Keith’s joining me on the blog today with some thoughts about complementarianism–and the fact that the spelling mistake people often make is quite apt.
I always appreciate when he shares his thoughts, and his posts always are among my most read for the month!
I am sorely tempted to play the role of “grammar police” a little too often.
When I hear someone say “for all intensive purposes” it takes a real act of will to bite my tongue and not launch into, “Well actually it’s ‘for all intents and purposes’”. I can do it. I can hold back. But not without a few deep breaths.
I know it’s ridiculous and pedantic, so I’m not one of those people always out there correcting people’s grammar. But I’m still definitely noticing it. Most of the time I just get a laugh out of it. For example, one of my favourite posts is the one that goes:
The devil whispered in my ear,
“Your not strong enough”
and I whispered back,
“It’s ‘You’re’!”
One of the funnier slips people make is to talk about “complimentarianism”.
But I don’t feel the need to correct them with, “Well, actually, it’s complEmentarianism”. Not just because I want to be polite, but because in a sense I think they are right. But before I explain why I think Complimentarianism (with an “i”) is an apt description, let me talk about the history of the proper term: complementarianism.
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March 27 at 9 pm EST–and you can listen to the recording if you can’t make it live.
Where did the word “Complementarian” come from?
It is a new term that didn’t appear until about forty years ago. Sheila & I have books from the 1980s discussing the different approaches to women in ministry. The words “complementarian” or “complementarianism” are never mentioned. The people opposing egalitarians in the 1970s and early 1980s were called “traditionalists”.
Interestingly, to this day, complementarians claim that they, unlike egalitarians, are holding to the tradition of the church over its two thousand year history. But if that is truly the case, then why the name change? Why not stick with traditionalist? I encourage you to read Scot McKnight’s summary of the arrival of “complementarianism” into the marketplace of ideas here, but in my frank opinion, the “rebranding” was necessary precisely because the foundations upon which the traditionalist perspective rested were shown to be flawed.
When complementarians say they are following church tradition, they are telling a deceptive half-truth (which to me is worse than a lie). Yes, the idea that men are ordained by God to be in positions of authority over women in the church and in the home is not new. It has existed in one form or another as long as Christianity has been around.
But to be blunt about it, this was based on the idea that women were inferior to men. Prior to the twentieth century, this was assumed to be true and rarely challenged.
You can see this assumption in the way the early church father’s spoke, declaring women to be “in a subordinate condition to the man” (Irenaeus), “feeble, untrustworthy and of mediocre intelligence” (Epiphanius), and “of small intelligence..[who] still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh” (Augustine). (My thanks to Marg Mowczko for these examples. If you want to read more, you can check out her blogpost where I got them.)
This view that women were intrinsically inferior to men persisted through the protestant reformation with Martin Luther declaring that the woman has “a mind weaker than the man” and that “as the sun is more glorious than the moon,…so woman…did not equal the glory of the male”. Quotes like these are so repugnant to us now that we can hardly believe they were spoken, yet the idea of female inferiority persisted until close to a century ago.
For example, one argument against women getting the right to vote was the “fact” that women had inferior brains to men so were not suited to politics.
So given the faulty assumption that – as Aristotle put it – women were “incomplete, deformed men”, it made sense that only males should have access to power.
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In the twentieth century, though, this view was completely overturned and women were finally seen (in theory if not in practice) as men’s equals.
As a result, women made tremendous advancements: the right to vote, getting their own bank accounts, access to higher education, and acquiring employment opportunities in areas where they were previously barred. All of this was the result of a sociological revolution based on a new understanding that women were in fact not intrinsically inferior to men and that society should recognize that fact.
And women proved this new understanding to be true by their performance when they were finally admitted to areas where they had traditionally been banned. As a result, it is a rare person indeed these days who would still hold that women are inferior to men.
But where does this leave those who wish to preserve the traditional structure of men being in authority over women?
When we believed women were inferior to men it made sense, but what is the basis of asymmetry in the relationship if men and women are equal?
