With thanks to Zondervan and the book For the Love of Women for sponsoring this post!
Complementarianism has a big problem.
For those of you who don’t know, complementarianism is the belief that God placed men in authority over women, in marriage and the church (some complementarians only believe men are in authority in one sphere, but most believe both).
To make this belief sound kind and normal and not-at-all unfair, they use pretty words for it, like this:
God made the genders totally equal in value, but with different roles.
Keith and I debunked this claim in last week’s podcast on complementarianism in a nutshell, but today I’d like to take a look specifically at that claim, and show how both sides of it—that the genders are equal, and that complementarianism is just about different gender roles—don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Let’s start with the last one first.
1. Do complementarians believe in different gender roles?
That’s the claim—that God created men and women for different things.
But here’s the problem: If there were honestly different gender roles, then there would be things that men can do that women can’t, and things that women can do that men can’t.
But there aren’t. In complementarianism, there are only things that men can do that women can’t (pastor, lead groups of both genders, have authority in marriage). There’s nothing that men are excluded from doing, only things that women are excluded from doing.
In Brandon Sanderson’s Way of Kings novels, the men are the warriors and the leaders, and the women are the only ones who read and write, so they are the philosophers, historians, and scientists. That’s what different gender roles would look like.
But in complementarianism, we don’t see things that women do that men are forbidden from doing; only the opposite. So complementarianism is not about different gender roles; it’s about restricting women.
People often push back with “But women give birth!” Yes, women do. But that’s a biological function, not a gender role. You can’t say “women give birth, so men pastor” because that’s saying, “because she has this biological function, she’s excluded from this social role.” That’s comparing apples to oranges. For that analogy to work, pastoring would have to be a biological role, too, which means men would have to pastor with their penises. Which is horrifying.
I also hear people say, “But God designed men to lead and protect, and women to nurture and serve.”
Except that, as Dorothy Littell Greco shows in her new book For the Love of Women,
Statistics show that companies with more women in their leadership tend to be more successful across many metrics, including innovation, creativity, lower turnover, and higher productivity. A 2016 study found that increased gender diversity in the highest corporate offices led to a 15 percent increase in profits. When the International Monetary Fund conducted a study of more than two million private and public companies, they found that “on average, replacing just one man with one woman in management or on the board led to a 3 to 8 percent increase in profitability.
(And she has citations to peer reviewed studies for all of these claims too, because she’s a journalist who wrote this book the right way!)
In other words, women make great leaders.
And men make great nurturers, too! In fact, we need men to nurture. The two times the Greek word for “nurture” is used in the New Testament it’s directed at men—in Ephesians 6:4 to fathers and in 1 Timothy 4:6 to Timothy.
Though women give birth, there is nothing stopping men from caring for babies and toddlers and children, and we need men to do this! By teaching that nurturing is a feminine thing, which the Bible never does, we cut men off from an important part of themselves, and end up hurting everyone in the process.
But besides this, the argument “men lead and women nurture” doesn’t even hold up to scrutiny, because while women are forbidden to lead, even the staunchest patriarchalists don’t forbid men from nurturing.
Again, it’s not about different gender roles; it’s merely about restricting women.
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Now let’s look at the other part of the equation:
2. Complementarians don’t believe women are equal in essence
The argument they make is that while the roles may be hierarchy based, women are still equal in essence. So while men are superior and women are subordinate in terms of roles, in terms of value men and women are equal.
They often use the example of a boss and an employee, or a pilot and co-pilot, or a lieutenant in the army and a captain. Even though one is subordinate to the other and one is superior, they are both still equal, right?
Well, sure, but this analogy doesn’t hold up. The reason a boss or pilot or captain are superior to the employee, co-pilot or lieutenant is because of a function that is true at a moment in time. An employee may one day be a boss; every captain started out as a lieutenant, and a co-pilot may be a pilot.
But a woman may only ever be a woman. She is subordinate because of something she cannot change—her very essence.
You cannot say “the genders are equal in essence,” but then make one superior and one inferior on the account of their essence.
If she is unequal because of her essence, then her essence, by definition, is subordinate and inferior.
Here’s how Rebecca Groothuis explained it in her wonderful essay Equal in Being–Unequal in Function: The Gender Hierarchy Argument:
In female subordination, the criterion for who is subordinate to whom has nothing to do with expediency or the abilities of individuals to perform particular functions. Rather, it is determined entirely on the basis of an innate, unchangeable aspect of a woman’s being, namely, her female sexuality. Her inferior status follows solely from her essential nature as a woman. Regardless of how traditionalists try to explain the situation, the idea that women are equal in their being, yet unequal by virtue of their being, simply makes no sense. If you cannot help but be what you are, and if inferiority in function follows necessarily and exclusively from what you are, then you are inferior in your essential being.
Complementarians use pretty language to obscure what they believe
Saying “equal but with different roles”—which is awfully similar to the racist discredited “separate but equal”—sounds much better than “we believe women are inferior to men and so we restrict them because of that.” And yet that is exactly what they believe, and what they do, even if they won’t admit it. The logic to their argument just doesn’t hold up.
