Rare double post today. But I wanted to add some thoughts in light of my two recent posts Let's Stop Calling It Complementarianism and Hierarchical Complementarianism Implies Ontological Ineptitude.
The observations have to do with contrasts between how evangelicals and Catholics conceive of gender roles. Specifically, many of my characterizations and criticisms of what I called "hierarchical complementarianism" were aimed at evangelicals. Readers coming from Catholic perspectives felt that my descriptions of "complementarianism" or "hierarchical complementarianism" missed the mark in their tradition. Which isn't too surprising, because I wasn't thinking about the Catholic tradition. I should have made that more clear.
So I'd like to try to add some reflections to sort through, mainly for myself, some of the relevant issues and locations of contrast between evangelicalism and Catholicism regarding gender roles.
To start, both evangelicals and Catholics have patriarchal authority structures--men hold the offices/roles of "authority"--but there are some key differences and distinctions. And in many ways, the Catholic vision of gender roles is "better" than the evangelical vision if you have egalitarian sensibilities like mine.
In the Catholic vision authority is given to a celibate male priesthood. And to be honest, most priests at the parish level don't have a lot of authority. They administer the sacraments, to be sure, but they aren't deciding a lot of things for the church. Basically, priests do more service than leading. That in and of itself is an important point of reflection. And the celibacy allows the priest to be available and free to do this service.
The priests are celibate in that they are "married" to the church. In this relationship, the (male) priest and the (female) church represent a marriage union, a union that functions sacramentally as the union between (Father) God and the (Mother) Church or (Husband) Christ and the (Wife) Church. Consequently, the gender of the priest is symbolically and sacramentally important. As the priest stands in for God/Christ he sacramentally represents Father/Husband.
There are two aspects about this that are important contrasts with evangelicalism and how it conceives of gender and authority in the church.
First, becoming a priest is costly, a life of celibacy. But given the sacramental imagery involved (a marital/familial union with the church) the celibacy is critical. And in return for making this sacrifice "authority" is given to the male priest (or, more precisely, the priesthood). Though we should keep reminding ourselves that, outside of the Vatican, most priests live lives of service--radical availability to the parish--rather than exercise authority.
All that is a stark contrast with evangelicalism. In evangelicalism there is no cost--like lifelong celibacy--for being given authority. All that is required is that you are, biologically, a man. Consequently, "authority" in evangelicalism is less about vocation than birthright, being born with the correct anatomy. In evangelicalism merely by being a man you have the spheres of authority automatically opened to you. In evangelicalism authority is not, as it is in Catholicism, associated with notions of calling, discernment, equipping, training, discipline, submission, vocation, sacrifice and service. Authority is given, and held in perpetuity, solely on the basis of anatomy.
The second contrast has to do with the clergy/laity distinction. While it is true that males have authority in Catholicism the laity is comprised of both males and females. Which means, crucially for our purposes, that both males and females are being denied positions of authority. In this sense, the exclusion is egalitarian in nature. Both males and females are being told "No."
Something very different happens in evangelicalism. While there is no overt clergy/laity distinction in evangelicalism there is a functional distinction. Men get to serve in the priestly and pastoral roles. Functionally, men are the clergy. And women are the laity.
That's a part of the problem in evangelicalism. Evangelicalism makes every female a member of the laity and makes every male a member of the clergy. Irrespective of calling, vocation or aptitude.
Which means that while Catholicism is patriarchal, at least its laity is mixed gender. In Catholicism both men and women get the "No." But in evangelicalism the laity is solely women and the clergy are all the men, with one entire gender telling the entire other gender "No." The clergy/laity divide is split right down the gender line, with no remainder.
In a related way, the clergy/laity divide in Catholicism is also a domestic/church divide. The priests exercise authority in the church but not in their homes. Because the priests are unmarried.
But, once again, the situation in evangelicalism is very much different. And more sinister. The clergy/laity divide exists (men function as clergy) but the home/church divide is eradicated. The male authority dominates both spheres, at home and at church. Male authority, thus, effectively dominates every sphere of life.
