Biblical Landmarks

Step 4: Preach Psychology Rather Than Theology

If you want to radicalize the church and feminize it, there is not much left to do after you’ve replaced the Psalms with hymns and accompanied the hymn with 19th century romantic style music.

A remaining task is to feminize the preaching, and that’s pretty easy to do. Now I happen to think there is a place for women in the church, and there’s even a teaching role for them. But, if only women do the teaching, you can be certain that some things in the Bible will be left out.

Even many hymns display this gender bias. I don’t know of any female who would write a hymn such as “Onward Christian Soldiers”. It does not suit their feminized idea of Christianity. Military hymns are masculine in origin.

With many churches the majority attendance is women and many preachers today are just as afraid of preaching a militant theology of victory, unless it is spiritualized. Women don’t take to this military stuff. They want a domesticated, feminized theology, based on love and affection. George Gilder, in his book, Men and Marriage (rev. ed. 1986), called this “The Taming of the Barbarians.”

Now don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for feminization in culture. But it has limits. Feminization in the culture is not the same as feminization of the culture. If the feminine view is all that is preached from the pulpit, however, then the congregation gets a distorted view of what the Bible really teaches.

So the contemporary pulpit is often full of messages designed to make you “feel” good — about yourself and about the world around about. It is emotionally driven theology as opposed to a more intellectually driven theology. There is a place for both. But you shouldn’t have one without the other, and therein lies the problem. Too often we do get one without the other.

An identification of the feminized church is its emphasis on prayer rather than righteousness. There is a place for both, but the modern church would rather pray than debate the meaning and application of righteous principles — God’s law.

Discussion of legal and theological principles is both philosophical and can be, at times, abstract, both of which do not appeal to the feminine mind.

And therein lies the problem of modern Christianity. An anti-intellectualism driven by a feminine view of life and Christianity.

Click here for Part 3: Use Music For the Revolution.

Click here for Part 5: Radically Change the Theology