In a world where sloganeering replaces argument, a serious critique of the diocese one attends as a Sydney Anglican is welcome, despite – actually, because – it questions a deeply embedded practice.

Rethinking Complementarianism: Sydney Anglicans, Orthodoxy and Gendered Inequality by Rosie Clare Shorter has been out in the world since 2021, in the Religion and Gender journal. But The Other Cheek had not read it in full before. It can be downloaded here.

There seem to be, to this writer, at least three ways to approach this topic 

• traditional exegesis of the relevant scripture and application

• the post-modern (my description) method that Shorter follows

• empirical data (if available), of which more later

Shorter makes it clear she is not taking the first option – this is well covered in the literature, with Claire Smith’s God’s Good Design: What the bible really says about men and women being an example of a widely read complementarian text, and Kevin Giles’ The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity the lstest in a long line of his books attacking complementarian theology, especially in Sydney.

This writer is no Foucauldian. But Shorter convincingly points to the necessity of examining how the mix of power and discourse operates within a largely complementarian community. 

Citing historian Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism, Shorter writes, “It would seem that theological challenges to complementarianism have not led diocesan leaders and synod representatives to set aside the complementarian model of marriage and ministry. Therefore, to advance a project of understanding and countering the contradictory and violent social consequences of complementarianism, it is time to change how we think about it. To borrow from feminist philosopher Joan Scott (2018), whose work on secularism as a discursive operation of political power encouraged me to consider complementarianism in similar terms, I want to consider a discourse of complementarianism. …

“According to Scott, secularism creates and rests on systems of binaries (state/church, public/private, science/nature), which are used to mark out gendered, religious, racial and cultural others. Scott

reminds us that historically, hierarchical and unequal gender-complementarity has been a founding—and lasting—feature of secularism. … 

“Using Scott’s approach, it is possible to analyse complementarianism not as a fixed theology or private faith, but as a shared discourse and operation of power, which creates both the ideal Christian and its suspect, inferior other. This approach demonstrates how both complementarian theology and the influence of complementarian leaders is not simply a natural consequence of reading or interpreting the Bible ‘correctly ’; rather, it is discursively constructed.

Foucault (1972), of course, teaches us that discourses do not merely describe the social world; rather, they produce and shape reality.”

Shorter not only traverses theory, but a good deal of her paper also deals with the lived reality of Sydney Anglicans.

Before examining her examples, here is one from me, from a column I wrote for Southern Cross back in 2005.

“At the end of a Moore College lecture on women’s ordination, I caught up with a fellow student outside. “I wanted to ask a question,” she said, “but my husband is a Sydney candidate”.

This eerily matches a Shorter interviewee: “Catherine, an Anglican ministry student who proudly calls herself egalitarian, has felt the alienating consequences of refusing to align with ‘plain teaching.’ Reading the bible in an egalitarian way places Catherine on the wrong side of the norm, forcing her off the complementarian path. She says you have a slightly different view on something, and people think, therefore, you’re not a Christian. … I don’t think any person who is seeking Jesus wants that to be the comment that people think about them when you’re interpreting Scripture.”

Shorter comments: “Catherine’s experience demonstrates how the language of ‘plain teaching’ is used as a disciplinary technique which reinforces both the idea of conflict between Christian and secular society, and that there is one correct way to be a Christian.”

Another interviewee, “Rebecca, who works for a church, suggests that, ironically, instead of encouraging deeper reading and respect of Scripture, the notion of ‘plain teaching’ prevents people engaging with the Bible, because it reinforces the belief that there is a correct view taught and endorsed by the diocese.” 

Shorter comments: “Instead of engaging with the text, people might opt to retell the ‘plain teaching’ they are taught.”

This writer has normally heard “plain teaching” used slightly differently in the phrase “plain teaching of the Scripture,” which one can take as an invitation to engage with the text.

