Secret Women's Business

There are things all Christian traditions agree on (faith questions), and areas where there are significant differences around how churches organise and describe themselves (order questions). This is reflected in the name of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission, where theological dialogue occurs.  Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christedelphians and others cannot join the World Council of Churches as they do not  “confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures… to the glory of the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” There are however a huge variety of churches that belong to the World Council of Churches. They have diverse views on women in ministry, modes of baptism, communion, the priesthood, the weight of scripture vs tradition, etc. These are "order" questions, not "faith" questions. How should Christians manage their relationships with one another around differences over these secondary quest...

Earlier this month, a 100 million dollar Noah’s ark replica opened in Kentucky sponsored by the Creation Science group “Answers in Genesis”. That’s a lot of money in anyone’s language. And it reflects a lot of interest in Young Earth Creation Science. For many years I attempted to hold a relaxed attitude around Creation Science. Though I had long believed a six thousand year old earth is both poor theology and poor science, I had decided it was impolite to pick a fight about it. However, 2011 research coming out from the Barna Institute about why young people leave the church caused me to rethink my “live and let live” approach . This reported that: “Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that ‘churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in’ (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that ‘Christianity is anti-science’ (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have ‘been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debat...

Imagine for a moment that you were able to convince a group of people that the earth is really flat, and that the only logical explanation for the sun rising and setting is that a god pulls a sun chariot across the sky each day. If you can convince them of that, then theism for them is an immutable fact. Should anyone try to argue that there really are no gods, they would simply point to the sky. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course there is a god! Just look at the sun! How else can such a thing be explained?” But imagine someone new comes along, and manages to convince these "flat earthers" by careful argument and evidence that the earth is really a spinning sphere, and that this phenomenon alone can explain the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Once persuaded, this might shake their faith in the sun god, and they would no doubt review their theology. It is not in itself a death knell to theism or religious faith, but it does disturb a particular construct of faith. ...

One of the things I wonder about is the tension between having opinions and having humility. Intellectual humility would surely involve openness to being wrong. Part of the brilliance of the scientific method is that ideas are constantly tested against reality. Results of controlled testing are published, so others are able to design new tests to see whether a hypothesis is supported or not. Other areas of academic endeavour, such as philosophy, mathematics, theology, history, and the arts, also involve the discipline of publishing research for scrutiny. The business of publishing academic work opens one up for critique: your ideas might be rejected as other opinions compete for validity.  There is a vulnerability about the best academic endeavour. I must confess there are many areas where I have formed strong opinions. For example, I have judged Complementarian theology to be very poor theology indeed, based on dreadful hermeneutics, forcing those who adopt it to accept ludi...