I. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton first published The Woman’s Bible in 1895, she attempted to remedy what she perceived to be a religiously justified inequity: the inferior role of women. The first-wave feminist matriarch lamented that, despite woman’s equal position and glory in Genesis 1, she was a mere “afterthought” in Genesis 2.[1] Stanton pronounced...

World-renowned historian William Manchester could write in 1993 that “the erasure of the distinctions between the sexes is not only the most striking issue of our time, it may be the most profound the race has ever confronted.”[1] Twenty-six years later, it is difficult to overstate just how prescient Manchester’s statement was. The attempt to...

I have noticed of late a growing chorus of what we might call “ex-complementarians” entering the fray of the evangelical gender debate. These folks are not identifying as egalitarians, but neither are they identifying as complementarians. They wish to embrace the Bible’s teaching about eldership being available only to qualified men, and some even wish...

Through the ages, similarities and differences in the intellectual and ethical development of men and women have been examined and debated. Author and educator Elizabeth Hayes writes: Women’s potentially distinctive characteristics as learners have been a topic of interest to scholars, educators, and women themselves for centuries. Noted Western (male) philosophers, ranging from Plato to...

Since 1964, federal law has prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex. At the time, no one argued that “sex” included sexual orientation or transgender identity. Congress has repeatedly rejected attempts to add specific references to sexual orientation and gender identity. But some new theories of sexuality and gender treat “sex” as a set of...

The early Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–c.395) once complained that it was nigh on impossible to buy bread at the market or even go to the baths without finding oneself asked whether or not God the Son is equal to or less than God the Father. His was a day when Trinitarian questions dominated...