“If complementarians really just believed that God gave men and women different roles, then there would be roles that women can fulfill that men can't. But there aren't. There are only things that men can do that women can't. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “If you're experiencing pain, confusion, or exhaustion from living under teachings that diminish you, your feelings are valid. It's not a sign of weak faith or rebellion. It's your spirit longing for freedom, authenticity, and dignity ... /1

Hi everyone, I'll be away for a few days ... I hope the coming week is filled with encouragement and nourishment for you. Best wishes, OB "Comfort the discouraged. Help the weak. Be patient with everyone. /1

“I grieve for the women who've compiled a checklist for an ideal “spiritual leader,” only to face the inevitable disappointment and resentment when their husbands fall short. Likewise, I ache for the men who stagger under the immense, /1

“The enemy would have us believe power belongs to the person or group who can exert the most violence the most effectively. It’s a really persuasive lie because it looks really true on the world’s stage. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: [On the relationship between extreme and moderate forms of complementarianism]: “When it came to evangelical masculinity, the ideological extreme bore a remarkable resemblance to the mainstream. /1

“... for every Mark Driscoll there are 100 unknown pastors doing similar things.”– Lark TheoSis From: www.threads.com/@larktheosis...

“Imagine a phone company randomly restricts data from all of their female unlimited data plan customers. People are furious, so the company responds with a statement: /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “Churches who say to women, you may not preach, or we don’t want you to lead us, are like the eye saying to the hand, I don’t need you (1 Cor. 12:21). /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “Sin marred the unity, equality and affinity between men and women, resulting in disunity and a gender hierarchy where women were unilaterally subordinated to men (Gen. 3:16). /1

“In 1960, ten leading Reformed Afrikaner theologians published a series of essays condemning Apartheid and the claim that the Bible endorsed racial separation. They were put on trial for heresy, found guilty, and denounced by the prime minister, Dr. H. Verwoerd, himself a theologian. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “As a general rule, humans (even Christian ones) resist anything that threatens their place or privilege. Should slave-owning theologians have been allowed to be the loudest voice in theological debates in the 1800s? /1

“A person’s male privilege is reflected the second he wonders why people are still talking about gender. It is reflected even more if he acts offended or annoyed when another person calls out and questions that male privilege. /1

[On 1 Timothy 2]: The text addressed to men about what to do with their hands has never been enforced in any church I have ever attended. It certainly has not been used to define a universal “male identity” as “those-whose-hands-are-always-lifted-in prayer” ... /1

“If you really believe that God's assignment of men and women to their various roles/vocations has nothing whatsoever to do with intrinsic competencies then you are basically claiming that the only reason God assigned the genders to their respective roles is genitalia ... /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: [On 1 Timothy 2:12]: “The instruction “to be quiet” is not to silence the woman but to urge her to conduct herself with dignity (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 2:2), not speaking in anger or disputing like the men (2:8). /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: [On “Biblical womanhood”]: “Women think all of this is the Bible because they learn it in their churches ... But it’s really a post-Second World War construction of domesticity, which was designed to send working women back to the kitchen ... /1

“I know many women who are bewildered, hurt, despairing, or fed up with what they are being told about “biblical womanhood.” What is being touted as “biblical womanhood” doesn't align with their personality, talents, or heartfelt and spirit-led passions. /1

“Jesus doesn’t match the macho, tough-guy exterior that often passes for masculinity today. He didn’t pretend to be invincible. He came to serve. /1

“Men like John Piper will tell you that men carry such a tremendous burden by being responsible for the decisions. Women like Shaunti Feldhahn will tell you the tremendous burden of being a man in this society, trying not to lust after every woman you see, and how having sex can make that easier. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: [On the idea that men provide and protect]: “Patriarchy gives rights to men and takes them away from women - which results in an expectation being put on men to provide for and protect women. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “If the purpose of men is to protect and provide for women and children, then men must assume a world of scarcity and threat. You can’t assume this in Genesis 1. /1

“It's not a stretch to translate the Hebrew word kenegdo, in the expression ezer kenegdo used for Eve, as “equal to him.”” – Marg Mowczko From: www.threads.com/@margmowczko...

