But when I read the news, I also thought with a heavy sigh, “Oh, here we go again.” I knew the debate about women’s roles in the church would dominate conversation all week, and I could already predict the rutted arguments I’d hear recited over and over.
Tish Harrison Warren
I know how you feel Tish.
I’m a complementarian, at least I think I am but I am so fed up with this for all sorts of reasons. So let’s name a few of them.
The meanness
One of the biggest reasons is the thin-skinned, downright mean and often shameful behaviour of people (mostly, if not entirely men) who are complementarian. Time after time you see something said and there’s no love, no respect, and sometimes no thought. Justin McRoberts captures this well when he says,
“I’ve spent enough time directing snark and insults at others to know that it just isn’t worth the zing or the ‘points’ I win among people who already agree with me. Treating people that way takes too much of a toll, not only on any sense of community and connectedness, but on my own psychology over time. In short, each time I choose to take a shot at someone, the connections I work to create and care for are diminished (and so am I). The way I see things and ideas are not valuable because of their rightness or even their beauty; ideas have value if they enrich and bless human lives. Treating people disrespectfully (especially when I have an ideological difference with them) undermines the point of conversation and argument.”
HT: Mike Frost
Much online discourse from complementarians demeans. It demeans the people they’re responding to and it demeans them and most of all it probably disgraces Christ. As I’ve already said, ‘We just do not get a pass from being kind. It doesn’t matter what the other person has said or done.’ And you know what, if that really is what this theology is all about, well, bring it down and pass me a hammer.
The power
I’m also fed up with it being framed around power and fed up with it being framed around the American culture wars. Christendom in the States has a lot to answer for, good and bad.
In short, my decade of scholarship on this particular area has shown complementarianism to be what it is: a 20th century fundamentalist ideology that will adapt anything—especially the Bible—to reaffirm its own conclusions of supporting male power. It is no more “Christian,” “godly,” or “biblical” than any other intellectual framework or religious constituency—especially white American men driven by a constant fear of losing their privileged place in church and society.
Dr. Jamin Andreas Hübner
I reject that analysis for a bunch of reasons but I get why that charge is laid at the door. Because that’s exactly what it looks like a lot of the time. I get that there’s a verse that mentions authority, but I just don’t buy that authority looks like that. The biggest danger for the egalitarians is that they end up playing for power too. That in the end what it will look like is a power grab because men have made it about power.
I might have some influence in my little church but God help us all if I’m putting myself through the pains of church leadership just so I can be a big man in a pond so small. Plus as a pastor in Sweden I don’t have a privileged place in church or society. We’re on the margins because we’re a church, we’re international, we’re full of refugees, we’re outsiders. We’re thrown no bone for being Christian here. Quite the opposite usually. And there’s absolutely no material gain for me to be a complementarian here in the land of 10 million feminists (Sweden population 10.2 million). My life would be an awful lot easier if I wasn’t. My church would be bigger too.
The inequality
When your theology teaches that women are less than men, which is what complementarian theology teaches, no matter what they claim to be different, it teaches that women are less than men. Men will treat women as less than men. And so, I think that’s just the reality, we have to accept that reality, and we have to realize that God never treated women as less than men.
Beth Allison Barr
I get it. I know why she would feel that way. And it’s hard to deny the reality of those experiences.
But I simply don’t believe that the convictions I hold necessarily entail that. I just don’t. I understand full well why people might not agree with me but if you want to frame what I believe in a way that I’d recognise it – then that’s not it. And for the record this is more what I aspire to:
The disunity
I want them to realize that they can’t tell me that I am not biblically faithful because I do not agree with them. And so, that’s really, it’s not gospel truth. That’s the subtitle of my book is that it’s not gospel truth. And that’s what I want people to hear. And I think, that seems to be what Beth Moore was saying, although I don’t really want to put words in her mouth, but that seems to be what she was saying too, is that it’s not gospel.
Beth Allison Barr
I agree with Beth Barr, and Jackson Wu that however important this issue is to how you build church it’s not a first-order gospel issue and shouldn’t be made into one. We can disagree without dishonouring. I don’t think this issue is biblically more important than baptism, more important than the Spirit’s presence & gifts and I can find ways of working with dear friends who think otherwise. If I can’t do that because someone is of the opposite sex then that says much more (and nothing good) about me than it does about them.
On the one hand, I clearly do not believe that the Bible teaches complementarian ideas. I would say that’s not actually biblical. But at the same time, I understand how people could come to that idea, and I’m not going to say that they’re not Christian, or that they don’t take the Bible as seriously as me, as long as they believe in who Jesus is, and they believe in the God that’s presented to us in the Bible, the Trinitarian God that’s presented to us in the Bible.
Beth Allison Barr
From the other side, I can agree with that. I can work with that. And I can work with and alongside in people who can think that about me.
Drawing new circles
There is an added complexity for those of us who are willing to collaborate with and even learn from complementarians. We love the church and the Scriptures and don’t want to “burn it all down.” Progressives see us as “fraternizing with the enemy,” and yet we never fit into complementarian circles. So we end up feeling like misfits in the conversation—buffeted by both sides of an immensely polarized church, which often regards the gospel of Jesus as second fiddle to the debates of the day.
Tish Harrison Warren
Well, I’d quite like to draw a new circle. Because I’d rather have more sisters & mothers than more enemies.
If you want to know what I think and teach on this, then you can find that here and on elders & deacons here.
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