Beyond Complementarian

I found this story appalling. In making decisions about a Christian school and whether the principal should be fired, women were not even allowed to speak.

While I do believe that a denomination or local church should have the right to do what it believes is right with a school it finances, including expecting the teachers to support the party-line, I do not think that it is right to maintain such narrow boundaries. Both the offense and the way it was handled speak more of paranoia than of concern for education.

What I really wanted to note, however, is that complementarians of my acquaintance would pretty much unanimously oppose this type of action as well. It seems that what often happens in controversies happens in the egalitarian debate–those who are not egalitarian are complementarian, and those who are not complementarian are egalitarian, and the line is drawn very near to the opposite end of the spectrum. (Please notice that I’m aware this is not the topic of the original story, nor of Cheryl Schatz’s blog post.)

It’s sort of like the political spectrum where everyone who is not 100% laissez faire can get labeled a socialist, while on the other hand people who would support many socialist ideas are labeled as laissez faire by the “real” socialists.

We should realize that there are many shades in these camps, and that the labels can be problematic, especially if we narrow one and broaden the other, from either direction. Labeling is useful; mislabeling is confusing.