Hey everyone,
I've been wrestling with the egalitarian vs. complementarian debate for a while, and I'd love to hear your thoughtful insights—especially from complementarians who can help address my hang-ups.
From a purely scriptural standpoint (ignoring modern culture), I lean toward complementarianism feeling like the majority/historic view and the most straightforward reading of passages like 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Ephesians 5, etc. Men and women are equal in worth but have distinct roles, with male headship in home and church.
But here's where I can't fully get on board: the practical application in real life often falls apart logically, reasonably, and with common sense—especially in edge cases or modern contexts.
A few examples that bother me:
- Extreme hypotheticals: Imagine a small church that's mostly wise, mature Christian women (e.g., rural area, war drafts men away, etc.). A brand-new male convert walks in—he's less knowledgeable and spiritually immature. Does the entire service/leadership get handed to him just because he's male? Or cancel everything until he's ready? It feels absurd and counterproductive to the church's mission.
- Modern teaching contexts: In 2025, Bible teaching happens globally and anonymously online (blogs, YouTube, Reddit threads, podcasts). If a woman shares solid scriptural insight that teaches men incidentally, is that forbidden? How do you practically enforce "no teaching men" in open forums? Shouldn't it be merit-based (accuracy, wisdom, gifting) rather than gender? Does this only apply to in-person teaching? If yes, why?
- Inconsistency across spheres: Complementarian restrictions seem to apply only to church leadership, but women can lead men in workplaces, government, universities, schools, etc. If the justification is that men are inherently better leaders/less emotional/headship from creation, why is it okay outside church? If it's not about inherent superiority, what's the precise reason the restriction is church-specific?
- 1 Timothy 2:15: "Women will be saved through childbearing..." This one confuses me. We all agree salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone (for men and women). How does this verse fit without implying works (bearing kids) or contradicting sola fide? Also, in the same passage, Paul talks about jewelry/braided hair—do we enforce that literally too, or is it cultural?
One thing that really intensified my struggle with this issue was a conversation I had with a complementarian friend. I asked her whether she would share the gospel with a non-Christian male friend (she said yes, that was fine according to her view). But then I followed up with this scenario: Imagine he becomes a believer, and the next week they're work friends out at lunch, talking about his new faith and celebrating it together. If he's still brand new in his walk and doesn't feel comfortable praying out loud yet, would she feel free to lead them in prayer?
She said no—she would rather they not pray at all than have her lead, because he is now a Christian brother and a man, and she couldn't exercise authority over him.
Her answer deeply troubled me and still doesn't sit right. It felt overly legalistic, like the principle was being applied in a way that actually hindered something good. After all, in that moment, wouldn't a guided prayer led by her be a beautiful, encouraging way to help this new believer connect with God—far better than skipping prayer entirely?
I get that no system is perfect and hypotheticals can poke holes in anything, but these feel like real tensions that make strict complementarianism hard to apply consistently without feeling arbitrary or unfair.
I'm not trying to argue or push egalitarianism—I'm genuinely seeking to understand better.
Thanks for any gracious input! Looking forward to learning.
If I were to literally accept complementarianism - then it would occur to me that master and slave are also complementary roles based on authority and submission. Women and slaves were second class citizens under patriarchal rule.
That is pretty much the standard christan position on those subjects
In my experience talking to people on here, that's not a zinger so much as it's just their position.
Does it not bother you that were said roles intact and stations reversed you are either as a master or as a slave in terms of complementarity?
Yes, it bothers me that slavery apologia exists in scripture and in Christian interpretation of it. Regardless of which roles you've imagined me into.
I've seen so much slavery apologia invented to strengthen complementarian marriages in recent years. Added to pastors who want to repeal women's rights to vote we are entering a period where rights my mom had, I had, might not exist for my niece when she's grown. Essentially enslaving her in a way as a wife if the worst elements have their way.
Any Christianity that is used to dehumanize another person is wrong and unChristlike.
Christianity was radical in its elevation and protection of woman for its time. I don’t think we were ever meant to go backwards in our love for our neighbor of either gender.
And complimentarians always ignore the women that do lead and teach in scripture. If God can make exceptions, who are you to gate-keep, other than the ways we would a man, by the fruits of the spirit.
