Sorry for the delay. I make no distinction between thick and thin. For me, it is clear that scripture teaches a strict hierarchy for gender roles for society, the church and for the family. That hierarchy comes in the form of the patriarchy.
As for the difference between the complementarians and the egalitarians I see it like this. Since …
Sorry for the delay. I make no distinction between thick and thin. For me, it is clear that scripture teaches a strict hierarchy for gender roles for society, the church and for the family. That hierarchy comes in the form of the patriarchy.
As for the difference between the complementarians and the egalitarians I see it like this. Since complementarians don't consider themselves "feminists", strictly speaking, they made a compromise between the feminists/egalitarians and those who follow the bible, the patriarchy folks. It is simply an attempt to make the bible and its teaching less offensive. And when we do that we make the bible irrelevant to our lives. Cuz the bible, its not changing. Or as Lady Thatcher famously put it, "This lady is not for turning". In other words, she wasn't looking to compromise, in her case with socialists. In the case of the bible on the patriarchy, with feminists. And remember, feminism is simply one wing of communism. It is the wing of communism dedicated to destroying the family. And damn if it has done a hell of a job!
In reality, complementarians really only apply their complementarian approach to the pulpit and no where else. MOST CERTAINLY NOT IN THE HOME! I mean, Adam was actually the first egalitarian when he chose to not correct his wife and instead disobey God. God had given him this amazing fellow human being that was awfully pretty and he could have sex with and get along with and support him in his work of bringing all of creation under his dominion. He wasn't going to let a little rule from God screw that up, was he?
And since the late 1800's in the West, man has been choosing this direction to the absolute destruction of society and the family.
I would HIGHLY recommend the book "Masculine Christianity" by Zachary M. Garris. In chapter 3, titled "Complementarian's Compromise" the author talks about an organization called the "Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" that outlined its core beliefs in the Danvers Statement of 1987. In this statement they chose the name "complementarian" instead of the much more precise and much more descriptive term, "patriarchy". Want to guess why they chose such a confusing term when a much better term was already in the public vernacular? Yep, they didn't want to alienate those pesky feminists. So, rather than do the hard but certainly doable work of redeeming a word that had been demonized by the fems, they chose the easy way out. And they have been paying for that ever since.
So, even in its founding, complementarianism was already bending to the culture instead of standing strong with scripture. And it has been downhill ever since.
But it would take some doing to stand against the culture. Lots of courage and a willingness to let some single moms and other women leave your church. And those people tithe. See the problem?
Also, men in our culture are saddled with women who are feminists, plain and simple. Even the ones like my wife, who was raised in a strict, conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran home. On farm no less. We are in our 60's. So both of us have been swimming in a river of feminism our entire lives. It is in her blood. She has been told both overtly and subversively, to "not be a door mat", "you can do anything a man can do", "you deserve this", etc. etc. It is the same for women my age as the young folks now who believe, understandably, that the climate is going to kill us all, or that men and women are the same except for their plumbing. Lies all, but when it is all you have heard since you were a wee lass in short britches, it is all you know.
I watched my dad live a miserable existence with a woman, my mother, who ruled the home and when she didn't get her way, it was hell on earth for my father and I for weeks on end. So, as an adolescent I resolved to not allow my wife to rule me that way. The deal was sealed, so to speak, when I attended a Bill Gothard "Seminar on Basic Youth Conflicts" and realized that scripture taught that happiness in the home comes when the father is the sole leader.
And as a result, since I have been unwilling to cave like most men, we don't have much peace in the home. One thing that wives do to their husbands, in addition to using sex as a weapon, is wives (with the Deceiver's assistance) throw their husband's imperfection in their face as an excuse to not follow their lead. I have chosen to not allow my sin to drive me to abdicate my responsibility to lead my wife.
I have gone on too far, much too far, but this is a subject for which I have a great deal of passion. Have a great day. I look forward to your reply.
Your claim that complementarians limit their approach to the pulpit and most certainly not the home is the very DEFINITION of thin complementarianism, and is untrue for thick complementarianism. So you leave me with my original impression that you just don't understand the terms and their differences.
I guess I would add that Christians and conservatives have for too long, ceded way too much ground to the Left when it comes to language. We have allowed the Left to determine what is "allowed" to be said in polite company.
And since we think in our native tongue, i.e. we form ideas and thought with language, the Left has successfully narrowed the scope of what can be said and even thought.
Patriarchy is simply one example.
The Right needs to grow a pair and speak the truth. The bible (and experience) teaches that people are drawn to the Truth spoken boldly. Folks are repelled by mealy mouth compromise. For proof, I give you all the mainline denominations; Episcopal, Methodist, most of Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc. and the old guard GOP which has zero support among the masses and is only kept alive by the donor class.
