Thank you, this article along with your older work and the newly linked articles were very helpful. Your explanation of both positions as Boomer inventions, one a challenge, the other a response, makes a lot of sense. Interested in your thoughts on two topics, the first being how 'equality' is used by both camps, and second being the concept of covenants.
First 'equality'. Both the "blue book" and the "red book" frame their positions in terms of a post-enlightenment definition of 'equality'. Using admittedly a very broad brush, the blue book uses "Equal, but ...", the red book screams "EQUAL in role or women are dehumanised". Looking through the Scriptures, 'equality' is rarely used to compare people, and never to compare men and women. Yet both camps assume a modern definition 'equality' holds and then proceed from this point, so both are firmly grounded in Boomer worldview. Is this something you can comment on?
The second is an understanding of God's redemptive work in terms of Man as priest, king, and prophet acting as God's image bearer within a covenant framework. 10,000 ft summary for those skimming comments who may not know what this is ... a framework of understanding God's creative and redemptive work through the lens of covenants, first God-Adam, then God-Family unit, then God-people group, then God-nation, then God-world. The priestly and kingly roles evolve as the covenants are developed. Though this idea is present in many Bible commentaries, I believe the "blue book" does not use the concept of covenant at all, but relies on 'headship'. The "red book" touches on covenant theology only in footnotes, and then recoils from it like a demon before a crucifix. Based on your research, is this something you can comment on?
I appreciate this post because it appears that I had a wrong understanding of complementarianism. I was operating under the assumption that the term complementarianism covered a range of views, from a Biblically-sound form of patriarchy to near egalitarianism. It would seem from this post and Aaron’s earlier one that I was incorrect. Patriarchy is excluded from complementarianism and is covered under a traditionalist heading. If that is the case, I find myself agreeing with Aaron. That leaves complementarianism as a shifting pattern of views that is moving ever closer to becoming indistinguishable from egalitarianism. As such, it is not viable since it is not based on sound principles.
I maintain that patriarchy is the correct model for society, even if it is rejected by virtually everyone today. The Biblical model of a patriarch is not an unloving martinet, but rather a man who understands his authority and responsibility, as well as his obligation to be loving and considerate. There is no inherent inconsistency there. God himself is both powerful and loving. Authority and love can be in tension at times, but if so, it is only because the man experiencing this tension needs more discernment about the right frame of mind and right course of action.
Re: I maintain that patriarchy is the correct model for society, even if it is rejected by virtually everyone today.
It has been rejected because it does not work (things that do work tend to last), and it was always honored with lip service and often in the breach as circumstances demanded. It's a simple fact that there are more than just a few women who are capable and competent, and more than just a few men who are anything but.
Also, we do have to acknowledge that "In Christ... there is neither male nor female."
Please understand, I am not arguing for modern style feminist equality (other than in matters of civil law). My church is one which only ordains men as priests and bishops (there is some sentiment to restore the order of deaconesses which lasted longer in the East than in the West), but we allow women in other prominent roles such as Sunday school teachers, parish council members and choirs members and directors. Our parishes would collapse if we shut the women out entirely from any public worship and administration role.
One must consider all the verses in the Bible that pertain to a topic to get the complete picture. The Galations 3:28 passage that you quoted refers to men’s and women’s (and all races’) equal share in salvation. It does not speak about roles. If you take into account all the verses that cover roles, evaluate the examples of men’s and women’s roles depicted in the Bible from Adam and Eve onward, and use some very sensible inferences, you will conclude that patriarchy is the correct model. By that I mean that men and women were designed to live that way and problems can be expected if they don’t. Ambition, though desirable within bounds, has always been a snare in following God’s word. Ambition leads people to want to follow their own course, irrespective of Biblical principles. Labor saving devices over the last century uncorked the genie of female ambition and men have lamely responded to it. The result has been devastating.
You say that patriarchy doesn’t work, but it did for thousands of years. The issue today is that people are so thick-necked and blind that they can’t see the trouble feminism has created both in the church and society. I don’t want to take up space here expounding on it, but the examples are legion. Some of the roles in your church that you mentioned, such as Sunday school teachers, are compatible with patriarchy. Women teaching women and women teaching children are perfectly fine. For roles that should be held by men, I think you’d find that men would step up to the plate in your church if their roles were properly recognized.
