Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian

A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate

Lee-Barnewall, Michelle

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781493402045
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

Christianity Today Book Award Winner Regarding gender relations, the evangelical world is divided between complementarians and egalitarians. While both perspectives have much to contribute, the discussion has reached a stalemate. Michelle Lee-Barnewall critiques both sides of the debate, challenging the standard premises and arguments and offering new insight into a perennially divisive issue in the church. She brings fresh biblical exegesis to bear on our cultural situation, presenting an alternative way to move the discussion forward based on a corporate perspective and on kingdom values. The book includes a foreword by CraigL. Blomberg and an afterword by LynnH. Cohick.

Part 1
Gender in Evangelical History

1
Evangelical Women and Social Reform

In order to argue for the need for a new framework, the next three chapters examine some of the historical contours of the evangelical gender debate and how the dominant concerns reflected general cultural ideas. The point is to show how the types of issues that captured the interest of evangelicals corresponded to larger social trends. We will see how the specific concerns and values of a certain period impacted perceptions of appropriate ideas of gender.

The purpose of this section is not to indicate approval or disapproval of a particular view but rather to note its existence and historical context. Furthermore, while each period might contain a variety of thoughts on the topic, the main attention here is on the ideas that dominated the discussion or at least were successful in gaining a substantial foothold so we can consider why they were accepted.1 Also, these chapters are not meant to be comprehensive but rather are intended to demonstrate a pattern of striking similarities between evangelical gender discussions and the cultural context in which the gender debate was formed.

In this way we are interested in the larger contours of the discussion and the overall trajectory. Issues of authority and equality existed throughout these periods but took on different forms and found different levels of acceptability according to how well they fit into these greater concerns. We will note the impact of a general movement from a more corporate concern to an individualistic ethos and also of changing views of family and the home. Thus we will see how the priority of male authority waned in a more pragmatic age that was fueled by the concern to send as many people as possible to the mission field and saw the benefits of women’s leadership in social reform. This study also investigates how, despite the early appearance of arguments for women’s equal rights, the subject was mostly rejected as too focused on the self until it found more fertile ground in a later era that was more accepting of the importance of civil rights. We will note the variety of views on the family and consequently the acceptable type of women’s activity. These views shifted from seeing the entire world as a woman’s home and so her sphere of influence, to a narrowing to the immediate household of the nuclear family, to finding a sharp distinction between home and work that identified a woman’s “role” as including the world of “work” beyond home and family.

In order to illustrate the framing impact of these larger social issues, this section discusses three time periods in American history: (1) the mid-nineteenth century to the turn of the twentieth century, a period dominated by the Victorian ideal of womanhood but one that also produced the first evangelical feminist movement as evangelical women played a major public role in social reform; (2) the post–World War II era of the 1940s–1950s, which saw a reversal in evangelical openness to women’s public ministry and was characterized in large part by a definition of ideal womanhood in terms of marriage and motherhood that reflected to some degree a return to the Victorian model but in a greater sense the home-oriented culture of postwar America; (3) the 1970s, which saw the rise of egalitarianism, the second evangelical feminist movement, which differed from the previous one in its stress on individual “rights” over women’s roles in larger social issues.

This section intends to outline a few significant phases in American evangelical history in order to demonstrate ways in which ideas about gender fluctuated according to cultural shifts and so draw attention to the way in which our framework for the gender debate can be influenced by larger social ideas and concerns.2 The subject of this chapter, the mid-nineteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, has been seen as providing evangelicalism’s first feminist movement, but the movement was also based on very strong ideas about a feminine nature that not only separated women from men but also considered them morally superior.

Consequently, this period provides a unique window into the topic because ideas of gender in this early period did not reflect our contemporary categorization of gender according to “authority” and “equality.” Although these aspects were not absent, they did not dominate the discussion as they would later. Instead ideas about gender for the most part reflected the interests of the era in expediency, the relationship between feminine nature and virtue, and the need for a moral foundation for a rapidly changing country. Perhaps most of all, an overriding corporate perspective meant that women’s domestic nature thrust them out of their immediate homes into the larger “household” of the world.

Women and Social Reform at the Turn of the Century

One of the more remarkable features of post–Civil War America through the turn of the century was the vigorous activity of American evangelical women in social reform and missions. Fueled by a millennialism that led them to believe that their work could help usher in the kingdom of God on earth, evangelical women had major leadership roles in numerous benevolence society and reform movements.3 The work of these women was so pioneering that numerous scholars have connected their activity to the beginnings of the secular4 feminist movement, including the suffrage movement.5 Women also were accepted as preachers by prominent evangelical leaders such as Dwight L. Moody and A. J. Gordon and played key roles in the foreign missionary movement.6

This period is an intriguing moment in evangelical gender relations. The influence of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian ideology created a mix of ideas that assigned women to the domestic realm while simultaneously propelling them into the public arena. While complementarians and egalitarians may argue over, for example, whether women’s place is primarily in the home or whether they should have equal opportunity for public leadership roles, this era saw a blurring of the private versus public distinction precisely because women’s domesticity meant that they had a duty to bring their domestic values to influence the corrupt larger society. Women did not argue for their “right” to public ministry as much as they felt compelled and were urged to act because of their superior moral and spiritual nature.

Women, Virtue, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Gender in Evangelical History
• Part 2: Reframing Gender
• Final Thoughts
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Back Cover