Complementarity and Evangelical Feminism
3 Comments Published by Lally on Wednesday, April 30 at 11:00 AM.
Though many of you know that I can be quite critical of religion at times, sometimes even going so far as to mock modest clothing retailers and Christian Singles dating guides, my recent foray into the study of the history of American evangelicalism and revivalism has made me much more of a moderate, most likely toa Billy's chagrin. It goes to show that education can be a peacemaker.
In any case, for my final paper, I am doing an investigation on the notion of "complementarianism," a belief among many conservative evangelical Christians about the Biblically hierarchical nature of gender. Complementarians believes that men and women are equal in the eyes of God with respect to salvation, but are meant for different but "complementary" roles on Earth. This generally means that men are meant for headship (kephale) and women for joyful submission.
Long story short:
In the late 1980's, the feminist evangelical group Evangelical Women's Caucus granted rights to homosexuals, causing an uproar and a subsequent schism, creating the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (EEWC, the liberal evangelical feminists) and the Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE, the conservative evangelical feminists). Of these two, the latter is more popular (300 and 2000 members, respectively). Nevertheless, each pales gravely in comparison to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). According to surveys by an academic named Sally Gallagher, over 90% of self-described evangelicals consider themselves to have "traditional" views of gender. For well over 83% of this group, this means that men are the primary spiritual leaders of the family.
The most interesting part of this research has been a better understand of what it means to be accepted as an evangelical in America today. Through reading the movement's history (I recommend everyone research George Whitfield, Charles Finney, and D.L. Moody, what I consider big three icons of the major protestant religious movements in U.S. history!) it has become clear, especially through the CBMW watershed publication Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism that CBE is only feminist organization that CBMW actually thinks is evangelical - everyone else has a hermeneutic (theory of interpretation) of Biblical meaning which does not take the Scriptures to be authoritative enough to be labeled evangelical.
What makes CBE an acceptable level of evangelical? Well, I think this can be summarized by the following belief in their statement of faith: "We believe in the family, celibate singleness, and faithful heterosexual marriage as God's design."
In other words, though CBE reads the Bible to be gender inclusive, they still take it to be inerrant. CBMW thinks that this qualifies them to remain in the category "evangelical."
As a way to conclude, I'd like to highlight some of the ways that these two groups are different using on the one hand their respective interpretations of key biblical texts and on the other selective quotes from their web sites and publications.
From CBMW's Danvers Statement:
From CBE's Men, Women, and Biblical Equality:
There is a lot there. But briefly let's focus on two passages they both seem to mention here, and how they differ in their exegesis.
Here are two passages from the Bible that both CBMW and CBE think support their respective claims about gender:
Complementarians, on the other hand, use passages like Ephesians to show that an inerrantist reading must take hierarchy into account, even though Galatians 3:28 shows that men and women equally share in salvation, even though not in earthly leadership.
So, what's the point of all this? Well it has serious implications for: the ordination of women, social support for female career aspirations, gender-inclusive Biblical translation, and many many other issues of every-day import to all people and families. CBMW publishes semi-practical advice for their adherents; I'd like to post some of it here for concluding amusement. Thank you!
In any case, for my final paper, I am doing an investigation on the notion of "complementarianism," a belief among many conservative evangelical Christians about the Biblically hierarchical nature of gender. Complementarians believes that men and women are equal in the eyes of God with respect to salvation, but are meant for different but "complementary" roles on Earth. This generally means that men are meant for headship (kephale) and women for joyful submission.
Long story short:
In the late 1980's, the feminist evangelical group Evangelical Women's Caucus granted rights to homosexuals, causing an uproar and a subsequent schism, creating the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus (EEWC, the liberal evangelical feminists) and the Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE, the conservative evangelical feminists). Of these two, the latter is more popular (300 and 2000 members, respectively). Nevertheless, each pales gravely in comparison to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). According to surveys by an academic named Sally Gallagher, over 90% of self-described evangelicals consider themselves to have "traditional" views of gender. For well over 83% of this group, this means that men are the primary spiritual leaders of the family.