One must also consider sound rules for interpreting Scripture. And one of those, dating back to the Church Fathers, is that any interpretation which contradicts what we find in the natural world must be rejected lest we depict God as foolish and ignorant in His word. Does the Bible contain verses which imply a flat Earth? A geocentric solar system? A six thousand year old universe? Slavery as morally legitimate? It does, but because we know none of those are true, we must find non-literal interpretations that do fit reality. And we definitely know that women are not inferior as human beings; they are not incapable of leadership-- I pointed out an example from Scripture itself. As such I would suggest (strongly) that "Scripture demand patriarchy" is false doctrine, conditioned by mere culture, every bit as much so as the restrictions and outright misogyny some forms of Islam impose on women are due to Arab culture not to anything transcendent in their own Scriptures (No, I do not believe the Qur'an is Scripture- let's not get distracted by that).
And no, patriarchy did not work for thousands of years. I suggest taking a good long look at history in all its sanguinary, squalid detail. That should be no one's affirmation of godly living!
Re: I think you’d find that men would step up to the plate in your church if their roles were properly recognized.
I noted that we have an all male clergy. What else do you want? No women in the choir? Women in burkas segregated behind screens as in mosques? I suspect you know very little of the Orthodox Church, so please post no Protestant bills on us. Yes, we have our faults and failings-- I will be happy to detail some of that on request-- but it is for us to handle. By the way at my own local church I have recently played a key role in reviving our church men's group which had fallen into abeyance when the former guy heading it moved away. There is a hunger, I find, for male fellowship (and we do have a women's group as well for the women), but I have also been taught that when we step through the Church door we should set aside all worldly concerns and chains and identities and become as Children of God singing His glory alone lest the Devil tempt us with hubris.
You're mentioning too many things that I disagree with for me to respond. I wish there were a way for us to discuss this off-line. I'm not tech-savvy enough to know how we might do that - if you were interested.
Reading such things... such overwrought concern for the details and specifics of how men and how women do or should behave and a "deep" exegisis of previous standards and practices... is, well, bizarre and a bit hilarious. It sounds like dog owners talking about how they believe their dogs used to be trained and cared for and may have had better training regimens or not now.
Skip religion... or, take from it: be nice, be careful with people's emotions and specific lived experience, pay attention both to who you desire and why. And accept failure.
The challenge, as I see it, has less to do with the boomer nostalgia and defense (although that is a significant challenge) and more to do with how to help these young Christians who are embracing a more traditional approach in their marriage and in the world after having been raised by boomers. In some marriages, the husband (or wife but less common) comes to a place of settledness about the more traditional view and the spouse is not on the same page. This can lead to a great deal of friction.
It's the same concept as the chapter Doug Moo wrote in the same Big Blue Book, where he stated that what he was teaching was new to the church. It was that women were ok to teach women theology, which the church had never done on any large scale. Another new concept with no historical backing that just happens to align closer with culture.
A lot of churches have a ladies Bible class during the week, in which a woman teaches a class of women. Are there churches that forbid this practice? Genuinely curious.
I don't know about the word "forbid". There are lots of churches that don't have Sunday School or Bible Classes, and there are ones like mine where the women have a bible study/fellowship meeting and our pastor comes and delivers a message to them and then leaves and lets them fellowship.
I was raised Catholic, became a Mormon at my husband's insistence (turned out he only liked the husband as boss concept, he left me and the church at the same time, I left the church later), then a Presbyterian, now I'm unchurched. I've never been an evangelical.
I enjoy your writings, because I enjoy ideas and discussing them. Unfortunately (for you perhaps), I have subscribed and can now comment.
I think part of the problem of discussing complementarianism or, in fact, to try to define pretty much anything about male-female relationships is that you are lost in the thicket about three steps in. And it cannot be discussed in a "pure manner," as the outside forces of the times you live in must, by necessity, encroach.
I did read Newsletter #33 and found it very interesting, but wanting. Let me say I used to be a liberal feminist and would have argued that woman could do anything a man could do. I've grown up since then. I'm still a feminist to the extent that I believe men and women have equal rights under the law, but the idea that women should have more rights is ridiculous. (My son phrases it thus: feminists want to be able to do everything a man does, without having to everything a man must.) And men's and women's roles within their families is simply not my business.)
