Egalitarianism, for our purposes here, is a postmodern heresy that denies the hierarchical structure of God’s created order concerning male and female. This unbiblical view has no historical representation prior to the last third of the 20th century.
Some rather considerable manipulation of scripture is required to advance this view with a straight face and it is no mystery that not a single serious instance of it can be found among the people of God anywhere, either in the bible of in church history until modern times.
As always this will be a brief treatment of highlights only.
Key tenets of Egalitarianism include:
- It is common for egalitarians to hold a less than orthodox view of biblical authority and inerrancy, though many of them will vociferously deny this. Soft views on creation for example are also common.
- While most egalitarians will hold that there are important inherent differences between men and women, they deny that God has ordained that those differences function within a framework of male headship and female submission.
- They will endorse female pastors and other offices of senior theological and decision making leadership.
- In the more serious forms of egalitarianism, a loosened view of sexual ethics is seen. Especially as pertains to sex before marriage and also unbiblically expanded grounds for divorce. These specimens tend to wink at fornication and the baby daddy syndrome for instance.
- In the most radical versions, we find a wholesale embrace of homosexuality and abortion.
- Egalitarians are also usually proponents of social justice as defined though critical theory.
- They also commonly display an angry, arrogant dismissive attitude toward those who dare to hold the historic biblical view of gender.
- In short, egalitarianism just about always brings with it a suite of other postmodern liberal errors as well.
Modern-Day Proponents of Egalitarianism:
- There are only modern day proponents of egalitarians because as stated above, it didn’t exist before the last few decades of the 20th century.
- It’s proponents are so numerous in today’s apostate western church world that it is nearly impossible even to give a few prominent examples.
- Perhaps the most well known might be the late Rachel Held Evans, who died in May of 2019 after a tragic allergic reaction to antibiotic medication.
