Patriarchy and the Church
There's nothing Christian about it
Christianity in general is often criticized for the patriarchal position some churches take on gender roles, but there is nothing particularly Christian about patriarchy. It’s also a problem for atheists and non-Christians.
Charles Darwin wrote that evolutionary benefits were “transmitted more fully to the male than to the female offspring… Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”[1] Darwin doubted women could ever overcome the inferior status evolution had bestowed on them.
The luminaries of the Enlightenment promoted a secular, non-Christian worldview. Most of them also believed women were physically and intellectually inferior to men. Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that higher education was wasted on women because “the search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalization, is beyond a woman’s grasp.”[2] Patriarchy for them was just the natural order of things.
For most of human history, patriarchy has been the norm. The pagan civilizations of ancient Babylon, Assyria, Persia, India, China, Greece and Rome, long before Christianity arrived on the scene, were all extremely patriarchal.
Historian and medieval scholar Dr. Beth Barr researched the history of patriarchy in the Christian church back to its origins in the Roman Empire. As she explains it, “Christians are, historically speaking, pretty late to the patriarchy game. We may claim that the gendered patterns of our lives are different from those assumed in mainstream culture, but history tells a different story…Christian patriarchy mimics the patriarchy of the non-Christian world.”[3]
However, the issue of patriarchy in some churches is often used to discredit Christianity as a whole. As one atheist writer, Sig Sawyer, puts it: “The Bible is not kind to women.” Sawyer goes on to cherry pick a few isolated verses to support his argument, and concludes that because some Christians also use these verses to support patriarchy, the Christian faith itself must be false. (See “Women and Christianity” in Christianity Disproved, by Sig Sawyer).
Women throughout history, however, have had a different view. Christianity has attracted more women than men from the very beginning of church history. Historian Rodney Stark writes: “From the earliest days women predominated…Indeed, the converts of Paul ‘we hear most about are women,’ and many of them ‘leading women.’”[4]
Nancy Pearcey relates that “Christianity was unusually appealing to pagan women because in the Christian subculture women enjoyed a far higher status than in the Greco-Roman world. Christianity recognized women as equal to men, children of God with the same supernatural destiny. The Christian moral code enhanced the dignity and well being of women.”[6]
The predominance of women in the church has continued through history into modern times. To this day the vast majority of Christians are women. Here are some recent statistics from 1996:
Male Female
Catholic 30 70
Liberal Protestant 33 67
Mainline Protestant 34 66
Fundamentalists 35 65
Evangelicals 43 57
Table 1: Percentage of men versus women in various branches of the American church.[10]
Right from the very beginning of the church, women have outnumbered men almost 2 to 1. One of the major points of criticism the ancient Romans leveled against the early church was that “women and slaves” flocked to it. It gave them status, a voice and equality they didn’t have in pagan circles.
Romans considered it a waste of time to educate a woman, since she would spend most of her life raising children. Rome and Greece, indeed most pagan cultures, were extremely elitist and sexist, and they were much more patriarchal than anything we’ve seen in our own recent history in Western culture.
The church ended all that.
However, it needs to be admitted that there are still churches which restrict women, on the basis of sex, from leadership roles. They even claim biblical support for it.
Complementarianism is the theological term for the belief that patriarchy is biblically mandated. According to complementarians, God has ordained men to lead and women to follow in the church and home. Women are not allowed to lead or teach men and are banned from senior leadership and teaching positions in complementarian churches. They believe men and women are equal, but have different roles which ‘complement’ each other.
Complementarian is a fancy term coined by modern patriarchs to avoid the negative connotations patriarchy has today, but it’s the same thing. Complementarianism is patriarchy.
Egalitarian is the theological term for the opposite. Egalitarians believe the Bible teaches the full equality of women and men, and places no restrictions on women based on gender. Women, as full spiritual equals to men, can be called by God to teach and lead in the church, including male parishioners, as they are gifted to do so.
According to egalitarians, patriarchy is not divinely ordained but came about as a result of human sinfulness and imperfection. As such it has been done away with through the redemption we have in Christ and should not be practiced in the church of Christ.
Complementarians find support for their position from a small handful of passages, which fall into two broad categories. First, we have what are known as the ‘household codes’ which would appear to endorse gender-based hierarchy within marriage: Ephesians 5:22-33, Colossians 3:18-19, 1 Peter 3:1-7.
The second group has a more direct bearing on church leadership, and appear to restrict women from leadership based on gender: 1 Timothy 2:8-15; 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and 1 Corinthians 14:34. While there are a few other highly debatable passages with a tangential bearing to the discussion, these six passages form the foundation of the complementarian position, and their entire argument hinges on how we interpret them.
Complementarians make a lot of noise about how ‘biblical’ their position is, but the lack of verses that could possibly be used to support it is stunning. There are 7957 verses in the New Testament, and only 6 to 10 can possibly be used to support patriarchy. And even then, only by lifting those verses out of context and interpreting them in an isolated, superficial manner.
There are actually more passages in the New Testament that could be cherry-picked in support of slavery, if you were so inclined, then can be used to support patriarchy. (More on this fun-fact in a later blog.)
I believe the actual biblical position is full equality of the sexes. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at the passages complementarians typically quote to support their views, and examine them in their historical context to see if those passages can really mean what complementarians claim.
Then we’ll look at the overwhelming biblical evidence for women in leadership and gender equality. I think you’ll find that it’s very conclusive.
As I will show in a series of blogs over the next few weeks and months, there’s nothing biblical about patriarchy.
This post is adapted from chapter 5 in my book “Jesus and Captain Kirk”, available on Amazon.
[1] Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871
[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, p.349.
[3] Beth A. Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, p. 12.
[4] Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity, p. 121
[6] Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, p. 441
[10] From a 1996 survey. Cited in Total Truth, p. 441