How many folks do you know that actually practice "thick" complementarianism? I don't know that many. Mostly at the church we attend, where the entire congregation of 250-300 people are extremely conservative culturally. Only one family sends their kids to a public school, all the rest home school. A couple of kids attend a conservative Lutheran HS.
But of all the other Christian families I know, I don't know of a single one that practices what you call "thick" C.
As for terms and definitions, if you want to call what I refer to as the patriarchy as "thick" C., then be my guest. However, one of those terms is MUCH more easily defined and understood by most people than the other. I will let you decide which one.
My larger point remains. Nearly all of mainstream Evangelicals do not follow scripture when it comes to how they order heir lives and their homes.
To lift a line from "The Sting" I would ask, "you folla?"
I would say that "patriarchy" brings in associations that lead to misunderstanding. When Saudi Arabia did not allow women to drive, that was part of their patriarchy, but not likely what you are advocating. At one time in America, it was hard for a woman to own property or have her own credit, and the laws even caused problems for widows. All of these associations with the word "patriarchy" make it a poor choice for labeling thick complementarianism. It is simply not very precise.
The thin complementarians limit the pulpit to men, but seem to look for ways to accommodate women in every other way that they can argue lies beyond some specific Biblical prohibition: leading prayers, song leading, basically everything besides the sermon. They are dragged along kicking and screaming by certain Bible verses, but they do not believe that God ordained a natural order with men leading in family and faith, so they are egalitarian in every way that is not ruled out by their Biblicism. My congregation, like MANY, does not fall into that description.
Rather than read bad motivations into the choice of the word "complementarianism" I would be charitable and recognize that they avoided a word that already had connotations that would not be accurate.
I will just repeat one thing, for emphasis, that I said earlier. Patriarchy has only recently become a word that is loaded with negative connotations. And that was something the feminists did on purpose.
For hundreds of years patriarchy was not considered controversial in the least, as it accurately and precisely described the hierarchy laid out in scripture for family, church and society. The organizers of the meeting in 1987 chose to come up with a new word that few laymen can define instead of doing the hard but honest work of redeeming an accurate and precise biblical term. IMHO, that was their first, in a long line of, mistakes.
I have enjoyed our gentle jousting. I will add one last point, sort of in jest, sort of not. Having read the bible, especially but not only, Genesis, I ALWAYS assume bad motives until I know otherwise:). Best.
Sorry for the delay. I make no distinction between thick and thin. For me, it is clear that scripture teaches a strict hierarchy for gender roles for society, the church and for the family. That hierarchy comes in the form of the patriarchy.
As for the difference between the complementarians and the egalitarians I see it like this. Since complementarians don't consider themselves "feminists", strictly speaking, they made a compromise between the feminists/egalitarians and those who follow the bible, the patriarchy folks. It is simply an attempt to make the bible and its teaching less offensive. And when we do that we make the bible irrelevant to our lives. Cuz the bible, its not changing. Or as Lady Thatcher famously put it, "This lady is not for turning". In other words, she wasn't looking to compromise, in her case with socialists. In the case of the bible on the patriarchy, with feminists. And remember, feminism is simply one wing of communism. It is the wing of communism dedicated to destroying the family. And damn if it has done a hell of a job!
In reality, complementarians really only apply their complementarian approach to the pulpit and no where else. MOST CERTAINLY NOT IN THE HOME! I mean, Adam was actually the first egalitarian when he chose to not correct his wife and instead disobey God. God had given him this amazing fellow human being that was awfully pretty and he could have sex with and get along with and support him in his work of bringing all of creation under his dominion. He wasn't going to let a little rule from God screw that up, was he?
And since the late 1800's in the West, man has been choosing this direction to the absolute destruction of society and the family.
I would HIGHLY recommend the book "Masculine Christianity" by Zachary M. Garris. In chapter 3, titled "Complementarian's Compromise" the author talks about an organization called the "Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood" that outlined its core beliefs in the Danvers Statement of 1987. In this statement they chose the name "complementarian" instead of the much more precise and much more descriptive term, "patriarchy". Want to guess why they chose such a confusing term when a much better term was already in the public vernacular? Yep, they didn't want to alienate those pesky feminists. So, rather than do the hard but certainly doable work of redeeming a word that had been demonized by the fems, they chose the easy way out. And they have been paying for that ever since.
So, even in its founding, complementarianism was already bending to the culture instead of standing strong with scripture. And it has been downhill ever since.
But it would take some doing to stand against the culture. Lots of courage and a willingness to let some single moms and other women leave your church. And those people tithe. See the problem?
