views and thoughts on topics, especially ones pertaining to christianity – with an emphasis on how most christians either ignore or discriminate against unmarried christians – and how christians have turned marriage and parenting into IDOLS and how there is no true support for sexual purity, virginity, or celibacy among christians – this is a blog for me to vent; I seldom permit dissenting views. I don't debate dissenters ————-
What Should You Do If A Pastor Ever Tells You to Repent of Your ‘Whiteness’ (or If Your Pastor Points Women to Biblical Womanhood, Wifely Submission, and Gender Complementarianism)?
Please note I am not a supporter of any and all pastors or all their views that the editorialist excerpted in this post below mentions.
I do oppose CRT (Critical Race Theory) because it’s divisive, anti-American, pro-Marxist, there is no room for grace of permanent forgiveness to it, and it upholds reverse racism and perpetuates racism, and so far as the pastors quoted below object to CRT, I probably would agree with most of their anti-CRT arguments.
So far as “reverse racism” is concerned – yes, it is entirely possible for a “POC” (person of color) to be racist, because racism is not just about “who holds control” in a culture, but is also an attitude or mentality.
There is no need to shame White people for being White, or Asian people for being Asian, if you’re attempting to discuss what you see as any residual racism against Black people in the United States.
My one small quibble with the views of some of the men mentioned is where one says that a Christian should “filter everything through the Bible.”
That sounds good, so far as it goes, but Christians – even conservative ones who believe the Bible to be holy, inerrant, and inspired – cannot always agree on what the Bible says, what it means, or how it should be applied.
What Should You Do If a Pastor Insists You Define Yourself by Biblical Womanhood, Which is Based on His Incorrect Gender Complementarian Views, Which Are Based on a Flawed Biblical Hermeneutic?
A lot of the anti-CRT pastors, who also happen to be proponents of Christian Gender Complementarianism, should consider that they also basically tell women that womanhood is sinful, that women aren’t quite as smart as men, so all women should be under male headship
– these anti-CRT pastors point women to their, the male pastor’s, biblical interpretations of “biblical, complementarian womanhood,” rather than encouraging women to look to Jesus of Nazareth or to look in themselves for their purpose and identity.
Complementarians believe that despite Christ’s sacrifice at the cross that women are STILL under the curses from The Fall, mentioned in the book of Genesis.
Women are supposed to find salvation in Christ and Christ alone and sanctification via the Holy Spirit – not through marriage, or through male leadership, wifely submission, or through carrying out gender roles.
Complementarianism is fundamentally at odds with biblical Christianity, the Bible, the Gospel, and with God.
Single, Virgin Women Do Not Have Another Standard by Which to Be Saved, Contra Complementarian Group CBMW
The Bible does teach that people should remain virgins until marriage, but oddly, some Christians do things like omit men from this teaching (as though virginity applies only to women).
In this case, they seem to be conflating being single, and a virgin, with receiving salvation, as though there’s some other standard by which others are saved. Christians also frequently make much too much out of the marriage analogy, in which they pretty much seem to suggest that a person has to be married (and having sex) to truly know God or be in relationship with God.
The Biblical Personhood blog reproduces this quote from a Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood resource:
[from complementarian, CBMW, material:]
48. How can a Christian single woman enter into the mystery of Christ and the Church if she never experiences marriage?
[Their answer promotes offering your virginity to God. Nothing about becoming a Christian.] – CBMW, “Fifty Crucial Questions, Question 48
… The mystery of Christ and the church, likewise, is not about marriage or celibacy. Jesus loved you – male or female, single or married or divorced or widowed – first. Know you are loved by God, love God back, experience God’s love, and see how it never ends, and how it changes you to live for Him.
Teen-Raping Texas Pastor Gets life in Prison After using the Bible to Justify Abusing Women – Equally Yoked is BUNK
Far below is a link to a page about a pastor who raped girls in and from a church. Notice in the article how other church-goers who went to church with this guy described him as being “very nice” or as being a “good Christian.”
My Christian parents brought me up to think if I wanted to marry, that the best place for me to meet potential spouses would be at a church. I suppose the assumption with that is that the type of men who attend church regularly are going to be “safer” or better moral choices than the type of dude you might meet at a bar.
However, in the last few years of running this blog, I have seen (Link): so many news storiesof church-going Christian men who get arrested for abuse or perversion, I now have my doubts about that.
