“Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.” – Sojourner Truth

Two prefaces are provided in modern editions of RBMW, the first from 1991 and the second from 2006. They reflect the difference that fifteen years can make in the world, but also fundamentally play upon the same concepts, almost perfectly in step with one another. We will discuss each in turn before evaluating them together.

1991

            Four years before I was born, the first preface was written. It highlights the usual plight of the authors. Men and women are being treated as equal in society. The preface cites the “rejection of a unique leadership role for men in marriage and in the church,” as the cause of significant controversy in Christendom. This arises from “new interpretations,” (emphasis theirs,) of Biblical texts. The preface highlights that “selfishness, irresponsibility, passivity, and abuse,” have made the traditional stance unpalatable to many. This is, we are told, a widespread issue.

            Here, we come to one of the most confusing aspects of this kind of writing. We are told, “the vast majority of evangelicals have not endorsed the evangelical feminist position.” Within conservative texts, you will often find that the problems they address are described simultaneously as having taken over the world because they are more appealing than tradition, and also that most people reject them because of some concept of “common sense.” Both are held up as true. Men and women, it is argued, know that it is wrong to be social equals, and yet they also rush to embrace egalitarianism. I think a lot of writing about issues does this, but in traditionalist literature, the need to be winning because of the common people and also being crushed by liberalism are often paired as simultaneous realities.

            The 1991 preface takes time to highlight that it is not written to simply bash feminism, it is meant to be a critique of the movement toward egalitarianism while also acknowledging that evangelical feminists have shown the ways traditional gender roles hurt women. From this the term “complementarity,” is coined – a vision to “correct the previous mistakes and avoid the opposite mistakes that come from the feminist blurring of God-given sexual distinctions.”

            The preface is clear that it wants an audience of both men and women. That women need to know they are “fully equal to men in status before God, and in importance to family and the church.” They also wish for them to see in complementarianism a route toward, “wholehearted affirmation to Biblically balances male leadership in the home and the church.” This is similar to the desire that men know, “women are fully equal to men in personhood, in importance, and in status before God,” but with an additional note. The authors wish for men to support women’s ministry, “without feeling that this will jeopardize his own unique leadership role as given by God.”

            This highlights another element of this movement. While men are treated as being naturally lifted up as leaders, the sacredness of their leadership, and more specifically its violation, is described in terms of “offense.” A woman ought not to “offend,” a man’s sense of leadership. This will pop up throughout our analysis, but it has always struck me as strange that a man’s feeling of being threatened by women in power is often given as evidence that there is an “unbiblical,” balance of power. We will address this more when the arguments are actually presented regarding this matter.

            The 1991 preface ends with the main authors (John Piper and Wayne Grudem,) thanking their wives.

2006

A portrait of doom is revealed in the opening pages of the 2006 preface. “A conservative backlash against radical feminism has reverberated through pop culture during the last twenty years; simultaneously, egalitarianism is now the cultural norm.” The movement for complementarianism is more popular than it ever was, but also losing its battle on every front.

This 2006 preface spends more time pointing to churches as the cause of the decay in “biblically defined roles in marriage, family and the church.” Ministers have embraced egalitarianism, and no one believes or teaches what the bible says men and women are meant to do. “Increasing numbers of men entering the ministry have little or no formal training, so they lack a thorough grasp of biblical teaching…”

The main audience of this text as moderate or conservative evangelicals is highlighted in the image of a minister presented in these opening pages. The leaders of the church have erred in believing the main purpose of the church is to “empower women to serve more broadly and visibly,” so long as they are not pastors or elders (administrators,) in the church. This violates the God given tasks of men and women, but so does compromise of any kind which only results in “a repackaging of egalitarianism.”

The “new generation,” must be told that complementarianism is the true and proper way to live their lives. “When male and female live and work together as God intended, there is nothing more beautiful, satisfying, delightful, and God-glorifying.” The fault of egalitarianism is that it fails to address “God’s creation design and redemptive calling of women.” I am curious at the outset what this “redemptive calling,” might be, but if I had a guess it has to do with 1 Timothy 2:15:

“Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.”

The shift in the culture since the 1991 publishing is reflected in the additional notes this preface gives on what must be done in the church. “we must promote healthy, heterosexual, monogamous marriages.” As Meatloaf said, “two out of three ain’t bad,” and I can stand by two of those endorsements personally. The important thing about this addition is that it suggests a slippery slope is created through endorsing egalitarianism. Later in the same paragraph we read, “egalitarianism is part of the disintegration of marriage in our culture…”

In general, this preface seems less evenhanded in who it wishes to reach. We are told that the church “must also lead Christian women toward a joyous embrace of godly, male leadership as we simultaneously direct their men toward a self-denying, other-serving embrace of the leadership role.” While this maintains the critique of men abusing their power, it is focusing much more on catechizing women into this worldview. They must be taught that they are meant to submit, is a lot different language than “we want them to give thanks they are a woman.”

