A Way-Station To Egalitarianism: A Review Essay Of Aimee Byrd’s "Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood" -- By: Denny R. Burk

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 24:1 (Spring 2020)
Article: A Way-Station To Egalitarianism: A Review Essay Of Aimee Byrd’s "Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood"
Author: Denny R. Burk


A Way-Station To Egalitarianism: A Review Essay Of Aimee Byrd’s Recovering From Biblical Manhood & Womanhood

Denny Burk

Denny Burk is Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, the President of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and Associate Pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Burk earned a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a PhD from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of What Is the Meaning of Sex? (Crossway, 2013), Transforming Homosexuality (P&R, 2015), and a commentary on the pastorals in ESV Expository Commentary: Ephesians-Philemon (Crossway, 2017). Most recently, he co-edited God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays on Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner (B&H, 2019).

Evangelicals have been debating manhood and womanhood for decades, and the conflict shows no signs of subsiding. No little bit of ink is spilled every year by both sides, and many works have trouble getting through all the noise. Such is not the case with Aimee Byrd’s new book Recovering from Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose (Zondervan, 2020). The provocative title riffs off the name of the seminal complementarian work Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Crossway, 1991). Byrd takes direct aim at what she believes to be the deficiencies of complementarianism as expounded by its chief proponents, especially the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW).

Summary

Byrd’s Introduction presents the defining metaphor of the book—yellow wallpaper—which comes from a feminist novel authored by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (15). In the novel, Gilman describes a woman who loses her sanity in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The main character begins to feel that there is a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper trying to tear her way out. The yellow wallpaper serves as a metaphor for patriarchal oppression from which women must free themselves. Byrd uses this metaphor to describe how women in evangelical churches are trapped behind patriarchal oppression in the form of “current teaching on so-called ‘biblical manhood and womanhood’” (19). For example, she cites John Piper’s definition of masculinity and femininity and contends that it focuses too much on authority and submission. She claims that Piper’s complementarianism means that all women must submit to all men (22). Instead of authoritative male headship, Byrd wishes to emphasize “reciprocity” between male and female voices in scripture and between men and women in the church (25). She also wishes to �...

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