What does complementarianism mean in 2024? Too often, the phrase complementarianism has been a half-measure to ward off against egalitarianism in the Church while rejecting the self-evident and assumed patriarchy found in the Scriptures. The most important sticking point being that complementarians reject women’s ordination, but increasingly, it has become evident that they who assume the label embrace the function of teaching and leadership without the title of pastor.
And what better place is there for answers than The Gospel Coalition? The outlet most known for promoting Tim Keller’s Third Wayism has taken a more feminine turn in recent years, perhaps in line with a greater proportion of their readership. In a recent video entitled, “How Men and Women must Labor Together for the Good of the Church,” they set out to advocate for greater participation of women in the church, but what does that mean?
On the panel includes Collin Hansen, the host; Jen Wilkin, a female fixture at TGC who previously defended public schools; Kori Porter, a black woman associated with the AND Campaign; and Michael Kruger, a certified beta male. The early argument trotted out by Wilkin is that the Church, being a family, should look like a family. This is juxtaposed with the current practice of women’s spaces in churches being their isolated silos of activity. She then applies Jesus speaking to who is his family (Matthew 12:46-48) to suggest how gender-integrated the church was and should be.
He describes the Church as the family of God. And I worry too often we have families in our local churches, that if it was a nuclear family attending our church, we’d be very concerned about—we have a father who sets the rules, we have children who toe the line, and we have an absentee mother. So when we think about just a healthy family structure, we would expect that in our local churches, which are expressions of the family of God, that we would see fathers and mothers operating in that space.
Wilkin pits the operations of the family against the operations of the church. What is strange is that she analogizes the church to a nuclear family, only that the mother is absent. A nuclear family is a father, mother, and children, and often there are more single mothers than single fathers who attend churches. Still, she uses this illustration regarding the church, nevertheless. She argues that if a family were to function as the church, that would be problematic, but would it? The family was the first Church recorded in Scripture seen in Genesis and Job and should maintain some of this function even now, apart from the sacraments of faith. Since the New Testament Church is not a single family, she neglects the issue of scale that arises from multiple families while ignoring that the structure arose out of the design of the ancient synagogues, which Jesus affirmed through participation. Her real contention is not that women are denied participation in church, but in roles that she wants them to participate in. Plenty of churches have women laboring on the ground throughout various ministries, so the mother in this metaphor is not absent, but merely not seated in positions of leadership.
One of the prevailing themes is that there needs to be more female voices that women can look up to, something Wilkin ascribes to herself, though she contends that there needs to be more women voices like her in the local church. This resembles Standpoint Epistemology where members of all groups must be represented to properly understand Scripture, which is verifiably untrue. Hansen then celebrates the rise of prominent women in ministry who were absent just fifteen years ago. If one really thinks about who those women are, they are mostly, if not entirely, bad: Aimee Byrd, Janet Mefferd, Julie Roys, Sadie Robertson, Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer. And some were platformed by organizations and men like TGC and Carl Trueman.
Jen Wilkin later declares that women in the church should be treated the exact same as any non-elder male with regard to their participation. This ignores certain roles, such as deacon, small group leader, or Sunday school teacher, where qualified non-elder men might lead and women are considered unqualified. Furthermore, those non-elder males might become elders one day as elder boards typically incorporate longstanding members, so such a church needs to develop that depth for a potential vacancy. So no, they are not the same.
The conversation then goes into the need for male pastors to shepherd both men and women, whereas they claim that pastors only speak to men. Naturally, the number one concern is that either churches do not shepherd their flocks enough or the members do not trust their pastors to shepherd them at all, so if a church is only able to shepherd the man of the house, that should be considered a positive, but not according to this panel. Again, they ignore the issue of scale with regard to the local church. Women might come away listening to this conversation and think their pastors are ignoring them, or they will perceive the greater attention devoted to the men of the Church as a slight against the women. In sales, it is common to shake the wife’s hand first, because the perception of her feeling slighted poses a risk to closing the sale, but this worldly gynocentric attitude should have no place in the Church. The Church should not have to walk on eggshells to avoid offending the feelings of women.
This then devolves into cases of discipline and abuse where Wilkin argues for a Women’s Advocate to provide input. The implication is that men are too daft to understand the feelings or perceptions of women. She uses the feminist language of “trauma-informed response” and even says that abuse is everywhere in the church. The insinuation is that there are numerous disaffected women, due to abuse, being ignored in the pews because there are no women in leadership. She claims that men would side with the men in shepherding matters, so women need to be included. This ignores the likelier outcome in which women will almost always side with the woman in a he-said-she-said. And by labeling it as a “Women’s Advocate,” the implication is that they would advocate on behalf of the women.
At the end of the discussion, Jen Wilkin uses an anecdote where she asked a group who their greatest influences on faith were, to which they would name three men. She then challenges them to ask, “What if you had a woman on that list and not your mom?” The overall insinuation is that there should be “mothers” of the faith just as men have spiritual fathers. It is almost as if she is creating the notion that men need a spiritual longhouse.
Conclusion
Overall, The Gospel Coalition ignores the issue of scale at the local church to advocate greater women’s involvement in all areas, just short of the pastorate, though how short is unclear. The larger a church becomes, the less accessible the pastors and elders become to the laity. Ultimately, they spoke with vaguer and nonspecific generalities that might project these issues onto listeners that are largely absent within their local church. This contradicts the “complementary” aspect of their supposed complementarianism. The conversation further projects the notion that most pastors feel uncomfortable around the women in their local congregations, which is the basis for the ambiguous “women’s advocate” role Wilkin proposed.
In a society that is asking, where are the men, too often society is elevating women into roles for the sake of sex rather than more qualified men for those same roles. This happens in politics, media, and the workplace (through DEI), so naturally, it filters into the church. To advocate greater roles for women is to advocate against the elevation of men due to the limited resources available. Just as the father is the most important role in the house, so too does the church need strong male leadership. The elevation of women like Jen Wilkin and Kori Porter by The Gospel Coalition is nothing more than their current effort at egalitarian subversion.