Finally, I’ve never seen a church actually follow the verses they quote. I attended a very strict evangelical church but.. first of all women could speak, they could share their testimony, they could teach kids, they could teach men on missions, they could teach men in Bible studies (under the supposed leadership of men), all sorts of unpaid labor for the church. In practice all the verse meant was women can’t be the “paid” lead pastor- a position not even mentioned in the Bible.
A couple things:
Complimentarian marriages are proven to be significantly unhealthier. To the point where they essentially can’t be healthy unless they are actually egalitarian in practice (despite calling themselves complimentarian). When one partner has the final say in decisions (the primary point of difference between the two groups), even when the other partner is consulted, marriages have a divorce rate this is 7.4 TIMES higher. (Peer reviewed data from Sheila Gregoire and Bare Marriage)
Second:
The Bible is very much leaning egalitarian. The Bible passages are very much misunderstood by many, and actually support egalitarian marriages:
For many articles on what the Bible actually says, search these websites, especially Mowzsko:
https://www.cbeinternational.org/
https://juniaproject.com/
https://www.leadershipwithoutapology.org/
https://margmowczko.com/
https://baremarriage.com/
The Sheila Gregoire study you're referencing has some serious methodological issues that make those divorce rate claims pretty questionable - her sample sizes were small and self-selecting, which isn't exactly the gold standard for peer review
Plus citing advocacy organizations as your primary biblical sources kinda undermines the "what the Bible actually says" angle when they're already committed to a particular interpretation
Nope. The methodology was reviewed by universities prior to being done, and the study has been peer reviewed.
Not even remotely small. Much larger than they need to be to get statistically significant data, actually. They have down peer reviewed studies of 20,000, 7000, and another matched pair one. All of which are much more than required.
Nope. The respondents to their surveys were carefully measured to get a broad spectrum of respondents, and even err on the side of too many people who wouldn’t agree with them.
They meet ALL of the requirements for a good peer reviewed survey.
https://greatsexrescue.com/gsr-survey/
Oh, no! I’m getting information from people who care about the subject! (Why would I want to get information from someone who didn’t care about what they were studying?)
What a pathetic attempt to try to undermine actual data.
The Bible says to judge by fruit and the fruit of churches that hold to male headship is sexual abuse at epidemic levels, which makes sense as who other than a predator would hold these beliefs?
A note on scenario 1: a complementarian might say that in that situation, there is no one in that church who meets the biblical requirements for the office of elder, based on 1 Timothy 3:6, which specifically says that new Christians are ineligible for the role.
On 3, I don’t think that’s generally the basis of the argument. The question raises an interesting thought experiment, which is this: what if there was no known explanation at all- all we had was God’s say so (and we were convinced that we had this), that he had tied church leadership to something that, as far as we can tell, is 100% arbitrary- say, bishops must be born on June 2nd. Would we feel that this rule ought to be followed? Why or why not?
Thanks for your thoughtful response!
I appreciate your note on scenario 1—it's a fair point and definitely gives me something to think about.
I realize I phrased point 3 poorly, so let me clarify. I wasn’t implying that the Bible bases the complementarian position on men being naturally better leaders. I know most complementarians don’t believe that’s the reason for the biblical teaching. My question was directed specifically at anyone who does hold that view (i.e., that men are inherently better suited to leadership in general): if that’s truly why they think the restriction exists in church, why don’t they apply the same logic to non-church contexts (e.g., business, government, etc.)? Not applying it consistently raises questions about whether they genuinely believe that’s the underlying reason.
As for your thought experiment with the “June 2nd birthday” rule: yes, if Scripture clearly taught that elders must be born on June 2nd (and that teaching held up under careful hermeneutical and exegetical scrutiny), I would submit to it as God’s command, even if the reason wasn’t obvious to me. The key difference, of course, is that proper exegesis is required first before accepting any rule as divinely mandated. Regarding the passages in 1 Timothy about women's roles I don't find them entirely clear-cut as a universal, timeless prohibition. There's a strong case to be made that Paul was addressing specific cultural or situational issues in Ephesus—such as disorder in worship, false teaching being spread by some women, or local customs around authority and teaching. This contextual interpretation allows for the possibility that the restrictions aren't meant to apply identically in all churches across all cultures and eras.
I think that's a strong argument. A point I often add is the necessity of having a bit of pragmatism in our view of history, and seeing things, not as we might like them to be, but as they were. The reality is that in the ancient world, it was common for adult men to be married to teenagers, and while there was at least a chance that a man might be literate (and thus able to read the Torah), it was very rare for a woman to be literate. Some of the more "paternalistic" verses frankly make a lot more sense in that context. We can intuitively understand why St. Paul might have encouraged illiterate teenagers to avoid teaching doctrine and direct their questions to a trusted older person who might be able to consult the scriptures.
