Gender Role Theology: A Slippery Slope to LGBTQ+?

I know the premise may sound crazy – gender role theology as a slippery slope to LGBTQ+?!? – but bear with me, and I’ll try not to disappoint.

In evangelical patriarchy/hierarchalism/complementarianism, it is often assumed that gender role equality in the church is a slippery slope to acceptance of LGBTQ+ ideology. The argument goes something like this: when a woman exercises spiritual authority over men in a church, she rejects her divinely-ordained sexual nature as man’s subordinate. This permissiveness paves the way for the takeover of liberal theology, in which God’s intention for sexual activity between a man and a woman, and the sacredness of one’s created gender, are similarly subverted.

Many evangelical egalitarians have demonstrated how this argument is beset both by a causal fallacy and a misunderstanding of gender differences. I will briefly summarize their counterarguments and present a new idea, namely, that the exclusion of women from church leadership as “God’s will,” or gender role theology, ultimately separates God’s will for creation from his design of creation in a way that is inconsistent with the evangelical stance against LGBTQ+ ideology. For if woman’s created equality of being with men does not inform her telos, or final purpose, as an equal partner with men, then why should human sexuality – our created sexual being as male or female – inform our sexual telos? (I write more on this theme here.)

While hierarchalists claim that egalitarianism opens the door to LGBTQ+ practices, I will argue nearly the opposite: that a theology of women’s submission, as articulated by hierarchalists, is actually more consistent with LGBTQ+ practices, as they rely on the same false conceptual paradigm that divorces ontology from telos.

Equal in Being / Unequal in Role: Divorcing Ontology from Telos

Both hierarchalists and egalitarians attest that women and men are equal in being; however, for hierarchalists, this equality is qualified by what they call “role” differences based on male/female complementarity. Hierarchalists differ broadly in how they understand and apply these role differences, but basically, as long as you prohibit women from doing something in the church on the basis of their sex, you’re in the hierarchalist club.

Egalitarians also affirm that men and women are complementary, bringing different strengths, for example, to ministry, and serving unique biological roles in reproduction as mothers and fathers; however, egalitarians do not equate complementarity with hierarchy.

So why is there no gender role hierarchy?  The answer, as Rebecca Groothuis explains in Discovering Biblical Equality, is rooted in the basic fact that men and women – being made in the image of God – are equally gifted with distinctly god-like qualities: higher-order cognitive reasoning, self-governance, wisdom, spiritual insight. These qualities are important to our human ontology, for they distinguish us from the rest of the animals.

These qualities are also important to leadership.

Yet hierarchalists would deny to women (or restrict and qualify) the telos suggested by their God-given ontology, their unique gifting as human beings, while disproportionately encouraging women to submit to their husband’s leadership and bear/raise children. These latter endeavors, although noble, are not uniquely human ones. Even dogs obey their human masters, and all mammals raise their young.

These unequal emphases and prohibitions, which ultimately de-humanize women, are justified by hierarchalists as gender “role” differences eternally instituted by God, who wills generally that men should lead and women should submit. Hierarchalists attempt to preserve woman’s equality under this scheme – which requires that women subdue or restrain their God-given gifts, their calling, even the expression of their own humanity – by insisting that women are ontologically equal while remaining functionally subordinate to men.

Thus a woman may have gifts of preaching, pastoral leadership, and godly wisdom, but her exercise of these gifts will be restricted or suppressed entirely under a hierarchalist regime where ontology is divorced from telos. The disconnect between ontology and telos demanded by evangelical patriarchy is a problem, Groothuis explains, not only because it does not make sense (why would God give us talents to restrict or bury?) but because it runs counter to Scripture; denies women their inheritance and calling as believers; robs the Kingdom of God; and usurps God as Gift-Giver and Caller:

