Friends have told me there are a number of influential people who have come to the conclusion that egalitarianism is a heresy, but for various reasons decline to identify it as such in their public communication.
I understand those reasons, and myself enjoy similar reticence from those who consider me a heretic. Although the documents of Vatican II do not use that word to describe Protestants, their definitions justify it. Protestants will not confess one or more doctrines the Roman Church teaches are de fide--required of all the faithful--and this has alienated them, formally. To Catholics, Protestants are heretics. I don’t think it bothers them much, since most of them appear to be undeclared Protestants themselves, but few of them make heavy weather of it, and I am grateful.
My own willingness to name egalitarians as heretics, however, arises from several grounds. First, admittedly, I have far less to lose by doing it than many do. My wages are not paid by anyone who cares much (yet) about my religious opinions, and there is no disagreement on the issue in my immediate family. I don’t have much status, or any club memberships to lose--I long ago gave up on these. I have known, and believed, from my early youth that Christians who act and think like Christians should expect to pay for it in this world, sometimes with their lives. I don’t much like “marginalization,” and like even less the cloud that so often covers the faces of some people when they find out who I am, but have tried to be prepared much worse. When I see the horrors to which other believers are subject for trying to be Christians, why should I complain about a bit of unpopularity?
Second, I believe the charge is true. This doesn’t mean that one need scream heresy with every other breath, but it does mean he must act, in the place he is found, in accordance with the belief. There was a time when I didn’t really wish to look into the matter and said it wasn’t a hill I was willing to die upon. I hoped it wasn’t important. But still, I agreed with J. Gresham Machen about what theological liberalism is, and with H. Richard Niebuhr on what it does to the doctrine of churches that adopt it. During my years as a pastor in and member of mainline Protestant churches I witnessed egalitarianism as a natural outgrowth of the teaching of formerly evangelical churches (for that is what the “mainline” is) that had rejected the authority of scripture and tradition, creating a humanistic religion that employed Christian words and symbols in the service of something that was not Christianity. Egalitarianism, with women’s ordination and “inclusive” language as its distinctive sacraments, was welcomed in and promoted by the same "progressive" minds, the same means, and the same operations that had established theological liberalism in the churches, and would later introduce even more drastic departures from Christian faith and practice. It had to be examined, and the conclusion I found inescapable was that it was an anthropological heresy that of necessity infected all Christian teaching about God and creation.
Finally--and this consideration removed any hesitancies I might still have entertained--I have come to believe this is the time when the identification of egalitarianism as a heresy should be clearly made, especially for the good of the churches upon which it has recently settled. It is a kairotic moment, particularly among Evangelicals, for they find themselves in the time when the first generation of heretical teachers (I am not speaking of the pioneers, most of whom have now passed from the scene) is still holding forth, and in the process of confirming and consolidating its power and influence. This is the first generation in which the majority of their colleges, seminaries, and publishing houses have come fully into egalitarian hands, or whose leaders will not effectively oppose it. It is the first generation of full dominance by those who have consciously and deliberately betrayed the universal faith for their positions and influence, or because they know egalitarianism wrong but are reluctant stand against it with appropriate force.
It is time the creature that has emerged from the egg they have hatched be given its proper name by those concerned for the integrity of the Christian faith, time for all the desperate and wildly improbable interpretations egalitarian operators have inflicted upon scripture and church history, and their insolent effrontery in the face of every venerable authority, be identified for what it is. The thing they have engendered is now fully born and they are claiming its covenental right to reception in the Church. If this is the time Christian baptism is being claimed on its behalf, then this is also the time to name it. Until it is named, and named correctly, it will not be recognized for what it is and cannot be dealt with accordingly.
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I will add here this comment on an article I recently read whose author, a complementarian, does not believe egalitarianism by itself should be defined as a heresy, for while he thinks it an error, it does not directly touch the central doctrines of the faith, upon which complementarians and egalitarians can agree.
There are, to be sure, greater and lesser errors, but what we are concerned with here is whether this justifies a genetic distinction in which the smaller ones are to be called errors and the larger, more serious ones, heresies. If a heresy is an error in doctrine (all errors being by definition schismatic, since they separate those who hold them from those who do not), then it would be better, I think, to speak of greater and lesser heresies. Or, if one decides that “error” should be used instead, greater or lesser errors. But since their nature is the same, whatever their size and wherever they lie, it would seem best to identify them as a single genus.
I will grant that “environmental” factors may keep mere “error” from metastasizing into “heresy,” as when women’s ordination among Pentecostals, being the product of charismatic enthusiasm rather than widespread and powerful ideological deformation, has not deposed its men or produced a caste of priestesses. But it is, I believe, an error that has helped separate Pentecostals into their own groups and created division in the Church. If we are accustomed to reserving “heresy” for more obviously serious cases, the term does not readily spring to mind in this one, any more than the average Catholic immediately thinks of the Protestant as a heretic. But in either case, we are dealing with greater and lesser instances of the same thing, and just as circumstances may in one instance render the lesser relatively benign, a change in those circumstances will demonstrate that any and every small error--all errors sharing the same character, that is, as error--has the viral potential to grow into something immeasurably larger, more comprehensive and destructive.
I identify egalitarianism as a heresy merely because it is a doctrinal error promulgated in the churches. I press the definition because my experience indicates that even though it begins in anthropology rather than theology proper, it is far more serious and virulent than many who wish to define heresy only as grave error on the central tenets of the faith appear to understand. I regard them as naive, unobservant of what has happened elsewhere, and insensitive to the gravity of what they are willing to tolerate.
They do not appear to understand the profoundly altering effect of egalitarianism’s anthropological modalism on the life and worship of the church, and on the family, nor the natural operations of minds seized by an egalitarian principle and driven by the belief that they have not only the knowledge, but a spiritual vocation, to change beliefs and practices that have been held in the Church from its beginning. They do not comprehend the fundamental unity C. S. Lewis identified between those who want smaller changes in the teaching and practice of the churches in regard to gender matters, and those who carry through to what they would be willing to call heresy. Nor do they--with the more pious and less frightening “orthodox” egalitarianans--understand the complex and dynamic reality in which they are bound together with, and in the service of, the radicals.
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