It was fascinating to watch the complementarian leaders of Together for the Gospel insist that C.J. Maheney speak at their conference last week despite the concerns expressed by many that he is not fit for teaching or leadership given the controversies surrounding his leadership in Sovereign Grace Ministries.
Coupled with this, there are more complementarians voicing their concern with the increasingly bizarre ideas coming out of the comp/patriarchy camp. I personally believe the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) officially jumped the shark when they published Soap Bubbles Submission last month. (And then deleted it. You can read it via The Wayback Machine.) I truly cannot even do it justice by trying to explain it here. You’ll have to click over and read how CBMW now believes men micromanaging the way their wives wash and rinse dishes is part of Gospel complimentarity. (The Mortification of Spin did a bit on the soap bubbles that was pretty funny.)
If the soap bubbles weren’t enough, CBMW is now promoting sanctified testosterone. I am totally not joking. In 5 Key Ways to Cultivating Biblical Manhood in Your Church, Jason Allen says that “the church needs to recover biblical manhood, Christian masculinity—what we might think of as sanctified testosterone.”
Seriously?
9 Marks of Healthy Biblical Complementarianism?
As I’ve done with other topics that capture my attention, I’m listing a group of posts here for the benefit of not only my readers but also myself in the future since these topics seem to come up time and again. This bit got started when Kevin DeYoung posted about the nine marks of healthy biblical complementarianism. It snowballed into a number of other posts that I’ve listed below. If you haven’t read them, go ahead. Then I’d like to offer a few observations of my own.
- 9 Marks of Healthy Biblical Complementarianism by Kevin DeYoung
- A Response to Kevin DeYoung’s 9 Marks by Aimee Byrd
- DeYoung’s 9Marks of Complementarianism by Scot McKnight
- A Unified Field Theory on Gender from Wendy Alsup
- Listening to the Women by Aimee Byrd
Why Are the Complementarian Leaders Ignoring Us?
For the women who run in these circles and are confused as to why the leadership is not responding to their request for meaningful public dialog, I’m going to offer a few observations. Please understand there is no snark, no anger and no ridicule intended in my tone. These are matter of fact observations as I’ve interacted with this corner of Christianity for many years.
The complementarian male leaders (excuse the redundancy) do not respond to their thoughtful sisters in Christ for the following reasons.
The Slippery Slope
The overarching reason these men will not respond to sisters in Christ asking serious theological questions online is that answering their questions is the start of a slippery slope these men do not wish to start down. It all boils down to that.
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
The seminal moment in my understanding of the leadership in TGC, T4G and the like was when it became crystal clear to me that these men would rather have men die without hearing the Gospel than hear it preached by a woman. My interaction with Denny Burk is recorded in Should Women Proclaim the Gospel to Men? and it has forever changed the way I think about the men carrying the complementarian flag. Denny Burk would not say that the woman in the boat should proclaim the Gospel to men about to die because he knows if he does it will open up a series of questions he does not want to answer.
Think about that.
In their paradigm, it’s apparently better to die apart from Christ than hear the Gospel from a woman.
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
They Will Not Publicly Learn from a Woman
Responding to women who ask detailed and thoughtful theological question would also require that they appear to learn to from a woman. This is also a no-go. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think any of the men prominently associated with this movement have EVER specifically responded to significant theological questions put forth by a woman on a blog or website. If they have and I am wrong, I’d love to see the links so please leave the exchange in the comments. To admit that a woman pointed out a flaw in their theology will again lead down a slippery slope they want to avoid at all costs.
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
They Don’t Want Their Followers To Dig Deep in Scripture
I am thrilled to see complementarian woman calling out the bad theology coming from some of these groups. These women are digging into the Scriptures and studying. However, you don’t see any deep study of the complementarian versus egalitarian view on any of the prominent complementarian websites written by men. Why? It would require that the debate of complementarian versus egalitarian theology dig much deeper into the Scriptures in a public way and they do not want to “confuse” their faithful followers.
They do not want the people who read their websites, buy their books, and attend their conferences to read quality arguments from the other side. They would rather dismiss them and invoke the homosexuality card at the end of their post to cause people to cling to complementarianism in fear. Frankly, it’s insulting and degrading to their followers. If the complementarian view is so weak that it can’t stand up to scrutiny and detailed study of the Bible, what are these leaders telling their followers? That they are too stupid or easily deceived? Or that they cannot be led by the Holy Spirit and come to their own conclusions about these matters?
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
Women Cannot Have a Prominent Voice
They do not want to give women a prominent voice. All of these organizations are fronted by men. Men speak. Men lead. Men dictate the direction. Sure they have softened a bit in the last year or two. They will occasionally let a woman put her name on a post for TGC. They will have a special conference for women. But women are never ever going to have a prominent voice in those organizations. Again, if they acknowledge the gifts and abilities of women it is going to open a can of worms they don’t want to deal with.
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
This is the real end game of complementarianism.
It’s the only logical conclusion. It really can’t end any other way.
These men have a grid and they will not depart from it.
