Lewis’ Observation

One of the most profound observations about the feminist movement to place women in leading offices in the churches was made by C.S. Lewis in a 1948 essay on “priestesses in the Church?”¹ He suggested that the issue involved was not really that of the ability of women to function in offices, but of the nature of Christianity as revealed religion. When we decide such matters by prudence, convenience or common sense, “we exchange revelation for . . . Natural Religion” (in other words, paganism.) That is about the sharpest observation about the nature of this movement that could be made and it is one that ought to get some attention at this time.

Belittling the Issue

Since last year’s C. R. synod decisively opened one of these leading offices to women, we are seeing increasing efforts on the part of those who have been promoting this movement to minimize its significance. They are telling us that nothing has really been changed. Although churches that have special “needs” are permitted to make a slight adjustment in making nominations for office, no members’ or churches’ convictions or consciences are being threatened. Nobody is questioning or denying the authority of the Bible or any other of the churches’ doctrines. The differences of opinion only concern a few texts about whose meaning the overwhelming majority of experts on successive committees have said the Bible is unclear. We are urgently admonished with pious appeals to I Corinthians 13 and other Biblical injunctions to promote love and peace, to reassure uneasy church members and to try to restore unity and tranquility in the troubled churches.

While God’s Word indeed commands us to act and speak in love, and to seek the unity and welfare of Christ’s church, it orders us to speak “the truth in love” and to seek “the unity of the faith” (Eph. 4:13, 15). The trouble with these current appeals to love and unity is that they misrepresent what is happening.

A Different Kind of Religion

The issue we face is not about an honest difference of opinion regarding the meaning of a few obscure texts; it is about whether the church may deliberately ignore Biblical commands for the church that are so clear that nobody can misunderstand them. Delegates at our last synod reported that promoters of the change no longer even attempted to Biblically justify it; only those who opposed it appealed to the Bible and they were voted down.

And if the Bible can be, as it has been, so officially ignored in the deciding of the churches’ course, we should not be surprised by seeing that the churches’ creeds can be, and have been, treated just as casually as the Bible. In our March OUTLOOK Professor Norman De Jong alerted us to the way in which the old, legally adopted Belgic Confession has been rewritten by a committee that was authorized only to translate it into more contemporary English.

Although it did not come to the attention of the synodical delegates in 1979 or 1983, and has not been cited by the committee when calling attention to the “revisions,” the male language used in reference to the ecclesiastical officers has all been removed and replaced with non-sexist language. “Men” becomes “persons” and the male pronouns become “everyone” or “all.” If this is allowed to pass next June, those who treat the creeds lightly will have effectively altered the Confession in such a way that there will no longer be any legal barriers to women elders and ministers . . . .

We are reliably informed that the contents of our churches’ hymnbook are being similarly edited to remove expressions and even hymns, such as “Faith of our Fathers” which feminists find distasteful. We learn that the Publication Committee is also recommending that Dr. Emily Brink, temporary musical editor of the new Psalter Hymnal, be given a permanent position in the education department as music and liturgy editor. We are not facing only the placement of women deacons or helpers in a few churches; we are to have a woman expert in charge of the denomination’s liturgy and revisions of its way of worshiping God.

One of our foreign missionaries recently reported that when the supervisory Latin American secretary job opened, “the call went out for ordained or unordained, male or female, candidates!” Our April OUTLOOK contained a report of the address of Dr. Alvin J. Vander Griend, the Associate Minister of Evangelism for the denomination, fervently advocating the removal of all restraints on women’s service in any church office. Especially striking in the address, besides his flagrantly irresponsible exegesis of some Scripture texts, was the fact that he was not just expressing a private opinion, but plainly trying to fulfill his assigned job in the denomination’s Home Missions administration, of promoting and guiding evangelism. This kind of propaganda is now part of our churches’ common “home mission” program. This list of items is by no means comprehensive, but only a random sampling of reports that happen to come to the attention of a retired minister. They show, however, that the feminist movement in our churches involves much more than a difference of opinion about trivial details. It increasingly seems to affect every part of the churches’ faith and life.