Secondly, single women out-number single men in churches. I know that every church I’ve been to in person, I’ve been one of the few singles there. The only men in attendance and 80 years old, which would be fine if I were 80 too, but I’m not, and May December relationships (Link): make me want to barf. (I do not want to date or marry dudes who are over 5 or 10 years my age.)
I’ve done blog posts before about Pat Robertson, who has criticized women on his Christian TV show, for having married jerks, perverts, or abusers. Robertson seems to think women should be able to instantly spot if a man is a jerk, creep, loser, or abuser from the start. He’s wrong and an idiot about this.
The fact is, as this article below shows, even other adults who go to church with these kinds of deviant men are not aware of what a creep or pervert these guys are.
These are not people who are dating the guy – they are simply sitting next to him in church every week. If they cannot spot the perverts among them easily, why do Christian conservative men like Robertson think women who date men should be any better?
The Conservative, Christian Case for Working Women by J. Merritt
Some of the few complementarian Christians I follow on social media did not like this article at all. They seem to find any criticism of their position, or any suggestion of other options for women, to be a great affront to complementarianism itself, or to God or the Bible. Why do they feel their movement is so fragile?
Christian women who reject complementarianism – some of them may go by various labels, such as “Jesus feminists,” or “egalitarians,” or “mutualists,” don’t seek to limit women the way complementarians do. Non-complementarian men and women do not mind if a woman chooses to be a stay at home wife and mother.
However, complementarians do not truly afford all women, and especially not non-complementarian, women this same courtesy.
Much complementarian content will pay “lip service” to respect a woman’s right to choose to work outside the home and so on, but often times, from what I’ve seen, that very same site, or authors on some other complementarian site, will cry and clutch their pearls in sorrow or grief that more and more Christian women are choosing to stay single, not have children, and/or to work outside the home.
Notice that in this article, at one point, complementarian Owen Strachan, who is a spokes-head for complementarian group CBMW, comes right out and says egalitarianism, or any departure from complementarianism, is supposedly a sin.
Egalitarians are all about giving women more choices, telling them to go after their dreams, and doing whatever they feel God has led them to do.
Complementarians really chaff at that. Complementarians want women in boxes. I wrote a much older post saying that (Link): this is one reason of several I really have been struggling with holding on to the Christian faith. I was raised in a Christian family that bought into many of these complementarian ideas, and it’s not something that worked out well for me in my life.
An evangelical Christian and avowed feminist argues that God intends every woman to work.
The final episode of Leave it To Beaver aired in June of 1963, but many conservative Christians still promote a vision of womanhood reminiscent of June Cleaver. When Tobin Grant, political-science professor at Southern Illinois University, analyzed General Social Survey data from 2006, he found that nearly half of evangelical Christians agreed with this statement: “It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.”
Forty-one percent agreed that “a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works.” For these evangelicals, a woman’s place in the world is to get married, bear children, and support her breadwinning husband.
Katelyn Beaty—the managing editor of Christianity Today,America’s largest evangelical Christian publication—has set out to change this notion of gender. Her new book, A Woman’s Place, claims to reveal “the surprising truth about why God intends every woman to work.”
This declaration may surprise many of her magazine’s 80,000 print subscribers and 5 million monthly website visitors. And it may also rouse many of her fellow evangelicals who believe her ideas defy the Bible’s clear teaching, if not qualifying as outright heresy. While Beaty knows criticism may be coming her way, she is making a conservative Christian case for working women.
Woman raised in the Bible Belt by religious parents says she ended up in TWO abusive relationships – because being banned from dating made her ‘ignorant’ about men
(A link to a woman’s testimony about how Christian or religious dating advice as a kid hurt her as an adult is linked to farther below in this post.)
As I’ve written of before on my blog, much Christian teaching about dating, gender roles, and marriage – especially if espoused by Christians who believe in and teach something called “gender complementarianism” – can often leave marriage-minded singles single far longer than they wish, or perhaps permanently.
Christian teaching on dating, while intended to help singles date “safely” (i.e., to prevent pre-marital sex) ironically erects obstacles for singles who’d like to get married.
One problem of Christian teaching about dating and singleness is to teach singles, to teach men and women, to be afraid of each other; never spend time alone with an opposite-gender person, lest it lead to fornication.
Well, the only way to marry is to first spend time with an opposite-gender person (assuming you are hetero), via dating.
If you are a lady, in order to discover if you are compatible with a guy, you need to spend time alone with him on dates, especially if you are an adult. (Group dating is for teens, not people over the age of 21.)
This woman’s testimony I link to farther down this page is yet another example of this situation, of how damaging the usual Christian dating advice and gender complementarianism is to singles, especially women.
