In the survey I posted on my Instagram, hundreds responded to this question: “Did you ever feel like you were out of place within your prescribed gender role at church? If so, please elaborate on how that looked.”
In each section below, you’ll hear from people who responded to my survey. I have ascribed everyone in this essay a fake name (I didn’t ask for names in my survey) to help delineate each individual response from the one before or after it.
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“I was always viewed as being ‘too much,’ and told that no man would ever want me because I had dreams and aspirations beyond being a homemaker. I didn’t sit idly by and I always spoke my mind. I was constantly told that my behavior was ‘unbecoming.’” - Jenna
“I don’t know, she just seems kind of bitchy.” - me, on Hillary Clinton, talking to my youth group on a Wednesday night at church in 2006.
Oh, high school Mary Catherine.
Calling Hillary Clinton “bitchy” was my own tiny way of saying, “I’m going to curse and say something subversive here, because I don’t like the assumption that, just because I’m a girl, I have to be a ‘lady.’” I don’t know if I even really felt that way about Hillary (I certainly don’t now). But rocking the boat in whatever small, safe way I could felt good and powerful, even if it was ultimately pretty silly.
For me, this was an act of protest. Which, for the record, is ridiculous - my church was very pro-women-in-leadership, as were my parents, so I had no system to buck against. And still - I couldn’t embrace feminism as an idea until my junior year of college, and even then, did it a little begrudgingly. Feminism was a word that didn’t belong in a sentence with “church going girl” or “Southern girl,” for that matter - both huge parts of my identity. It represented aggressive, loud, brash women.
Today, of course, I feel differently about it. Feminism stands alongside Southern and Christian as a profound part of who I am. But the gender roles taught within purity culture (and within society, really) constantly cause us to evaluate: even if women can, there’s always a question about whether women should.
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“I do have a strong personality and a gift for leadership but that was always encouraged. I was on our leadership team in youth group and led other groups. Submission was/is discussed as how a wife should submit to her husband's leadership in marriage, assuming he is leading in accordance with scripture. It has been made clear many times that this is NEVER in reference to women in a hurtful/abusive relationship and is never in a demeaning or overpowering way.” - Cindy
Complementarianism is “the idea that there are two distinct genders that have equal worth in God’s eyes, but very different rules, responsibilities, and expectations here on earth: The man is to be undeniably masculine, even as he practices patience and understanding as a leader, whereas the woman is to be irrefutably feminine and to lovingly consent to and support the leadership of the man” (Linda Kay Klein, 62).
Though this term was new for me in doing this research, I was deeply familiar with its execution. Growing up, my first two long-term boyfriends (3 and 4.5 years, respectively) both attended the same Church of Christ in Decatur. I spent a lot of time in that church and around the idea of complementarianism, which showed up in pretty obvious ways, but is kind of all over the place if you’re looking for it.
Cindy’s quote above reflects the goal of a healthy complementarian lifestyle: a man, led by God, leads his wife and household; a woman, following a godly male lead, leads a life alongside him - not unequal to him, but decidedly different in purpose. Within each role is a deeply understood set of gender prescriptions about the traditionally Christian male (strong, honorable, magnanimous, wise) and the traditionally Christian female (beautiful, humble, kind, nurturing).
Complementarianism is evident in both protestant and Catholic churches, no matter how progressive. In the United Methodist Church, where I grew up, women are allowed in every position (all the way to the top - the Bishop of the UMC in the United States is a woman), but still experience massive gender discrimination. No matter how liberal the church, women in leadership positions almost inevitably ruffles someone’s feathers because the idea that men should lead is tacitly ingrained in many of us.
More obviously, many evangelical denominations don’t allow women in higher-level leadership - certainly at the preaching level, but as far-reaching as Sunday School or bible study classes. Doing so would buck against the norms set up by complementarianism: women shouldn’t be in leadership positions that give them authority over men in any setting.
In portions of the evangelical community, like the Church of Christ, the concept of gender separate-ness is taken to extremes: because of the implicit doctrine that women must never preside over men, if a boy as young as 8 chooses to get baptized, he could no longer participate in mixed-gender Sunday School or bible lessons taught by a woman. Getting baptized, which would effectively make him “beyond the age of innocence,” and, in essence, go from a spiritual boy to a spiritual man, would cause the formerly acceptable female Sunday School teacher to be rendered problematic. In those cases, the female teacher would either have to be replaced by a male, or the student would have to be moved out of the class.
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“I am female, but I was always very outspoken and questioned authority a lot (still do, hard enneagram 8 here). I was told I wouldn't make a good "Christian Wife" and that my career dreams (knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I was little) would fail because it was a man's world.” - Rhea
A particularly intense example of how complementarianism plays itself out in culture is evident at Lads to Leaders/Leaderettes, a convention held in many cities across the country, often on Easter weekend, that brings together thousands of young people from different Churches of Christ and offers competition-based activities to promote biblical familiarity, leadership skills, etc.
