“Dora the Doormat” and other Scary Straw Women of Complementarity
Recently, someone in the twitter world called me an “uber-complementarian.” They threw out the term “complementarian” derogatorily, like an ugly handful of mud – akin to calling someone a “racist,” “fascist,” “sexist,” or something scary like that. I had to smile, since I remember sitting around a table with John Piper and Wayne Grudem and others, wracking our brains to come up with an apt label to describe the historic Christian teaching on gender. Oh how quickly labels turn into stereotypes!
The Historic Christian Position on Gender
Since New Testament times, Christians believed that the Bible taught that God created male and female with complementary differences and roles. There was no word to describe this position, since no one had ever questioned it. But about 50 years ago, feminism changed all that. And by the mid-eighties, when Egalitarians and Evangelical Feminists eagerly jumped on the feminist ideological bandwagon, it was necessary to come up with a label to identify this traditional, orthodox, historic belief. That’s when we came up with the term “complementarian.” It simply means someone who believes that the Bible teaches that God created men and women with equal, yet distinct roles. A complementarian is a person who believes that God created male and female to reflect complementary truths about Jesus.
Straw Women
And that’s when I started to be called a gender traitor. And misrepresented by scary straw women. A straw woman is the female version of a straw man. A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position, knocks that position down, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted. It’s a common, but faulty way to argue against an idea. Anyway, since the term “complementarian” now conjures up such scary stereotypes, I thought it would be fun to parade some of the most popular straw women out across the stage so they could take a bow—and hopefully bow out. Here they are…
Click to continue to read “Dora the Doormat” and other Scary Straw Women of Complementarity.
A Learning Wife 