Vol. 37, No. 5 _ May 2006

Mary Kassian, one of the foremost scholars and theologians on issues of feminism and biblical womanhood, was appointed in 2005 as distinguished professor of women’s studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She began teaching at Southern Seminary during the spring semester of 2006. She is a member of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) and is author of several books on feminism and gender issues, including two recently released works: The Feminine Mistake (Crossway, 2005, a revision of The Feminist Gospel, 1992) and In My Father’s House (Broadman and Holman, 2005). Kassian’s other works include Women, Creation, and the Fall (Crossway, 1990).

A native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Kassian founded Alabaster Flask Ministries in 1999. Alabaster Flask is a ministry aimed at strengthening Christian women and families. Kassian annually speaks and teaches women in seminaries, Bible colleges and churches around the world.

Dorothy Kelley Patterson is an active homemaker, author, and frequent speaker and Bible teacher at women’s conferences, as well as a mother and grandmother. She is professor of theology in women’s studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where her husband, Paige Patterson, is the president. She studied at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (Th.M.), Luther Rice Theological Seminary (D.Min.), and the University of South Africa (D.Theo.). Patterson has written articles published in many publications, including Women in the Church, edited by Andreas Kostenberger and Thomas Schreiner (Baker Academic, 2005).

In her book, Where’s Mom? The High Calling of Wives and Mothers (Crossway, 2003), she urges women to reconsider their child rearing and family priorities. As an educated professional woman herself, Patterson raises crucial questions about the high calling of wives and mothers in light of biblical teaching. She emphasizes that women who want to be all they can be should not forget who they are meant to be, biblically speaking. I will come back to Patterson’s writings in a moment.

Mary Kassian is a veteran analyst of the trends within culture as they relate to gender issues. Over the past two decades, Kassian says she has observed the full embrace of feminism in both the home and the church that mirrors our culture. Whereas Christians 40 to 50 years ago virtually assumed the husband was the God-ordained leader of the home, today egalitarianism, often referred to as "evangelical egalitarianism" - the belief that God has gifted men and women equally so that no role is limited to one sex - is the assumption, Kassian says. Dealing with this issue biblically is part of her vision for teaching women at Southern Seminary.

She observes,
Even now in Christian homes, women and men come into the churches and do not have that understanding [of male leadership in the home]. Their default setting I believe really is for the most part egalitarian rather than complementarian [the belief that men and women are equal before God but have different roles]. So there is a whole lot of careful teaching and convincing and persuading and expositing of the Scriptures that needs to be very intentionally done...in order to build healthy marriages, healthy relationships and healthy church bodies (quoted by Jeff Robinson in BP News, July 22, 2005).

Kassian often refers to the "Titus 2 model of biblical womanhood." She says,

I think that women are the ones that need to be teaching women on this issue. It is very difficult, particularly in our culture, for a man to be coming in and teaching a woman these things. There is a resistance. It certainly is important for church leaders to be teaching sound doctrine, so I am not saying that men ought not to be teaching - they ought to be teaching it. But it is also important that women be reinforcing that and for women to be teaching women and for women to be modeling biblical womanhood" (quoted Jeff Robinson in BP News [Baptist Press], July 22, 2005).

As we have mentioned in a past Update in responding to a question about Kassian's The Feminist Mistake, she provides her readers with a history of what she calls the "second wave of feminism," which began after the lull that followed feminism's 19th and early 20th century first wave. Kassian insightfully follows the development of modern feminist thought in both secular culture and in the church.