Proponents of male authority had to drop the label of “traditional” since the traditional view that women were under men was based on their assumed inferiority. In order to preserve the hierarchy, though, they had to come up with a new reason why women needed to be kept under the authority of men. Enter “Complementarianism”.
You may also enjoy:
- Keith’s series on the 4 problems with the Danvers Statement
- The slippery slope of male hierarchy
- Our new book The Marriage You Want!
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Complementarianism ostensibly is the belief that men and women are fully equal but have different and complementing roles.
The reason for the “e” in these words is that their root is found in the Latin word “compleo/complere” which means “to complete”.
But setting aside the fact that being locked into immutable roles of essentially “lord” and “servant” is the antithesis of equality, one still must ask the question, “In complementarianism, who completes whom?” It’s evident to me that, in contrast to egalitarians who believe we complement each other, complementarians believe it is the wife who completes the husband. For all intents and purposes, it’s a one-way street.
The husband is the lead actor and she is the supporting cast. He is the hero of the story and she is a side character, important only insofar as she advances his plotline, never a character in her own right.
They don’t always state it as bluntly as Doug Wilson who infamously put it like this: “Godly women are designed to make the sandwiches”, but when books like Marriage on the Rock and His Needs, Her Needs enshrine the idea that men have a God-given need for “domestic support”, for example, it takes a real persistence to overlook that the clear message is that he is the VIP and she is “the help”.
And then of course there are the repeated exhortations about how a good Christian woman always builds up her man and continuously tells him how awesome he is. He needs to feel like a hero, so tell him he is one. Whether he acts like a hero or not is irrelevant. He might be lying around and wasting all the family’s time and money. He might be yelling at his pregnant wife to give the dog its medicine while he enjoys a stogie. Either way, your job as a Christian woman is to let him know how proud you are of him. Those are the ones that make me chuckle to myself when I see people talking about “complimentarianism” – how right they are!
Complementarianism’s story is a tale typically told like this: “a man leads his wife with love and his wife submits to him joyfully and they build a happy home.” Putting aside the mountains of evidence that in fact it is true mutuality and not hierarchy that leads to a happy home, I find the idea of a wife melting into her husband to make him great unappealing for all the reasons I have already pointed out. And I am saddened by how this view has somehow gotten such a tight hold on the evangelical church.
For those who wish to cling to it, its familiarity breeds comfort, but to me it seems an anemic and weak little fable when compared to the great adventure of two equal image-bearers seeking out God’s will for their household together.
How much better would our families, our churches and our society be if we truly leaned into the idea that men and women equally reflect the image of God?
How much better if women truly felt free to be who God meant them to be?
And how much better if men didn’t need women to be small for them to feel big?
I still hope we can dare to ask those questions. And I pray I live to see us get a little closer.
Actually Keith- for me I cant spell COMPLEMENTARIANISM and spell check doesn’t even recognize it. No irony there! For real. So when I spell it with an I its because spell check did it for me. 🤣
Same here! And back when X was Twitter, I remember people joking about how even the spellcheck knows it’s faulty theology.
HAHAHA!
“As a result, it is a rare person indeed these days who would still hold that women are inferior to men.”
Not particularly rare in the churches I’ve been in or within the evangelical industrial complex. In fact, I’d say it’s an axiom in their worldview.
If a woman’s femaleness makes her unsuitable for certain tasks simply because she’s female, then from the MALE point of view, she IS inherently inferior.
I am not speaking of the generally recognized physical differences, like less upper-body strength. Any observant person can see that women IN GENERAL have lower upper-body strength than men IN GENERAL.
I’m talking about abilities, skills, and talents that can be created or improved with education, training, and experience. It’s beyond stupid to say “women are uneducated” when men have kept women from attending school for centuries or millennia. Why do we think it strange and why are we shocked that denying a person an education would make the person uneducated?
(I personally throw “like a girl” because I was never taught to throw a ball properly. You know, the way dads teach their sons to throw a ball from the time the sons can stand upright somewhat reliably. But guess what? A boy who’s never taught the proper way to throw throws “like a girl” too. I can think of some notable examples throwing out the ceremonial first pitches at baseball games.)
