Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia, that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews.
In this episode, from an evening seminar hosted by the Priscilla & Aquila Centre, a centre of Moore
College, on Monday the 29th of April, 2024, Charlie Screen, Rector of All Souls Langham Place in London.
speaks about complementarianism, the view that God created men and women equal
but different, and what complementarianism looks like in a range of contexts.
Charlie begins with Ephesians 5 verses 22 to 33, and moves outward to examine where the idea is found in the rest of the Bible.
Then he discusses why complementarianism is so controversial, how it plays out in
various contexts, in church, in ministry teams, in families, and in the wider culture,
and what happens when pastors neglect to impart the good teaching of the Bible about men and women to the people they're ministering to.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Good evening, and thank you very much for having me here, Jane.
Thanks for your invitation.
It's great to be at Moore.
This talk will be, um, very much from my context.
So, uh, this is a profound mystery, uh, which is what Ephesians five says.
Um, but then how can something the Bible says is this good, uh, as in the fact that men
and women are different and complimentary, how can it be the cause of so much division?
And I'm aware that maybe it isn't for you.
Uh, maybe you have an entirely happy church on this entirely happy diocese.
And, um, he's laughing at that idea.
Um, and that, um, that, that my context is very different.
Is this like bringing, um, an alien from Mars to talk about gardening, uh, here, but, um, in my context,
uh, The issue of distinctions between men and women and how that works out in church is a cause of enormous
division, both within churches and among evangelicals, within families, and certainly within our denomination.
Though I suspect I'm beginning to meet people from Uh, wider Australia, people from EFAC who are here for the next few days.
I suspect it is more normal, my situation across some of the rest of Australia.
Um, and it may be that, uh, if you are currently Sydney based or even Moore College based, it
may be that you will not always work in the happy sunlit land, uh, that is, uh, that is Sydney.
And I guess even in Sydney, the neighbourhoods, the secular communities that you're part of will have very different assumptions on this.
And we'll say a bit as we go that the views of culture are constantly on their way into your church.
That isn't something that stands still.
Okay, so I'm going to try and show you, um, here we go.
This is the current, uh, website front page of an organization called W A T C H, uh, Women and the Church, which is
the campaign group in the Church of England trying to, uh, drive out complementarians from the Church of England.
And, uh, you'll see, um, if you read to the bottom that, um, they've decided to
name my church, uh, alongside in, you know, August Company of other churches there.
Um, as, uh, as some of the places where, uh, discrimination happens, um, and, um, it's slightly tedious to be on a national website like
that, uh, but there is a, um, there's a sensible point under it that I think is going to be relevant for what we're going to talk about.
Uh, so one of their big campaigns.
is that complementarians keep their, their complementarianism secret.
They are not transparent about it.
Uh, and in particular, they would have stories of, uh, young women who go to university, who join a church that, um, seems nice, uh,
that they attend for three years, uh, until at the end of their three years, they say, oh, by the way, I'm interested in ordination.
Would that be okay?
At which point they're or at least discouraged because nobody ever told them they were at a complementarian church.
And I've had, uh, conversations with, uh, people who take a different view from me on this, about transparency, whether it's good or not.
Um, and I said, and this slightly surprised them, I said, because I think this teaching
is true and I think it is good for both women and men, why would I want to keep it secret?
Why would I not want people to know that my church was complementarian?
Now, I said that a couple of years ago, so let me tell you something else about my context.
Uh, I have moved from, I finally finished my curacic.
So, uh, I, um, I was a curate for 18 years, uh, at a church called St.
Helens Bishopsgate, because there was a lot to learn, uh, and I was very slow.
And, um, St.
Helens, uh, which is also you'll see featured second on that list is interesting.
They're obviously slightly friendlier than ourselves.
Um, St.
Helens would be a church and there's people in this room who, uh, know this
firsthand, but, um, that would be sort of consistently complimentary as in, I'd say.
Everyone on the staff would, would hold to that view, uh, it would be worked through consistently, and you might disagree with
some of the decisions, but, but attempted to be worked through consistently throughout, uh, where complementarism would be
taught regularly, uh, so I was the student worker for quite a long time, and we would have a, address this explicitly about
every other year, uh, so that each generation of students would have the chance, uh, to get their heads around these issues.
