This new article is insightful:

Laughlin, Bryan, and Doug Ponder. “Complementarians and the Rise of Second-Wave Evangelical Feminism.” Sola Ecclesia, 26 February 2024.

Here is one of my takeaways from the article (the below table is my own synthesis but in line with the article by Laughlin and Ponder):

Four Views on Hierarchy and Complementarity

*barely (see below)

**in a sense (see below)

Some explanations:

• For a primer on the spectrum of major views, see §2 in Andrew David Naselli, “Does Anyone Need to Recover from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood? A Review Article of Aimee Byrd’s Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” (Eikon: A Journal for Biblical Anthropology 2.1 [2020]: 109–51)—PDF | web version. See especially my table “Narrow vs. Broad Complementarianism.”

1. Biblical patriarchy / broad, thick, or natural complementarianism

• This view affirms hierarchy broadly in the home, church, and society.
• This view affirms complementarity in the sense that complementary differences between men and women are part of God’s good design of our different natures and are reasons supporting the rules.
• From my review of Rosaria Butterfield’s Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age: “Patriarchy means father rule. For the past thirty years, complementarianism has been a common label that English-speaking conservative evangelicals have used for the biblical view of God’s design for men and women. It captures what God says in Genesis 2:18: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’—that is, ‘corresponding to him’ (ESV note, CSB) or ‘who corresponds to him’ (NET). But as self-identified complementarians have become less broad and more narrow, some prefer the label patriarchy. In contrast, some complementarians think the label patriarchy has insurmountably negative connotations. I think both labels are fitting. Complementarianism emphasizes that God designed men and women to complement each other; they are not interchangeable. Patriarchy emphasizes that God designed fathers to rule; God designed both complementarity and hierarchy. (The subtitle of the second edition of Discovering Biblical Equality—a prominent textbook defending evangelical feminism—is Complementarity without Hierarchy. Egalitarians reject hierarchy.) But what matters most is not the label but what we mean by it.”

2. Narrow, thin, or ideological complementarianism

• This view affirms hierarchy narrowly in two specific areas: marriage (but emphasizes “mutual submission” and not a husband’s authority) and the church (only qualified men may be pastors, but an unordained woman may do anything an unordained man may do).
• Laughlin and Ponder describe this view as “complementarian in name only.” They argue that this view “is historically novel, theologically problematic, and internally incoherent. As such, narrow/thin complementarians—regardless of their intentions—are unwittingly sowing the seeds of second-wave evangelical feminism.”
• Laughlin and Ponder argue, “By ignoring or downplaying the differences between men and women taught in the Scriptures and observed in the natural world, these complementarians act as if men and women were not all that different and, therefore, are interchangeable in principle. The most succinct expression of this is found in Kathy Keller’s statement, ‘Anything that an unordained man is allowed to do, a woman is allowed to do.’ Setting aside the fact that such statements overlook male and female differences in marriage, where ordination is of no consequence, the real issue is that such statements attempt to carve out space for narrow sex-based prescriptions while undermining the very reason why God established such prescriptions. … In effect, narrow/thin/ideological complementarians are arguing for hierarchy without complementarity, which means random rules without reasons, divine commands divorced from created order, and a complementarianism without any actual complementarity. In other words, they are complementarian in name only. More than that, most of them are future egalitarians. For if there is no sexual complementarity grounding the gender-specific commands in Scripture, that means there is no reason why God says a man must (not) do this or a woman must (not) do that.”

3. Egalitarianism / evangelical feminism (initially)

• This view strongly rejects hierarchy in the home, church, and society.
• This view claims to affirm complementarity but defines that differently than broad complementarianism: “Women should participate equally with men precisely because they bring complementary gender qualities to marriage, ministry and society” (Rebecca Merrill Groothuis and Ronald W. Pierce, “Introduction,” in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity without Hierarchy, p. 17).
• Laughlin and Ponder observe, “Early egalitarians seemed to accept sexual distinctions so long as those distinctions did not reflect a divine design that came with God-given prescriptions.”

4. Egalitarianism / evangelical feminism (increasingly now)

• This view contrasts with early egalitarians who recognized complementarity in some sense. Laughlin and Ponder explain, “More recently … egalitarians have moved away from speaking of ‘complementarity without hierarchy.’ In fact, the latest edition of Discovering Biblical Equality has dropped that language from its subtitle and concedes in the introduction that ‘contributors to this volume are varied in their opinions on the degrees of gender-related complementarity.’” As the culture changes, so do theologies that accommodate to culture.
• Laughlin and Ponder argue, “Whereas first-wave evangelical feminism took aim at gender hierarchy in marriage, the church, and society, second-wave evangelical feminism takes aim at gender complementarity. Indeed, it must do so, not only because the gender binary is increasingly passé but also because the very concept of sexual complementarity entails sexual difference, and sexual difference implies varying levels of sexual fitted-ness for certain roles—the very thing egalitarians are increasingly keen to avoid. In other words, second-wave evangelical feminists have realized the need to go beyond ‘complementarity without hierarchy.’ For to admit differences between men and women outside the reproductive realm is to leave open the door for arguments that gender differences convey God’s design for gendered duties in various spheres of life. Thus, for feminists of any stripe, gender complementarity will never do; they must have gender interchangeability. But to argue for that, of course, one must continually downplay, overlook, or flatly deny the very real differences between men’s and women’s bodies, brains, communication styles, prosocial orientations, and even sin tendencies (e.g., compare 1 Tim. 2:8 with 1 Tim. 2:9–10). That is what egalitarians have long done, but that is also what thin/narrow/ideological complementarians are now doing, too.”

Related: See other articles tagged “Complementarianism.”