Today, the Warhorn team is launching a campaign to help fund the republication of Man and Woman in Christ by Stephen B. Clark.
Believe it or not, we’ve been doing work on preparing this book for republication for over 20 years. While in high school, at his dad’s request, Joseph OCRed the text and worked on painstakingly linking well over a thousand footnotes and endnotes in order to make a usable electronic version. For several years it was available online, but eventually it was too outdated to work in modern browsers. After that the project sat for a long time. In 2016, we officially received permission from Mr. Clark to republish the book, and then ensued several years of fits and starts on the immense amount of labor involved in preparing a long scholarly book for publication. At long last, the work is done, and the only thing left is raising some funds to pay for the actual printing of the book. Here’s a glimpse inside the pages of the book…
Right now, we are planning to release the book in hardback and PDF formats. However, if we were to raise additional funds beyond the campaign goal, we would like to produce an e-book version, as well as an online version which would be made available for free by Warhorn Media. If you’re familiar with this book, you already know how beneficial this sort of resource would be. Will you please help us reach that goal?
Right now you can give $40 to this campaign and you’ll get a hard copy of the book. The list price on release will be in the neighborhood of $60. This is normal for a book of this length and scope, and believe it or not, $60 barely covers the costs to print and sell it. This has been a labor of love, and we don’t in any way expect this book to be a moneymaker for Warhorn. Truth be told, producing good books, especially ones which push against our culture, is never really a lucrative endeavor, which is why we’re asking for help. (Did we mention $40 will get you a hard copy of the book? In other words, you can pre-order and get the book for 33% off! There are other rewards, too. Check it out.)
Why this book? Why now?
Christians keep talking and writing about how the prospects for the Christian faith look dim. Our civic leaders at the highest levels seem intent on undermining the goodness of God’s design in sexuality, and we feel the pressures of external censorship as well as the weakness of our own faith to proclaim God’s truth in matters of sexuality. If we’re honest, we must each confess that we have hedged our words when it comes to speaking plainly about truths as basic as the fact that God created man male and female, and that it is good that He did so.
How are Christians to stand firm in a world which is increasingly marginalizing basic Christian faith? Do we need more political non-profits dedicated to passing legislation which aligns with God’s law? That might help in the short run. But if we’re honest, the reason we’re where we are today isn’t because of a lack of political activism. The reason our nation as a whole has rejected God is because we have not been faithful in little things. For decades, pastors and elders have blushed at the thought of preaching and teaching what the Bible says about sexuality, and the sheep have dutifully followed. (If you want to learn more about the Church’s unfaithfulness to love those caught in sexual perversion today, read The Grace of Shame, which will be included as one of the rewards for giving to this campaign.)
What we really need is ordinary, everyday Christians who are committed to living as godly men and godly women in their own homes, churches, extended families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. We need pastors and elders who are faithful to shepherd their people to live obediently before God as husbands who love their wives, as wives who submit to their husbands, as men who take responsibility and care for the weak, as women who live modestly and serve generously.
We need churches who call upon their men to lead and make righteous judgments, who keep watch over the souls of their flocks. Churches who call upon their women to teach what is good, “so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored” (Titus 2:3–4). Speaking of children, we need churches who train their children in what it means to be men and women—not just persons—made in God’s image.
Man and Woman in Christ is an essential resource for men and women seeking to live obediently as men and women today. It will be especially helpful as a reference resource for pastors, elders, teachers, and other leaders seeking to faithfully shepherd their churches, families, neighborhoods, and workplaces . To that end, we’ve done our best to make it useful to the reader. We included topical and Scripture indexes which help the reader find quickly what you need to find. In the PDF version, these indexes are hyperlinked in the document for easy navigation. So are the endnotes, which are extensive!
Still Relevant Today
Man and Woman in Christ was originally published in 1980. Steve Clark was writing in the wake of the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism of the 1960s and ’70s. A wide array of Christian leaders acknowledged the preeminence of Clark’s work, including protestants like James Dobson and F. F. Bruce, but also Roman Catholics such as Richard John Neuhaus. Christianity Today praised it as “an irenic, helpful book, and of all the multitude of books on this subject it is easily the best.”
Despite the commendations, knowing that Man and Woman in Christ is 40+ years old might tempt you to think this work would be irrelevant today. Indeed, neither the legalization of same-sex marriage nor the prevalence of transgenderism get mentioned in Man and Woman in Christ. But Clark’s work is helpful today for the same reasons it was helpful 40 years ago. For one, it is grounded in the eternal truths of Scripture. Part of what Clark demonstrates, as he traces the application of Scripture’s teaching through Church history, is that Christians in the Early Church faced many of the same cultural difficulties we face today. He then goes on to thoroughly address the modern ideologies of liberalism, socialism, and feminism, which continue to bear bitter fruit in our culture, just as they have been for over a hundred years now. John Frame’s recent commendation of the book explains well why Clark’s book is still needed today:
Stephen Clark’s Man and Woman in Christ is a classic presentation of the Bible’s teaching about men and women. For many years I’ve referred to it, and I consider it still to be one of the very best sources on this subject, perhaps the best. I’m delighted to hear of its republication—so timely, given the current discussion. Some are suggesting that one’s gender is a personal decision, rather than a divine gift. Clark’s book corrects such thinking and therefore clears the track for progress in godly relationships between the sexes.
Many still consider Clark’s book to be the best and most comprehensive treatment of the Bible’s teaching on manhood and womanhood, especially because of how it addresses modern sociological research. David Talcott, professor at The King’s College in New York, wrote an article for Eikon in 2019 on how Man and Woman in Christ has aged well. He writes,
Forty years after its original publication, Clark’s book remains a valuable resource both for understanding the timeless truths of our manhood and womanhood as well as living out their reality in our twenty-first century context.
Our hope is that bringing Man and Woman in Christ back into publication will help bolster a new generation of Christian men and women committed to living obediently to God’s design in sexuality. Will you help us in this endeavor?
