I had intended to critique each of the sessions offered to Covenant Guys at this past weekend’s Sexual Orthodoxy Conference in Moscow, but the flurry of activities I signed up for when I arrived in Tucson took more time than I’d imagined. So I’ll add my thoughts on just one more of Tim Bayly’s offerings, skipping the two by Ben Merkle and Wilson’s last pontifications on being “pro-life” and on “gender-neutral” Bible translations — which are not “neutral,” by the way; in these translations, such as the NLT, NRSV, and TNIV, men are men, boys are boys, and God takes the male third person singular. It’s the spectre of addressing crowds of men and women as “brothers and sisters” that so threatens Wilson. But that’s for another day.
As for engaging with Ben Merkle’s work, I’ll have to pass. My memories of his tome on men taking Ephesians 5-responsibility for their wives’ conduct in “child labor” are all too fresh. I’m sure Ben has matured, but I doubt that was made evident at this weekend’s conference, which featured the three erstwhile defenders of Covenant masculinity discussing “sexual orthodoxy” in ways that had little to do with sex, much to do with gender, and in any case were not at all “orthodox,” Biblically or logically. Again, I’ll cover Bayly’s despicably-titled “Abortion: The Blood Sacrifice of Egalitarianism” when I return home midweek. It deserves all the attention I can give it.