Finally Unconvinced: A Review of John G. Stackhouse Jr., Finally Feminist

Not long ago I heard a complementarian Christian scholar gently rebuke one of his students for referring to an evangelical egalitarian as a "feminist." The scholar said the word "feminist" sounded "too pejorative."

John Stackhouse may disagree. Stackhouse is Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture at Regent College. In his recent work, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender, he attempts "to show how one can be both authentically feminist and authentically Christian." Admitting that the word "can mean several things," Stackhouse defines feminist as "someone who champions the dignity, rights, responsibilities, and glories of women as equal in importance to those of men and who therefore refuses discrimination against women" (17).

In this work, Stackhouse first lays out his rationale for why a new paradigm for understanding gender roles in the church and home is needed for Christians today (15-32). He then moves on to describe his own paradigm for Christian feminism (33-73). Finally, after responding to what he anticipates to be the most pertinent critiques of his proposal (75-103), Stackhouse includes two appendices, which cover a host of issues related to gender roles (105-129).

In his preface, Stackhouse admits that he hopes that his book "will assist those who genuinely would like to become egalitarians but who cannot see how the Bible supports such a view" (12). The desire to be both feminist and Christian comes up again and again throughout the pages of Finally Feminist. Indeed, in the first chapter, Stackhouse recounts his own "conversion narrative" to feminism (20).

Growing up in "a Focus on the Family-type home" (20), Stackhouse began to question why his spiritually competent mother could not lead in a worship service while each week "Mr. So-and-So rose to bore us once again with his meanderings through Scripture and Mr. Such-and-Such followed with his interminable prayer" (21). Answers given in his church did not satisfy him, evidenced even in a memorable discussion he had with his future wife over such issues while in college (22).

As societal norms began to shift and Stackhouse's own egalitarian marriage still seemed a bit theologically groundless (22), he "underwent an explosive paradigm shift" upon realizing that no biblical scholar could provide satisfactory exegesis of 1 Tim 2:11-15 (23). This led Stackhouse—who "wanted to be a feminist all the way" (34)—to the understanding that Christians ought not wait until the exegesis of every relevant passage in all of Scripture is sound in order to make theological assessments on gender. "Instead," Stackhouse surmises, "we should look at all the texts as openmindedly as possible and see if among the various competing interpretations there is one that makes the most sense of the most texts and especially the most important ones" (23).

Stackhouse's own paradigm for understanding gender, then, rests on a number of foundational principles: equality "in every way" between men and women (35), "holy pragmatism" (38), and an understanding of gender through the lens of the eschatological in-breaking of the new creation (41).

His argument in favor of "holy pragmatism" is perhaps one of the more troubling aspects of Stackhouse's paradigm. Because "furtherance of the gospel message" is what is of utmost importance to Christians (38), believers at times must sacrifice issues of secondary importance in order to advance the gospel. This is rooted, Stackhouse maintains, in God's own principle of accommodation—that is, the fact that "God works with what he's got and with what we've got" (39). Therefore, even if Christians enjoy "radical freedom in Christ" (46), historical and even some contemporary situations have demanded that Christian women forgo freedom and wholeness, and instead submit to being "trammeled and reduced by patriarchy" (48).

Conceding, for example, that the first five books of the Bible are patriarchal (64) and that the New Testament is replete with hierarchies in the home and the church (50), Stackhouse argues that this was because the writers of Scripture were accommodating to societal norms that the gospel may advance with the fewest impediments. In our current cultural context, however—a context in which our culture "is at least officially egalitarian"—it should be considered scandalous "that the church is not going along with society, not rejoicing in the unprecedented freedom to let women and men serve according to gift and call without an arbitrary gender line" (56).

Those familiar with William J. Webb's redemptive- movement hermeneutic will note similarities between Webb's proposal for reading the Scripture and Stackhouse's paradigm for understanding gender. Indeed, Stackhouse acknowledges the similarity in his book's very first footnote (10). However, Stackhouse's "double meaning" in the text (63-70) will likely lead to the same result as Webb's hermeneutic, that is, that God's people must discern that second of the double meaning inherent within the text—a second meaning which may have been fairly indiscernible to God's people in every generation since the closing of the biblical canon.

Indeed, throughout the book it is somewhat unclear just how Stackhouse—who writes as a selfprofessed evangelical (16)—views ultimately the "supremely authoritative Bible." For him, biblical interpretation is to take place "with the ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit of God in the current life of this part of the church." He asserts that Christians need to be "open to hearing fresh words of God that help this part of the church cooperate with God in the work of his kingdom in its particular situation" (28). Stackhouse even critiques the apostle Paul's application of Old Testament texts, suggesting he has misinterpreted them (66-68).

