Wayne Grudem is a big mover and shaker among evangelicals. He is a research professor at the Phoenix Seminary here in Arizona, he was the major translator of the now-favored English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible, and his Systematic Theology is used in evangelical Protestant seminaries and colleges across the land.

A couple of days ago, Grudem published the following on TownHall:

Why Voting for Donald Trump Is a Morally Good Choice

townhall.com

Basically, the argument is that Clinton is so very, very evil because she’s pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and pro-“gender confusion” (whatever that means). All of these things outweigh Donald Trump’s relatively minor sins.

The article has started to take fire among evangelical Protestant Twitter. There are a number of different responses: of course, there are the people who think it’s great, some of whom have versions of “pastor” in their Twitter Handle. I’ve occasionally tweeted at those guys something along the lines of: “right, vote for a man who holds women, the disabled, immigrants and minorities in contempt. Why are you a pastor?????”

Other evangelicals are #NeverTrump, but they’re also #NeverHillary, which is an interesting tightrope to watch them navigate. And then there are a third group, mostly women, who are pushing back strongly. Some of them are still very conservative, but they’re really tired of what’s at bottom of this.

And what is at bottom is that Grudem really does believe women are subordinate to men. He doesn’t believe women can head up a church, or be in any sort of ministry where a woman might *possibly* be in a position of authority over a man. He even came up with a list of 83 things women could and could not do in church. His Systematic Theology, which I mentioned above, also teaches a doctrine called “Eternal Subordination of the Son,”* which he came up with (in my opinion) as a way to keep us uppity women in our place. He is also a big mover and shaker in the so-called “complementarian” movement, where wives are told they must be subordinate to their husbands, otherwise they’re out of God’s will.

This, as much as anything regarding Clinton’s political positions, is why Grudem is opposed to Clinton. But he’s getting pushback, and I’m pleased to see it.

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*I’m putting this in a note because it’s really “angels dancing on the head of a pin” stuff. Grudem has taken some flak lately over this “Eternal Subordination of the Son” (ESS) dogma. Other evangelical theologians are saying that ESS is promoting a form of semi-Arianism where Jesus is not the full equal of God the Father. (In the early 300s, a guy named Arius taught that Jesus was not God’s equal, but rather God’s first and best creation. The Nicene Creed in 325 was a response to Arianism.) Grudem and his friends teach that Jesus is subordinate to God the Father in some ways, and thus, women should be subordinate to men. Some of these winners even teach that women will be subordinate to men throughout eternity.

My opinion? Well, it’s amazing how far guys will go in manhandling (heh) their theological beliefs to keep us women down.