The things she was taught growing up by her religious parents – things about dating, modesty, gender roles, etc – caused her relationship problems later in life.
Christian Gender Complementarianism infantilizes women, causes them to be naive, and teaches them it is wrong, unladylike, or selfish to have boundaries and to be assertive.
As you can see in this article, this was certainly a problem for the woman author, Lorens.
When she was confronted with vulgar, strange male clients at her job in a store, she did not know how to assert herself and tell them to shove off – or even if she could do so in the first place.
The Good Wife: How the Cult of Domesticity Still Reigns in the 21st Century
The following mentions Christian gender complementarianism, which is a sexist position held by Christians – some well-meaning – who still harbor unbiblical ideas that make women second class citizens, though they love to argue up one side and down the other they only believe women are inferior in “role, not in worth.”
I have long observed that today’s brand of Christian sexism, called by its adherents “gender complementarianism,” pays no mind to certain classes and types of women, such as never-married, childless women. American Christian gender complementarians think in terms only of married mothers who are middle class or upper middle class. Bear that in mind when reading the content below.
Here are just a few excerpts (please click the link above to visit the page to read the whole thing):
by L. Turner
On the cost—and subtle persistence—of the cult of domesticity.
[The author explains how the Industrial Revolution took men from the homes to go look for work and earn money, which meant that often, the wife stayed at home all day. Previously, men stayed at home and did farm work and so forth. This change – men leaving the house to go to the city to go to work – gave rise to the Cult of Domesticity.
There were four aspects to this cult, one of which women should not receive much of an education, but should stay at home and do laundry and look after children. The other qualities were submission, piety, and purity]
…Women’s magazines and religious literature were two of the primary ways the cult of domesticity was promulgated;…
…The development of the cult of domesticity also leaned heavily on religious principles. It drew especially from a chapter of the Bible…
…Of course, different groups of women had different experiences with the cult of domesticity. Women of color, immigrants, and poor women were largely ignored by the movement. …
…The pressures of the Industrial Revolution and 1950s America have been recycled for our modern area. The notion of the home as the domain of the feminine persists to this day.
…We can also see this battle being waged in contemporary religious circles. Complementarianism—the notion that men and women occupy different but complementary roles in marriage and society—was a direct antecedent of 19th-century thinking about women.
That doctrine still has a foothold among conservative Christians, in local churches and organizations like the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It is rooted in verses like Ephesians 5:23 (“For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church…”), and gained prominence with the rise of domesticity as a virtue.
Complementarianism often looks like a return to 1950s gender roles, and continues to insist in its most extreme forms that women remain at home to raise as many children as they can bear.
The cult of domesticity created a box that stifled women, and continues to do so.
Gender Complementarian Owen Strachan’s “Being Single To Bring God Glory” Essay
The following post contains one or two cuss words – the majority of the post is “clean,” however. Proceed at your own risk if you are a dainty Christian flower who gets the vapors upon seeing crude language.
Owen Strachan, who almost always gets 99% of commentary about gender roles and gender incorrect (he’s also written some (Link):very insulting, (Link): way more insulting, or (Link): weird things about gender roles – Strachan used to be head guy at CBMW, an organization that promotes the bogus gender complementarian view), wrote this page at Patheos about a year ago about adult singleness and giving God glory.
A reminder: I am not a fan of Boundless, one of several reasons is that Boundless laser focuses on 20 something singles ((Link): for example and (Link): for example) but ignores older singles, and some of their writers give horrible or insulting advice to and about singlehood.
After I began pointing out on my blog and under a few of their blog posts, that there are tons of over 30 singles out there, I notice the writers at Boundless began lumping 30 somethings in with 20 somethings, rather than focusing solely on 20 somethings as had been their previous habit.
However, the folks at Boundless don’t seem to notice or care that there is a significant crop of 40 and older (never married) singles in existence, too. It took them a long, long time to catch on to the fact that there are singles over the age of 29.
Returning to the topic of Strachan’s post about singleness. Not all of Strachan’s blog post about adult singles is terrible. I agreed with a few parts of it.
Strachan actually mentions a few of the same points I’ve been bringing up on my blog here in the last 3 or 4 or however many years.
I believe his blog post was written in 2014, but I did not see it until today (August 2015).
Before I paste in a few of the excerpts from his blog post (probably much farther below), the parts I agreed with, I wanted to comment on this “give glory to God” rhetoric that shows up in his post’s title.