Also, men in our culture are saddled with women who are feminists, plain and simple. Even the ones like my wife, who was raised in a strict, conservative Missouri Synod Lutheran home. On farm no less. We are in our 60's. So both of us have been swimming in a river of feminism our entire lives. It is in her blood. She has been told both overtly and subversively, to "not be a door mat", "you can do anything a man can do", "you deserve this", etc. etc. It is the same for women my age as the young folks now who believe, understandably, that the climate is going to kill us all, or that men and women are the same except for their plumbing. Lies all, but when it is all you have heard since you were a wee lass in short britches, it is all you know.
I watched my dad live a miserable existence with a woman, my mother, who ruled the home and when she didn't get her way, it was hell on earth for my father and I for weeks on end. So, as an adolescent I resolved to not allow my wife to rule me that way. The deal was sealed, so to speak, when I attended a Bill Gothard "Seminar on Basic Youth Conflicts" and realized that scripture taught that happiness in the home comes when the father is the sole leader.
And as a result, since I have been unwilling to cave like most men, we don't have much peace in the home. One thing that wives do to their husbands, in addition to using sex as a weapon, is wives (with the Deceiver's assistance) throw their husband's imperfection in their face as an excuse to not follow their lead. I have chosen to not allow my sin to drive me to abdicate my responsibility to lead my wife.
I have gone on too far, much too far, but this is a subject for which I have a great deal of passion. Have a great day. I look forward to your reply.
Your claim that complementarians limit their approach to the pulpit and most certainly not the home is the very DEFINITION of thin complementarianism, and is untrue for thick complementarianism. So you leave me with my original impression that you just don't understand the terms and their differences.
I guess I would add that Christians and conservatives have for too long, ceded way too much ground to the Left when it comes to language. We have allowed the Left to determine what is "allowed" to be said in polite company.
And since we think in our native tongue, i.e. we form ideas and thought with language, the Left has successfully narrowed the scope of what can be said and even thought.
Patriarchy is simply one example.
The Right needs to grow a pair and speak the truth. The bible (and experience) teaches that people are drawn to the Truth spoken boldly. Folks are repelled by mealy mouth compromise. For proof, I give you all the mainline denominations; Episcopal, Methodist, most of Lutheran, Presbyterian, etc. and the old guard GOP which has zero support among the masses and is only kept alive by the donor class.
How many folks do you know that actually practice "thick" complementarianism? I don't know that many. Mostly at the church we attend, where the entire congregation of 250-300 people are extremely conservative culturally. Only one family sends their kids to a public school, all the rest home school. A couple of kids attend a conservative Lutheran HS.
But of all the other Christian families I know, I don't know of a single one that practices what you call "thick" C.
As for terms and definitions, if you want to call what I refer to as the patriarchy as "thick" C., then be my guest. However, one of those terms is MUCH more easily defined and understood by most people than the other. I will let you decide which one.
My larger point remains. Nearly all of mainstream Evangelicals do not follow scripture when it comes to how they order heir lives and their homes.
To lift a line from "The Sting" I would ask, "you folla?"
I would say that "patriarchy" brings in associations that lead to misunderstanding. When Saudi Arabia did not allow women to drive, that was part of their patriarchy, but not likely what you are advocating. At one time in America, it was hard for a woman to own property or have her own credit, and the laws even caused problems for widows. All of these associations with the word "patriarchy" make it a poor choice for labeling thick complementarianism. It is simply not very precise.
The thin complementarians limit the pulpit to men, but seem to look for ways to accommodate women in every other way that they can argue lies beyond some specific Biblical prohibition: leading prayers, song leading, basically everything besides the sermon. They are dragged along kicking and screaming by certain Bible verses, but they do not believe that God ordained a natural order with men leading in family and faith, so they are egalitarian in every way that is not ruled out by their Biblicism. My congregation, like MANY, does not fall into that description.
Rather than read bad motivations into the choice of the word "complementarianism" I would be charitable and recognize that they avoided a word that already had connotations that would not be accurate.
I will just repeat one thing, for emphasis, that I said earlier. Patriarchy has only recently become a word that is loaded with negative connotations. And that was something the feminists did on purpose.
For hundreds of years patriarchy was not considered controversial in the least, as it accurately and precisely described the hierarchy laid out in scripture for family, church and society. The organizers of the meeting in 1987 chose to come up with a new word that few laymen can define instead of doing the hard but honest work of redeeming an accurate and precise biblical term. IMHO, that was their first, in a long line of, mistakes.
I have enjoyed our gentle jousting. I will add one last point, sort of in jest, sort of not. Having read the bible, especially but not only, Genesis, I ALWAYS assume bad motives until I know otherwise:). Best.