This is clear in a quote from Claire Smith that Shorter includes, pointing out the opposition to feminism, evinced by many complementarians: “The dust of feminism has settled on the pages of our Bibles and obscured God’s word. What the Bible once said clearly about men and women is no

longer clear to us. The plain meaning of texts no longer seems plain.”

But Shorter’s point about discourse is clear. If feminism is powerful as a discourse, then surely in the Christian world, complementarianism is also powerful – and both from an evangelical perspective should be tested by Scripture.

Evangelicals, including this writer, should take care to make sure they are not persuaded by this discourse, the teaching of leaders of opinion fashionable among their particular cohort, but to really wrestle with Scripture. Shorter has done evangelicals a real service in examining our fatal attraction to “follow-the-leader” discourse.

Those opposed to complementarianism in the Anglican church, including Shorter in her paper, point to the National Anglican Family Violence Project (NAFVP), a survey conducted by NCLS Research released in 2021.

Sometimes claims are made that imply that the survey shows complementarianism leads to increased rates of Domestic and Family Violence.

This view is shared by Shorter when she writes of”the violent consequences of asymmetrical relationships based on the principle of men’s headship partnered with women’s submission.”

This brings us to the question of an empirical evidence base for a critique of complementarianism.

For example, as The Other Cheek reader Greg Colby noted in a discussion about the Anglican General Synod choosing not to continue funding the Families and Culture Commission, at first glance the survey might lead one to conclude the Anglican Church has greater DFV than the community at large, and of course then people might be led to say complementarianism would contribute to that.

Colby noted the stats:

Lifetime Intimate Partner Violence for women:

• Church-attending Anglican women: 58%

• Other Anglican women: 53%

“Previous 12 months

• Church-attending Anglican women: 28%

• Other Anglican women: 18%.”

“And after controlling for age and education, church attendance remained associated with higher 12-month IPV among Anglican women.”

But the opt-in nature of the non-random survey means, Colby summarised, “The figures still do not show that Anglican women are at greater risk of IPV or DFV than women in the wider community. The report doesn’t establish the prevalence of all ‘DFV in the Anglican Church’; it establishes particular patterns of reported IPV among people identifying with, and attending, Anglican churches.

“The report provides evidence about the prevalence of reported IPV victimisation among Anglicans. It does not establish that Anglicanism causes IPV, and it provides no comparative evidence that Anglican men perpetrate IPV at higher rates than other Australian men.”

This means, as Shorter has in her paper, one has to look for lived examples of the possible effects of complementarian discourse.

I can think of examples of coercive control exercised by men at the church where Rosie Clare Shorter grew up and which I still attend. I am haunted by the first case I became aware of, where a woman was so desperate she left her children behind with her controlling husband. I was far too callow to take a stand. Over time, the congregation shifted in its attitude, so much so that it was the majority view about one marriage that the wife should leave the relationship. In another case, everyone could see why a wife moved out. These stories played out over 40 years. There is no suggestion that they are common.

Did complementarian theology contribute? It was never strongly preached over those decades, but to take up Shorter’s analysis, regardless of that, it was a form of discourse that two of the husbands, in my view, were influenced by. Thinking back, I think the men involved were all self-obsessed and probably would have behaved coercively anyway.

Whether one is complementarian or egalitarian, Shorter is correct to note that “complementarian discourse continues to shape identity as it creates and limits the field of possibility for Christian men and women as they consider their place in the church and home.”

But perhaps not as completely as one might suspect – Shorter quotes the American research by Gallagher and Smith: “the hierarchy of husband’s headship and wife’s submission is in name only” and quotes Michael Jensen’s Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology: “‘amongst complementarian Christians that I know, marriages are remarkably egalitarian.”

Despite the examples quoted above, this is the reality this writer observes among complementarians at church. Actually, in this writer’s experience (and not suggesting mine is universal), without asking people at church their views, it is often hard to know who is complementarian and who is egalitarian.