The two world wars forced women into tasks, skills, abilities, and responsibilities that they might never have otherwise had the opportunity for simply because SOMEBODY had to get that work done if the war efforts were to continue. Women found out for themselves that yes, given the chance, they can do more, MUCH more, than simply act as breeding stock.
And men, men in positions of authority in general and especially men in the church, have been trying to put that genie back in the bottle ever since.
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I have a question for the theobros since, after all, I’m a by-nature inferior female: Should women take Genesis 2:18 seriously?
Of the fifty-seven English translations on Bible Gateway, fifty-four say it is not good for THE MAN to be alone (only CEB, CJB, and OJB use wording other than “the man,” and I hesitate to include OJB, since it simply transliterates the Hebrew noun). Since men and women are soooooooo opposite, soooooooo different, amounting to being nearly different species altogether, can I take that one verse as conclusive proof that it IS good for a WOMAN to be alone, or at least to not be paired off with a man?
And if I shouldn’t take that verse that way, then explain like I’m five WHY NOT. Because if A = B and B != C, then A != C too.
I’m so glad you brought up throwing like a girl because there is research showing that girls get TAUGHT to throw like girls. Part of the reason is because the most feminist dads will, with the best of intentions, praise their girls for throwing at all, but they make sure their sons throw like men.
Then there’s adult women… I read the most interesting article called “Faking Like a Woman” which was a play on the phrase “throw like a girl” and about how women are taught (from movies) how to fake orgasms. It said that even our real orgasms are fake in the sense that even if we are actually orgasming, we learned the “copulatory vocalizations” we are supposed to produce from the movies. Here’s a link if anyone’s interested: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3387/1/Jackson_2007_Faking.pdf
Ah, yes, putting the “I” in a term to represent equality much like the joke of putting the “I” in “team”… oh my.
I also try not to be the grammar police, either. My biggest pet peeve is your vs. you’re.
Other issues don’t bother me that much, such as “Their going to get There reward over they’re”. Although in this case all three at the same time is a bit much.
The grammar police DID allow a misplace apostrophe to stand though… 🙂
>> getting their own bank accounts
Wasn’t there a play called the Doll House or some such, wherein a woman got into trouble for (among other things) opening a bank account without her husband’s permission? (I think she forged his signature)
That was a REALLY good story (though a little heartbreaking) about how the woman had to take back her identity after having it erased via marriage. We should all read it.
Yes, by Henrik Ibsen.
Sheila, do you know about “head and master laws” that governed U.S. marriages until they were struck down in the late seventies/early eighties? Here is what the opening line of the Wikipedia entry says: “‘Head and master'” laws were historical American property laws that granted husbands sole control over household decisions and jointly owned property, without their wives’ knowledge or consent.” It was basically complementarianism enshrined in law. The last state to repeal its head and master laws was Louisiana in 1979 and in 1981 the Supreme Court repealed it all together. Then in 1988 we get the “complementarianism” coinage, where the wife “joyfully submits” (since the State cannot force her) and the husband makes the final decision.
There is an excellent book by a marriage historian Stephanie Coonz about what life was like for women then, called “The Way We Never Were” (the title itself challenging the idealization of the 1950s marriages) and I cannot recommend it enough.
Oh, isn’t that interesting? So once they can’t force it, they make it a “if you don’t do this, God is angry at you” thing.
As I’ve studied the comp/egal debate I have found it interesting how complementarians think they are holding a traditional position when it’s really not. Yes, they are traditional in the sense that they are keeping women from certain positions, but the arguments for how they get there are different. Both egalitarianism and complementarianism flow out of a modern acceptance of the value of women.
That’s really well said!
Sheila I am a BIG Fan – I am a very conservative person in all things BUT when it comes to women I believe women can do anything a man can do in Christian Ministry. I was wondering if you can look into doing a show on the toxic nonsense spread by Michelle Lesley. She is very anti egalitarian and most of her writings have to do is showing how someone else is wrong- I would love to see a show on Michelle Lesley