UPDATE
Former members of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus (EWC) have helped form an alternative organization for Christian feminists in the United States. Several women who left EWC last year after it adopted a controversial gay-rights resolution are founding members of a new organization, known as Men, Women and God: Christians for Biblical Equality (MWG).
The new group is a national chapter of Men, Women and God International, an organization associated with John Stott’s London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. At press time, national chapters from four countries had applied for membership in the British organization, which was internationalized in August.
“I am very glad to express my support of Men, Women and God in its aim to understand and obey God’s will for sexual roles today,” Stott said in a written statement. “The authentic evangelical way is neither the conservatism which reasserts traditional positions without reflection, nor the radicalism which sacrifices all tradition to the spirit of modernity.…”
The U.S. chapter of MWG grew out of discussions among biblical feminists who left EWC after it adopted a gay-rights resolution, which recognized “the presence of the lesbian minority” in EWC and took “a firm stand in favor of civil rights protection for homosexual persons” (CT, Oct. 3, 1986, p. 40). Former EWC member Catherine Clark Kroeger, acting Protestant chaplain at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, is serving as chair pro tem of the MWG board of directors.
The organization adopted a statement of faith and a mission statement. Included in the statement of faith is a belief in “the equality and essential dignity of men and women of all races, ages, and classes …”; a belief that “women and men should diligently develop and use their God-given gifts for the good of the home, church, and society”; and a belief in “the family, celibate singleness, and heterosexual marriage as the patterns God designed for us.”
In its mission statement, MWG affirms the “equality of women and men in church, home, and society. Our particular focus is to make known the biblical basis for freedom in Christ to those in … conservative churches.”