Anyway, on women in the military. Often, arguments against allowing women in the military or in combat are based on protecting women. As an explanation, this is hogwash. Women have never been protected in war. In medieval times, knights went off to fight the war, leaving women home to raise the family and deal with whatever problems come along. If the war is in her homeland, her lands may be raided, her crops stolen or burned, her home may be burned, she may be raped or killed, her children may be raped or killed. If the war is not in the homeland, she will be fulfilling every role within the family, including the traditional male roles, all the while being restricted in what she can do because she is female. But somebody needed to go to war and somebody needed to watch the home front; and men were more suited to war and women were more suited to the home front. No one had to say this, it just was.
In the modern military, and in modern business, women are successfully carrying out roles that used to be reserved for men. The old arguments that women aren't suited have been proven false.
But, and this is a big "but," it is the children who have taken the hit. I'm not going to be the one who says that women should stay home and take care of the kids, though I believe it should be easier for women to do so. I'm not going to say that children can't thrive when both parents work outside the home, because we all know adults who raised with two working parents who are doing just fine.
But I believe we have lost is the focus on the family. In a traditional family, there is a wife on the home front caring for children and a husband to go out into the world as provider and, as needed, protector. If a modern, family still has someone to carry out these roles (regardless of who does it), I believe the family is still being served.
But, as a society, we are now outer-directed. How the children are cared for often falls out of the needs of the adults. My brother (whose wife did not work outside the home and whose children went to parochial school) told me about a conversation with a neighbor. The neighbor said he wished they could afford for his wife to stay home and for their children to attend private school. My brother told him, "I don't make any more money than you do. Having a mother at home and a Catholic education for our children is our priority. We don't have two cars, we don't take vacations, our furniture is old. It's all about priorities.)
My own personal belief, especially in our times, is that home is sacred and how a man and woman negotiate their roles in marriage is up to them (acknowledging that if they are evangelical or in an orthodox religion, they are likely to assume the prescribed roles).
But having said that, it seems to me that discussions and disagreements over complementarianism and traditionalism and modernism and whether they are old or new is too much like arguing about the number of angels who can fit on the head of a pin.
Who is the head of household and who is the helpmate is far less important than what happens in the family when the door is closed and it just them.
Re: a husband to go out into the world as provider and, as needed, protector.
But that can cause problems too if the father thereby becomes a distant figure with rather limited involvement with his own children, perhaps because he works too much, or is too tired out to do much at home.
The problem for families began with the Industrial Revolution which took men away from their families for long stretches of time daily. In earlier eras most (married) men worked in the home, or else in fields and pasture outside where wives and older children also worked.
Thanks, that was a long time ago. And though my husband was a jerk in many ways, I was no picnic either. We each wanted the other to be something the other couldn't be.
I am interested in complementarianism. Although I bristle at the thought of it, at the same time, when both parties agree that that is how they will manage their relationship, there is a lot to recommend it. I remember when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated and all my progressive friends were convinced her marriage was like The Handmaiden. And yet, what I saw was a woman who had had a long marriage, had seven children and, yet, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. She could not have done this without her husband's approval and support. This was exactly the opposite of the handmaiden.
Obviously, you are coming from a biblical standpoint and I'm coming from a practical viewpoint, and, in the end, it is people who have to live it and that is practical.
But I think it must be very difficult to be a man today. I think men (in general) have bent over backwards to try to please women who can't be pleased.
I think back to a Harold Robbins book I read many years ago called The Adventurers. It was about a revolution in a South American country and, in the end, the revolutionaries became the oppressors.
I think that is what second wave feminism has done. As a group, women have managed to get everything that first wave feminism fought for and much more. They no longer want to be equal, they want it all. And they are still not happy.
You are absolutely right about White Knight syndrome. By all means, help someone who is in trouble. But that is a thin thread indeed upon which to base a relationship. They should remember the fable about the horse and the scorpion.
Anyway, I do enjoy reading your posts. Even, maybe especially, when I disagree with you. It makes me think.
I believe is fundamentally correct. Most of the people that I have spoken with about this issue try to steer the conversation toward what it is technically right and wrong. The issue is not whether Christians have historically allowed for women to operate in a pastoral role or whether men are the head of their household. The issue is an absence of certain truths in complementarian culture. The most foundational one in my view is that manhood is conferred by other men – I can’t tell you how often I have been to a lecture on manhood, where the speaker asks the women in the audience what they think a real man is. There are plenty of things that can and should be deferred to women. Manhood is not one of them.
"I can’t tell you how often I have been to a lecture on manhood, where the speaker asks the women in the audience what they think a real man is."