A Different God

C.S. Lewis helps us to understand the otherwise surprisingly wide effects of the feminist movement when he explains that it really involves worshiping a different kind of god! That is why it has to have a different Bible, different creeds, changed liturgies, and different kinds of churches and missions. It is really a heresy not a bit less radical than was the old Arian heresy which denied the Trinity. If we are going to eliminate all “sexist” language, how can we continue to worship the Father and the Son? John Hultink, editor of Christian Renewal (March OUTLOOK, p. 17) called attention to the fact that one of the professors of the AACS Toronto Institute (which continues to be officially recommended for support by our churches) had the “distinction” of referring to God as a female on national television for the first time in the history of Canada. As early as August 29, 1983 Institute professor, Dr. Hendrik Hart also wrote in The Banner on “Must I Believe in God as Father?” “Our Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed have made ‘our father’ a key to the faith.” “Jesus, the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer, our confessions, doctrine, tradition, songs, and the organization of our faith can be said to be circles which have ‘God the Father‘ as their center. Still, for a person whose history has made ‘father’ a source of anguish rather than comfort, betrayal rather than trust, enmity rather than love, we have no doctrine which commands the use of that image.” “Certainly it would be wrong to say: God is not our father; instead she is our mother. I don’t believe that. But is it wrong to say: God may also be worshiped, loved, known, feared, prayed to, referred to, spoken of via that other parental image, mother? I really don‘t believe that it would be wrong . . . . I’m fairly convinced that we have to make room, also in our worship service, for those who are growing up with the wonderful message of God as their mother. I’m nearly convinced that if we don’t, we will be wrong.”

God Tolerates No Compromise

This is not to suggest at all that everyone who is misled by present feminist propaganda is therefore a heretic who denies the Trinity. I am sure that most ofour church members have no intention of becoming that. But why should our churches let themselves be pressed into compromising with and making concessions to a movement which increasingly shows its anti-Christian origin and motivation? Such a policy only exposes the church and its message to deserved ridicule. The secular world seems to be becoming disillusioned with the feminist drive for power. The church, when it borrows worn out secular slogans in effort to be “contemporary,” becomes like the false prophet that Isaiah (9:15) described as the tail wagging along behind the dog of the faithless politician.

It becomes increasingly evident, as C.S. Lewis observed, that the feminist movement in the church is really a different kind of religion. It is, in principle, a heresy, as radical as that of the ancient Arians. Instead of making foolish concessions to it, we need to learn again one of the earliest lessons reflected in our most ecumenical creeds. The Arian controversy too could be and has been misrepresented as making much ado about nothing—Gibbon quipped about its splitting Christendom over one letter , “i,” the smallest in the Greek alphabet, (which distinguished the Arian statement that the Son was like God from the orthodox statement that He was God.) When , for a time, the heretics had grabbed all the positions of power and seemed to overwhelm all opposition, a lone Athanasius was ready to stand adamantly “against the world” for the Deity of Christ. And he taught his multitude of orthodox followers to unitedly sing, or shout in the face of the enemies, “Glory be to the FATHER, and to the SON, and to the HOLY SPIRIT, as it WAS IN T HE BEGINNING, IS NOW, AND EVER SHALL BE, world without end. Amen.” Thus, in the mercy of God, the orthodox gospel was preserved against its deniers.

When the church is confronted by the worship of a false god it may not compromise. God commands, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” And He is far from Dr. Hart’s tolerant indifference to the kind of images with which people might like to represent or misrepresent Him. He warns in the second commandment that He detests and condemns such carelessness about this matter. He is “a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him” (Ex.20:5). He condemned that policy when the Jews slid back into worship of the Queen of Heaven (Jer. 7:18). He continues to warn especially against all compromise with idolatry. The Apostle John concludes his exposition of the Christian faith and life (1 John 5:20, 21), “And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, guard yourselves from idols.”

1. The article is found on pp. 234–239 of the collection of his essays under the title God in the Dock published by Eerdmans in 1970.