Why Advocates For Women's Rights Are Alarmed By Complementarianism
“Complementarianism is the belief that men and women are ‘equal’ in value to God but have different God-given roles that complement each other,” April Ajoy, author of “Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding a True Faith,” told HuffPost.
“It enforces stereotypical, traditional gender roles and focuses on women’s submission to male authority both at home and in the church,” Ajoy continued. “Complementarianism holds that only men can lead in the church and that husbands have complete authority over their wives. Wives are taught that God commands their complete submission and obedience to their husbands in everything.”
This belief that men and women have clear separate roles in marriage and society is quite widespread across fundamentalist Christian communities and evangelicalism.
Cait West, author of “Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away From Christian Patriarchy,” grew up inside complementarianism and described it plainly.
“It is just another name for patriarchy, and some believers hold to it more strictly than others,” she said. “Men are supposed to be strong leaders, the heads of their households, and women are supposed to submit to their husbands in all things. The idea is that men and women who follow this “godly” plan complement each other as they serve God.”
Ajoy gave the example of Ephesians 5:22-24: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
“Most evangelicals who use this passage to keep women submissive to men conveniently ignore the verse right before it that says, ‘Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,’” Ajoy noted.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/complementarianism-christian-religion-women-rights_l_6a4fbf38e4b00d12ee8551afOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works
8 replies
I've tried to steelman Christian Complementarianism in the past, reading up on their internal critiques for and against.
Everything I've read boils down to a no true Scotsman fallacy. "Yes, men can take this authority and abuse it, but then they're doing it wrong and not really acting as Christians".
No push for ways to shore up the potential of abuse. Just that men must do it the "right way", and that if they do it the "wrong way" there is no mechanism to correct them or to protect the women who are supposed to be seen as of equal value.
But it did lead me to reading about the UK's resources on coercive control https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/controlling-or-coercive-behaviour-statutory-guidance-framework/controlling-or-coercive-behaviour-statutory-guidance-framework-accessible. I found the Examples list helpful
I was always fascinated by the pride on display here, even when I was Christian. Women should submit to their husbands like they are Christ? Wow! It sure felt like a self-serving group of dudes wrote that part of the Bible.
I don't consider the figure of Yshua to be much more than an ancient myth based on someone or some people, but I'd be curious to know how his overall progressive message matched up with the quoted section.
Seems like it's all too easy to take almost any sort of message away from the Bible, altho I've no doubt that overall it skews heavily towards patriarchy.
@celeste
1 Corinthians a weird one.
Makes it seem like a church that does not have women actively prophesying would be a pretty grim heresy, but the focus always upon the covering up, and usually shutting up too:
"Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head shames his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled shames her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved."
@celeste It was not a group of dudes, it was a single dude: Paul.
yeah it's been many years since bible studies
“Complementarianism can appear mild in some cases, and the way I came to understand it growing up was that complementarianism could be bearable if you happened to marry a good man who wouldn’t abuse his power,” she said. “But what I didn’t understand at the time was that the hierarchy set up by complementarianism inevitably strips women of their agency and gives men a disproportionate amount of power, which leads to unhealthy family dynamics and abuse.”
Sounds homophobic too