Quick question to Max and Rhester or anyone else who has probbaly come by this term. What do you make of it? request: please don't turn this into a sidetrack argument about the validity of Christianity etc. Its a serisous issue for me. My church is in the middle of inviting someone to come on as pastor and he is a strong believer of complementarianism and wants us to adopt it. I am initially very much against it but the language in the Bible on this matter can be a bit hard to read, so maybe I'm overlooking something.
I think its a nicer way of saying that women need to know their roles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementarianism I'm sure you've heard it before just with a not so nice word like complementarianism
oh. well. huh. i'm not very dogmatic about stuff like this. i've found truth listening to women teach. i've found truth listening to men teach. i hate when people divide over stuff like this. and i think there's ample evidence to suggest that Christ turned all this on its head given the role of women in leadership (in a society that otherwise repressed them) in the early church.
My church falls under the definition of Complementarian -- or, referring to the wikipedia, perhaps more accurately as Complementarian without hierarchy. It's a PCA church. People have a strong visceral reaction to the idea of gender roles in the church, and will often infer ulterior motives, but I do think it is a sincere doctrine, and one with a lot of support in the Bible. In the church, women cannot be ministers, elders, or deacons (Biblically, they're allowed to be deacons, but our church ordains the deacons so that they can help with the weekly communion and don't feel allowed to ordain women). They can't teach the Sunday school classes, but can lead Bible studies (which are often but not always divided by gender, but I think that's cultural, not doctrinal), and lead in mercy ministry (deacons serve church members whereas the mercy ministry serves people inside and outside the church). They can speak in class, they can read scripture in the service, lead singing, volunteer anywhere, and vote in elections. Of course, there is nothing a woman can do that a man is not allowed to do. Not everyone at the church agrees with the position, but most don't worry about it too much. Most of the women do agree with the doctrine. The church teaches submission in marriage, but also heavily emphasizes a husband's duty to love and care for his wife, which would include hearing her counsel and putting her interests over one's own. So, it comes out to be a very soft submission. From my experiences with the congregants, there doesn't seem to be much difference on the submission-front from unchurched couples. Generally speaking, the church doesn't teach hierarchy, or justify the roles with some BS about Eve. They try to give women as big a role as they can without ignoring the NT passages about women's roles in marriage and the church. I don't think the position runs at odds with passages about equality in the church and in salvation. I hope that gives a flavor of what it looks like in operation in a church. Of course, this is my only experience with such a church, and others complementarian churches could be brutal, repressive regimes and I wouldn't know.
My little contribution as someone most Christians would consider a marginal Christian to begin with and probably a heretic besides: As far as I know none of the gender role talk occurs in the synoptic gospels or any of the others that directly deal with Jesus. IIRC, almost all of the gender role talk comes from Paul - Paul's letters to x, y, and z churches. This has long been an issue with me that I have trouble with, but I personally assign far greater weight to Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and even Acts than I do any of the letters. So if Paul, who was at one extreme of the backgrounds of the early disciples, talks about his thoughts in a letter to the Ephesians, I take it as just that: the personal thoughts that the disciple Paul sent to a church in Asia Minor (or wherever an 'Ephesians' comes from), not the direct word of God. I'm sure some people will say that this is blasphemy, but I think if you look there are lots of things is stuff that Paul wrote that is not particularly in line with what you read in anything coming in an account of the life of Jesus and thinking about context makes resolving these conflicts easier. I think the idea that the books in the Bible exist outside of contextual information about those books is dogmatic thinking. Martin Luther, for instance, firmly believed that Revelations didn’t belong in the Bible, and acted thusly.
Hey Otto, I think the problem as far as I can see it is not what Paul wrote (he actually commends a female deacon by name in Romans 16:1), I think it's that when certain people want to see things in a certain way, they'll grab and twist anything they can. I've been doig a lot of reading onthis subject and I've heard arguments form both sides of the equation using the same verses.
There are examples of women preachers and prophetesses in the Book of Acts, like Phillip's daughters. I was saved in a revival led by a woman evangelist. I've always held, with little evidence, that the church at Corinth had a specific problem that Paul was addressing. I don't think that we should use the direction for women to keep their mouths shut as a general order for the whole church. (My current pastor disagrees with me, but he knows my feelings on the issue.)
Anything else besides that? I'm against the idea of it right now, I gues I'm kinda looking for good angles to open with when I question him about it during our meeting next week.
I'm not sure I understand the term (sorry about that prior post ) I don't judge alot of those issues myself. In my church we hold women in the highest esteem. We have women teachers. We view leadership as serving others. I don't have any women elders or bishops. But that is the least of my issues as a pastor. Unless I get sued for it I teach the bible, mainly I try by example. So alot of the doctrinal issues I let people form from study of the scripture. When they ask me we look to the bible together. If it is not directly commanded in the New Testament I don't emphasize something. I might show applications of scripture but I emphasize what produces disciples of Jesus. To explain gender roles for me I would first have to explain what it means to be a leader, headship or authority from the position Jesus took.
I 'm guessing that big word Complementar**** (whatever) means that women can't do things men can do in church? Or I am confused a little as usual. Well, I just don't have that much problem with that issue. I think if that's what it means, I would go to him privately with your question. I would want to know how he defines it. (That's me though, I like to know ahead of time before stuff happens)
Complementarianism Pastor's Wife: Church Is a Divorce Asset Nov 16, 5:25 PM (ET) MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) - The estranged wife of a pastor claims her husband blended his professional and personal finances so thoroughly that his church should be counted as an asset in their divorce. A judge agreed in a decision published this week to hear arguments on the claim, and he ordered a financial appraisal of the church. Lawyers said it could represent the first time anyone in New York state has tried to treat a religious institution as a marital asset. The wife argues that her husband of 31 years used his Brooklyn church as a "personal piggy bank," setting his own income, spending the congregation's tithes as he pleased and running a catering business from the building, according to the decision by state Supreme Court Judge Arthur M. Diamond. The couple's names were redacted from the decision. The wife said $50,000 of the couple's money went into starting the church, and that the church property is partly hers. "That church is no different than any other business he might have opened," said the wife's lawyer, Robert Pollack. The pastor maintains he is simply a church employee, and the institution's funds should not be considered his, according to Diamond's decision. "My client can't own the church," said the minister's lawyer, Eleanor Gery. A message left at the church was not immediately returned early Friday.
