Review: Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate

Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate by Michelle Lee-Barnewall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a labour of love, with thorough research having gone into the pages. While other books on the topic of Women in Ministry is narrow in scope, this author attempts to provide a blanket exploration on the topic, from both a "secular" and theological angle. It perhaps would be apt to classify this book as a hybrid of a meta-analysis and devotional commentary. Chapters 1 (Evangelical Women and Social Reform) and 2 (Returning Home after WWII) provided a far more rigourous revisit to my Junior College days when we set in lectures and had to write essays on the emancipation of and rights of Women.

I could imagine Lee-Barnewall presenting the content in the book in the form of a 52 weekly lectures. The reason is probably because most of the time (especially when she refers to Scripture or theological themes) she is establishing a case with affirmative substantives, (if I could borrow a debating term) positive matter. While she does cite other bible scholars at times, this occurs less infrequently than I had expected (given the endorsements by fine theologians like Darrell Bock and Craig Keener). Having read many extremely scholarly commentaries in my research, I felt that Part 2 of the book reminded me of a devotional commentary by Wiersbe or an inspirational sermon. Or perhaps to be less harsh, (in Lynn Cohick's words in the Afterword) "review" may be more apt description.

This is probably my fortieth book I have read for the purposes of writing an exegetical paper on 1 Tim 2. The title would have hinted at the author's attempt to strike a balance between the extremes of complementarianism and egalitarianism. I wish that she would have bitten the bullet and taken a stance (like Craig Blomberg did in his excellent Appendix of a similar title in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...), rather than refrain from making a conclusion of where she stands in the debate. I would have probably given an extra star if she had attempted to do so.

I received this ebook from Baker Academic through Netgalley.com in exchange for this review.

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