Men who need prayer - according to Tony Campolo

My friend Gilly sent this to me to post on Axle - something we have been grappling with related to Women in Leadership and being free to use their gifts in the church context. Here are two snippets from the interview with Tony Campolo on some of what I believe to be ludicrous and legalistic rules set out by Wayne Grudem of what women can and cannot do in the church context.

"These are taken out of context from an interview by Tony Compolo but I have to admit………… I love it! If you have 5 mins, click onto the web site and read the full interview. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/201/story_20177_1.html

And to be fair this link is the interview with Wayne Grudem on the topic… www.beliefnet.com/story/202/story_20219_1.html

He holds firmly to what he considers the biblical distinction between the scene in Acts where Priscilla and Aquila talk privately about scripture, and then the verses in Timothy and Titus that say women should not speak or lead or have teaching authority in a big church setting. He distinguishes between a private situation and a church situation.

'Most of my fundamentalist brothers and sisters--and I am an evangelical, so I can say most of my fundamentalist brothers and sisters--are quite willing to pack women off and send them as missionaries to dangerous places where they might get killed. They don’t mind them preaching overseas. They just don’t want them to be preaching in their own backyard. I think there’s a subtle racism implied in all of this, namely that white men can speak to white women, but white women can’t speak to white men. Yet white women can speak to black men or Asian men. Aren’t you, in fact, saying black men are inferior to white men?'

Some evangelicals sincerely fear that women preaching and women’s ordination will muddle male-female roles and potentially drive men from the church. What’s your response to that?

'If a man is so intimidated by a woman in a role of leadership, the man has a psychological problem that needs to be healed and cured. He needs counselling and he needs prayer. We can’t control women simply to cater to the insecurities of men who can’t handle this.

If a guy is intimidated by a woman in leadership, he has real problems with his own concepts of masculinity. That’s a harsh statement, but I believe it to be true'