I wouldn’t say that the purely scriptural standpoint is complementarían. Translation matters. For example, if you read the ESV, you will see complementaríanism. That is because the translators intentionally translated with a complementarían bias. Evan when the Greek allows multiple interpretations they went with the complementarían choice, even if it wasn’t the most likely, and they are open about that. That doesn’t mean that the translation is bad, just that the translators told us their intentions while translating and that should frame how we read it. What you see historically is that social culture has always been a lens that scripture was interpreted through.
In the ESV in particular they go out of their way to translate masculine plural nouns and pronouns as masculine words in English even when they obviously refer to mixed gendered groups. It's like specifically translating the word "ellos" in Spanish as "the men" even in a context where "ellos" was referring to men and women. In these cases it's simply a bad translation where the translators deliberately ignored pretty basic Greek and Hebrew grammar.
The very nature of morality in Christianity is that it goes against what is seen as practical. After all, it wasn't "practical" or "useful" or "common sense" for early Christians refuse to merely as a pragmatic gesture burn a pinch of incense to the emperor and suffer torture and death as a result. After all, it didn't affect reality or their inner beliefs, right? And it wasn't pragmatic to put the whole movement in danger for a point of principle, right?
But so Christianity has always been. It has always been about making sacrifices and standing on principle when what the world calls "common sense" is dead set against the principle in question. No wonder Christian theologians from Augustine through Aquinas, Calvin and Wesley all the way up to some modern ethicists have argued that, for example, it is never right to lie, even to save a life.
What I am trying to say it that, from a Christian ethical perspective, the issues you raise are not relevant to the principle as such. We may wonder what the exact best course of action is to respond to the practical aspects, but the practical aspects alone can never overthrow a principle laid down in Scripture, which was never seen as negotiable or culturally relative from the earliest church until recent times. The specific potential objections you have are simply not relevant from the point of view of an ethics Augustine would have recognized as Christian. That does not mean that there are no arguments for egalitarianism which require more consideration. But these ones truly don't merit any consideration as challenging the basic principle.
As to "enforcement" and edge case details, I don't think the church can afford to be too prescriptive even from a principled point of view. It's not that no woman can ever give a man theological information. But it can never be officially sanctioned teaching with authority from the pulpit. That is the basic difference between egalitarians and complementarians, not niggles about how exactly every scenario should work. It's not the church's job to enforce details about complementarianism online, outside the ministry of the pulpit.
The Bible says to judge by fruit, churches that hold to complementarianism have sexual abuse epidemics, seems like a pretty easy call.
Actually, the Bible never says to judge churches or doctrines by fruit, only individual leaders. The saying "you shall judge them by their fruit" is one of the most decontextualised and misapplied by progressives and liberals, ironically, just like "judge not", which they often use just as it suits them, whether or not they contradict themselves.
For that matter, the "fruit" of egalitarian churches seems to be mass deconversion and catering more and more to the standards of the world, but mainline Protestants who are bigoted against evangelicals love to leave that part out.
I'd also love to hear an argument for why every church ever before the late 1800s can be judged negatively according to their own Bible, since none of them were egalitarian. Insistent egalitarians are not interested in being fair, they just want to impose their own presuppositions and preferences on the Bible, and your comment is a perfect example. I was egalitarian once, but through openmindedness and proper Biblical education I switched to complementarianism.
Also, progressives: "Nothing in the Bible is clear! You must nuance every ethical command until it fits with modern morals!" And again progressives: "A church from a group I don't like once had a scandal, "you shall judge them by their fruits", case closed".
Yes, I’m judging leaders who are an all soft on/hard for rape and abuse. Look at men like Doug Wilson, Paige Patterson, Bill gothard, Joel Webbon, and the recently departed like John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, and James Dobson. The fruits of their ministries was hate, sadism, authoritarianism, and sexual violence. Then you look at their political influence and we have basically every problem caused by Trump can be placed squarely on conservative Christians shoulders, but given his involvement in the whole Epstein network, conservative Christians knew he was their guy despite his incompetence, hate, sadism, narcissism, authoritarianism, and sexual predation which also matches their values.
