new church life: september / october 2013
to the draft by men in their late teens
and early 20s. But not all flower children
slipped off to Canada or found new interest
in further education so as to avoid the draft;
and the fact is that many of the leaders of
the revolution were men in their late 20s
and, in some cases, in their 30s and older,
not subject to the draft.
The revolution’s rejection of authority
manifested itself in college student
demonstrations, occasionally in occupation
of the Dean’s office; in the tearing up of
draft cards; in the adoption of colorful
clothing and Amerindian native garb; in
the pursuit of physical pleasure through
hallucinogenic and other drugs; and more violently, by more radical members
of the movement, in the bombing of police and military facilities. A common
slogan: “Do your own thing.”
Written in plain
language, the
doctrines...are
immutable. We
cannot rewrite them.
We cannot interpret
them to mean other
than what they
purport to mean.
The Sexual Revolution
The movement also manifested itself in the so-called sexual revolution.
Rejection of prior social norms led to rejection of marriage as well. Young
couples simply lived together, in the mistaken belief that it represented a greater
commitment to each other than that found in traditional marriage. Rejection
of those norms led eventually also to the claim that men and women differ
from each other only in their physical reproductive organs, but are otherwise
mentally and emotionally alike. To emphasize this the revolutionaries adopted
unisex clothing and unisex hairstyles.
What does all this have to do with the question of women in the ministry?
As a result of the cultural revolution, in our now politically correct culture,
there remains an echo of the earlier rejection of authority. Children and
grandchildren of the revolutionaries have learned to harness the institutions
of authority and power to dismantle many of the nation’s earlier social norms.
They now occupy the majority of institutions of learning and of the visual
media, enabling them to promote their agenda, which includes access to
pornography, easy abortion, homosexual marriage, and continued drug use.
And it includes as well challenges to traditional church doctrine and ministry.
The Women’s Movement
Piggybacking onto the cultural revolution was the women’s movement. The
modern movement first began in the late 19th century, with the objective of
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