The Christian Reformed Church fought a protracted, bloody, civil war  over Women in Church Office (WICO) that got started in my childhood years and has continued through today. My mother was an “elder-adjunct” at Northside Chapel and during high school, Calvin College and Seminary the battles raged on. Last year I was a delegate to the first CRC Synod where women served as full delegates, not just advisors.

There is still so much pain and tension in so many places from this war that there is definitely a chill over public talk about WICO. What that means is that there is plenty of presumptive enlightened or biblically faithful “us” talk vs. neanderthal or apostate “them” talk that goes on in private. This retards progress in the CRC’s official position which is that churches and members can maintain either an egalatarian or complementarian perspective.

I’m on the egalatarian side of the dispute but I want the CRC to be able to do what it said it wants to do on this, to make room for both positions. This conflict has become a “defeater issue” conflict. People immediately write the other side off on the basis of this one issue and in the context of church life it is a tragedy. The biggest difficulty for the CRC on this subject now is that because of the war we can’t keep talking about the issue and what that means for the complementarians is that they are too often effectively silenced and community suffers.

In my parents and grandparents generation the conflict in the CRC was over common grace and the split was with the PRC. My grandmother’s family was divided and greatly sorrowed by that split. Some of the stories from that are just so tragic.

In a couple of blog postings, however, not from the CRC I see communication over the divide that seems to be producing more light than heat. http://www.whitbyforum.com/2009/05/great-debate.html and http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/05/complementarian-and-egalitarian-marriage-models-compared-.html I’m glad for this.

I know that some on the complementarian side might assert that since “my side won” I can now afford to be generous in a way they can’t. Maybe that’s true. I certainly can’t stop them from thinking that. Others in the egalatarian camp might see even this post as treachery. The win is fragile, skirmishes abound, there can be no let down for the cause…

One of the things that disturbs me most about the thinking on both sides is how much they defer to myth of progress thinking. I was thrilled to see NT Wright address this directly in his book Surprised by Hope. Also in this YouTube Video I find this so pervasive and it is frankly a greater danger than whatever you imagine gender roles should be. It is more than a defeater issue, it is an alien salvation narrative. Conservatives slide into slippery slope metaphors, throw up their hands and flee the field of engagement to cloister themselves into ever smaller and more isolated affiliations. Winners betray their belief in somehow connecting this change with the year on the calendar.

The mysteries of relational identity will continue to give us important work to do and new fields to explore. I welcome these new discussions and especially the spirit of submission that many of them seem to express. I read the great mandate of Ephesians as “submit to one another”. More exploration of this is welcome.