The Bible is a book about Jesus, the Light of the world, and how Jesus came to conform us to his image (Rom 8:29). God’s gifted you with bright light to guide you. Are you convinced it works? Or do you secretly let yourself think it’s a duff gift? Are you secretly disappointed with its effectiveness? Could it be that sometimes, actually, we don’t really want to let its light shine in the dark corners of our decision-making? The Bible isn’t there for us to stare at, and just enjoy the glow; it’s there for us to actually use. God’s word isn’t just potentially and occasionally a lamp to our feet. It really lights up our path! “Walk as children of light” (Eph 5:8).

What guides your decision-making and daily living? How do you decide what time to get up? How do you decide what to eat for breakfast and lunch? How do you decide what to say to family, friends, and colleagues each day? How do you decide how much to spend on groceries? How do you weigh up whether to make a luxury purchase? How do you decide what to do with your evenings and Saturdays? How do you decide who to spend time with and what to spend time on? What guides your parenting decisions? How do you arrange your to-do lists? How do you decide what you’ll do on Sunday? How do you decide which church meetings to go to? How do you decide what to say ‘yes’ to and what to say ‘no’ to?
The Psalmist says: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). In other words, the Bible helps me see the way to go. The Psalmist considers the Bible to be critical to my decision-making. In the darkness, its role is to shine and clarify the choices God wants me to make. The picture isn’t of the Bible very occasionally having something to say – maybe once a week, or once a month. It’s offering me 24-7, practical guidance. “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it’” (Isa 30:21).
But, sadly, it’s very easy for Christians to act as though the Bible’s light-bulb has blown! We can treat our Bibles like a faint LED that offers no real guidance for our complicated, advanced modern lives.
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A true biblical “feminist” embraces the ontological reality of male and female, submits to the authority of Scripture, and the authority of her father or husband, and adheres to the biblically outlined roles of men, women, and children in the marriage, family, church, and society. This is a feminism that builds up rather than tears down. It is time for women to reclaim their power of femininity, venerate motherhood, and permit men to be masculine again.  

The feminist movement has for decades propagated the myth that historically, and almost universally, women have been uniquely oppressed and confined to the domestic sphere, leaving the power, wealth and public life for the men.
Over the past 170 years, the feminist movement has undergone multiple waves of change, however, a consistent thread within this ideology has been the suppression of traditionally feminine traits with the promotion of masculine traits within women. The movement which originally pledged to fight for equality between men and women bestowed upon them by their Creator (Seneca Falls Declaration 1848) has progressively abandoned the biblical distinctions between male and female genders and roles for the fictitious idea of sameness.
Within any ideological “-ism” a grain of good can be found, but within feminism, the grain of truth has mutated into a vulgar and abusive ideology. The feminist movement has been hurting and enslaving many women for decades all the while purporting to be liberating them from the alleged evils of patriarchy. Now many women are waking up to the reality that the promises of liberation and equality from the feminist movement come at a great personal cost.
God has given women the keys to the future of any society—motherhood—and if we are going to pass on a good legacy to our children true feminine feminists must take the lead within our personal spheres of influence by adhering to the authority of the Scriptures in our understanding of male and female identity and roles within the marriage, family, church, and society.
Anti-Femininity
Classical feminism advocated for the recognition of the basic equal humanity, dignity, intelligence, and competence of the female sex (e.g. Olympus de Gourge, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jane Austen). However this is not a new or revolutionary concept, it was embedded within the creation account of mankind by their Creator, “So God created man [humankind] in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27)
In this verse, both males and females are included under the heading of “man” and are granted equal status as sharing in God’s image. The Bible has provided clear teaching regarding gender roles and distinctions while upholding an inalienable equality between men and women. A woman who embraces her femininity and biblical gender role is no less than a man–they are distinct yet equal.
However, the feminist movement has consistently sought to undermine gender distinctions of any kind and subsequently proven to be quite disingenuous in its claim of being advocates for women’s rights. They have not been advocates for the many women who uphold the binary definitions of gender and the God-given roles within the marriage, family, and the church. On the contrary, they have promoted women adorning masculinity and viewed femininity as a facilitator of oppression.
The feminist movement has been significantly influenced, if not highjacked, by Marxism, another -“ism” with a grain of truth, which focused on the power struggle between business owners and the working class. As the feminist movement intersected with Marxism the practical result was women being demoted from wife, mother, and matriarch to join the ranks of the labour force for the marketplace.
