Ask the Author: John G. Stackhouse Jr.
Answered Questions (5)
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
Thanks for asking. I share your ambivalence about the term "evangelical," since it is linked with positions, parties, and people from whom I would keep some distance.
For me, "evangelical" means not just "of the good news" (its literal etymology). Historians use the term "evangelicalism" for the mainstream of vital, orthodox Protestantism that flows out of Puritanism in Britain and Pietism in Europe into a variety of eighteenth-century movements, such as the Great Awakening in the American colonies and the Methodist revival in Britain.
This book surveys what is now a form of religion thriving all over the globe, characterized by the six key qualities I set out in the book: Trinitarian, Biblicist, conversionist, missional, populist, and pragmatic. I'm willing to be identified with such a worldwide communion, even if some family members still strike me as . . . insufficiently sanctified! (I daresay many would say the same of me—and correctly.)
For me, "evangelical" means not just "of the good news" (its literal etymology). Historians use the term "evangelicalism" for the mainstream of vital, orthodox Protestantism that flows out of Puritanism in Britain and Pietism in Europe into a variety of eighteenth-century movements, such as the Great Awakening in the American colonies and the Methodist revival in Britain.
This book surveys what is now a form of religion thriving all over the globe, characterized by the six key qualities I set out in the book: Trinitarian, Biblicist, conversionist, missional, populist, and pragmatic. I'm willing to be identified with such a worldwide communion, even if some family members still strike me as . . . insufficiently sanctified! (I daresay many would say the same of me—and correctly.)
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
I have not been in leadership in a church that was patriarchal for a long time. But I have generally agreed with leaders in churches with whom we have worshiped that I would not publicly teach (e.g., from the pulpit, in seminars, in Sunday School) against the teaching of that church, whatever my private disagreements might be. And that's been fine with them...so far...
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
That's what the book is intended to answer, Maria!
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
My approach in this book is to take seriously the theological claims of complementarians. I believe many of them today, as in the history of the church, to be godly and intelligent people doing their best to understand the complex data of gender. And I believe many of them are following good theological methods to their conclusions.
I do think, however, that the method I recommend in the book is better than the complementarian--and egalitarian!--methods I have encountered before, and thus the argument is better, too. That's why I bothered to write this book!
I do think, however, that the method I recommend in the book is better than the complementarian--and egalitarian!--methods I have encountered before, and thus the argument is better, too. That's why I bothered to write this book!
John G. Stackhouse Jr.
Maria, my full-length approach to theology is the book called "Need to Know: Vocation as the Heart of Christian Epistemology."
As for women and men being equal, yes, I believe they are--regardless of biology! But perhaps you are asking me if I think they are identical, and no, I don't think so. I do think that some sort of gender essentialism marks out men and women from each other, as I argue in this book and in "Finally Feminist."
As for women and men being equal, yes, I believe they are--regardless of biology! But perhaps you are asking me if I think they are identical, and no, I don't think so. I do think that some sort of gender essentialism marks out men and women from each other, as I argue in this book and in "Finally Feminist."
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