All that to say, these differences are so significant that when I say "hierarchical complementarianism" I am not referring to the Catholic situation. I'm picking out how gender roles are typically described and defended in evangelicalism.
And as I hope you can see, as patriarchal as Catholicism is, I think evangelicalism is much, much worse.
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Richard Beck
Welcome to the blog of Richard Beck, author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University (beckr@acu.edu).
The Theology of Faƫrie
The Little Way of St. ThĆ©rĆØse of Lisieux
The William Stringfellow Project (Ongoing)
Autobiographical Posts
- On Discoveries in Used Bookstores
- Two Brothers and Texas Rangers
- Visiting and Evolving in Monkey Town
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On the Principalities and Powers
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- A Boredom Revolution
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- "A Home for Demons...and the Merchants Weep"
- Tales of the Demonic
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- "All That Are Here Are Humans"
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Experimental Theology
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- Empathic Open Theism
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- Living in Babylon: Reading Revelation in Prison
- Reading the Beatitudes in Prision
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Series/Essays Based on my Research
The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes
The Theology of Peanuts
The Snake Handling Churches of Appalachia
Eccentric Christianity
- Part 1: A Peculiar People
- Part 2: The Eccentric God, Transcendence and the Prophetic Imagination
- Part 3: Welcoming God in the Stranger
- Part 4: Enchantment, the Porous Self and the Spirit
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Blogging about the Bible
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- On Preterism, the Second Coming and Hell
- Commitment and Violence: A Reading of the Akedah
- Gain Versus Gift in Ecclesiastes
- Redemption and the Goel
- The Psalms as Liberation Theology
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- Doing Beautiful Things
- The Most Remarkable Sequence in the Bible
- Targeting the Dove Sellers
- Christus Victor in Galatians
- Devoted to Destruction: Reading Cherem Non-Violently
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- The Threshing Floor of Araunah
- Hold Others Above Yourself
- Blessed are the Tricksters
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- I Am a Worm
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- Let Them Both Grow Together
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- Here I Am
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- "A Bloody Husband"
- Song of the Vineyard
Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prision
Civil Rights History and Race Relations
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- Bus Ride to Justice: Toward Racial Reconciliation in the Churches of Christ
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- Remembering James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
- Will Campbell
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Hip Christianity
The Charism of the Charismatics
Would Jesus Break a Window?: The Hermeneutics of the Temple Action
Being Church
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- A Million Boring Little Things
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- Where David Plays the Tambourine
- On Interruptibility
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- Open Commuion: Warning!
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- A Community Called Forgiveness
- Love is the Allocation of Our Dying
- Freedom Fellowship
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- Barbara, Stanley and Andrea: Thoughts on Love, Training and Social Psychology
- Gerald's Gift
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- This Morning Jesus Put On Dark Sunglasses
- The Only Way I Know How to Save the World
- Renunciation
- The Reason We Gather
- Anointing With Oil
- Incarnations of God's Mercy
Exploring Preterism
Scripture and Discernment
- Owning Your Protestantism: We Follow Our Conscience, Not the Bible
- Emotional Intelligence and Sola Scriptura
- Songbooks vs. the Psalms
- Biblical as Sociological Stress Test