Thing is, I actually wouldn't mind that (because, let's be real here, women are affected by how men behave, so they do have a stake in the matter) if--if--it were paired with an equal willingness to ask men what they think a real woman is.
It sounds like you are pointing to the double standard where women get a say over men's behavior, and men must be silent over women's behavior. Fair enough. Double standards do often exist.
But my point is not that women should not have a say in how men behave, this is a fairly obvious aspect of living in community, especially a democratic one (aka other people get a say in how you behave). My point is that a women is not capable of telling a dude how to be a man. I likewise suspect that men are not capable of telling a women how to be a women. There is a reason that "older women are to teach the younger women." We both recognize one in the opposite gender when we see it, but we don't have the capacity to guide the other gender into becoming it.
I think you are hitting a nail squarely on the head-- and a problem we have in our world is the segregation of generations from each other such that older generations really do not have much a role in guiding younger people.
At my church we have had influx of converts, many of them younger men (though we've gotten women, and even some family groups too). Our priest cannot do it all, and he's casually asked the older men who are longtime church members to befriend the younger converts and make sure they do not form isolated cliques which could then go off the rails. We've had at least one problem with a guy overly influenced by manosphere and Andrew Tate thinking and he had was eventually asked to leave due to inapproriate behavior.
Good stuff. In light of this what resources and places do you think we should look for a better answe in regards to Christianity and the differences between men and women?
I'll check it out. While a full blown account is probably something you don't want to get into I think your nuts and bolts early writing men for men might be worth returning in light of the good things you share here. I also find Jordan Peterson an interesting guide on this as his insight is based off of pyscological differences that show up continually between men and woman while acknoleding exceptions exist (women low in compassion, men higher etc.)
That excerpt is an incredible illustration of your point, Aaron. Hunter hits on the loaded, ideological language and assumptions derived from the political moment of the mid-to-late 20th Century and how they fundamentally inform complementarianism.
Any power as domination, authority leads to abuse, hierarchy as fundamentally dehumanizing - all of these assumptions are essentially products of that time period and of a discrete set of post-WWII left-wing philosophers. By taking the entire political and cultural frame of the 1960's for granted, complementarian thinkers blindly import a swath of assumptions that are never grounded, never justified, and entirely unbiblical. This summary is an excellent illustration of why mainstream Evangelical Elite defenders of complementarianism are off base.
The question, now, is the way forward. I'd point to the fact that post-Boomer generations have made strides in understanding the psychology and social dynamics of intersex relations. For example, we have a greater understanding and respect for the truth of Genesis 3:16 because of our ability to articulate phenomena like hypergamy and the psychology of attraction. The complementarian view rests on not just a naive psychology, but an absolute refusal to engage in questions about intention and desire, as well as a borderline-heretical denial of female agency and sometimes sinfulness. You're absolutely right that it's time for our generations to begin shouting out the truths we've discovered and pushing the dialogue forward.
It seems that you are saying that recent (1980's or so) evangelical complementarianism is a thin complementarianism that is a recent invention, and thick complementarianism is the one with a long pedigree. Am I understanding correctly?
I wouldn't say it's limited to thin complementarianism. Listen to John Piper - a thick comp - talk about women in combat. It's clear he is way off. (I wrote about this a bit in newsletter #33 and elsewhere if you want to look it up).
He doesn't believe in it, but 1) he puts 100% of the blame for it on men, in an incredibly vicious way 2) he declines to state whether women who enlist into combat roles are sinning and 3) he declines to affirm that men are better suited than women to be combat soldiers. To be fair, this is a series of web articles, not a formal essay. But still.
I cannot see how "women in combat" is in any way sinful, except insofar as all combat is, sensu strictu, sinful*. Women in combat roles may be unwise (I lean toward thinking so, at least when we talking about physical combat not firing drones and the like from a distance). But things that unwise and imprudent are not necessarily sins. We find the Biblical example of Deborah leading Israel in time of war, and historical examples like Joan of Arc too-- the latter canonized a saint in the Catholic Church.
* Such is the teaching and practice of my church. War may come as a necessary evil, but an evil it is, and except in extemis we require penance of soldiers returning from battle before they may commune again.
Thank you, this article along with your older work and the newly linked articles were very helpful. Your explanation of both positions as Boomer inventions, one a challenge, the other a response, makes a lot of sense. Interested in your thoughts on two topics, the first being how 'equality' is used by both camps, and second being the concept of covenants.