One survey respondent wrote in specifically about this event, and I’ll let her take it from here:
“We (the youth group) were involved in competitions within the Church of Christ—bible reading, song leading, etc. Men were not allowed to attend anything where women were leading worship. I remember being second place nationally in my age group in song leading (stay jealous) and being devastated that the men in my family, specifically my father, brother, and boy cousins, who I was always closest to, couldn’t see me win. When I converted to the Episcopal church, I was allowed to be an acolyte and actively participate in the service. I was ecstatic and was “serving” at almost every service from the time I was 14 until I was 18.” - Lee
Another response about Lads to Leaders came shortly after:
“Our congregation was/is involved in a regional conference-type event that happened yearly. The conference is/was geared to children ages 5-18, and tried/tries to create an environment in which youth from different congregations can compete in certain events- speech, song leading, you get it. At this conference, if a girl child participates in speech, even your very own five-year-old girl child, Dad cannot watch her give it/compete. Or brothers. Grandfather. Zero penis. [No] men at all. Because....that's women teaching men in the church and we just can NOT have that.” - Hannah
I can speak directly to this because I actually competed in the debate competition at Nashville’s Lads to Leaders in high school - no men were allowed to watch us compete (including my debate partner’s dad and my boyfriend), though we advanced and ultimately took first place. (That there was a humble brag.)
Hannah continued:
“Ladies (at church) were expected to be in charge of young children, committees, bridal teas, baby showers, cleaning baptismal garments, and taking food to the sick folk. And honestly, no man was ever mean or rude or went out of their way to throw their proverbial weight around. Not to say there have never been those, or weren't those then, that have, but in my own personal experience it was just sort of the natural state of being.”
The last part of Hannah’s answer, where she talks about how no one ever “threw (his) proverbial weight around” is noteworthy to me because it paints a clear picture of how this sort of dynamic is perpetuated. If everyone feels valued within their prescribed place in the structure of a church, then what’s the problem?
Is it possible to see value in a system that also, in the end, caps what we teach our daughters about their own leadership potential? How do you answer the questions of a 5-year-old girl who asks why her father isn’t allowed to watch her shine?
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“I am definitely assertive with strong leadership skills and during my years in the church, I was never not in a leadership position. I taught Sunday school, sang in both the choir and as a worship leader, and was even given the opportunity to speak in front of the congregation a couple of times. If there were people telling me I needed to “submit” to anyone, I wasn’t listening!” - Rachel
It would be a mistake to assume that women who believe in and abide by complementarianism are weak, subservient, or simple-minded. Some of the strongest, most assertive women I know have learned to flex their leadership muscles in churches that promote ideals of gender separate-ness, and that may be part of the reason they have such powerful leadership skills to begin with: instead of competing with boys and men for the spotlight, they were given their own stage.
I got to chat by phone with an inter-generational buddy/hero of mine who we’ll call Melissa - an undeniable leader with a sharp sense of humor and knock-your-boots off writing skills, who also subscribes to complementarianism. She and I differ politically and doctrinally on lots of things, but we share in common a streak of outspokenness. Here’s what she had to say about complementarianism:
“Sometimes I wonder, am I a fraud? As a Southern Baptist, on its face, I believe in complementarianism - in the home, at least, I believe God has given...not unequal roles, but slightly different roles. On the one hand, our home functions that way because my husband is the breadwinner. But at the same time, in my own life, I have a husband who is pre-programmed...to esteem me, consider me...and I know in lots of complementarian homes and churches, that just ain’t the case.”
When I asked her if she’d ever been negatively impacted by her big personality as it pertains to her gender role, especially as a young adult, she said:
“I can’t ever say that anyone said to me, ‘You need to hush and sit down,’ but there was a lot of talk around me about the roles of women - enough that I knew that there was only so far I could go with certain things before I would run into that buzzsaw.”
We talked a little longer about how the current climate of feminism and political promotion of women as leaders has impacted the Baptist church’s view on gender roles. Melissa acknowledged that there’s a lot of turmoil, and shared this story with me:
“There’s a massive internal debate raging about it right now. You have a lot of millennial pastors who’ve grown up in a world where professionally and civically, they’ve been raised to think of women as their peers. They find it utterly awkward to look at a woman and say, ‘You can’t teach this class because there are some men in it.’
I have a high view of scripture and believe that it’s specific about ordination and pastoral ministry, and that that is something that is reserved for men. But I do not at all buy into this idea that women are never to speak or teach or lead in front of men. When our long-time Sunday School teacher had to step back...he came to me and asked me if I would fill in. He had heard an audio tape of me teaching. He said, ‘You’re the person, will you do this?’ I said, ‘I’m happy to do this, but I know the Baptist faith and message well enough to know that this could not go well with some people. I’d like an assurance that no one is going to have a problem with this.’ I stood up and taught that class week after week that was populated with no fewer than 8 deacons in our church.”