And so it shouldn’t be surprising that complementarianism bears bad fruit in practice too. Women who attend complementarian churches lose the health benefits of religiosity, while men do fine.
We found in our survey of 7000 people for our new book The Marriage You Want, couples who function with hierarchy, believing that the man is in authority and should make the final decision, have lower marital satisfaction, and higher markers of emotional immaturity.
We need to stop letting complementarians pretend that their doctrine sounds fair and pretty, when it obscures something quite ugly, and bears bad fruit. Now, to be fair, I don’t think most complementarians realize they’re doing this. I think they want to believe they’re the good guys. But when you actually examine it, it’s quite ugly.
This isn’t of Jesus, and it’s okay to push back and say, “it’s wrong to believe that women are inferior to men.”
Watch our quick video from our Good Fruit Faith initiative on the problems with complementarianism!
Or watch last week’s Bare Marriage podcast, episode 305, for more on the way complementarians obscure what they really believe!
What do you think? Does the “equal in value but with different roles” fail logical muster to you? Let’s talk in the comments!
I was told the ” equal but different” is explained in I Corinthians 12 with “many parts form one body.” Unsurprisingly each time it was explained, the men gravitated towards referring to themselves as the heads, hands, or hearts, and the women as the feet, elbows, necks, etc. I honestly think most of them had no idea they were assuming the (seemingly) “higher value” parts. The assumption they represent a higher-respected part comes across much like those who try to defend slavery- they assume they would hold the position of owner and not slave.
That’s a really interesting observation!
>> There’s nothing that men are excluded from doing
The closest thing to this is in some churches, men are forbidden from being in charge of young children’s groups, sometimes due to fears of sexual assault.
Which is horrifying, because that means women are protecting children from men…and I thought they insist men are supposed to be the protectors? Also, the converse would be that women shouldn’t be pastors because they might sexually assault the men 🙄
I grew up in churches which taught that men and women had different roles because God had ordained that. And while it seemed odd to me to give someone a role based purely on their gender, I could go along with the argument that ‘human beings can’t understand God’s ways’. But when they started to say ‘God designed it this way because men are — and women are —, the argument fell apart. Because as soon as you get into “well, men are designed to…” or “women naturally…” you hit the problem that not all men and women fit into those stereotypes. For example, if God designed men to lead because they are physically stronger than women, then how come the comps still expect a physically frail or disabled man to lead when his wife has so much more physical strength? If men are ‘designed to lead’ because they are more logical than women, then any time you find a woman who is more logical than the men around her, then she should be leading them. Same with any other supposed ‘male’ characteristic which equips them to lead.
The other argument that I’ve often heard applied to this whole area is that God gave us these distinct roles to promote our spiritual growth – this school of thought argues that men find it hardest to lead and women find it hardest to submit, so we have been given roles that go directly against our natural, sinful desires. But the same problem applies – if this argument is true, then any proud, arrogant, bossy man should be a follower and any diffident, shy, retiring woman should be a leader. They really should have stopped at “because God says so” and not tried to come up with reasons for it, because the reasons just don’t hold up.
That’s a really interesting thought, Angharad, and I’ve never articulated it quite that way. But you’re exactly right!
This is so well explained! I have found the same. Whenever you ask, “But why are men the leaders? What about their design makes them suited to lead, and women to follow (if you say women aren’t inferior to men)?” And they never have any gokd answers, if they even try. “The mystery of God’s design.” 😂
To be honest, “because God made us and He sets the rules” IS the only answer that makes sense if you are going to argue for that position. If someone tells me that, then fair enough – “I believe this is what the Bible says, but I have no idea why” is honest. But any attempt to justify it on the basis of supposed male and female characteristics falls at the first fence because there are no characteristics that are purely male or female.
And don’t get me started on the really dumb examples such as that presented recently by TTW, who claimed that because a fictional female character in a film kept making unwise decisions and her equally fictional husband made sensible ones, it was proof that men were created to lead…
I am convinced the doctrine that says if you’re bad at it, then that’s what God wants you to do is false and was made to manipulate people into doing what a leader wants. I’m not saying everyone who uses it is malicious or intentionally manipulative, but the logic just doesn’t hold up when compared to Jesus talking about us using what we are given (assuming a figurative meaning to the money-mangers parable) and that following him is an easy burden.
The God-calls-you-to-what-you’re-bad-at doctrine boils down to: “God loves you, which is why God wants you to do everything that you’re bad at and that makes you miserable and not do the things you have talent for and that make you happy. Doesn’t it make you want to just bask in how wonderful and loving God is?”
Angharad’s comment somehow made me think my comment was related to the complementarian problem, but I’ve lost it now. 🤔
I think the part where companies that hire more women in the upper positions make more money than companies who don’t interesting. I would like to see the statistics for other minorities like POC and disabled people too. It really flips the phrase “Go woke or go broke” floating around on its head in that respect.
The phrase should be “Go woke AND go broke” , my bad