Not only does Strachan use the “glory of God” phrase in his posts about singleness, but I saw Challies (another Christian blogger) use the same phrase in talking to a Christian woman in my same situation (over the age of 35, never married, a virgin).
Challies was saying to this lady, under his post (which essentially put down adult virginity), under her comments to him on his post page, that this woman remaining a virgin over her mid 30s and that she was still single was all to “God’s glory.”
Now, I don’t want to spend a long time dissecting this or commenting on it, but suffice it to say, it offends me, annoys me, and hacks me off when Christians trot out this “be single and be a virgin to God’s glory,” or that they insist that being a single virgin is for his glory.
Before I go further with that, I must also note that Strachan has a graphic on his Patheos page that says “Don’t Waste Your Singleness.” Ugh, no. I have written about that cliche here:
This “it’s for God’s glory” is a pat answer, a cliche’ response, and does not really address the heartbreak, frustration, or dashed hope of someone who is past 35 and marriage never happened for them, although they had expected and had hoped to marry (and to have sex).
Christian Gender Complementarians, Target Removing Gender Store Signs, Women and Motorcycles, Social Science Doesn’t Confirm that Men Are From Mars / Women From Venus
I discussed on an older post how, since girlhood, I have really liked motorcycles and still do. I was a tom boy when I was a kid.
I was not into most girly hobbies, but my mother, who was a traditional Christian, tried to pique my interest in girly things by buying me dolls when I was a little girl.
My mother later relented a bit and bought me Evel Knievel toys. I was a big fan of Evel Knievel back in the day, and I loved motorcycles.
Evel Knievel
I still maintain an interest in motorcycles but have never owned one. I was also into other people, things, or hobbies that were considered more boyish.
Should you wonder: I am a heterosexual woman who does not act or look “butch.” I can wear jeans with chucks and turn around and look damn stunning in short skirts and high heels the next. Men flirt with me and ask me out on dates.
Me being interested in motorcycles and things considered boyish since childhood did not result in me becoming terribly unfeminine or a lesbian.
I mention this because I think one reason some Christians assume if they can make little boys and girls adhere to narrow parameters of what they consider “manly” and “womanly” (which is almost always built on secular cultural stereotypes), that they can keep kids from becoming homosexual later in life.
I’ve written a little bit more about some of these subjects in an older post here:
I have discussed before how the conservative, gender Christian gender complementarian approach to gender has been a big turn-off to me, and how it’s one factor of many that makes it difficult to remain in the Christian faith.
Though I will say that Christians who teach and promote Christian gender egalitarianism are a source of encouragement, such as (Link): Christians For Biblical Equality, or (Link): these guys.
I was raised as a gender complementarian – both my parents are Christians who are into traditional gender roles, and my mother encouraged me to be a typical girly girl. (My mother has since passed away.)
For years and years, I felt and believed that the Bible does endorse the Christian gender complementarian view, as is promoted by CBMW (Christians for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood organization. They have a web site. I hesitate to link to their site from my blog. I really hate linking to their site).
As I grew older, I began suspecting that GC (gender complementarianism) is not true, based upon a closer look at the biblical text itself, which has examples in both Old and New Testaments of women, with God’s stamp of approval, leading and teaching men and killing men. I later totally abandoned the GC perspective.
I still remain a right wing, socially conservative, Republican-voting individual who is, by and large, on board with traditional values. Therefore, and contrary to what GCs fear and promote, jettisoning their position on gender is not a slippery slope; it does not always or necessarily turn a person into a liberal, a Democrat, pro-choicer, or a militant secular feminist.
Several days ago, some writer at CBMW, Grant Castleberry, wrote a paper about how Target stores are removing signage that says “Boys” and “Girls” from their toy sections. Here is a link to that page, hosted on CBMW:
(I have disagreed with Tim Fall on a previous topic, but he’s a good egg, and I agree with him more often than not. I certainly agree with him on this Target story)
Target’s move toward gender-neutral toy aisles has us celebrating. But some unhappy people are threatening to boycott the store.
…And after (Link): Breitbart falsely reported that Target would be “getting rid of the words ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ on clothing” in addition to toys, many on Facebook are under the impression that the company will be removing all gender-based signs from its stores. The original post made it clear that keeping gender-based signage for apparel sections “makes sense” due to “fit and sizing differences.” Target has since (Link): reiterated to several customers: “We are not making any changes to our Men’s, Women’s, Boys’, Girls’, or Baby sections.”
