Is Ligonier Ministries Promoting Female Teachers & Subverting the Household?

 By: Thomas F. Booher 

Let me begin by saying I have much appreciation for Ligonier Ministries. While I don't read Table Talk regularly anymore, it's also still a valuable resource, and when I'm Googling something online to help me with doctrinal or pastoral matters, Ligonier is often the link I click, and sometimes it even takes me to a free article from Table Talk.

Having said that, I am concerned about Ligonier undermining the Christian family/household and even unintentionally laying the groundwork for women to be ordained as pastors and teachers in churches, an office that God has ordained only for men (see I Tim. 3:1-7). 

To illustrate, Ligonier Ministries has Karrie Hahn writing an article in TableTalk in the December 2021 issue. They list the contributors for this issue, and I believe she's the only one who is female. (Contributors include James A. Brown Jr., Robert Rothwell, Kevin D. Gardner, Sinclair B. Ferguson, Jonty Rhodes, Dan Forrest, Todd Alexander, Geoff Thomas, Terry Yount, Timothy Z. Witmer, Alan D. Strange, Karrie Hahn, Jared Longshore, Nate Pickowicz, Jon D. Payne, Donny Friederichsen, William C. Godfrey, Eric Kamoga, and Robert VanDoodewaard.)

They've had other women write for them before (I can think of Rosaria Butterfield and Elisabeth Elliot, and others too I am sure), but usually these women have some prominence, and it seems in the past the women that have written have generally been writing on topics that would fall into the category, at least broadly/loosely, of "older women teaching younger women" per Titus 2.

But Karrie Hahn is also writing for Ligonier online, and what she is writing on there is what I am concerned about. She's writing things like "5 Recommended Resources on the Trinity". https://www.ligonier.org/.../recommended-resources-trinity

When I saw the title to the article, I thought maybe Dr. Mathison or a minister had composed this, and was eager for their insight due to their particular calling as a pastor, professor, etc. Then I discovered it was a woman, and a fairly young, likely single woman (based on my brief research) at that, who isn't bringing her writing to bear on her work as a counselor to other women in any discernable way.

I asked in several other online groups for recommendations on best books to read on the Trinity. Several, but not all, of the books Karrie Hahn lists in her article showed up. (I can't help but point out that all the ones she recommended are linked and sold through Ligonier Ministries.)

My issue here is that you have a woman who is writing about best books on the Trinity to an audience that undoubtedly includes many men, even men who are pastors. My issue is not that a woman reads books on the Trinity, or even that she would share what she has learned with men or women, but rather that we are essentially putting her in a position to teach/instruct men on weighty doctrinal matters, even if for now it's mostly recommendations of other men's writings with only her brief comments on them. She has no pastoral experience and isn't really bringing this to bear on her work as a counselor to women. Women counselors often just want to be teachers like men (or so it seems), and this article by Karrie Hahn demonstrates that for me.

If the article was something like, "5 books on the Trinity that have helped me counsel women" I'd have much more respect for that, and it could even help me in ministering to women potentially. Even then I'm not overly keen on women counselors in a professional, degreed, authoritative role where they had to accumulate debt and likely take years away from being in the home with their children, or even starting a family and bearing children. It's not the biblical pattern. It undermines it.

Older women are to teach younger women how to be homemakers, etc., and certainly understanding the Trinity can help with that, but I doubt this woman and many female counselors are really doing that. I bet most of them aren't even married or have children. A lot of them are younger. I grant a 30 year old woman can teach a 20 year old woman something doctrinal, devotional, & dare I even say in a sense "pastoral" -- if that 30 year old woman is married with children and has established her own household under the headship of her husband. If you read the article by Mrs. Hahn, it doesn't appear to be the case that she has. She refers to her niece, not her own child, spilling a drink in the backseat of her car. https://tabletalkmagazine.com/.../entitlement-when-grace.../

Swelling numbers of single, professional women is an inversion of creational norms and will further undermine or destroy the household. In our Evangelical and Reformed churches, we are increasingly propping up such women to teach, at minimum, other women, though in practice they are often also teaching men. Even just focusing on their teaching women, what do they have to offer the Christian church and family if these women are younger and single? And I've got no ax to grind with this woman writing for Ligonier, I don't even know her. I do have an ax to grind with institutions that are supposed to be Reformed, biblical, etc., that are further eroding the Christian family/household, and apparently Ligonier is throwing in its hat to become part of the problem with stuff like this, though I doubt that is their intention and am sure they'd completely disagree with my assessment of things here. 

And I'll close by perhaps complicating things further. I'd have no problem asking this woman, or any woman in our church, if they've read books on the Trinity that are helpful to them, knowing what they say could be helpful to me also. I would not, however, then proceed to give them a writing position on the church blog, or recommend them to write for Ligonier, etc. Nor would I have the woman teach a class on the Trinity of course. These distinctions between teaching positions, teaching with authority, informally sharing your gleanings from what you have read, etc., have to be made. Obviously a 20 year old woman can share something with an older women that is spiritually beneficial and instructive. That doesn't mean the younger woman should then be teaching a Sunday school class or even necessarily leading a women's study group. 

But perhaps more importantly, we have to look at the bigger picture, the cultural moment, the trajectory that professional women writing on theological matters almost inevitably head in, and I think we will come to a time where we realize discerning these matters aren't actually as difficult as we claim they are. But it seems at this time even stalwarts like Ligonier Ministries are failing to thoroughly "renew their mind" in this crucial area, and if they don't correct course, will it really be long before they have a crisis on their hands?