I never thought I would see this. Never.

Like a lot of lay people, I don’t particularly want women preachers or elders. I consider the qualifications for elder-hood are quite patriarchal in the best sense of that word: you are expected to be the husband of one wife (the divorced and polygamous need not apply) and your wife is expected to be a sensible woman, you have to practice hospitality, and have raised decent kids. (The test is if you can manage your household. If you cannot do that, and you cannot keep a good reputation in your work and business, you do not qualify).

Not all can be elders. I consider that my past disqualifies me from this role.

And on the issue of female elders I choose not to make a fuss: I am not an elder and although I think my church is in error on this I will bend for the sake of unity.

But that is not enough. The morons in the cathedral are going against the clear teaching of the church, and science — the neurobiologists are looking at how the brain changes in puberty — driven by psychiatric epidemiology, where young men and young women get very different conditions under stress — and finding not only plasticity of the brain (that means it changes) but differences between men and women.

At this point I can imagine most of the married people I know saying “Obvious is Obvious”.

But not to these twits. To quote

I don’t take this lightly. I very much take Jesus’ prayer for unity in the Fourth Gospel seriously. Our eschatological hope is that the church will be one, and that we will all be united in belief, practice, and love.

But sometimes we need to separate. We need to say hard words to those who are not living the way that Jesus laid out for us. We need to divorce.

The time has come for a schism regarding the issue of women in the church. Those of us who know that women should be accorded full participation in every aspect of church life need to visibly and forcefully separate ourselves from those who do not. Their subjugation of women is anti-Christian, and it should be tolerated no longer.

That means:

• If you attend a church that does not let women preach or hold positions of ecclesial authority, you need to leave that church.
• If you work for a ministry that does not affirm women in ecclesial leadership, you need to leave that ministry.
• If you write for a publishing house that also prints books by “complementarians,” you need to take your books to another publishing house.
• If you speak at conferences, you need to withdraw from all events that do not affirm women as speakers, teachers, and leaders.

That is, we who believe in the full equality of women need to break fellowship with those who do not. The time for dialogue and debate has passed. The Spirit has spoken, and we have listened. It’s time to move forward with full force.

Several schisms have rent the church in the past. They have indeed caused much damage to the body of Christ, but they have also ultimately produced benefit. Little good came from The Great Schism of 1054. Much more good came from the Reformation schism catalyzed by Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others.

Other issues that vex the church have not risen to the level of schism. Gay rights, for example, is an issue being worked through diligently and faithfully by many churches and denominations. They deserve time and grace as they study the Bible, listen to their people, and test the Spirit.

The full equality of women and men, however, is an issue that has long since been settled. Those who continue misogynistic practices in the church are not being faithful to the Bible or the Spirit of Christ, they are perpetuating retrograde and archaic beliefs and are doing great violence to women and men and the cause of Christ.

Having grown up in a church that ordained women, allowed women to lead, and had women preachers, it is honestly shocking to me to continue to run into so-called “complementarians.” I don’t meet them in real life — I just see them in the blogosphere, on Facebook and Twitter. And friends of mine like Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey assure me that they exist.

I don’t know what a schism looks like in the 21st century. It won’t look like past schisms — there’s no monolithic authority like the Vatican for us to protest against. Probably, like so many things in our postmodern society, it will be pluriform — a million little schisms.

It will be difficult for many people. It will cause broken relationships. But we have daughters, and the subjugation of women in the church needs to end in this generation.

Well, this is where the Left is. The test is not the Nicene creed. It is if we will bow to the gods of feminism.

There is a name for this. Idolatry.

And if this fool considers the church oppresses women I want to ask him one question Where are the (divorced) men?. The women are in the church getting Oprah style support. The men have been cast out as a consequence of the women dumping them for non legitimate reasons. And when a church actually takes discipline seriously — and does what the author suggests to those openly in sin, that’s evil because girls cry.

Well, girls can cry. They should cry. They should weep and wail. For the feminist meme has destroyed the effectiveness of the church, and turned what should be the army of God into a set of wimps doing ineffective social work.

And he wrote in Patheos. I will just add that the comments are illuminating. A couple as a taster…

“Since folks can already find lots of egalitarian churches, the call apparently is to raise an unholy ruckus in conservative churches, to split those churches, to divide and conquer.” Well, the problem is that most progressive churches just plain suck so bad that not even someone like Rachel Held Evans wants to attend them. To be fair, conservative Evangelical churches in the First World aren’t exactly setting the world on fire either, but there is at least some life left in them, so progressives want to take over. Meh.

When your extremist theology, aggressive agenda, and Scripture-twisting has killed YOUR church, the only thing left to do is take those things to another church and try to kill it too.

Liberal and feminist churches are full of the walking dead. The lack of live is warning and a witness that they are not of Christ, for by your fruits will you be known. And, as the Spengler said, the cure for a zombie society is to not be part of it.