Eventually, a young male pastor came to her to express his discontent with her new role. She ultimately agreed with him that a man would’ve been the preferable choice and said to the pastor:
“It’s a funny thing - none of the men in that class had studied the word as much as I had in the decade prior to that, and none of them were equipped. So who failed complementarianism there? I’m all for staying in my lane, but if you abdicate yours, I’m not going to let the sheep go unfed.’”
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“While I had female role-models I looked up to, I more often found myself wanting to look like and be like boys, which really started ramping up in high school where I was a theatre kid and played mostly male roles, and dressed almost exclusively as male characters. Nowadays I've been transitioning in earnest for about five years, and have been one hormone replacement therapy for roughly 3 of those, and had a double mastectomy in March 2019.” - Taylor
Of course, the elephant in the room is comprised of all the people who don’t fit into a prescribed gender at all. What if your sexual orientation, from the beginning of your life, precludes you from ever feeling at home in the church because what you’re taught is that being a Christian means being a straight, cis-gendered male or female?
I won’t presume to speak for the people who’ve had these experiences, beyond saying that this facet of complementarianism can’t be cleaned up or “done right.” There is simply no space for genderqueer, gender non-comforming, or gender non-binary people within its structure, and because of that, if you identify as anything other than traditionally male or female, you’re receiving the message in a complementarian church that the family of God does not have room for you. The pushback here would be that a conservative reading of scripture doesn’t allow for anything but traditionally heterosexual male/female relationships, and that the exclusionary nature of that reading is reflective of God’s design for men and women within marriage.
I wish to both represent that opinion as objectively as I can and also add as a personal and editorial comment that I find anything that is exclusionary about church to be against the very heart of God.
If all you want to be seen as is “good,” in the eyes of your church family and your Creator, the idea that the very fabric of who you are is unacceptable right from the start is harrowing. And if you’re trying that to be true to who you are, yet still welcomed into your chosen house of God, it means you must be driven into secrecy. People who responded to my survey who had this experience spent years unwinding the lessons the church taught them about their own lack of worthiness or place.
By the time I came out, I was Episcopalian, and my church is affirming so it was a nonissue. I know I haven’t had it as bad as some have. It took me a long time to not hate myself for experimenting with my sexuality and gender identity, to allow myself to enjoy sex and to be interested in both learning about it and doing it. I was suicidal for a long time because I would feel like it was okay and then I’d lay in bed at night wondering if my natural state would send me to hell. I’ve never shaken the feeling of being rejected by my family. My wife’s family has always treated me as one of their own family and they love on me and cherish me, and it makes me sad to think about how my relationship with my family could have been if I had conformed to their expectations. But in the end, my life is full and joyous and I get to love the person God made for me and I get to enjoy being who I believe God wanted me to be. That is what I find so comforting when I am reminded of my family relationships. And not all of my family relationships are bad. They are all mostly civil to my wife and I. I guess I was just raised in such a tight-knit family that I expected more than civil. I expected deep and boundless love, and that’s just not a realistic reality for my family given the circumstances. And I hope to be okay with that someday. - Lee, who identifies as genderqueer and is now married to a trans woman
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At my home church in Decatur, the youth take over the service for one Sunday a year. In 2005, I gave the sermon. I remember writing it, rehearsing it, going over it and over it to make it exactly right. I felt so proud, so energized - it was one of the purest moments of purpose I’ve ever had, not because it was about me, but because I felt like I was being used for something. My dad, brother, and grandfather were in the congregation that day. Just a year later, I would be standing in a room at the Opryland Hotel, working toward winning the debate prize at Lads to Leaders, while my boyfriend stood in the hall and prayed for us.
There will always be congregations - entire denominations, even - whose doctrine and politics promote complementarianism. Many of the people I love most subscribe to it and feel healthy within it, and that very fact keeps me from passing a judgment on the idea itself - it would be disrespectful and presumptuous of me to do so. Melissa’s existence and her role in the world prove that there are perfectly healthy ways to exercise this principle which promote women and their views, leadership, and skills.
What I can say from reading the 240 responses that were submitted to me about this very thing is that the practice is widely varied in its execution, sometimes lifting women up and celebrating their gifts at every turn, and other times communicating to them even as children that their gifts and talents (within the walls of the church and in the world at large) are only for the benefit of their female peers. Played to its fullest and most dangerous extreme, the latter notion gives women the impression that men will always have the final say and hold the cards for them - even when those men, contrary to Cindy’s quote above, aren’t living a godly life.
I am sorry to report that the power dynamic encouraged by complementarianism gone wrong leads to oppression and sometimes sexual violence, and that’s what we’ll talk about next week. It’s gnarly stuff, but it’s worth your time. And really, we have to look closely to ask: what are we teaching our daughters about what they deserve?
See you there.