The feminist movement pressured women to enter the workforce in order to gain economic equality with men. However, if these women were going to compete with men within a male-dominated workplace they were called upon to shed any stereotypical femininity and female gender roles.
No longer was it acceptable for a woman to find her value in being, “created in the image of God,” now it was calculated by her ability to dominate within her life and work spheres like a man. Biblical femininity and female gender roles were typecast as weak and a relic of the oppressive patriarchal system.
The feminist movement subsequently crafted a toxic caricature of male masculinity that vilified strong and successful men. Therefore if true equality were to be attained the feminist movement required both genders to become neutered. Herein lies the real rub, the feminist movement is not pro-women it is pro-masculine women. The modern feminist, in practice, disdains feminine-women and despises masculine-men.
Embracing Transgenderism
It should not be surprising to anyone that a feminist movement that is so anti-feminine would evolve into a quagmire of perversions. The new 21st-century feminist is defined as such, “Quite simply, feminism is about all genders having equal rights and opportunities.” (International Women’s Development Agency)
The feminist movement does not exclusively promote women’s rights but includes “all genders,” and ironically transgender-women. Quite absurdly, the feminist movement has trumpeted the valour of men winning women’s athletic competitions, beauty pageants, and laughably Woman of the Year awards.
For a female to speak out against such perversions and inequalities is considered a transgression against the feminist ideology and is met with incensed anger and disapproval. An article from the ACLU titled “Banning Trans Girls from School Sports Is Neither Feminist nor Legal” by Shayna Medley and Galen Sherwin makes the argument that, “The politicians who introduce these anti-trans bills are not concerned with the integrity of girls’ athletics, any more than proponents of bathroom bans are concerned about preventing gender-based violence. We must see these efforts for what they are: fear-mongering intended to push transgender and non-binary people out of public spaces.”
In turn, the men and women who do speak up to protect the equal rights and opportunities for these girls are vilified as transphobic oppressors of women. The response to such crusaders for female rights is met by a disproportionate level of anger and cancellation from the very people claiming to advocate for women’s rights–witness the backlash JK Rowling is receiving for having the audacity to stand up for women’s (female) rights.
This begs the question: why are feminists embracing transgender women? For decades the feminist movement has tirelessly worked to undermine gender distinctions and transgenders personify the ultimate degradation of gender. Perhaps transgender women are the logical end of the modern feminist movement. Where does this leave the female girls on the college swim team? They have become losers dominated by men in lipstick and high heels. The feminist movement is replete with people who refuse to address the real assaults on female rights and equality, like transgenderism and Islam, while also minimising the real-world success of countless women in the public sphere. This leaves many women (and men) feeling unable to relate to or work with the loud angry mob of feminists in the west.
Angry Women
The feminists display disproportionate levels of anger about perceived inequalities and reproduction laws which they allege are oppressing women, while they pay little regard to the reality that they are living in societies brimming with successful, wealthy, and powerful women (many of whom are also mothers). A disconnect with reality is exemplified in this quote from Martha Rampton, professor of history and director of the Center for Gender Equality at Pacific University, “the realisation that gains in female representation in politics and business, for example, are very slight.” Compare this assessment of “very slight” with the following facts:
In 1965 2.3% of the US House of Representatives were women compared to 2021 at 27.3%; In 1971 4.5% of the state legislators were women compared to 2021 at 30.8%; In 1995 0% of Fortune 500 CEO’s in the USA were women compared to 2020 at 7.4%; in 1995 9.6% of Fortune 500 board members were women compared to 2019 at 27%; In 1986 9.5% of University and College presidents were women compared to 2016 at 30.1%.
For feminists to make the claim that women have had very slight gains in representation is confounding and disingenuous. Individuals will always face challenges and need to sacrifice in order to gain success in politics and business, but the grievances of the relatively few angry feminists are not shared by the majority of females. Most women are content to rely upon men, in varying degrees, financially, socially, emotionally, and sexually and do not consider themselves oppressed and enslaved.
Many women do not feel the need to have a 50/50 representation within all areas of the public sphere. In our Western world women have equal status, rights, and opportunities as men, so why aren’t the feminists heralding their success? Though the feminist movement has for decades actively marginalised and vilified gender-based distinctions they have been unable to change the ontological realities of gender. Thus, those women who legitimise gender-based divisions of labour, appreciate the value of masculine men and feminine women, oppose abortion, and find personal worth and value in their role as wives and mothers are not considered success stories.
