Rightwing Patriarchalists vs Mushy Moderates

Everyone Loses

There’s a war waging in the American church between two factions of people: the extreme rightwing patriarchalists and the mushy moderates.

The rightwing patriarchalists get important things like abortion and transgenderism and medical freedom right, but the way they communicate it is often really awful, and they’re hideous at binding wounds, caring for the marginalized, and loving like Jesus did. They perpetuate harmful gender roles and treat women like breeders. There’s often a side of unhealthy degrees of Christian nationalism in their narrative, and they’re usually worse than useless when it comes to facilitating important nuanced, discussions about things like racism and abuse. They’re so heavily focused on eradicating legitimate cancers outside the church that they’re often dismissive of the cancers within it, which they view as trivial by comparison and not worth the collective attention. In this camp we have bigwigs like John MacArthur and Owen Strachan and Doug Wilson and Dale Patridge as assisted by the Matt Walshes of the world.

On the other side you have the mushy moderates, who, appalled by some of the demonstrably unloving rhetoric of the patriarchalists, have rightly chosen to distance themselves from it and champion some of the issues the others neglect: racial reconciliation, misogyny in the church, the binding of the wounds inflicted by sexual violence, and the elevation of women’s voices. This camp serves as home base for a lot of the #NeverTrump crowd. They’re so busy excising cancer from within the church that they often take a very dismissive approach to the malignant cancers outside it. They often fail to take a clear, bold stand on issues destroying people such as the chemical castration of children. Here you’ll find people like David French and Russell Moore and Phil Vischer and Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

The first camp dismisses the second as bleeding heart social justice warriors who’ve begun embracing Marxism. They refuse to engage or legitimize their valid concerns. The first camp routinely makes the grave error of categorizing all pursuits of justice as “social justice warrioring,” forgetting that we actually have a biblical mandate to bind wounds and speak out for the oppressed. Any hint of kindness, any invitation to build bridges of reconciliation is held in deep suspicion. I remember being so troubled by this a few years back when John MacArthur released what I considered to be a really ill-advised Statement of Social Justice and the Gospel, which, of course, I refused to sign.

The second camp dismisses the first as unloving, unseeing, fearmongerers who prioritize politics over people. They refuse to acknowledge the validity of some of the important causes they champion. We saw this in full effect earlier this month when David French wrote a pretty awful op-ed for The New York Times, in which he framed conservative opposition to the chemical castration of children as an assault on the Constitution.

This cycle plays on and on ad infinitum, and for those of us doing work in the middle of the extremes, it can feel like being a kid caught in a toxic custody battle between two belligerent parents, both of whom could easily lighten the emotional load for everyone involved if they would only grow up and channel enough humility to LISTEN for a hot minute.

I’m a women’s advocate. That’s my lane. And as much as most people hate to admit it, we have a major misogyny problem both inside and outside the church. (The Bible itself pretty much promised that woman hatred would be a constant problem once Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden, so I’m not sure why anyone continues to pretend like it’s not, but that’s another blog for another day.)

But here’s how this plays out for those of us occupying this space: We condemn misogyny in the church, and we support the work of those bravely naming it, women like Julie Roys and Aimee Byrd and Beth Allison Barr. We amplify their voices. But the people who most desperately need to hear them refuse to because they are afraid these women are leading people toward Marxism and away from orthodoxy.

So when I saw Julie Roys, one of my all time FAVORITES, publicly justify her choice to adhere to AP guidelines on the gender madness last night, specifically as it related to the female mass shooter in Nashville this week, I honestly wanted to cry. I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the patriarchalists would be spreading the tweet far and wide as justification for their decision to discard the rest of Julie’s legitimate work. And I wasn’t wrong. Literally five minutes later, conservative commentator William Wolfe had done just that.

I tried to appeal to his reason. Despite my aggressive disagreement with Julie on this issue, the rest of her work is valid and important. I invited him to contend with the misogynistic rot in his own camp. His response?

“Sorry, but that’s not a thing.”

And so the vicious cycle continues, each side so thoroughly convinced of its monopoly on the moral high ground that they’re rendered completely unwilling to see the obvious cracks in their own foundations. William Wolfe still vocally praises overtly abusive men like John MacArthur. Beth Allison Barr proudly shares honors with fully apostate women without ever drawing a bold distinguishing line on orthodoxy.

I’m all about building bridges with ideological opponents. I co-founded a bipartisan coalition with lesbian radical feminists, for crying out loud. But I did so from a place of complete transparency about my ideological disagreements. The feminists who work alongside me know that I believe in traditional marriage and that I oppose abortion. These lines are important to draw if we want people to trust us.

As someone who has spent the past seven years paying a pretty high price to defend women against the gender cult, I have to admit I felt a bit betrayed by Julie’s tweet last night. I still love her work. I’ll still go down swinging to defend it, but that stung.

As Christians, we must tell the truth no matter who it implicates or how we are judged for it. We tell the truth about JMac, knowing we will be rebuked, misjudged, and shat upon. And we tell the truth about trans knowing we will be hated for that, too. You can’t fight misogyny on one side by hiding behind the misogynistic cover of another. Truth. Truth is what liberates us. The truth is that the gender industry is wreaking just as much havoc on women as “Christian” patriarchy is. We have to stand together and fight it all. Courage. Truth wins.

But we will never arrive at truth if we only tell the ugly truth about everyone else. There’s a reason the Bible gives pretty strict instructions about removing the planks from our own eyes. “Judgment begins in the house of the Lord.”

Lord, clean your church.