…“I have news for [Target] and for everyone else,” he wrote. “God created two different genders.”
Fox & Friends found (Link): a psychotherapist who said that the decision went “overboard” and implied that children might “question what their gender is” if they were taken into a Target store without gender-based signage. The caption on the segment: “‘Sign’ of the Times.” Nothing like some light Second Coming humor to kick off your morning.
(Link): Blaze contributor and self-declared “professional truth sayer” Mike Walsh blamed Target’s decision on “a few hypersensitive, hyperliberal parents” in a provocative post headlined, “Yes, Target, I Do Want My Daughter to Conform to Her Gender.”
Wrote Walsh: “I won’t attempt to defend every gender stereotype or ‘gender norm,’ but I do subscribe to the radical theory that boys and girls are different and distinct from one another in complex, concrete, and important ways, and many of the dreaded ‘norms’ are, well, normal and biological.”
Walsh conveniently lays bare the fundamental internal contradiction in the anti-Target outcry: If gender is a universal, biological, and God-ordained constant, then why do children need cultural reinforcement from a retail chain to figure it out? In the bizarro world of far-right logic, gender is at once the strongest force on the planet and the most fragile.
The God of Genesis may have created male and female but unless Target puts these words on signs for action figures and Barbie dolls, all of His hard work will be undone.
The protests seem to be motivated by the paradoxical fear that children will grow up genderless without Target’s help even though their biology should supposedly guide them into pink and blue aisles without any intervention.
But Target is not attacking gender itself, only the outdated idea that girls and boys should play with certain shapes and colors of molded plastic and not others.
Creepy Editorial from Christian Gender Complementarian CBMW Site Asks “How Many Children Should You Have”
Before I get to the editorial from CBMW, I have a preface.
If you are a man, especially one who considers himself a Christian, you need to understand that the sexist drivel that comes from complementarian Christians -such as CBMW (Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood)- impacts you too, and not always in your favor, because some complementarians equate “true manhood” to being “man who is married with children.”
Christian gender complementarians will tell you that you, a man, are a disgrace to God and to humanity and you are not carrying out your cultural duties, unless you marry and have children.
Not even that, but if you are not living out married life the WAY in which these people teach, they will deem you a “man fail.” (Yes, that really happened, a prominent gender complementarian referred to certain types of married men as being “man fails.” Several blogs and news sites discussed it, like this one.)
Yes, you read correctly. Married men who stay at home to raise the baby while mom holds the 9 to 5 job are deemed “man fails” by some Christian gender complementarians.
You cannot just be married with a child in gender comp land, but you have to also fulfill certain other criteria to be counted, to be deemed acceptable.
Not only do groups such as CBMW promote sexist ideas about women, but they harm men in the process.
I was looking through Twitter today, and came across this, hosted on Christian gender complementarian site CBMW:
In the beginning God said, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth…” (Gen. 1: 28). The blessing of children was given in the context of Eden where God walked with Adam and Eve in uncorrupted communion.
… These words have recently given me pause for thought as my husband and I consider adopting. You see, the research and red tape that has delayed the process, and the departure of our two children to university, seems only to have increased my desire to adopt.I look around our church; I love what I see—large families, children being raised in the fear and instruction of the Lord.
Researchers quizzed pairs of twins over sexuality and number of lovers
Found that the genes that control masculinity also control promiscuity
Findings showed 30 per cent of woman’s sexuality determined by genes
Girls who are tomboys grow up to have more lovers whether they are straight or gay, a study has found.
For it seems the genes that make women more masculine may also make them more promiscuous, researchers say.
The finding helps explain why homosexuality doesn’t die out, even though lesbian couples are not able to naturally have children carrying the genes of each partner.
This is because straight tomboys have more lovers than others – and so the ‘tomboy DNA’ stays in circulation, according to the study carried out by a team from King’s College London.
Researchers questioned almost 500 pairs of twins about whether they were attracted to men or women, how many lovers they had had and about their levels of ‘childhood gender non-conformity’ – if they were a tomboy and whether they preferred to play with boys rather than other girls.
They compared the answers from identical twins, who share all their DNA, with those of non-identical twins, who share only half their DNA.
This showed how important genes are compared with other factors that shape behaviour such as friends and education.
The analysis showed that around 30 per cent of a woman’s sexual orientation is governed by her genes, the Journal of Sexual Medicine reports.
It is thought the other 70 per cent can be explained by everything from peer pressure to conditions in the womb.
50 Shades of Grey and Patriarchy: What Else Did We Expect? From CBE
I came across this the other day via Twitter.
