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Lowell Noble
Resident Professor, John Perkins Foundation
Jackson, Mississippi

As part of an organization that advances a biblical foundation for gift-based rather than gender-based ministry, I appreciate Timothy George's plea for "A Peace Plan for the Gender War"[posted Nov. 17]. However, it is possible that the "gender war" among Christians exists because people erroneously assume that biblical egalitarianism grew out of the radical feminist movement, identified with people like Mary Daly and Daphne Hampson. This is false.

Our history dates back to the great revivals and the "golden era of missions." Our foremothers and forefathers include individuals like Katherine Bushnell, Frances Willard, A. J. Gordon, Catherine Booth, William Godbey, Amanda Smith, Sojourner Truth, and Pandita Ramabai. All of these individuals advanced a biblical basis for women's equality in home, church, and society. They also sought to free women for gospel service, worked to liberate slaves, and labored for all Americans to gain the opportunity to vote.

Today's biblical egalitarians affirm most of the values of those who disagree with us on the place of women. We embrace the authority of Scripture, the sacredness of the family, and the centrality of missions. This has been true since the 1800s. What is there to war about?

Mimi Haddad
President, Christians for Biblical Equality
Minneapolis, Minnesota

In "Bridging the Ephesians 5 Divide" [posted Nov. 18], Sarah Sumner focuses too narrowly on Ephesians 5:21 and misses the wider context. The point of verse 21 is that the motive for submission ought to be "reverence for Christ," not necessarily that every believer ought to submit to every other believer. Paul goes on to apply the principle of submission to specific situations in the following verses. Namely, Paul applies the principle of submission to marriage (wives submitting to husbands, Eph. 5:22–33), family (children submitting to parents, Eph. 6:1–4), and master-slave relationships (slaves submitting to masters, Eph. 6:5–9).

This is a better interpretation for two reasons. First, it is consistent with Colossians 3:18–22, which is likely a shorter summary form of the Ephesians passage. Second, if we were to accept Sumner's interpretation of verse 21, we would have to conclude that parents must submit to children and masters to slaves, which the text does not suggest. If nothing else, we must at least admit that if there is a sense in which husbands ought to submit to their wives, it is not the same sense in which wives are to submit to their husbands. There is an asymmetry in the marriage relationship, just as there in the parent-child relationship and the master-slave relationship.

Brian Chang
Escondido, California

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December (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49