First 'equality'. Both the "blue book" and the "red book" frame their positions in terms of a post-enlightenment definition of 'equality'. Using admittedly a very broad brush, the blue book uses "Equal, but ...", the red book screams "EQUAL in role or women are dehumanised". Looking through the Scriptures, 'equality' is rarely used to compare people, and never to compare men and women. Yet both camps assume a modern definition 'equality' holds and then proceed from this point, so both are firmly grounded in Boomer worldview. Is this something you can comment on?
The second is an understanding of God's redemptive work in terms of Man as priest, king, and prophet acting as God's image bearer within a covenant framework. 10,000 ft summary for those skimming comments who may not know what this is ... a framework of understanding God's creative and redemptive work through the lens of covenants, first God-Adam, then God-Family unit, then God-people group, then God-nation, then God-world. The priestly and kingly roles evolve as the covenants are developed. Though this idea is present in many Bible commentaries, I believe the "blue book" does not use the concept of covenant at all, but relies on 'headship'. The "red book" touches on covenant theology only in footnotes, and then recoils from it like a demon before a crucifix. Based on your research, is this something you can comment on?
I appreciate this post because it appears that I had a wrong understanding of complementarianism. I was operating under the assumption that the term complementarianism covered a range of views, from a Biblically-sound form of patriarchy to near egalitarianism. It would seem from this post and Aaron’s earlier one that I was incorrect. Patriarchy is excluded from complementarianism and is covered under a traditionalist heading. If that is the case, I find myself agreeing with Aaron. That leaves complementarianism as a shifting pattern of views that is moving ever closer to becoming indistinguishable from egalitarianism. As such, it is not viable since it is not based on sound principles.
I maintain that patriarchy is the correct model for society, even if it is rejected by virtually everyone today. The Biblical model of a patriarch is not an unloving martinet, but rather a man who understands his authority and responsibility, as well as his obligation to be loving and considerate. There is no inherent inconsistency there. God himself is both powerful and loving. Authority and love can be in tension at times, but if so, it is only because the man experiencing this tension needs more discernment about the right frame of mind and right course of action.
Re: I maintain that patriarchy is the correct model for society, even if it is rejected by virtually everyone today.
It has been rejected because it does not work (things that do work tend to last), and it was always honored with lip service and often in the breach as circumstances demanded. It's a simple fact that there are more than just a few women who are capable and competent, and more than just a few men who are anything but.
Also, we do have to acknowledge that "In Christ... there is neither male nor female."
Please understand, I am not arguing for modern style feminist equality (other than in matters of civil law). My church is one which only ordains men as priests and bishops (there is some sentiment to restore the order of deaconesses which lasted longer in the East than in the West), but we allow women in other prominent roles such as Sunday school teachers, parish council members and choirs members and directors. Our parishes would collapse if we shut the women out entirely from any public worship and administration role.
One must consider all the verses in the Bible that pertain to a topic to get the complete picture. The Galations 3:28 passage that you quoted refers to men’s and women’s (and all races’) equal share in salvation. It does not speak about roles. If you take into account all the verses that cover roles, evaluate the examples of men’s and women’s roles depicted in the Bible from Adam and Eve onward, and use some very sensible inferences, you will conclude that patriarchy is the correct model. By that I mean that men and women were designed to live that way and problems can be expected if they don’t. Ambition, though desirable within bounds, has always been a snare in following God’s word. Ambition leads people to want to follow their own course, irrespective of Biblical principles. Labor saving devices over the last century uncorked the genie of female ambition and men have lamely responded to it. The result has been devastating.
You say that patriarchy doesn’t work, but it did for thousands of years. The issue today is that people are so thick-necked and blind that they can’t see the trouble feminism has created both in the church and society. I don’t want to take up space here expounding on it, but the examples are legion. Some of the roles in your church that you mentioned, such as Sunday school teachers, are compatible with patriarchy. Women teaching women and women teaching children are perfectly fine. For roles that should be held by men, I think you’d find that men would step up to the plate in your church if their roles were properly recognized.