I started a very long post about Christian reactions to the Fifty Shades of Grey (50 SOG) movie – I don’t know if I will get around to finishing it and post it – but one point in my editorial I brought out (or wanted to in a Part 2) is I cannot comprehend why so many conservative Christians are upset by 50SOG.
The 50 Shades of Grey movie and book series echo and support what conservative, Christian gender complementarians teach about women, men, dating, marriage, and sex. The following essay (from CBE, linked to below) explains those parallels a bit more.
A lot of assumptions about sex, dating, women, and marriage that undergird 50 Shades of Grey are also taught as being “biblical” by gender complementarian Christians, so it’s beyond me why so many of them are critical of 50SOG.
Christian gender complementarians teach things such as, women are more easily deceived than men, all women need a “male covering,” a woman is nothing without a man (unmarried and childless women do not matter in complementarian teachings), a man should “call all the shots” in a relationship, the woman should always defer to the man, etc.
Some conservative Christians (including preachers) even teach Christian women that they “owe” their husbands sex, no matter what, and even including performing debased sex acts they may not want to perform if the husband wants those sex acts.
So please, explain to me how Christian teaching on sex, women, control, men, and dating is really that much different from what one finds in 50SOG? As far as I can tell, most Christian teaching about women, sex, dating, etc, is almost identical to aspects of 50SOG.
It is fascinating to read the numerous articles circulating about the just-released film, 50 Shades of Grey, which is based on a wildly popular book trilogy.I am not sure there has ever been an event in which feminists, the BDSM community, and conservative Christian organizations like Focus on the Family have united their voices in mutual disgust.
The concerns of most are that:
The film is “soft porn” and should not be marketed for mainstream consumption
The story glamorizes what psychologists have asserted to be “consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official definition of intimate partner violence — and… perpetuates dangerous abuse patterns.”[1]
There are many articles written by Christians trying to pick apart why it is that so many women, both in and out of the church, are flocking to see this film, after buying 70 million copies of the book (sales divided equally among professing Christians and the American adult population [2][3]).
Secular and religious experts are discussing the repercussions of rape culture, feminism, the innate need for love, and the search for the divine as explanations for the popularity of the books and movie.As I look across American culture in general, and American Christian culture in particular, I am left wondering, “What else did we expect?”50 Shades of Grey is simply a mirror to the experiences of women. Regardless of what side of the church walls they grew up on, women both in secular society and in Christian subculture are consuming the books and film because the underlying ideology of the story is what so many are familiar with, only it has been exaggerated and sexualized in form.
Both in and out of the church, women are regularly fed the message that we are not complete without a man by our side. From the time we start ingesting Disney films, we know that life revolves around finding our prince.
Tabloids and self-help books are filled with titles about how to get a man and how to manipulate him into staying.
The vast majority of secular material on sexuality written for women is about how to make a man want you and how to please him in bed.
Throw in the statistics about how frequently women experience assault (1 out of 5 American women have been sexually assaulted), the discrepancy in income earning (78 cents to the dollar), and the lack of women in leadership (10-20% in most fields) and you end up with a pretty clear case of misbalanced power between men and women. [4][5][6]
In conservative Christianity, the experience is hardly any better.Women living under complementarian Christianity are told regularly that God’s intention for humanity is that men should hold exclusive power in the home and in church. They are the decision makers and the ones responsible for the well-being of the women and children under them.
A Christian woman in the complementarian world is left hoping for a man like Jesus because that is exactly what it takes to guarantee gender hierarchy NOT be abusive.
Please do not understand me to be saying that all complementarians are abusive.
… The Christian complementarian viewpoint is, at its essence, an attempt to redeem the fallen-ness of male authority/female submission.
Complementarians would say, rightly, that 50 Shades of Grey is a satanic twisting of how God intends men and women to relate to one another. The difference is that they would continue to define God’s intended relationship between men and women in terms of authority and submission. As one complementarian writer explained, “Domination is, in essence, Satan’s counterfeit ofhealthy submission.” [7]
The problem is that the basic ideology itself is exactly the same. In the very worst of scenarios, a culture of male-dominated authority leads to horrors like what is depicted in 50 Shades of Grey (and worse). The most perfect possibility that complementarianism can offer is a safe, life-giving relationship resting in the capable and loving authority of a man who is at all times just like Jesus.
Except even the most godly man simply is not Jesus, and does not have the unwavering selfless love or the omniscience required to lead perfectly.
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