willing to go so far as to redefine marriage," Lavy told Baptist Press.

All the "yes" votes came from Democrats. Voting against it were all 32 Republicans and five Democrats. If it were to pass it would move to the Senate, which also is controlled by Democrats. Even if it were to be signed into law--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on it--it would face a lawsuit.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno, acknowledges the constitutional hurdle but argues that Proposition 22 bans only out-of-state "gay marriages." If his bill were to pass, he says, California would recognize in-state "marriages" but not those from Massachusetts. Leno is homosexual and one of five members of the legislature's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus.

Bill opponents call Leno's argument nonsense and point to the language of Proposition 22, which states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

"I think you have to ignore the words of Proposition 22 to come to that conclusion," Lavy said, referring to the arguments by bill supporters. "'Valid' refers to something in the state and 'recognized' refers to something out of state. Those words are not redundant. They refer to two different things."

Leno and other homosexual activists hope to change a few minds before the third vote June 3.

"Thirty-five people agree with me," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I need 41."

California has a domestic partnership law that gives same-sex couples most of the legal benefits of marriage. But supporters of the bill say that measure is not enough.

"It is offensive to hear from some of you that there is nothing discriminatory about existing law," Leno was quoted by the Chronicle as saying during debate. "All ... of us are equally human beings ... with the full capacity of our hearts to choose our partner for life, or we are not."

But Republican Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy said activists were attempting to normalize homosexuality.

"They ... want our children to be told that homosexuality is OK, that it's natural," Mountjoy said, according to The Sacramento Bee. "I'm here to tell you it's not OK, it's not natural, and I don't want our children taught that."

Added Republican Assemblyman Jay La Suer: "This has nothing to do with discrimination--it has everything to do with the destruction of the moral fabric of America."

A lawsuit seeking the legalization of "gay marriage" also is working its way through the state court. Homosexual activists won on the trial court level.

Pro-family groups are supporting a petition campaign that would place an amendment protecting the traditional definition of marriage on the ballot in 2006. They have launched a website: www.voteyesmarriage.com.

A constitutional amendment would trump any law and any court ruling.

"The arrogant Democrat politicians who are aggressively pushing San Francisco-style 'gay marriages' upon every county in California have awoken average people to the crying need to protect marriage in the state constitution," Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families and an amendment supporter, said in a statement. "Marriage is obviously for a man and a woman. In response to the legislature's brash, in-your-face attack upon marriage, the people of California have the real need to override the bureaucracy and provide real protection to marriage between one man and one woman."