One must also consider sound rules for interpreting Scripture. And one of those, dating back to the Church Fathers, is that any interpretation which contradicts what we find in the natural world must be rejected lest we depict God as foolish and ignorant in His word. Does the Bible contain verses which imply a flat Earth? A geocentric solar system? A six thousand year old universe? Slavery as morally legitimate? It does, but because we know none of those are true, we must find non-literal interpretations that do fit reality. And we definitely know that women are not inferior as human beings; they are not incapable of leadership-- I pointed out an example from Scripture itself. As such I would suggest (strongly) that "Scripture demand patriarchy" is false doctrine, conditioned by mere culture, every bit as much so as the restrictions and outright misogyny some forms of Islam impose on women are due to Arab culture not to anything transcendent in their own Scriptures (No, I do not believe the Qur'an is Scripture- let's not get distracted by that).
And no, patriarchy did not work for thousands of years. I suggest taking a good long look at history in all its sanguinary, squalid detail. That should be no one's affirmation of godly living!
Re: I think you’d find that men would step up to the plate in your church if their roles were properly recognized.
I noted that we have an all male clergy. What else do you want? No women in the choir? Women in burkas segregated behind screens as in mosques? I suspect you know very little of the Orthodox Church, so please post no Protestant bills on us. Yes, we have our faults and failings-- I will be happy to detail some of that on request-- but it is for us to handle. By the way at my own local church I have recently played a key role in reviving our church men's group which had fallen into abeyance when the former guy heading it moved away. There is a hunger, I find, for male fellowship (and we do have a women's group as well for the women), but I have also been taught that when we step through the Church door we should set aside all worldly concerns and chains and identities and become as Children of God singing His glory alone lest the Devil tempt us with hubris.
You're mentioning too many things that I disagree with for me to respond. I wish there were a way for us to discuss this off-line. I'm not tech-savvy enough to know how we might do that - if you were interested.
Reading such things... such overwrought concern for the details and specifics of how men and how women do or should behave and a "deep" exegisis of previous standards and practices... is, well, bizarre and a bit hilarious. It sounds like dog owners talking about how they believe their dogs used to be trained and cared for and may have had better training regimens or not now.
Skip religion... or, take from it: be nice, be careful with people's emotions and specific lived experience, pay attention both to who you desire and why. And accept failure.
The challenge, as I see it, has less to do with the boomer nostalgia and defense (although that is a significant challenge) and more to do with how to help these young Christians who are embracing a more traditional approach in their marriage and in the world after having been raised by boomers. In some marriages, the husband (or wife but less common) comes to a place of settledness about the more traditional view and the spouse is not on the same page. This can lead to a great deal of friction.
It's the same concept as the chapter Doug Moo wrote in the same Big Blue Book, where he stated that what he was teaching was new to the church. It was that women were ok to teach women theology, which the church had never done on any large scale. Another new concept with no historical backing that just happens to align closer with culture.
A lot of churches have a ladies Bible class during the week, in which a woman teaches a class of women. Are there churches that forbid this practice? Genuinely curious.
I don't know about the word "forbid". There are lots of churches that don't have Sunday School or Bible Classes, and there are ones like mine where the women have a bible study/fellowship meeting and our pastor comes and delivers a message to them and then leaves and lets them fellowship.
I was raised Catholic, became a Mormon at my husband's insistence (turned out he only liked the husband as boss concept, he left me and the church at the same time, I left the church later), then a Presbyterian, now I'm unchurched. I've never been an evangelical.
I enjoy your writings, because I enjoy ideas and discussing them. Unfortunately (for you perhaps), I have subscribed and can now comment.
I think part of the problem of discussing complementarianism or, in fact, to try to define pretty much anything about male-female relationships is that you are lost in the thicket about three steps in. And it cannot be discussed in a "pure manner," as the outside forces of the times you live in must, by necessity, encroach.
I did read Newsletter #33 and found it very interesting, but wanting. Let me say I used to be a liberal feminist and would have argued that woman could do anything a man could do. I've grown up since then. I'm still a feminist to the extent that I believe men and women have equal rights under the law, but the idea that women should have more rights is ridiculous. (My son phrases it thus: feminists want to be able to do everything a man does, without having to everything a man must.) And men's and women's roles within their families is simply not my business.)
Anyway, on women in the military. Often, arguments against allowing women in the military or in combat are based on protecting women. As an explanation, this is hogwash. Women have never been protected in war. In medieval times, knights went off to fight the war, leaving women home to raise the family and deal with whatever problems come along. If the war is in her homeland, her lands may be raided, her crops stolen or burned, her home may be burned, she may be raped or killed, her children may be raped or killed. If the war is not in the homeland, she will be fulfilling every role within the family, including the traditional male roles, all the while being restricted in what she can do because she is female. But somebody needed to go to war and somebody needed to watch the home front; and men were more suited to war and women were more suited to the home front. No one had to say this, it just was.
