The Imperative to Put Limits on Women According to Calvinistic and Reformed Men

I recently left a comment on a YouTube video that I also wanted to put in a post. Jon Harris’ video Deracination, Q & A on Woman’s Roles delved into the following topics. 

There is a reason Jon is discussing these topics. There is a growing group of younger and middle aged men in parts of the conservative Christian church who think increasing limits need to be put on women. Some of them would basically limit women to only doing things at home. I’ve written about this a bit in Vision Forum 2.0 and Patriocentricity Again | Joel Webbon on Women and Women Are Born That They May Acknowledge Themselves As Inferior. This is a very real thing and it is impacting young men. 

Many of these men have very little practical and real-world experience in dealing with these questions as they impact real women. Many of these men are newly married or have young families. As a woman who was single until 29 and didn’t have a living child until age 39 (neither one by deliberate choice), I look at these questions very differently. I know the practical outworking of these increasing calls for limitations on women. If you really want to deep dive into that, go through the posts I have under the True Womanhood Blog tag on my website from roughly 2007. We’ve already been down this road before. It ended horribly.

This is my comment I want to keep a record of.

There is a vocal group of men who are consistently asking the wrong questions. They are obsessed with male authority, hierarchy, etc. And, yes, I do mean obsessed. So every question about women is about the importance of restricting women according to the Bible. What they should be asking is how much freedom can we give women according to the Bible. It is a completely different mindset.

For all of the discussion about being the leader in the home and being responsible for what happens in the home, I don’t think any of them ever stop and consider it from that perspective. It’s always about how do I lovingly limit my wife effectively to these roles that are easy to assign from a few proof texts. None of them seem to consider that someday God may ask them why they squandered their wife’s gifts and abilities by limiting her freedom and ability to serve Christ.

I hope we do not end up with a new generation of men creating the next version of Grudem’s detailed list of what women can and cannot do in the church, marketplace, etc. It then always comes back to the limits that must be put on women. It’s never about the fear of limiting the gifts God has given her and answering for that.

This is my point I wish to emphasize.

None of them seem to consider that someday God may ask them why they squandered their wife’s gifts and abilities by limiting her freedom and ability to serve Christ.

This also came up in my post John Piper on Limiting Women’s Leadership and Influence. Tim said:

Inappropriate is his default position. 

They start from a position of being obsessed with limiting women. Their default mode of thinking is that almost everything that happens in “church” or “church-related places” is off-limits to women. They lump women together as though we are basically a monolithic group and then apply a broad brush to what they deem inappropriate for the inferiors in the church.

I saw the tweet below in real time and commented on it. I can’t find it now so I took a screen capture from Jon’s video. I thought Annie expressed it so well. 

As I said recently, The Angry Christian Men want their pound of flesh. One of the ways they will attempt to get it is by shutting down the women in their churches.