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    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry
    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry
    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry

    By Michael F. Bird

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    About this ebook

    Taking a stand over the gender-issue divide

    Author and New Testament scholar Michael Bird was formerly in favor of distinct gender roles in ministry, a viewpoint commonly called “complementarianism.” But inconsistencies in practice and careful biblical study convinced him to rethink his position.

    Originally published as a short ebook, Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts offers an engaging, incisive perspective on biblical gender equality and the egalitarian view—a preference for allowing women to hold teaching and leadership positions in ministry.

    While Bird is now egalitarian, he nevertheless strikes a respectful tone toward those in his previous camp, seeking to craft a perspective that both values women and upholds biblical differences between the sexes. Humorous and hard-hitting, Bird will challenge readers on both sides of the gender-issue divide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateDec 25, 2012
    ISBN9780310498179
    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry
    Author

    Michael F. Bird

    Michael F. Bird is Deputy Principal and Lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College,?Australia. He is the author of numerous scholarly and popular books on the New Testament and theology, including, with N. T. Wright, The New Testament in Its World (2019).

    Read more from Michael F. Bird

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    Reviews for Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      If you don't believe that a solid Biblical case for Egalitarianism can be made, I challenge you to read this book. Bird is fair and funny and demonstrates a great love for God and his word. Also, see more in-depth treatments of this subject by others who share the author's conclusions and methods at the end of the book.
    • 4/5
      Michael Bird does a brilliant job of distilling some of the key passages related to women and leadership in the church. He applies faithful exegesis, gives insight to cultural contexts, and indicates how he comes to his conclusions.

      This book is fair-handed and will present a challenge wherever you fall on the scale. At points I heartedly agreed, at other points I shook my head, and occasionally I was surprised to find ideas that I'd never engaged with before.

      Time spent reading this book will be well spent.
    • 4/5
      This short work is an overview of M. F. Bird's position on Gender Equality in the Church. Michael Bird has a position, which is neither complementarian nor egalitarian, but somewhere in the middle. HIs even-handed dealings with Scripture, and with others engaged in this subject area are excellent. My only criticism is his lack of detail, but that is the nature of this publication.

    Book preview

    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts - Michael F. Bird

    Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts

    A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry

    Michael F. Bird

    For Ben Witherington III

    Who has done much to advance the gospel by advancing the ministry of women for the gospel.

    Table of Contents

    Cover

    Title Page

    Abbreviations

    Introduction

    1. Who’s Who in the Zoo?

    2. Fretting over Phoebe

    3. Women in the Pauline Churches

    Heads, Hair, and Hats

    Women and Silence

    Mutual Submission

    Paul’s Cohort of Female Coworkers

    The Egalitarian Manifesto

    I Do Not Permit a Woman to Teach … But Why?

    Conclusion

    Epilogue: Who Is Ilse Fredrichsdorff?

    Further Reading

    Copyright

    About the Author

    Notes

    Abbreviations

    Introduction

    Many years ago the Baptist fundamentalist John R. Rice published a polemical booklet called Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers, written to censure women for rebellious acts like cutting their hair. In fact, a woman cutting her hair was so rebellious that even the angels might be led into rebellion against God by imitating her example (yes, Rice actually said that!). For Rice, a worst-case scenario was probably something like a woman wearing pants with a Jacqueline Kennedy-style bobbed haircut, speaking from a pulpit, while her husband minded the kids in the nursery.¹

    Stanley E. Gundry has mentioned how Rice’s booklet was important to his Baptist minister father, who harangued women in his congregation for outlandish behavior such as sharing unwanted opinions. Though Stan was raised a staunch patriarchalist, he was also instilled with a deep reverence for the truth of the Bible. Eventually he came to believe that the truth of the Bible permitted a place for women in pastoral ministry. Stan came to this view largely through the exegetical prodding and theological questioning of his wife, Patricia Gundry. Patricia in fact went on to write the book Women Be Free! an early evangelical manifesto for Christian egalitarianism.² Stan was drawn to the egalitarian position because he came to believe that the climax of redemptive history would bring about the restoration of male-female relationships as evidenced in creation, that patriarchalists seek to prohibit women from doing the very things we see women doing in the Bible, and that advocates for patriarchal hierarchalism would one day be viewed as derisively as we now view Christian defenders of slavery in the nineteenth century.³

    Stan’s story is not unique, as many devout evangelical men and women of faith have had something of an epiphany on women and leadership that moved them toward a more inclusive view of ministry.⁴ I share in that story. Admittedly, I would demur with Stan and other egalitarians on some points of biblical interpretation, just as they would disagree with me. In my own journey with the biblical truth, I’ve not been concerned with fitting into a particular camp or assenting to every item on a checklist that marks one as theologically kosher. In fact, my own position is either almost-complementarian or nearly-egalitarian, depending how you look at it.

    Yet I have changed my view on women and ministry, and some of my friends have shaken their head in disappointment, thinking that I have sold out to the cultural tide of feminism by adopting a fashionably left-leaning version of evangelicalism. My own perspective is that I have simply followed the testimony of biblical texts that affirm women can and should be involved in pastoral care and the church’s teaching ministry. Let me tell you about my journey.

    During my late teenage years, my views on women were largely shaped by military culture. I joined the Army at age seventeen and adopted the maxim of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly. Women were mainly sexual playthings—though finding a bourgeois babe willing to satisfy my unbridled lusts was not particularly easy. Fortunately my conversion to Christ at age twenty led to change in a great many areas of my life, including my view of women and relationships. But in my early theological education I took to a patriarchal view very naturally. I was greatly influenced by complementarians such as John Piper, John MacArthur, and Wayne

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