In the modern military, and in modern business, women are successfully carrying out roles that used to be reserved for men. The old arguments that women aren't suited have been proven false.
But, and this is a big "but," it is the children who have taken the hit. I'm not going to be the one who says that women should stay home and take care of the kids, though I believe it should be easier for women to do so. I'm not going to say that children can't thrive when both parents work outside the home, because we all know adults who raised with two working parents who are doing just fine.
But I believe we have lost is the focus on the family. In a traditional family, there is a wife on the home front caring for children and a husband to go out into the world as provider and, as needed, protector. If a modern, family still has someone to carry out these roles (regardless of who does it), I believe the family is still being served.
But, as a society, we are now outer-directed. How the children are cared for often falls out of the needs of the adults. My brother (whose wife did not work outside the home and whose children went to parochial school) told me about a conversation with a neighbor. The neighbor said he wished they could afford for his wife to stay home and for their children to attend private school. My brother told him, "I don't make any more money than you do. Having a mother at home and a Catholic education for our children is our priority. We don't have two cars, we don't take vacations, our furniture is old. It's all about priorities.)
My own personal belief, especially in our times, is that home is sacred and how a man and woman negotiate their roles in marriage is up to them (acknowledging that if they are evangelical or in an orthodox religion, they are likely to assume the prescribed roles).
But having said that, it seems to me that discussions and disagreements over complementarianism and traditionalism and modernism and whether they are old or new is too much like arguing about the number of angels who can fit on the head of a pin.
Who is the head of household and who is the helpmate is far less important than what happens in the family when the door is closed and it just them.
Re: a husband to go out into the world as provider and, as needed, protector.
But that can cause problems too if the father thereby becomes a distant figure with rather limited involvement with his own children, perhaps because he works too much, or is too tired out to do much at home.
The problem for families began with the Industrial Revolution which took men away from their families for long stretches of time daily. In earlier eras most (married) men worked in the home, or else in fields and pasture outside where wives and older children also worked.
You can't stop the world.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your husband leaving you.
Thanks, that was a long time ago. And though my husband was a jerk in many ways, I was no picnic either. We each wanted the other to be something the other couldn't be.
I am interested in complementarianism. Although I bristle at the thought of it, at the same time, when both parties agree that that is how they will manage their relationship, there is a lot to recommend it. I remember when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated and all my progressive friends were convinced her marriage was like The Handmaiden. And yet, what I saw was a woman who had had a long marriage, had seven children and, yet, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. She could not have done this without her husband's approval and support. This was exactly the opposite of the handmaiden.
Obviously, you are coming from a biblical standpoint and I'm coming from a practical viewpoint, and, in the end, it is people who have to live it and that is practical.
But I think it must be very difficult to be a man today. I think men (in general) have bent over backwards to try to please women who can't be pleased.
I think back to a Harold Robbins book I read many years ago called The Adventurers. It was about a revolution in a South American country and, in the end, the revolutionaries became the oppressors.
I think that is what second wave feminism has done. As a group, women have managed to get everything that first wave feminism fought for and much more. They no longer want to be equal, they want it all. And they are still not happy.
You are absolutely right about White Knight syndrome. By all means, help someone who is in trouble. But that is a thin thread indeed upon which to base a relationship. They should remember the fable about the horse and the scorpion.
Anyway, I do enjoy reading your posts. Even, maybe especially, when I disagree with you. It makes me think.
I believe is fundamentally correct. Most of the people that I have spoken with about this issue try to steer the conversation toward what it is technically right and wrong. The issue is not whether Christians have historically allowed for women to operate in a pastoral role or whether men are the head of their household. The issue is an absence of certain truths in complementarian culture. The most foundational one in my view is that manhood is conferred by other men – I can’t tell you how often I have been to a lecture on manhood, where the speaker asks the women in the audience what they think a real man is. There are plenty of things that can and should be deferred to women. Manhood is not one of them.
"I can’t tell you how often I have been to a lecture on manhood, where the speaker asks the women in the audience what they think a real man is."
