Biblical Inerrancy's As an Evangelical Tool for White Patriarchy

Last week saw another clash about women's (in)equality play out online between leaders in evangelical Christian culture. In the clamor for the high-ground of evangelical legitimacy, something happened that outsiders may not fully appreciate the implications of: the participants contested each others' commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible. Evangelicals who identify as inerrantists consider their Bible to be without error in all of its correctly interpreted, actual claims. Think about how often evangelicals talk about their Bible's reliability, truthfulness, or authority. Inerrancy is the concept their leaders use to legitimate such talk. Unity in these concerns, however, does not yield unity in the interpretation of the Bible or even in how to understand the nature of truth and inerrancy. Inerrancy itself is a contested, polemical landscape.