Abuse-proof theology

A few notes on complementarians

I posted this meme in response to the persistent framing of complementarianism as sponsoring abuse. There are a few reasons I think it is important to get clear on why this framing is not only unhelpful but something to be actively avoided.

Complementarianism argues that the genders have complementary but different roles when it comes to both public and private life. The roles are hierarchically related- men holding authority in both public and private spaces. It is not difficult to see why claims that complementarianism fosters abuse follow from this system. If women are taught to be subservient to men, a system will arise that teaches women to subsume all of their desires, preferences, and needs to the demands of men in their lives.

The reason I continue to object to the (seemingly obvious!) claim that complementarianism fosters abuse is two-fold; first, I think it’s a bad argument logically, but second, and increasingly important, I think the argument that a method of thinking about gender aids and abets abuse creates a correlation that will become entrenched and so unimpeachable. When the pathway towards accusation of abuse is seen as a one-way street, claims made of abuse become increasingly nonnegotiable. They become the logical and even necessary outcomes of theological systems that themselves are benign. To claim that a theological system is false, unbiblical, or damaging is one thing; to make it complicit with abuse is another entirely.

Complementarianism itself sets a clean line between men and women and orders their relations hierarchically. It closes some ecclesial roles to women on these grounds. It is critical that this is seen as an earnestly held disagreement and not in itself abusive- there is nothing inherently damaging about disagreeing regarding whether women should be ordained. Though I personally think this is a faulty deduction, I do not think it cuts against my personhood or value as a woman. This would make ordination a metric for personhood or human value, which it is not. Additionally, the view that men have a role that is hierarchical to women should provide protection to women- if men truly hold a divine authority over women and children, even a very limited one, this extends to ensuring that abuse is immediately corrected. I can hear the objections to this even as I write it, but as a woman (and a strong one, at that), it just seems logical that this would pertain. All that to say, complementarian theology has within itself the resources to combat abuse, full stop.

It’s the second line of thought that increasingly bothers me. The idea that a direct line can be drawn between a theological system and abuse makes it almost mandatory that the theological system in question is eliminated. If complementarianism enables abuse, then there is simply no good reason to allow it to remain. The elimination of this thought system would become vital to eliminate abuse and promote women. This sort of thought-policing will do absolutely nothing either to prevent abuse or to further inquiry. It will simply make some ideas “dangerous”. It will weaponize certain readings of Scripture. And it will mandate others. This is its own form of fundamentalism, and I am set against fundamentalisms in all its forms.

I’ve been spending some time with Jacques Ellul and his idea of “technique”. Boiled down, “technique” for Ellul is the idea that there is a “best possible way” to act for an end. This has implications beyond technology to theology, as well- for when we think that there is a “best possible way” to prevent abuse, we weaponize ideas and turn men into means. If I have one driving concern in my own work these days, this is it. For when man becomes a means, he is truly beyond redemption. Tools, after all, cannot be redeemed. They can only be used and then discarded.