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Even before the value shift to diversity instead of the universal Gospel, some mission departments changed their names to ‘intercultural studies.’  This involved reconceiving the method and purpose of mission studies.  Instead of being about understanding the Gospel, the focus was now on understanding the audiences.  Instead of missions understood through Biblical and theological interpretation, it was now a project of the social sciences—anthropology, culture, and sociology.  Instead of involving evangelism to the lost, it was now about dialogue and understanding.  Instead of understanding the Gospel as all about the world streaming to the cross to make their garments white in the blood of the Lamb, the public square’s value of diversity ruled the agenda. 

I continue to be very pessimistic about the public square, expecting an increasing opposition to and persecution of Christians throughout the world.  This is based on reading stories daily about how Christians are opposed, sued, discriminated against, deplatformed, and ridiculed.  This does not mean for me a disengagement with the world but a recalculation of what that engagement involves.  The prophets found themselves in the important role in ancient Israel of telling the governmental and social powers of their day that they did not know God.  As the West today becomes increasingly anti-Christian, not simply post-Christian, in its values and practices, and as it redefines virtues in anti-Christian ways, the Church’s engagement with the public square ought to be less and less a matter of finding common cause with others in the pursuit of justice but needs rather to be a matter of showing the world that it is not the Kingdom of God.  An anti-Christian vision of the world defines social justice in a way that is opposed to divine justice.
One significant way to describe the moral changes in public discourse about justice is in terms of social values.  Not that long ago, Western values were defined in terms of human rights, based on the notion that all humans were equal.  Freedom and equality became the primary values for the West.  The American version of this argument involved a Deist understanding: the Creator made humans from the same cloth, so to speak, and He endowed them with inalienable rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence.  The French had their secular understanding of this, but it, too, highlighted similar values: equality, liberty, and fraternity.  Over the history of secular Western modernity hung the vestige of a Judeo-Christian worldview involving freedom and equality for all because there is one God, Creator of all.  With this loosely Christian version of justice, Christians could usually agree—it was their ethic, after all, that stood at the root of Deist and secularist versions of the public square’s ethic.  Thus, Christians could frequently engage the public square in common cause with non-Christians.  Or they could, at least, dialogue and argue with them.
In the 21st century, however, these values have been shuffled to the storage closet and three new values have been erected in the public square: diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Not a few in the West have been duped by the reshuffling of values, thinking that there is continuity between what was and what is now proclaimed as truths self-evident.  The three new values are all predicated on the essential differences of humanity, not their essential sameness.  Instead of universal commonality or unity we now have diversity.  Instead of equality we now have equity.  Instead of God’s work of inclusion, His mission—Christians would say His offer of salvation through Jesus’ sacrificial death for the sins of the world—we have strictly human efforts at inclusion, particularly of things God calls sin.  The shift in values in the public square has left many Christians speechless.  Thinking that diversity, equity, and inclusion sound like worthy values, ones Christians might affirm, they have been confused at the resultant changes in Western society.
I recall one well-meaning Christian jumping on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon only a short while ago, thinking that this racist organization was all about racial justice.  I know a seminary administration and board that has made diversity its mantra, even down to replacing white male authors on its syllabi for anything else—as though truth wears the faces of the authors writing about it and academic excellence is found in readers’ responses rather than critical arguments.  I know of ministers who crafted confused sermons about diversity, equity, or inclusion, not realizing that they were shifting the congregation’s eyes from the cross to street activism, from the Church’s mission to the public square’s version of justice.  The confusion comes because activist efforts in the face of perceived or actual injustices are easily endorsed without realizing that they are defined and pursued in entirely non-Christian ways.  Justice in the Kingdom of God is not a mere quantitative improvement of justice in the public square; it is a qualitatively different understanding of justice.
Some ‘evangelical’ seminaries have contributed to the confusion.  Even before the value shift to diversity instead of the universal Gospel, some mission departments changed their names to ‘intercultural studies.’  This involved reconceiving the method and purpose of mission studies.  Instead of being about understanding the Gospel, the focus was now on understanding the audiences.  Instead of missions understood through Biblical and theological interpretation, it was now a project of the social sciences—anthropology, culture, and sociology.  Instead of involving evangelism to the lost, it was now about dialogue and understanding.  Instead of understanding the Gospel as all about the world streaming to the cross to make their garments white in the blood of the Lamb, the public square’s value of diversity ruled the agenda.  In an Evangelical seminary, beyond the mission department changes, this might not be so blatantly presented as the study of other religions.  It might also be presented as a communal journey toward social diversity.  The result is to focus on ourselves, not the cross of Jesus Christ.
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