“In binary systems, the dominant term is defined narrowly, and the non-dominant term encompasses everything outside that definition. So in the case of masculine/feminine, what constitutes “masculine” is defined narrowly, and everything else is deemed “feminine”. /1

“If you’ve been knocking around certain corners of U.S. evangelicalism for the last 25 years, then it may seem that “complementarian” theology is native to evangelicalism or even to Christian faith. /1

The Twelve Theses (1983) “6. It also concerns us that some weighty and central doctrines are being denied full expression due to the prominence of the doctrine of headship: chief amongst these being the doctrine of man and woman created in the image of God. /1

“It sure would be convenient to have an inerrant book full of God confirming all my views. Whenever someone challenges me, I could just say “The Bible is clear!” and prove God is on my side. Whenever someone says I’m not living like Jesus, /1

The Twelve Theses (1983) “3. And we are convinced that as long as women are held under a theology of subordination, there can be no renewal of relationships under the impetus of the Gospel, for whilst spiritual and political distinctions between men and women continue to be taught and /1

The Twelve Theses (1983) “1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying: Repent ye, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, meant the whole life of the faithful to be an act of repentance. /1

““Clobber passages” are parts of Scripture that people have misused, that they have taken it and they’ve tried to borrow the authority of Scripture to achieve unChristlike ends. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “If salvation is a rebirth into a new way of being human in a kingdom not of this world, If salvation is a rescue from the bonds of anti-christ's agenda, If salvation is a shift from self-as-lord to thy-kingdom-come, /1

“Often the claim is that women can have many roles in the church with the one restriction that they cannot be called pastors. Not only is this unsupported biblically, but these female “directors” often do the same job as the pastors, /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “It’s not just you. If you’re enraged by the betrayal of those you loved & admired, who taught the word to you & somehow now have no regard for what it says, it’s not just you. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “There is a good reason why defenders of adulterous pastors always trot out the example of David rather than New Testament apostles. That is because there are no known examples of the disciples of Jesus committing adultery. /1

“As role models for women in their congregations, pastors’ wives reinforced the importance of submission and godly parenting for all the women who looked up to them. /1

“Parents who operate by the kind of limitless authority Dobson describes become accustomed to power when children are small & are uniquely ill-prepared for the moment when children state how daring discipline might have—whatever parental intentions— caused egregious harm. /1

“Pretty clear that Paul directly addresses women elders in the literary context of church leadership in two of his letters ... Pretty clear that Apphia, Nympha, and Chloe functioned as church leaders per Paul’s mention of them in different letters.

From the Orthodox Barbie archives (2024): “In an email that came out today, [James] Dobson still claims that women speak about 3 times as many words a day as men do ... ... That's inaccurate. In fact, women and men speak about equal numbers, except in mixed groups, where men speak more. /1

From the Orthodox Barbie archives: “Complementarians ... insist women are “equal” to men but have different “roles.” By “role” they mean submission to male authority. That’s not what “equal” means. It’s not what “role” means. It’s not what “complementarity” means.” - Mimi Haddad /1

“Women who have been subject to domestic violence within relationships where the husband holds to complementarianism report that their husbands had used that teaching to justify their abuse. However, the abuse might not be extreme forms of emotional manipulation or physical violence. /1

“Any discarding or trampling of the vulnerable is an assault on God Himself — no matter the spiritual or good-sounding words used as an excuse.” – Diane Langberg From: x.com/dianelangber...

From the Orthdox Barbie archives: “A lay deacon in our church walked by, stopped, looked at me, and said, “You know, you’d make a great preacher!” Then he started to walk away. I was shocked, but hope began to well up inside me. Maybe this desire to preach is from God after all! /1

“What kind of impact could be made for the Kingdom of God if we enlightened our sons and empowered our daughters to step fully into the priesthood of all believers?” – Dave Johnson From: juniaproject.com/three-reason...

“I think the church’s big mistake is to look at women through a few controversial restrictive texts that have probably been misinterpreted rather than looking at women the way Jesus does as his sisters but also through the eyes of the Great Commission that we need men and women /1

“I wish it was that simple to say let’s stop debating women in ministry and just support women…..Recent news from the world of Doug Wilson & the Southern Baptist Convention show how naive such a statement would be. /1

“People are making it sound like Wilson is fringe, and it's just Wilson. But evangelicalism's best-selling marriage books say the same thing, just not as blatantly. Nancy Pearcey ... said that women's suffrage had negative impacts. /1

“In the end, though, I think the central idea of American evangelical sexual culture in the 2000s was taking purity culture and porn culture and just putting them together. The porn was just supposed to come from inside the house provided individually by the wife. /1

“If you asked a $100 bill if it sees the $1 bill as its equal, it could give the same answer. “Yes and no. In the sense that we’re both monetary units, we’re absolutely on equal footing. But we have very different values.” ... /1

“When you run complementarianism all the way to the end, you get what you see now in pastors openly saying women shouldn’t vote outside the church because women don’t get a vote inside the church. That’s the harm of “male headship/hierarchy”. /1

“If you want the trauma survivor to understand that God is a refuge, then be one.” – Diane Langberg From: x.com/dianelangber...