Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

07.15.2026. — Book Reviews, News by Denny Burk Yesterday was the official release day of my new book Mere Complementarianism: Male and Female in the Image of God. It is now available at a variety of your favorite online booksellers: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Westminster | 10 of Those | TGC I want to share with you a little bit about this project and why I hope that you’ll read it.

The annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church in America both featured affirmations of complementarian convictions this June. The Southern Baptist Convention, which met on June 8–10 in Orlando, passed a measure to amend the constitution to provide further clarity on the ways that churches with women pastors are not in friendly cooperation with the convention. The “Truth and Unity Amendment,” championed by CBMW council member R.

When a group of Pharisees, hoping to trap Jesus into incriminating himself, ask him whether a marriage can be lawfully dissolved, Jesus refuses to take the bait. Rather than haggle with them over the legality or illegality of their first-century version of no-fault divorce, Jesus takes them back to Genesis 1–2, which establishes the biblical-anthropological foundation for the sexual binary on which marriage rests.

“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”[1] Thus spoke the Reverend Mother in Frank Herbert’s classic novel, Dune. In response to her words another character replied, “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind.”[2] In Herbert’s fictional world that sacred law was handed down as a way to ensure that machines could never again enslave humanity.

From the Archives | True Worship and the Idolatry of Works in the Christian Life

In June 1858, Abraham Lincoln famously declared that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was quoting Jesus but spoke in the context of slavery. Lincoln said it would be impossible for the nation to endure permanently “half slave and half free.” A reckoning was coming. America would have to become “all one thing or all the other.” And so it did. Lincoln’s insight — that moral evil can’t be contained within a polity without inevitably corrupting the whole — feels awfully relevant again.

Back in 2010 I spent some time in Uganda and was asked by a local pastor, “What do Americans think of (then) President Barack Obama?” I don’t think this dear brother realized how loaded of a question this was! It depends on who you ask. As the saying goes, “Ask two people, get three opinions.” Similarly, when the question of IVF is raised among people who are traditionally regarded as conservative, you’ll likely get a similar response.

Philip B. Payne The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood: How God’s Word Consistently Affirms Gender Equality. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023. Introduction The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood represents Philip Payne’s most recent attempt to affirm the biblical basis for men and women as equal in the home, church, and society. The book summarizes and extends his prior work on the subject, particularly his 2009 work Man and Woman, One in Christ.

Fellipe do Vale. Gender as Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023. Fellipe do Vale provides a theological account of gender in his book Gender as Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds.

Christians understand the need to apply Scripture’s teaching on the sanctity of human life, but should we assume non-Christians share the same understanding? The sacred value of human life applies universally, whether Christian or not. So, if the sanctity of human life is universal, and not just for Christians, can there be a way of defending it that does not get dismissed by non-Christians as faith-dependent and thus irrelevant to secular law and public policy?