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There's a story about a Texas rancher who threw a big party and filled his swimming pool with man-eating sharks. When the guests had all gathered, he announced that he would give anyone who swam the length of his pool the choice of $50 million or the deed to his ranch. Before he could finish speaking, he saw someone swimming furiously across the pool. When the swimmer arrived on the other side, the rancher said, "I'm astounded. I didn't think anyone would try that, much less do it. But I am true to my word. Now tell me, what do you want: $50 million or the deed to my ranch?"

"What do you mean?" the swimmer exclaimed. "I want the guy who pushed me into the pool!"

I won't accuse anyone of pushing me into this pool, but I confess that I would not be writing on this topic if I hadn't recently been invited—even prodded—to give a plenary address on it. I am not a card-carrying member of either party in the evangelical gender wars. I have no special expertise in this issue; I have read widely but not deeply in the enormous literature it has generated. I have no new interpretation of 1 Timothy 2 or headship or submission to offer. I am merely a participant-observer in the evangelical family who recognizes that in the polarization over gender, something crucial is at stake.

That polarization is found even in our seminaries. Evangelical theological schools tend to fall into one of three camps. Some are unequivocally egalitarian and would not likely hire a faculty member who did not share this commitment. Fuller, North Park, Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern), Ashland, and the Church of God School of Theology are among the schools that hold this view. Other theological institutions take the opposite view. Westminster, Dallas, Covenant, and, more recently, the six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention fall into this group. Beeson, my school, belongs to another group of theological institutions, including Trinity, Gordon-Conwell, Denver, and Regent College (Vancouver), which do not make this matter a test of fellowship but welcome faculty and students who hold differing convictions.

The ferment is further agitated by language changes. "Christian feminists" have become "biblical egalitarians," though the former term is still used by some. Likewise, "patriarchalists," "hierarchalists," and "traditionalists" have become "complementarians." Of course, no one denies that men and women are equally created in the image of God and share an equal access to salvation and Christ. Likewise, everyone in the debate recognizes, in some sense, that there are key distinctions as well as similarities between men and women. We have become all things to all people that we might confuse everybody!

It is well beyond my ken to sort all of this out. What I have to say is more pastoral and theological. I want to draw on my experience in the Evangelicals and Catholics Together project, which over its 11-year history has made remarkable strides in helping us bridge some needless divisions. Here I want to suggest possible, tentative steps forward to what, in God's providence, might become a new ECT—Egalitarians and Complementarians Together.

It is easy to get lost in the maze of exegetical minutiae, the thrust and counter-thrust of theological arguments, and to suppose that this debate among evangelicals has developed in a vacuum. Our wider culture is complex, but let me look at a few historic realities that continue to affect us today.

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November 2005, Vol. 49, No. 11