“The idea that what women may and may not do is ontologically disconnected from what women can and cannot do is….contrary to the whole tenor of New Testament teaching – that whatever one has been given one should use by investing it in and for the kingdom of God (e.g., 1 Pet. 4:10-11). Being and function, fruit and gifts, personal character and public ministry are tandem expressions of faithful service and obedience to Christ. Patriarchalists alter the teaching of God’s Word by denying to women a measure of [various] God-given privileges and responsibilities, allocating to men [my emphasis] the lion’s share of what the Bible speaks of as the status and calling of all believers.” (314, 323, from “Equal in Being, Unequal in Role,” Discovering Biblical Equality)

Unequal in…Everything

The second problem with hierarchalism, as should be evident by now, is that there ultimately is no equality – ontological or otherwise. For if woman’s functional subordination is based on her sex, and sex is foundational to our ontology – which it is – woman’s subordination is ontological de facto. As Groothuis writes: “Woman’s inferior ‘role’ cannot be defended by the claim that it is ontologically distinct from woman’s equal being. In female subordination, being determines role and role defines being; thus there can be no real distinction between the two. If the one is inferior, so is the other.” (333)

Groothuis concludes that since:

1. The hierarchalist claim of equal in being/unequal in role is internally incoherent; and
2. Both egalitarians and hierarchalists agree that the Bible affirms the equality of men and women; and
3. The Bible is the inerrant word of God; then,

Hierarchalists must be misinterpreting the Biblical passages that they use to support gender role theology.

With a bit of careful thinking, the complementarian claim to equality is exposed as mere rhetoric, and the absurdity of separating ontology from telos is made plain.

The Myth of the Egalitarian Slippery Slope

Hierarchalists claim that egalitarianism leads to a liberal theology that endorses LGBTQ+ practices. Not so, says William G. Witt, a professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at the Anglican Trinity School for Ministry. In Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination, Witt essentially argues that a causal fallacy is at work here:

“It does not follow that because many of the advocates of women’s ordination in the 1970s were theological liberals, there is then an inherent connection between advocacy of women’s ordination and liberal theology….There is a connection in the sense that liberal Protestants embraced women’s ordination and gay liberation as a further implication of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. However, liberal Protestantism….existed well before women’s ordination….[and] did not [always] embrace the ordination of women. Just as orthodox Christians can agree with liberal Protestants in embracing racial equality, while disagreeing with liberal Protestants about endorsing same-sex unions, so they can endorse women’s ordination without endorsing same-sex unions. And they can endorse the ordination of women while remaining orthodox Christians, indeed, not in spite of their orthodox faith, but because of it.” (12, 14)

Groothuis refutes the idea of the egalitarian “slippery slope” along different lines, in relation to her key point that hierarchalists misunderstand what constitutes female nature. Because they hold that gender distinctions in authority are as divinely-ordained as heterosexuality, a rejection of the former invites a rejection of the latter. Yet Groothuis demonstrates that if God created men and women equally in his image, a divine will that eternally favors men in spiritual authority would violate our created nature. Since men and women are equal by divine ordinance, there is no sense in which a woman’s spiritual authority over a man represents a rejection of her own nature or a rejection of orthodox theology. Rather, as Witt would agree, it is the orthodox claim to male/female equality, rooted in Scripture, that supports a woman’s equal exercise of spiritual authority.

The Irony of Gender Role Theology

The irony, of course, is that hierarchalists accuse egalitarians of violating the “natural” order of women’s subordination, while hierarchalists – who pay lip service to equality but advocate a system in which women can actually never be equal – usurp God’s creative prerogative. And they do so no less than the liberal theologians advocating LGBTQ+ practices.

If hierarchalists/complementarians are doing the same things that liberal theologians are – divorcing ontology from telos – perhaps they are the ones inadvertently opening the door to the practices of liberal theology. After all, if ontology is disconnected from telos – if a woman’s God-given capacities, her being, do not align with how she is permitted to live – then why should our created sexual gender have to align with 1) the gender we “live” as or 2) who we have sex with?

Indeed, support for LGBTQ+ ideology relies in part on the same flawed conceptual framework that underpins gender role theology.

Until evangelicals abandon gender role theology, it will be difficult if not impossible for us to speak the truth without hypocrisy on transgender issues and human sexuality.