The wild alphabets of sexuality have entered the church and men who think women can put on a collar and stand on behalf of Christ are only a few miles behind that party. This is not so much about defending complementarity or patriarchal principles, this is about defending the Christian principle of basic creational order. We can’t play with the animals of Genesis 3 as if they were the animals of Genesis 1-2. They are entirely new beasts, and they will bite and attack because they are not tame.

The biblical arguments for male headship in the Church are vast, ranging from the man’s role under the creation order ( I Tim. 2), the qualification for elders (I Tim. 3), his function in the liturgical order and decency of worship (I Cor. 14), and his significative symbol under the new man, Jesus Christ (Eph. 4-5). These are taken as presuppositions in the history of redemption and exceptions are theological judgment imposed on God’s people.

Additionally, the East and the West have carefully crafted the liturgical service with a man in mind. Christ is the perfect priest and he was enfleshed in a male body. Therefore, the liturgy starts with male vocal cords and ends with male vocal cords. The man gathers and calls and leads and protects. God decided on such things in the Old and New Testaments happily moving against cultural norms, pagan norms, emotional norms and sexual norms. God structures his creation in a Trinitarian fashion and therefore each actor functions according to his purpose and each actress functions according to his purpose. The script is given and we act out our parts. In the Christian script, the male clergy does not stand above the people of God lording over them, but they stand in their midst, just as Christ stands in the midst of his people.

In our day, it is relatively easy to imagine how distinctions in the role of man and woman can be easily confused and ignored in an entertainment-driven congregation where liturgy and life are constantly being reinvented. It is also an easy consequence of such environments to see women leading in churches where men gladly abdicate their function in order to give over to cultural concerns about sexuality. It may come as a reaction to male-pastoral abuse cases which occur often or the endless creativity of church leaders to try something new. There are some who attempt a biblical rationale for such alternatives, but quickly they are swallowed by a larger agenda that lead up to the second floor of leftist inc.

Lest we–high liturgical folk–should get a wee bit happy with the confusion of those “silly people over there”, we should be deeply humbled by the fact that mainline churches with organs and bulletins have produced some of the most abominable cases of false leaders in our day.

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