I’ve written before about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. I’ve worshipped at Mars Hill before, with my cousin and his wife who attend the church. My best friend (who was my Best Man at my wedding) also is very involved with the church – so I know there are some great people who attend Mars Hill. But I have serious issues with both Mark Driscoll and his theology, which is really no different than any other Southern Baptist, very fundamentalist version of Christianity.
In the past few years, one of the biggest critiques of Mark is his perspective on women and the church. Most recently, he has been called a misogynist because of his rhetoric against women and desire for an uber-masculinity for Christian men. One post at Off the Map blog, Conversation at the Edge, had a post with over 300 comments.
At any rate, there is one group that has had enough and decided to publicly let Driscoll and Mars Hill Church know that they find Mark’s preaching misogynistic, hurtful and oppressive to women. People Against Fundamentalism describes themselves as follows:
People Against Fundamentalism is a grassroots organization composed of people who are tired of their sincerely held faith being hijacked by fundamentalists who seek primarily to oppress others. We also welcome people not part of a faith tradition who want to stand in solidarity with us against fundamentalism in all its forms.
This is not about arcane theological disagreements. For us, this is an issue of justice, not hate.
And how are they going to let Mark know their feelings? They are going to show up at the Mars Hill Ballard campus for the 11am service on December 3rd to make their stand known. They describe the event as follows: “We’ve no idea if Mark the Misogynist is going to be there. We are not seeking an explosive confrontation or a shouting match. We simply want to show Mars Hill congregants and the rest of Seattle that we will no longer tolerate Driscoll’s view of women.”
I don’t know if this is going to be the most effective way of getting this perspective out there, but it’s possible. From what I’ve read, it definitely is going to be a nonviolent protest against Mark’s view of women. Anyway, I’ll be interested to hear what the fallout is to this, as well as to what Mark’s response is. I can assume that he’ll just say something like, “The Truth is never comfortable or popular…but we will continue to fight for the biblical version of manhood and the family…etc, etc.” We’ll see…