The Revolt of the Evangelical Elites
Gender, Equality, and Headship
D.G. Hart
October 1, 1995
The Christian Reformed Church, a Dutch Calvinist denomination headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan of a little more than a quarter-of-a-million members, recently bit the bullet at its 1995 Synod and decided to open the offices of minister and elder to women. This decision culminated (though last year's Synod barring women from ordination appeared to do the same) a long debate within the CRC about biblical teaching on male headship, the subordination of women, and the nature of ordination. Unless you are a conservative Calvinist who cares about the health of Reformed theology and practice there is probably no good reason to lament what happened this summer in the CRC. By most measures Dutch Calvinists are of no discernible importance. The CRC is a relatively small ethnic communion that, despite its post-World War II assimilation into American culture, often through such evangelical guises as Christian radio, televangelism, religious publishing, and church-growth strategies, has been on the sidelines of American Protestant developments. Yet these Dutch Calvinists have produced a number of important academics who have emerged not only as leaders in their respective disciplines but as models for Christian (especially evangelical) scholarship. Here the names of Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff (home-grown talent), George Marsden, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, and Richard Mouw come to mind. Equally important has been the CRC's intellectual leadership on the issue of the ordination of women. Traditionally, evangelicals have not been able to think their way theologically out of a box. (If readers think this judgment too harsh they should read Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.) But the debates in the CRC have occasioned ...
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