Complementarianism or Patriarchy? What’s in a name?

Rachel Held Evans recently made a splash with a blog post suggesting that complementarianism is merely patriarchy masquerading under a less offensive name. Her post generated a good bit of discussion not only on her blog but on Scot McKnight’s as well.

Evans is riffing on remarks that Russell Moore recently made about complementarians who are big on gender orthodoxy but not so much on orthopraxy. Here’s how Moore expressed his concern, “What I fear is that we have many people in evangelicalism who can check off ‘complementarian’ on a box but who really aren’t living out complementarian lives.” Evans agrees with this statement and then offers three reasons why she thinks complementarian practice is losing ground among those who profess complementarian principles.

1. Because more and more evangelical theologians, scholars, professors, and pastors are thoughtfully debunking a complementarian interpretation of Scripture…

2. Because their rhetoric consistently reflects a commitment to an idealized glorification of the pre-feminist nuclear family of 1950s America rather than a commitment to “biblical manhood” and “biblical womanhood”…   Continue at Denny Burk