Am I Complementarian?
On identity markers and what they actually mean
I believe that men and women complement each other. Does that make me a complementarian? Surely yes, right? Actually, according to the men responsible for popularizing the term “complementarian” to describe someone who believes in male authority and is allergic to feminists, I would very much not fit the bill.
Where does the road split, then? I do not believe in a set of fixed, divinely ordained roles for men and women - I think that any biblical example that seems to infer a fixed order of gendered authority and obedience better reflects a cultural norm and is largely misinterpreted by a patriarchal reading of scripture. I believe that men and women complement one another in scripture, but often in a way that subverts our patriarchal expectations. Barak seeks military assistance from Israel’s premier leader at the time, Deborah (Judges 4). Priscilla is listed before her husband Aquila as they co-labor in the ministry of teaching (Acts 18-18-28).
Conversely, complementarians traditionally believe that women complement men by “graciously submitting,” and men complement women by “responsibly leading.” In other words there is a dynamic of leading and following hardwired into the dna of human sexuality, and to deviate from that is to be unfaithful to ones very nature. Can we, at times, find examples of this dynamic in the cultural world of the ancient Near East at times? Sure. Does that make it God’s normative vision for gender? I don’t think so, and the diverse scriptural witness to the partnership of men and women in God’s story is a crucial reason why I have those convictions. But defending my theology of gender is not the purpose of this piece, so I digress.
My beef today is with the ambiguity of the term “complementarian.” Kevin Giles notes that before the term was “coined” at a breakfast meeting of conservative Christian leaders in 1988, Christians with an egalitarian vision of gender (where the dynamic of the partnership between the sexes is discerned by the spirit rather than assumed cultural norms) used the language of complementarity far before the Grudem gang “invented” the lingo. Take a listen to Giles excellent work on this:
“Grudem’s claim that, prior to November 1988, the term “complementary” had not been used in this debate is factually incorrect. Egalitarian evangelicals had long before this date embraced this term as the best way to designate the male-female relationship. Paul Jewett, in his seminal 1975 book, Man as Male and Female, argued for “a model of partnership … where man and woman are properly related when they accept each other as equals whose difference is mutually complementary in all spheres of life and human endeavour.”
...In 1983, the English egalitarian evangelical scholar Mary Evans, in her important study, Women in the Bible, continued this trend, using the term “complementary” to designate what the Bible teaches on the sexes. In 1985, another English evangelical, Elaine Storkey, in What’s Right with Feminism, similarly spoke of the sexes “complementing” each other. From this time on, the word was commonly used by egalitarian evangelicals.”1
So if egalitarians who disagree with a fixed hierarchy of gender roles were using the language of complementarity before the group who previously self-identified as traditionalists were, how come they get to be complementarians and we don’t? It’s also incredibly unhelpful for understanding the group's differing viewpoints as it misrepresents complementarian theology and can easily infer that egalitarians don’t believe in the complementarity of the sexes. Why adopt such ambiguous language when many more precise terms are easily within reach?
Honestly, I’m convinced that the term complementarian reflects an interest in marketing before it reflects an interest in theological accuracy. The truth is what it means to be a complementarian today, at least according to the crew credited with co-opting the term, means to be someone who believes in the right of men to have authority over women. Therefore, true complementarian churches will not allow women to preach, and true complementarian marriages will expect any female agency to be granted by the male partner (rather than assumed on the basis of gender equality). Sure, males and females are equal in value - they just don’t have equal say in marriage or the church.
Mary Kassian from The Gospel Coalition says, “Authority is not the right to rule—-it’s the responsibility to serve. We rejected the term “hierarchicalism” because people associate it with an inherent, self-proclaimed right to rule.”2 While well written, Kassian’s statement is also quite reductive. Authority is certainly more than the responsibility to serve; it’s also the right to make decisions, give directions, announce the good news on a stage, etc. Also, Kassian, a part of the original complementarian crew, notes that hierarchalism was rejected not because it’s inaccurate but because the term is kinda ick. Again, there are ways to operate within this theological system that are not destructive and do promote human flourishing. It’s not always unabashed primitive patriarchy; it’s baptized patriarchy - and that’s a better kind of thing, no matter how frequently it may go awry. Complementarians believe men have the right to rule but are supposed to rule graciously and sacrificially. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re working with a functional hierarchy of the sexes here.
The very architects of the term, if you read their stuff, reflect a vision of gender that can be much more clearly defined as a hierarchy or perhaps a “Christian patriarchy” than anything else. Take this lovely quote by John Piper as Exhibit A:
The God-given sense of responsibility for leadership in a mature man will not generally allow him to flourish long under personal, directive leadership of a female superior. J. I. Packer suggested that “a situation in which a female boss has a male secretary” puts strain on the humanity of both (see note 18). I think this would be true in other situations as well. Some of the more obvious ones would be in military combat settings if women were positioned so as to deploy and command men; or in professional baseball if a woman is made the umpire to call balls and strikes and frequently to settle heated disputes among men. And I would stress that this is not necessarily owing to male egotism, but to a natural and good penchant given by God3
Piper’s patriarchy extends beyond decision-making power in the marriage and ministry titles on a church website - it involves reducing the very definition of gender to women submitting and men leading. According to the guys who wrote the book, what it means to be complementarian makes a claim on every corner of embodied human experience. The coy marketing of the term misrepresents the theology that undergirds it. So when a man tells me that he is complementarian but doesn’t have a problem with female umpires, women preaching, or his wife making decisions, I have to wonder what he actually means.
Giles helps us to understand more precisely what the term means when he writes:
There is now no turning back. Both sides believe “complementary” captures something basic to their position. One side believes man and women standing side by side complete what it means to be human, they are egalitarian-complementarians; the other side believes that men complete what is missing in women by providing the leadership they need, they are hierarchical-complementarians.4
To be fair, describing oneself as a hierarchical-complementarian is a mouthful, but hey, clear is kind, right?
Giles points out that the terminology isn’t going anywhere; complementarians need the language of gender complementarity to avoid the negative connotations of more precise terms like hierarchy and patriarchy. However, we also need to be clearer about what we mean when we use such broad and ambiguous terms. For what its worth “egalitarian” can get lost in translation as well - moving away from sloganeering is a necessary counter-resistance to the polarity of this age for christians of every stripe. To do so perhaps we need to deconstruct our language and understand the context behind a word. Scot Mcknight hits the nail on the head (as he usually does) when he writes about the history of the term complementarian: “the reason they chose “complementarian” was because “hierarchical” and “traditional” were too clear.”5
I’m an egalitarian-complementarian who has no problem working for a woman, so if anyone needs a secretary, they can message me on LinkedIn.
https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/genesis-confusion/
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/complementarianism-for-dummies/
Piper, J., & Grudem, W. (Eds.). (2021). Recovering biblical manhood and womanhood (revised edition) : A response to evangelical feminism.
https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/genesis-confusion/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/03/02/revisionist-history-on-the-term-complementarian/