Thing is, I actually wouldn't mind that (because, let's be real here, women are affected by how men behave, so they do have a stake in the matter) if--if--it were paired with an equal willingness to ask men what they think a real woman is.
It sounds like you are pointing to the double standard where women get a say over men's behavior, and men must be silent over women's behavior. Fair enough. Double standards do often exist.
But my point is not that women should not have a say in how men behave, this is a fairly obvious aspect of living in community, especially a democratic one (aka other people get a say in how you behave). My point is that a women is not capable of telling a dude how to be a man. I likewise suspect that men are not capable of telling a women how to be a women. There is a reason that "older women are to teach the younger women." We both recognize one in the opposite gender when we see it, but we don't have the capacity to guide the other gender into becoming it.
I think you are hitting a nail squarely on the head-- and a problem we have in our world is the segregation of generations from each other such that older generations really do not have much a role in guiding younger people.
At my church we have had influx of converts, many of them younger men (though we've gotten women, and even some family groups too). Our priest cannot do it all, and he's casually asked the older men who are longtime church members to befriend the younger converts and make sure they do not form isolated cliques which could then go off the rails. We've had at least one problem with a guy overly influenced by manosphere and Andrew Tate thinking and he had was eventually asked to leave due to inapproriate behavior.
Good stuff. In light of this what resources and places do you think we should look for a better answe in regards to Christianity and the differences between men and women?
Someone needs to write that up. But a starting point would be Stephen B. Clark's "Man and Woman in Christ" from 1980.
I'll check it out. While a full blown account is probably something you don't want to get into I think your nuts and bolts early writing men for men might be worth returning in light of the good things you share here. I also find Jordan Peterson an interesting guide on this as his insight is based off of pyscological differences that show up continually between men and woman while acknoleding exceptions exist (women low in compassion, men higher etc.)
That excerpt is an incredible illustration of your point, Aaron. Hunter hits on the loaded, ideological language and assumptions derived from the political moment of the mid-to-late 20th Century and how they fundamentally inform complementarianism.
Any power as domination, authority leads to abuse, hierarchy as fundamentally dehumanizing - all of these assumptions are essentially products of that time period and of a discrete set of post-WWII left-wing philosophers. By taking the entire political and cultural frame of the 1960's for granted, complementarian thinkers blindly import a swath of assumptions that are never grounded, never justified, and entirely unbiblical. This summary is an excellent illustration of why mainstream Evangelical Elite defenders of complementarianism are off base.
The question, now, is the way forward. I'd point to the fact that post-Boomer generations have made strides in understanding the psychology and social dynamics of intersex relations. For example, we have a greater understanding and respect for the truth of Genesis 3:16 because of our ability to articulate phenomena like hypergamy and the psychology of attraction. The complementarian view rests on not just a naive psychology, but an absolute refusal to engage in questions about intention and desire, as well as a borderline-heretical denial of female agency and sometimes sinfulness. You're absolutely right that it's time for our generations to begin shouting out the truths we've discovered and pushing the dialogue forward.
It seems that you are saying that recent (1980's or so) evangelical complementarianism is a thin complementarianism that is a recent invention, and thick complementarianism is the one with a long pedigree. Am I understanding correctly?
I wouldn't say it's limited to thin complementarianism. Listen to John Piper - a thick comp - talk about women in combat. It's clear he is way off. (I wrote about this a bit in newsletter #33 and elsewhere if you want to look it up).
How is agreeing to have women in combat compatible with thick complementarianism?
He doesn't believe in it, but 1) he puts 100% of the blame for it on men, in an incredibly vicious way 2) he declines to state whether women who enlist into combat roles are sinning and 3) he declines to affirm that men are better suited than women to be combat soldiers. To be fair, this is a series of web articles, not a formal essay. But still.
I cannot see how "women in combat" is in any way sinful, except insofar as all combat is, sensu strictu, sinful*. Women in combat roles may be unwise (I lean toward thinking so, at least when we talking about physical combat not firing drones and the like from a distance). But things that unwise and imprudent are not necessarily sins. We find the Biblical example of Deborah leading Israel in time of war, and historical examples like Joan of Arc too-- the latter canonized a saint in the Catholic Church.
* Such is the teaching and practice of my church. War may come as a necessary evil, but an evil it is, and except in extemis we require penance of soldiers returning from battle before they may commune again.
1 and 2 are just typical white knight weaseling.
But #3 is not consistent with thick complementarianism. He can call himself whatever he wants.