The authors of this preface highlight that “until about 1970,” the culture was still largely Christian – in content if not in faith. The problem arose that “pagan worldview[s]” entered in. This is cited as being part of a compromise with post-modernism and secular mindsets. If the Church ordains women, if it erases distinctions between men and women, then, the argument goes, they will soon do away with essential doctrines of the faith. “The church has been called to counter and bless the culture, not to copy and baptize it.”

The preface continues in saying that opposing complementarianism naturally leads to a disbelief in biblical authority. Here we find the main issue we will have on this matter. Christians do not, on the whole, disagree about biblical authority – but they do disagree on interpretation. Complementarianism, and indeed most biblical interpretation frameworks, see themself as the “correct,” interpretation, and so to deviate from their teachings is to deny the word of God. “If we can wrest egalitarianism from the Bible, we can pervert it to say anything we wish.”

The argument goes on to say that egalitarianism is based, not so much in scripture, as it is based in “church history or elsewhere.” This external study is seen as an attack on scripture, as it requires that we learn from archaeology, history, and ancient texts outside the corpus of scripture to understand what the scriptures say. I would argue that if it is an attack on scripture to learn about its context, then no amount of biblical archaeology should be permitted, let alone heeded. If leaning on history, culture, and language pollute our interpretation, then we ought to only keep the Novum Testamentum Graece beside out bed and only use the Masoretic text for study of the Hebrew Scriptures. Translation is interpretation, archaeology is interpretation, if we are to be people who view scripture as needing no context – we must be fully consistent in that view.

The preface asserts complementarians stay in the fight for the culture in order to preserve the faith and especially the scriptures. This is the only way they can “raise masculine sons and feminine daughters.” The preface ends with an endorsement of the book itself, that it is still relevant, and with one final wish that people might see “God’s design for men and women.” This preface was written by J. Ligon Duncan and Randy Stinson.

A Tale of Two Prefaces

The content of these two prefaces is largely the same, but the tone is quite different. The language of the 1991 preface is that of people who earnestly believe that they have something to offer people that will improve their life. Whether they are correct in that assumption is secondary to the point that they are writing in a voice that say, “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and that they can thrive in a world where they acknowledge that.” The tone of 2006 reflects the shifting culture around these kind of views. “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and if we do not enforce them we will be destroyed.”

I do not wish to imply that some of this thinking was not present when the 1991 preface was written. As we go into the actual text of this book, we will find plenty of doomsaying and hand wringing. What I do wish to make clear is that, post 9/11, our way of talking about the left and right in the Church, in society, in the world – changes. Language becomes harsher, the need to strike out against dangerous new ideas becomes more urgent. In the eyes of many, the September 11^th attacks were the result of America’s failings to be the people of God. Whether that is through unjustified military actions in the middle east or egalitarianism and homosexuality depends on your political slant, but the attacks made whatever distinctions we had between us sharper than ever.

The argument of 2006 is closer to the fights we see today. Slippery slopes are everywhere, or at least so we are told. “If we embrace trans folks, then everyone will think they’re animals next!” Just like in 2006 it was common to hear people say that if gay folk could get married they would be marrying animals next. In terms of men and women the slope we are given is, “If men and women are fully equal in society, then you might as well throw away all the Bible!”

Personally, I do not see a need to throw away the Bible over egalitarian issues. The scripture is the bedrock of my faith, and I am honest about when something I believe is not drawn purely from them. I am a Methodist, I went to a Pentecostal Church for a while, I’ve been in non-denoms and I listen to Catholic Radio. Every one of those influences mixes together to make something that is not always 1:1 with scripture, but I do my best to make it so. The worst thing we can do as Christians is baptize our own views as infallible, because then we make ourselves sole arbiters of God’s words. We all have baggage, assumptions, and preferences that shape how we read scripture, admitting that is the first step to living a life like Christ.

I should also say that I see little of Christ in these prefaces. Christ makes one statement about gender dynamics, and that is in reference to men divorcing their wives without cause. Outside of that, we see his ministry involving men and women, and while I think it would be a stretch to call those early assemblies “egalitarian,” they were definitely more like that than they weren’t. In the letters of Paul, we see indications that both liberation and constraint existed in the early church regarding the role of women, as did abolition and the continuance of slavery. The New Testament, the Church, has always had a messy job of relating the incarnate God to the world we live in. However, just because it is messy does not mean that we should not attempt it.

The prefaces largely speak for themselves in terms of their goals, but it is in the actual chapters that we will be able to engage more directly with ideas. I hope you stick along with me as we dig deeper into RBMW and hopefully find something we can use in our discourse around these topics, nearly forty years after these texts first began to come together.

Stay safe, stay sane, and tell someone you love them.