The most interesting part of this research has been a better understand of what it means to be accepted as an evangelical in America today. Through reading the movement's history (I recommend everyone research George Whitfield, Charles Finney, and D.L. Moody, what I consider big three icons of the major protestant religious movements in U.S. history!) it has become clear, especially through the CBMW watershed publication Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism that CBE is only feminist organization that CBMW actually thinks is evangelical - everyone else has a hermeneutic (theory of interpretation) of Biblical meaning which does not take the Scriptures to be authoritative enough to be labeled evangelical.
What makes CBE an acceptable level of evangelical? Well, I think this can be summarized by the following belief in their statement of faith: "We believe in the family, celibate singleness, and faithful heterosexual marriage as God's design."
In other words, though CBE reads the Bible to be gender inclusive, they still take it to be inerrant. CBMW thinks that this qualifies them to remain in the category "evangelical."
As a way to conclude, I'd like to highlight some of the ways that these two groups are different using on the one hand their respective interpretations of key biblical texts and on the other selective quotes from their web sites and publications.
From CBMW's Danvers Statement:
In the family, husbands should forsake harsh or selfish leadership and grow in love and care for their wives; wives should forsake resistance to their husbands' authority and grow in willing, joyful submission to their husbands' leadership (Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:18-19; Tit 2:3-5; 1 Pet 3:1-7).
In the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation; nevertheless, some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men (Gal 3:28; 1 Cor 11:2-16; 1 Tim 2:11-15).
From CBE's Men, Women, and Biblical Equality:
11. The Bible teaches that husbands and wives are heirs together of the grace of life and that they are bound together in a relationship of mutual submission and responsibility (1Cor 7:3-5; Eph 5:21; 1Peter 3:1-7; Gen 21:12). The husband's function as "head" (kephale) is to be understood as self-giving love and service within this relationship of mutual submission (Eph 5:21-33; Col 3:19; 1Peter 3:7).
6. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ came to redeem women as well as men. Through faith in Christ we all become children of God, one in Christ, and heirs to the blessings of salvation without reference to racial, social, or gender distinctives (John 1:12-13; Rom 8:14-17; 2Cor 5:17; Gal 3:26-28).
There is a lot there. But briefly let's focus on two passages they both seem to mention here, and how they differ in their exegesis.
Here are two passages from the Bible that both CBMW and CBE think support their respective claims about gender:
Ephesians 5:21-33 (New International Version)
Wives and Husbands
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— 30for we are members of his body. 31"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."[b] 32This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Galatians 3:28 (New International Version)
28There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.Briefly speaking, with respect to the first passage, an evangelical feminist is tempted to say it must be read in the greater context of scripture, that is to say, in light of (among other passages) Galatians 3:28. As such, those passages are directives for "mutual submission" as opposed to hierarchy, ont heir view.
Complementarians, on the other hand, use passages like Ephesians to show that an inerrantist reading must take hierarchy into account, even though Galatians 3:28 shows that men and women equally share in salvation, even though not in earthly leadership.
So, what's the point of all this? Well it has serious implications for: the ordination of women, social support for female career aspirations, gender-inclusive Biblical translation, and many many other issues of every-day import to all people and families. CBMW publishes semi-practical advice for their adherents; I'd like to post some of it here for concluding amusement. Thank you!
Complementarian Singles: Who Should I Marry?
Walt Alexander
April 17, 2008[Single female readers of Girl Talk and single male readers of Man Speak are regularly encouraged to prepare for marriage. Then the challenging and intoxicating process of discernment can begin (whether called courtship, rescued dating, or whatever) to answer the question posed in the title of this post. Walt Alexander is a regular contributor at Man Speak and provides the second part of a two-day challenge for single complementarians. — David Kotter]
If we become the "right" person who is prepared to marry, who should we "court" with the intention to marry?
This is a list to consider:
1. We should court someone who is a Christian. Because we — as Christians — are forbidden by Scripture to marry a non-Christian (2 Cor 6:14-15), we should not court one. This is a no-brainer. If you are courting/dating a non-Christian, break up with them.
PS - I might repost this on my blog, or a link to it, if anyone starts to care to generate more discussion.
