Grudem Interview #8 – Arguing from Numbers

I’ve had a day or so delay in responding to sections of Adrian Warnock’s interview with Wayne Grudem, so I’ll take on the last couple of sections and do my own reflections post today. This post takes a small sample from Part Eight – What Does the Future Hold for the Church? The main part of the post simply expresses Dr. Grudem’s hope and optimism that his side is going to win. He does kind of limit it a bit with the following:

Yes, I have great confidence that this issue will eventually be resolved, and that the vast majority of God’s people who take the Bible as the Word of God will adopt and practice a complementarian position, and will put it in their statements of faith.

That “God’s people who take the Bible as the Word of God” phrase is theological code for “those who agree with me.” I know this will be seen as disrespectful, but this is the kind of qualification one uses on a statement when speaking for publication with a political aim–in this case, to make it appear one’s position is strong. The easy response to opponents is then, as has been demonstrated in this interview, simply to claim that they aren’t really taking the Bible as God’s word. If you allow me to define the terms, then I take the Bible as God’s word, and Dr. Grudem might not. The point is that as qualified, the statement doesn’t convey factual knowledge, but rather simply tries to comfort a particular audience.

The key portion of this section of the interview for me, however, was Dr. Grudem’s rather sneaky argument from numbers. I have heard this repeatedly with reference to mainline churches. Here’s how it goes: Mainline churches are declining in membership and charismatic and evangelical churches are growing, which means that charismatic and evangelical churches are blessed by God, while the mainline churches are not. There are innumerable variants. Evangelicals who dislike charismatics, for example, will exclude them, thus making the argument a bit more humorous, since you somehow then have one growing group blessed by God, one growing group apparently not so blessed, and then us mainliners, apparently not blessed at all.

Let’s look at Dr. Grudem’s form of this:

(I was just told last week of a complementarian church in a major American city that hired an egalitarian pastor; [they] gave in to his demands that all church offices be open to women, and he took the church from 2500 people on Sunday to under 400 today. I think we will see that more and more, though there will be temporary exceptions from time to time.)

Adrian Warnock has been urging us to show respect for his favored interview subject, but I really can’t bring myself to respect this argument, and I question its use by someone who is theologically educated. (I do note that it is not specifically used as an argument, but it’s placement is such that it must be intended to convince readers that the complementarian position means growth, while the egalitarian position means loss of members.)

Of course it is quite clear that there are a number of factors left out. We don’t know, for example, how good of an egalitarian pastor they called into that position. He might, for example, have been much less charismatic in personaility than his predecessor. But we really don’t have to look that far or get speculative. What were the elders of that church thinking? If you build up 2500 members as a complementarian church, do you imagine that by merely replacing the pastor you can change the whole system without losing members? If you had a 2500 member egalitarian church and the elders called a complementarian pastor, do they imagine that the church would not lose huge numbers of members as well? I think that in my own local congregation if a complementarian pastor was imposed on us, the membership would either walk out in a body or vote all of the appropriate leadership out of office next time around.

The point is that this little story accomplishes nothing except to plant the seed in the mind of the unwary that complentarian=growth and egalitarian=loss. If one considers the facts as presented, it only serves to illustrate the foolishness of a board of elders calling a pastor who is a dismal fit for their congregation.

(See also my response to interview #7 here.)