So what you consider the ills of egalitarianism, actually seems better than everything conservatives do, at least they’re not out there raping children.
If you’re Protestant then you already believe that basically for 1000 years of the church they were doing it wrong depending on when you think they lost their way. Also quakers were egalitarian starting in the mid 1600s. You believe women should be barred from leadership and bangmaids to their husbands and you’re claiming open mindedness and fairness?
I think not systemically raping children would be a good start to show you’re moral, get that done at all the comp denominations and then you can start making claims and asking questions until then you’re worse than basically any secular institution
It seems to me that the complementarian view acknowledges that male leadership doesn’t always make practical sense in every real-world situation—and in those cases, we’re called to trust the Lord even when it feels counterintuitive.
It also appears to recognize that the Bible doesn’t explicitly state why men should have authority over women in certain roles. The reasons given (Adam was formed first, and Eve was deceived first) are presented by Paul, yet complementarians are careful not to claim that these imply men are inherently better leaders than women. Still, I find it a bit confusing: if the order of creation and the fall are cited as the basis, it can feel like those reasons indirectly suggest a difference in reliability or capability—even though that’s not the intended conclusion.
All that to say, I have some genuine follow-up questions (not trying to argue, just seeking clarity):
How do we discern when to simply accept a biblical teaching on faith and trust in God—even when it doesn’t seem to make practical sense—and when to dig deeper through context, hermeneutics, historical background, or further study? Where and how do we draw that line?
I started going to an egalitarian church and it's what really convinced me. Hearing women speak and seeing them lead ministries, it would be a total detriment to people and the community to not have their voices or there abilities. I've heard some of the most thoughtful and impactful messages from women. I would not want to be deprived of their wisdom and perspectives.
Another way I look at it: We've obviously striven for a more egalitarian society and have seen how women are far more similar to men than they are different. Women are just as capable as men. So if God made them that way, why would he try to silence them or keep them down?
In regards to 1 Timothy; the scholarly consensus is that the pastoral epistles were not written by Paul at all. Why? Because they flat out contradict Paul. In the genuine Pauline epistles he discourages people from marrying, says sin came through one man, says there is no male or female in Christ, and greets women as deaconesses and even apostles. But in 1 Timothy "Paul" is suddenly requiring marriage and children for leadership roles, blaming sin on women, claiming they'll be "saved by childbearing" and commanding women to be silent. The true author of this likely also snuck in the out-of-place verse in 1 Corinthians commanding women to be silent. It's a shame too as people want to harp on the few verses demeaning women but ignore the numerous parts of the Bible that elevate women.
Yup. “I’ll ignore the many verses where women are leading; teaching, preaching, and being praised for it”, but cling onto the one verse that goes against that”.
And then they literally decide to create a new translation of the Bible so they can intentionally try to diminish the roles of women, by favouring interpretations that do so, even if they are contradictory with their own stated goals, and with how they have interpreted the same word elsewhere.
The simple answer is: follow what Christ and His Apostles modelled.
A follower of Christ can never go wrong if they model what Christ and His Apostles taught and practiced.
Those who say they follow Christ but are hostile to modeling our examples, can go wrong up, down, and sideways.
Ignore those entirely. As followers of Christ, we desire to remain true to the spirit and letter of what He taught. In 2000 years, we never had to worry about extreme hypotheticals.
See above.
No. This is not about penises.
That is because it is absurd, and that is why Christ followers should not get distracted by it.
No. I know a number of talented women who have preached the Word of God effectively and powerfully. I love them all.
In short? God said so.
That is the easy part. You don't need to challenge it. You can just assume He knows what He is talking about and we can trust Him.
Once you have that down, you can then speculate what the benefits are in male leadership...and how that model would need to work in every era and in every culture.
It is not talking about women being saved from their sins by having kids. That is not how Christ followers are saved from their sins.
Sozo does not always mean the exact same thing regardless of context.
That is not from the Word of God.
You don't need to sweat all the misunderstandings of others.
Lean into the Word more than you lean into opinions.
When we look at a comparison of churches that affirm male headship we see sex abuse epidemics, and they follow and affirm the leadership of predators and those who protect them. That makes sense obviously as men commit 93% of sex crimes, so predators are going to go churches without women in leadership because then they know it’ll be a buffet of children for them. That’s without getting into the entitlement mentality these teachings bring as they believe they get to control their wives. Judge by fruit.