Labels: evangelicalism, feminism, history, religion
US News reports that part of the gender pay gap may have something to do with the majors women choose to pursue in college (here is a map showing what kinds of gaps we're talking about and where). I've talked and/or thought about this a lot, and the article makes a good point of noting that
But if the article is right that women choose fields where there are more other women and generally fields that are not lucrative (because we can't do math) for reasons of social or emotional comfort, then certainly discrimination plays a role in those choices.
Maybe it's because of menstruation, as one piece of research asserts. Some think that controlled for education and hours, there is no gap, though these people are "equality feminists," or otherwise known as not feminists at all.
In any case part of the reason I always have problems with looking at these theories and statistics is because I am almost completely ignorant of gender discrimination on the level of personal knowledge. I come from a household where the highest earnings are from my mother, a physician, and from a family in which both my grandmothers were educated and professional. I am expected, and myself expect to, make as much money as the men in my field do in earnest. But in some sense or another there is and will always be a gender gap of some sort.
In the Soviet Union, where the government touted gender equality in the workplace and elsewhere, a curious trend developed in which women were held to high professional standards in the workplace (same hours, same pay, same work) but slowly "feminized" certain industries like education, editing/publishing, and nursing and were STILL held responsible for keeping family life together or in order. Thus they had the double burden of being house(apartment)wives AND diligent workers. This is how it will probably go in the United States as well, even though a select few progressive middle class men are increasingly finding it less and less emasculating to be stay-at-home-dads.
It is certainly the case in the US that we have feminized industries. Maybe less so than in the Soviet Union, but nevertheless low or uneducated males rarely if ever apply to be secretaries, a field completely dominated by women. Same goes for community health, psychology, and the like (in industry, anyway). Perhaps if women knowingly choose the fields they do (without being shut out from others) then the wage gap is not as big a problem as we thought, in the sense that women choose professions which cater to things other than their concern for their paycheck.
I, for one, have an interest in a high salary primarily to make men feel equal for once, as opposed to superior.
On a related note, why don't we have more females on Urbanagora?
AAUW Educational Foundation says the smaller numbers of women in certain fields can always grow. But even if that happens, there's still a piece of the gender wage gap puzzle that is missing. Hill says, and the study agrees, that piece could be discrimination. "It seems to be conventional wisdom that as younger generations make different choices, the wage gap will disappear," she says. "But even when women are making the 'right' choices, they are still getting paid less."
But if the article is right that women choose fields where there are more other women and generally fields that are not lucrative (because we can't do math) for reasons of social or emotional comfort, then certainly discrimination plays a role in those choices.
Maybe it's because of menstruation, as one piece of research asserts. Some think that controlled for education and hours, there is no gap, though these people are "equality feminists," or otherwise known as not feminists at all.
In any case part of the reason I always have problems with looking at these theories and statistics is because I am almost completely ignorant of gender discrimination on the level of personal knowledge. I come from a household where the highest earnings are from my mother, a physician, and from a family in which both my grandmothers were educated and professional. I am expected, and myself expect to, make as much money as the men in my field do in earnest. But in some sense or another there is and will always be a gender gap of some sort.
In the Soviet Union, where the government touted gender equality in the workplace and elsewhere, a curious trend developed in which women were held to high professional standards in the workplace (same hours, same pay, same work) but slowly "feminized" certain industries like education, editing/publishing, and nursing and were STILL held responsible for keeping family life together or in order. Thus they had the double burden of being house(apartment)wives AND diligent workers. This is how it will probably go in the United States as well, even though a select few progressive middle class men are increasingly finding it less and less emasculating to be stay-at-home-dads.
It is certainly the case in the US that we have feminized industries. Maybe less so than in the Soviet Union, but nevertheless low or uneducated males rarely if ever apply to be secretaries, a field completely dominated by women. Same goes for community health, psychology, and the like (in industry, anyway). Perhaps if women knowingly choose the fields they do (without being shut out from others) then the wage gap is not as big a problem as we thought, in the sense that women choose professions which cater to things other than their concern for their paycheck.
I, for one, have an interest in a high salary primarily to make men feel equal for once, as opposed to superior.
On a related note, why don't we have more females on Urbanagora?
