Are we ashamed of being complementarian?

“Hi. I’m Dave and I’m a complementarian.”

There are some kinds of theological labels that feel like they need to be confessed in some quarters in the same way that you might own up to being an addict.  The implication of course is that the label identifies something that you should be embarrassed about, a problem that you might want to address

Fran Kirby and Graham Nicholls have picked up on that kind of feeling concerning complementarianism, hence the opening statement in my article.  Writing for Evangelicals Now, they say:

“We have noticed recently that some complementarians have a tendency to downplay their position – either that or they are inclined to apologise for it, to over-compensate for it, or to try and work around it by creating ministry titles and roles.”

They then go on to identify a couple of reasons as to why this might be so including  cultural pressure with complementarianism seeming to clash with a society that embraces feminism and a broader commitment to equal rights.  Additionally they observe that there is a legitimate and understandable concern not to be seen to be promoting toxic and unhealthy attitudes to gender. They then go on to suggest that the issue is a live one and complementarianism is rooted on sound Biblical teaching.  These are good reasons to encourage complementarians to be confident in owning the label. 

The advice and encouragement they offer is helpful and healthy.  Now, I cannot speak about the specific concern they have because it is a little bit vague.  It would be helpful to know who they are thinking of when they talk about some complementarians.  I don’t know if complementarian preachers and teachers have been apologising for it and I don’t know what is meant be “over-compensating”.  Fran and Graham in their roles for Affinity though will have a better overview of what is happening around and among reformed, complementarian church contexts than I do though. 

I also have question marks about what they mean by saying that some “try and work around it by creating ministry titles and roles.”  I hope that we do not perceive roles like children’s and family workers, women’s workers and such like as attempts to get around our complementarianism.  Our current church is part of a collective of churches that share a number of employees together including an operations manager.  She (for the post holder is female) overseas a number of important areas of church life for us from finance through to safe guarding.   She is in post on merit because she is the best person to be doing those things, there are no genuine occupational requirements for the role to be male that I am aware of.     I’m sure Fran and Graham will be able to clarify what they meant by this. 

As I said at the start, I am a complementarian and I say that not as a confession and not as an apology because I hold the position by conviction.  I still consider it best to use the term, it provides enough short hand, especially in academic contexts for us to work out where people sit in the debates over marriage and leadership.  At the same time, I probably would be less concerned with using the term in the life of the local church.  I think that the term can come with some baggage that can make it harder for us to shepherd well and coney what we believe.  I prefer instead to talk about the church as a family and the types of people and roles that we want to see in a healthy family.

Not only that but I’m convinced that the problem people have is not that they are uncomfortable with the label but that they are uncertain about what it means, they are uncertain about what  believe on those issues and there are uncomfortable with what they believe to be the position and certainly with how it is articulated by the most prominent voices.

Part of the problem is captured in Fran and Graham’s opening paragraph.  They write:

“Egalitarian” and “complementarian” are broad categories. However, they do sum up a primary distinction between those who believe that leading and preaching in the church can be a role for either men or women (egalitarian) or those who, like us (Fran Kirby and Graham Nicholls), believe that the church should reflect the household by reserving particular leadership roles for men (complementarian).

The problem is that their chosen definitions for egalitarians and complementarians don’t do justice to the breadth of the categories. Further, because the categories are by nature broad and because we are probably dealing with a continuum, that the categories may overlap in places and a complementarian may at times find themselves closer to some egalitarians than some complementarians and vice versa.

I wonder if it might be better simply to say that the distinction between the broad categories is between those who see a gender distinction that particularly affects the ordering of authority roles and those who do not.   This is important because

1. Many egalitarians would recognise that there are gender distinctions so that we are not simply interchangeable.
2. Many complementarians would be happy for women to lead in a range of contexts in the church and some would be happy for women to preach as well.
3. Some complementarians would question whether “leading” and “leadership” are the best words to convey the idea of headship.

If you are interested in pursuing some of these issues further, then you might find this article here and this one here to be a helpful starting point.  I think that the best way to encourage complementarian confidence is for us to better understand and articulate what we do and don’t mean by the term.