Women asking theological questions does not fit the grid. Complementarian women who try to move forward in this paradigm are going to find themselves increasingly frustrated and marginalized. It is obvious that groups like CBMW, TGC, T4G and so on are doubling down on their grid. (See what Kevin DeYoung said in PCA General Assembly – PCA Churches Do Not Want People With Doubts.) Because they are driven to respond to the culture more than what the Bible actually teaches, I believe women are going to find themselves marginalized more and more by these leaders and those who follow their lead in the local church.
The cognitive dissonance experienced by intelligent, godly complementarian women is real. It’s real because they know that they cannot bring the truth of intelligent women being used by God in line with complementarianism.
I know the dissonance. I lived with it for a number of years until I realized the true freedom Christ gives to women in the Body of Christ.
I pray my sisters in Christ will find freedom from the grid.
Preach it! You’ve hit the nail on the head. I would add that in person, I can usually tell when a man is complementarian as he will not look me in the eye or engage in any kind of meaningful personal conversation. The end point of this theology is anything but equality, despite their claims.
Great post. You’ve made so many insightful connections. BTW, I have read or heard the word “dissonance” in connection with this conversation in several places in just the last several days. What a frustrating experience.
One other thing. During the recent #CBMW16 conference, Denny Burk and I interacted on Twitter. He as much affirmed, in a style similar to your experience about the woman in a boat, that Mary, sent by Jesus, would not be permitted at his church to proclaim the resurrection to an adult co-ed assembly during the Sunday morning service.
Angie – I think my head just exploded. Can you share a link of the Twitter conversation?
His view of women trumps Jesus’ decision to send out Mary to share the good news of the resurrection? How does someone even respond to that kind of twisted thinking?
Sallie,
Let’s see if this link gets you to the Twitter conversation. https://twitter.com/AngieKSanderson/status/719920496599379968
From a Catholic perspective, I have this impression:
Protestants usually equate the role of a “pastor” or “elder” with the role of nothing more but a teacher/preacher, counselor and parish administrator. But it’s easy to see that women *can* teach, counsel and do administrative tasks, too, and it’s hard to see reasons why they *should not* do all of that – especially since stay-at-home mothers, the conservative ideal of women, do all of that all the time concerning their children. So, when there are Bible passages that could indicate that Church leadership is reserved for men (not only passages in the Pauline epistles, but also the fact that Christ only chose men as His apostles), it’s hard to see any reason for that from a Protestant standpoint.
That standpoint, however, is quite different from the Catholic view of a bishop/priest as someone acting in persona Christi (standing in for Christ) while performing God-ordained sacred rites. A “priest”, in Judaism as well as pagan religions, has always meant something different from a rabbi, teacher or philospher – standing in for a god/a goddess/the one God towards the people (while also standing in for the people towards the god/goddess/God). So, it’s easy to see why pagan cults of mother deities would have female priests representing a female deity, while cults with male deities would have male priests. That sort of includes Judaism at a time when there was still a temple with a priesthood – now, obviously, God is neither male nor female, but male symbolism fits Him better; we Christians have a picture of God as Father (Jesus told us to call Him Father, not Mother), as a Creator distinct from His Creation. That is different from religions with female deities that tend to worship the earth as a Mother Goddess bringing forth life in a pantheist way. So, it makes sense to me why a priest representing Christ should be a man. Christ was incarnate as a man, and we speak of the Church as “she”, as the bride of Christ. That symbolism matters. (By the way, this reasoning is not my own idea – I take it from an essay by C. S. Lewis, who as an Anglican held the same view of priests not merely being preachers, but representing God to the people and the people to God.)
But what doesn’t follow, when you look at it this way, is any kind of prohibition on female missionaries, school teachers, theology professors, counselors, parish or diocesan administrators, and so on.
Sorry for that rather long and rambling comment… And I hope my English is correct.
By the way, I find your description of “Conservative Biblical Egalitarianism” quite interesting – an original voice in the Complementarian/Egalitarian debate where I also usually have the impression that both sides slip into diverse errors very often 🙂
Guten Tag, Crescentia!
Your English is excellent! Much better than my German currently is. (I took the link to your website.) At one time I could have read quite a bit of your site, but I am woefully out of practice. I had two years of German in college and even got to the point where I would have dreams in German. I started a third year and decided it was no longer fun so I dropped it since it was not required for my degree. I think about trying to pick it up again, but there are so many other things that have to come first. 🙂
I appreciated your thoughts regarding this topic from a Catholic perspective. Naturally we’ll see it differently but I do appreciate it.
Re: a different voice… I really don’t feel that I fit in any camp. I don’t relate to the Christian feminists for many reasons. And I don’t relate to the typical conservative evangelical in many ways. But I study to understand what the Bible says. I know there are many out there l like me. We simply tend to be quiet and not rock the boat. 🙂
It’s been nine years since I wrote this post. It’s still true and it’s only getting worse. I have so much to say about where we are now and where this is all headed
The recent Allie Beth Stuckey blowup made that crystal clear.
“The cognitive dissonance experienced by intelligent, godly complementarian women is real. It’s real because they know that they cannot bring the truth of intelligent women being used by God in line with complementarianism.”