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- Pawn to King 4
- Allowing God to Rage
- Poetry of a Murderer
- On Christian Communion: Killing vs. Sexuality
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- Atonement: A Primer
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- On Job (GutiƩrrez)
- The Selfless Way of Christ
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- Christ and Horrors
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- The Bible Made Impossible
- The Deliverance of God
- To Change the World
- Sexuality and the Christian Body
- I Told Me So
- The Teaching of the Twelve
- Evolving in Monkey Town
- Saved from Sacrifice: A Series
- Darwin's Sacred Cause
- Outliers
- A Secular Age
- The God Who Risks
Moral Psychology
- The Dark Spell the Devil Casts: Refugees and Our Slavery to the Fear of Death
- Philia Over Phobia
- Elizabeth Smart and the Psychology of the Christian Purity Culture
- On Love and the Yuck Factor
- Ethnocentrism and Politics
- Flies, Attention and Morality
- The Banality of Evil
- The Ovens at Buchenwald
- Violence and Traffic Lights
- Defending Individualism
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- The Varieties of Love and Hate
- The Wicked
- Moral Foundations
- Primum non nocere
- The Moral Emotions
- The Moral Circle, Part 1
- The Moral Circle, Part 2
- Taboo Psychology
- The Morality of Mentality
- Moral Conviction
- Infrahumanization
- Holiness and Moral Grammars
The Purity Psychology of Progressive Christianity
The Theology of Everyday Life
- Self-Esteem Through Shaming
- Let Us Be the Heart Of the Church Rather Than the Amygdala
- Online Debates and Stages of Change
- The Devil on a Wiffle Ball Field
- Incarnational Theology and Mental Illness
- Social Media as Sacrament
- The Impossibility of Calvinistic Psychotherapy
- Hating Pixels
- Dress, Divinity and Dumbfounding
- The Kingdom of God Will Not Be Tweeted
- Tattoos
- The Ethics of :-)
- On Snobbery
- Jokes
- Hypocrisy
- Everything I learned about life I learned coaching tee-ball
- Gossip, Part 1: The Food of the Brain
- Gossip, Part 2: Evolutionary Stable Strategies
- Gossip, Part 3: The Pay it Forward World
- Human Nature
- Welcome
- On Humility
Jesus, You're Making Me Tired: Scarcity and Spiritual Formation
A Progressive Vision of the Benedict Option
George MacDonald
Jesus & the Jolly Roger: The Kingdom of God is Like a Pirate
Alone, Suburban & Sorted
The Theology of Monsters
The Theology of Ugly
Orthodox Iconography
Musings On Faith, Belief, and Doubt
- The Meanings Only Faith Can Reveal
- Pragmatism and Progressive Christianity
- Doubt and Cognitive Rumination
- A/theism and the Transcendent
- Kingdom A/theism
- The Ontological Argument
- Cheap Praise and Costly Praise
- god
- Wired to Suffer
- A New Apologetics
- Orthodox Alexithymia
- High and Low: The Psalms and Suffering
- The Buddhist Phase
- Skilled Christianity
- The Two Families of God
- The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity
- Theodicy and No Country for Old Men
- Doubt: A Diagnosis
- Faith and Modernity
- Faith after "The Cognitive Turn"
- Salvation
- The Gifts of Doubt
- A Beautiful Life
- Is Santa Claus Real?
- The Feeling of Knowing
- Practicing Christianity
- In Praise of Doubt
- Skepticism and Conviction
- Pragmatic Belief
- N-Order Complaint and Need for Cognition
Holiday Musings
- Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
- Advent: Learning to Wait
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 1
- A Christmas Carol as Resistance Literature: Part 2
- It's Still Christmas
- Easter Shouldn't Be Good News
- The Deeper Magic: A Good Friday Meditation
- Palm Sunday with the Orthodox
- Growing Up Catholic: A Lenten Meditation
- The Liturgical Year for Dummies
- "Watching Their Flocks at Night": An Advent Meditation
- Pentecost and Babel
- Epiphany
- Ambivalence about Lent
- On Easter and Astronomy
- Sex Sandals and Advent
- Freud and Valentine's Day
- Existentialism and Halloween
- Halloween Redux: Talking with the Dead
The Offbeat
- Batman and the Joker
- The Theology of Ugly Dolls
- Jesus Would Be a Hufflepuff
- The Moral Example of Captain Jack Sparrow
- Weddings Real, Imagined and Yet to Come
- Michelangelo and Neuroanatomy
- Believing in Bigfoot
- The Kingdom of God as Improv and Flash Mob
- 2012 and the End of the World
- The Polar Express and the Uncanny Valley
- Why the Anti-Christ Is an Idiot
- On Harry Potter and Vampire Movies