Near the end of the book, Stackhouse asks his readers to be clear on the fact that "no one makes up his or her mind about such a set of crucial issues simply on the basis of theological argument" (102). Therefore, he requests that his readers ask of themselves questions such as, "What do I really want to believe about gender?" and "What are the voices in my head telling me to decide on one or another alternative, and how do I feel about each one?" (102-03).

With all of this in mind, then, the reader may be left to wonder: for Stackhouse, is Scripture the final authority in matters of faith and practice, or is it not? Most, if not all, complementarians would argue that God has spoken clearly, and in a non-contradictory manner, to the gender issue throughout the pages of Scripture, a clearly spoken word worth submitting to in all ages of the church. Stackhouse, it seems, may argue otherwise. And regardless of one's personal convictions on contemporary gender roles, the reader may also be left to wonder: if Stackhouse really believes that patriarchy is evil (92), sinful and oppressive (57), a structure that God "does not like" and yet accommodates to (65), "a deeply problematic drama" (79), "a result of the fall" (93), and comparable to "corrupt governments, with exploitative businesses, and with hypocritical charities" (93-94), should any Christian in good conscience remain in any kind of fellowship with those who advocate it? Are Christians who advocate patriarchy in today's context to be considered evil, as well?

Indeed, Stackhouse does seem to condone church splits over the gender issue in some situations (99-100). Moreover, splits may also issue in cases of divorce, "if the patriarchal treatment of the wife is severe enough" (100)—though he speaks only to marriage situations in which the wife is the feminist and the husband the patriarchalist, and not the other way around. And he suggests that Christian feminists ought to move forward on the principles of "activism, realism, vocation, and hope" (97) within the pockets of contemporary society in which the remnants of patriarchy persist.

But these kinds of questions seem especially pertinent due to Stackhouse's continual tying of patriarchy to race-based slavery. In fact, his argument in favor of the Holy Spirit's accommodation to the "sinful, oppressive structure" of patriarchy is tied to the Spirit's doing the same with slavery—another sinful, oppressive structure found in the culturallycontextualized Scripture, according to Stackhouse, but one that has since been abolished (57).

Contrasting first-century bond-servitude addressed in several places in the New Testament with nineteenth-century man-stealing and ownership of other human beings based on the color of their skin seems a poor comparison—though a thorough comparison of the two is outside the scope of this review. If Stackhouse truly sees a one-to-one correlation between today's complementarians and nineteenth-century slaveholders, shouldn't Christians be willing to split not only a church and a marriage over the issue of gender, but also an entire nation?

And if Stackhouse's "fundamental practical question" is what Christians are to do when their surrounding culture moves toward egalitarianism (72), it would seem prudent to ask the reverse—as my friend Christopher Cowan pointed out—as well: for feminists such as Stackhouse, what are Christians to do if their surrounding culture moves back to patriarchy?

Stackhouse does seek to address what he perceives to be the most common critiques of his paradigm for gender. He seems to dismiss those who would root complementarianism in the Son's functional subordination to the mission of the Father, arguing that the Trinity is too mysterious—though it would seem that Stackhouse would have to wrestle here with texts such as 1 Cor 11:3. He relegates Paul's rooting of husband and wife relationships in the union of Christ and the church as symbolic language embedded within a culture two millennia past—though he does not seem to deal with passages such as Rev 19:6-10, in which the marriage metaphor seems to be a driving force behind eschatological redemption.

Though Stackhouse admits that a survey of church history does not grant overwhelming warrant for his particular stripe of evangelical feminism, he does refer to the "general misogyny" of the early church fathers (81) and maintains that society today has reached a point in which evangelical feminism is no longer marginalized, as it has been in the past. His paradigm is not merely a bowing to secular feminism, Stackhouse argues, but he does seem to suggest that even secular feminism can bring with it God's shalom (86). In response to the critique that his paradigm could potentially lead to the legitimization of homosexuality, Stackhouse argues that the Bible is clear in its presentation of homosexual relationships as sinful.

Stackhouse's two appendices to Finally Feminist deal first with the three ways not to decide about gender—that is, biblicism, cultural conformity (or nonconformity), and personal intuition—and the place of women in theology and the question of gender-neutral Bible translations.

In the end, what is quite commendable about Stackhouse's proposal, among other things, is that he recognizes that the kind of biblical proof texting that takes place so often in Christian scholarship doesn't hold water ultimately in terms of dealing with bigger picture theological issues pertaining to gender roles in the home and church. He does present a creative paradigm for understanding gender, but the question remains whether his paradigm is a bit too creative for the Bible. Indeed, Finally Feminist seems to raise many more questions than it answers.

Historically, theologically, exegetically, and practically, Stackhouse's "pragmatic Christian understanding of gender" may not entice many converts to Christian feminism, as his work may even leave many Christians firmly—and perhaps even finally—unconvinced.