We should want to categorize something like this in the category of beyond unspeakable. Judy L. Brown, an evangelical egalitarian, contributed to an IVP book called Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy. Nothing out of the ordinary so far — just the normal IVP monkeyshines. She was the pastor of a Salem Covenant Worship Center, and all this is just the normal level of disregard for the teaching of Scripture.
But here is the jaw-dropping part. Judy Brown had been carrying on a lesbian affair with the wife of another man (another man? how do I put this?), and then she had attempted to murder her lover’s husband with a tire iron. This attempted murder was in August 2003. She was sentenced for the crime in March of 2004. The book to which she contributed was published in October of 2004. As Justin Taylor comments, “Therefore, an evangelical publisher, IVP, published Brown’s chapter in their book over a year after Brown attempted to murder her lesbian lover’s husband, and seven months after Brown was sentenced to prison for her crime.”
The central issue in this is not whether “conservative theology” would have prevented this. Any pastor can tell you awful stories of unspeakable sins committed by people who could sign off on the most conservative statement of faith. The issue here is not about this poor deluded woman. The issue concerns what may be going on in this poor deluded post-evangelical publishing house. Once the rot of liberalism sets in, it becomes impossible to discipline sin, act firmly in cases of sin, or make principled decisions in response to sin. IVP needs to answer Mr. Taylor’s very reasonable questions about what they knew, and when they knew it.