Author Archives: Benj

After stepping outside of the complementarian bubble, I realized that “complementarianism” is not actually a unified concept, and that its premise–that leadership in the home and in the church should be male exclusively–cannot be applied coherently or consistently. Continue reading →

I now come to the biblical text that is often played as the trump card by complementarians when discussing the issue of women’s ordination–and I speak from personal experience, having played this card myself. Indeed, 1 Timothy 2:8-15 was the text that gave me the most pause when I reconsidered the issue; I felt that I could accept that other passages speaking of male leadership were culturally relative, but this passage seemed to be quite clear and rooted in the prelapsarian (“before the Fall into sin”) created order. Continue reading →

Are the texts that speak of male headship in the home and in the church commands for every time and place, or are they time-bound concessions to patriarchal culture and to the peculiar scrutiny faced by first-century Christians in a hostile pagan context? Continue reading →

No one wants to say, “Thus saieth the Lord,” where the Lord has not spoken. But no one wants to ignore the law of the Lord, either. Continue reading →