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What is Complementarianism?
Challenging Complementarianism: Part One
Christianity has an unfortunate history of sexual discrimination. In recent years, this has been formalised in certain Protestant circles under the guise of something called complementarianism.
In this series, I want to look at the influence of sexual discrimination within the church generally and at complementarianism in particular and look at why it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Complementarianism is word that was invented in 1988 by an organisation called the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The rise of feminism in society and decreasing tolerance of sexism in the church had left quite a lot of people disquieted. So a group of prominent (male) church leaders gathered together with the joint aim of addressing the threat to traditional views of gender roles. They produced something called the Danvers Statement that outlined their position.
In brief, their position was, and is, that men and women are equal before God, of equal worth and dignity, but that God has ordained different roles for men and women. And roles that involve being in charge and leading things are reserved for men.
This could be seen as progress. In previous generations, men were not at all shy in declaring that men were better than women and that…
