mark driscolls gender problems

Tony Jones posts an interesting bit from Richard Beck regarding Mark Driscoll and his use of gender assumptions in his theology. This was my take.

Gender is different than sex due to its psycho-social construction. Since it is this, anyone can assert a different gender construction from within a existing frame that is at odds with another frame (see David Martins definition of "frame" picked up later by Charles Taylor). Thus, Driscoll asserts his own construction of gender in a way that is offensive to many. I frankly have no over-arching issue with that. People are free to be misogynistic and loaded with machismo as they wish. I can stay away from those constructions and find comfort in other social frames more like "me."

Where Driscoll crosses boundaries is that he uses a very unsophisticated biblical legitimation for that socially constructed identity. What is important here is that the social construction of gender identity in the ancient near east absolutely placed women in a lower social strata in terms of social and political influence among other things. Men had to go to war and work the fields, etc. such is the nature of agrarian life. But Driscoll wants this image of the man to work in a social frame that increasingly eschews it save for increasingly sectarian cleavages from the norm.

The issue is that he makes this kind of social construction of gender a core value in his understanding and communication of the Gospel. When we make any such social constructions non-negotiable foundations to the Gospel it creates divergences from the actual function of the Gospel and the role that Christians ought to play in its communication. The Gospel is not about gender construction, it is about soul re-construction through works enacted by faith – something made effectual to ultimate salvation by God"s grace. Thus, Driscoll erects a barrier to this central role for Christians with his stammering through often strange notions of the masculine gender of Jesus and bizarrely misplaced renderings of the apocalyptic in terms of gender construction in the frame of the secularized West.

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1. sociology and religion, what a pair