Tag: Complementarianism

Why submission in the comp/egal debate is actually about boundaries (and warrants comparison with kink)

By ChristineThis post is Firelight content.

Picture of a branch with a bright red rope around it, tying a double coin knot, with the words: Why submission in the comp/egal debate is actually about boundaries (and warrants comparison with kink) workthegreymatter.com

(You can watch this post on YouTube.)

Complementarians, egalitarians and kinksters are three groups of people who all frequently talk about submission in the context of a sexual relationship but using different words with different meanings.

  • The kink community (sex positives who are into BDSM) talk about D/s, a shorthand for domination and submission. (Click here for why I write about BDSM.)
  • Complementarian Christians talk about the servant-leadership of husbands and the wifely submission of—well, wives.
  • Egalitarian Christians, on the other hand, talk about mutual submission.

Each group explicitly says that it doesn’t support abuse, but each one also says that either or both of the other two groups normalise abuse. So how did that happen? Continue reading Why submission in the comp/egal debate is actually about boundaries (and warrants comparison with kink) →

What exactly is this ‘preaching’ MacArthur speaks of, that he says it’s categorically beyond all women?

By ChristineThis post is Sunlight content.

Picture of a closed black Bible resting on an ornate lectern, with the words: What exactly is this 'preaching' MacArthur speaks of, that he says it's categorically beyond all women? workthegreymatter.com

John MacArthur was recently asked what he thought of Beth Moore. In addition to telling her to ‘go home’, he said: “There’s no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher – period – paragraph – end of discussion.” (Video here.)

[For those less familiar: if you want a flavour of the more recent controversy around Beth Moore, try reading this Church Leaders article from May 2019: Beth Moore Has Had Enough of ‘Sinful’ Evangelical Misogyny. John MacArthur is on Wikipedia here.]

This ‘no case that can be made biblically’ statement has got me scratching my head a little. I mean…

Before Zelophehad’s daughters, there was no scriptural case for daughters inheriting. (Numbers 27:7-11) Continue reading What exactly is this ‘preaching’ MacArthur speaks of, that he says it’s categorically beyond all women? →

When we don’t explain the Trinity, the gospel gets ugly (especially for wives)

By ChristineThis post is Firelight content.

Book The Meaning of Marriage Tim and Kathy Keller

Last week, I met up with a good friend, also a blogger, whose areas of interest overlap with mine particularly in regard to consent and feminism. Though she’s not a Christian, a few months ago I had asked if she would read chapter 6 of Tim and Kathy Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2013). For those less familiar, this is where Kathy Keller squarely sets out her complementarian theology and how she found joy accepting the ‘divinely assigned’ role of her gender by submitting to her husband Tim.

I asked my friend Amy to read it because I wanted a second opinion. I felt Kathy sounded eerily like a woman who’d been conditioned to believe she was a ‘submissive’ in the BDSM sense, even though she wasn’t one – much like Ana in Fifty Shades of Grey (click here for what I mean by ‘BDSM’ and ‘submissive’).

Amy had been through an abusive 24/7 dominant/submissive relationship and she blogs regularly about BDSM, so I was interested to know her thoughts. Also, as someone who isn’t in the church, and who hasn’t exited the church, she didn’t have any theological axes to grind.

I got a flavour of her reaction when she messaged me the day before we met up:

So… it’s okay that my notes on this book contain a lot of RAGE CAPS, right? 😀

When we met she read her comments to me a little hesitantly, in case she was being too scathing in her criticisms. She needn’t have worried. From my perspective it was satisfying to hear her name several of my key complaints against this chapter and complementarianism in general.

But what surprised me was her take on the Trinity.

Continue reading When we don’t explain the Trinity, the gospel gets ugly (especially for wives) →