Um, but then three years ago, I moved to All Souls Langham Place to be rector, um, much to their surprise and
mine, uh, I think, um, and again, there's people in the room who, uh, can verify or otherwise what I'm saying.
Um, and All Souls is quite interesting is on that list.
Um, because, uh, All Souls would, um, well, as a definition, All Souls would say that we are messily complementarian,
uh, which is one of a whole series of, of beautiful phrases at All Souls, uh, that no one will tell me what they mean.
Um, so I, I, do you know what it means?
I, I'm not sure what it means, but, um, but part of what it means is, um, we are complementarian probably, um, but we'd much rather not talk about it.
Uh, and, um, And that within our staff team, we would have a range of views on this issue.
Uh, and we would, uh, seek to live together as a group that, that disagree on this issue, and that would be, um, you know, whereas I think normally
churches have a single view within which they try and be nice to people who disagree, uh, All Souls is much more trying to be, um, be both views.
Um, okay.
So that is just explaining the kind of alien that I am.
So you might need Ephesians five open, uh, and we're going to begin in Ephesians five.
And I'll read from verse 22.
As you'll see on the handout, the first thing is the two possible wedding sermons.
Uh, on the, who's, who's ever preached on Ephesians 5?
At a wedding?
Um, okay.
So, so as I read, uh, if you haven't preached on this thing, what you would do with this in a wedding.
Wives, this is verse 22, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife.
Even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its saviour.
Now, as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, so that he might sanctify
her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to
himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is profound, and I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
So two wedding sermons, uh, one is mine, uh, and one is a previous colleague of mine, Andrew Satches, uh, which I only
got to hear quite late on in my time of being his colleague, uh, when I was leading a service and he was preaching.
Um, my sermon on Ephesians 5, when couples choose that for their wedding.
Um, roughly goes like this.
It goes, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm really sorry.
Uh, this passage doesn't mean what you think it means.
It's not as bad as you think.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, roughly, uh, would be my one.
And then, uh, I heard Andrew speak and he began by saying, isn't this strange?
Look at what this passage says, isn't that weird?
Isn't this totally different to what all of you think?
Look at how it says men and women are different.
Look at how it says when they come together in a relationship, the relationships are not identical and they treat each other differently.
Isn't that strange?
And, and sort of lays on the fact we've got two different worldviews colliding here.
The non Christian assumption and the Christian assumption.
And, and why on earth would you believe these things unless like, uh, Bob and Jill.
Um, you believe because you believe Jesus is good and kind and loving and perfect.
Uh, and then roughly as I remember it, his recommendation was, and this was slightly scary for a
couple, uh, why don't you watch them for the rest of their lives and see whether this works or not.
So we're saying this is good.
Uh, this is the best way to put a marriage together.
Um, you will think that is totally bizarre.
Maybe that's the starting point for you of wanting to see whether Christianity is true or not.
It's so different, so odd.
Why not come and look at Jesus and why not watch this couple to see whether or not it works.
Um, now again, my sermon isn't quite as I said, it's slightly more front foot than that, but roughly, um,
that's sort of the territory I want to lay out for this talk.
We're going to do some of the biblical material, but really all I'm aiming for there is that
you would agree with me by the end of it, that the Bible thinks complementarianism is good.
It's not one of the embarrassing truths.
It's not one of the secret truths.
It's not one of the last truths you tell people when they've, they've covered everything else.
It is actually good.
Uh, connected to many other important things, uh, helpful, good to live by, um, and so given that, uh, why do we find it so hard to talk
about, uh, why do we find so much pain in the room when we talk about it and so much pain in the room when we're trying to apply it?
And then the sort of second half of the talk, uh, I would just throw out a load of, um, largely experiences
from my alien planet in England, uh, and you must take whichever bits seem relevant and helpful.
Um, and preaching on this at All Souls, where I think the legacy, one of the legacies from John Stott is that the
middle is the best place to be, um, where, um, We gather, I think, a broader range than we would have gathered at St.
Helens.
Um, and, uh, when I've, I've been beginning to preach on complementarian passages or passages that relate
to this, and always, uh, there's somebody in the room who thinks I have been far, far too apologetic.
Can't believe you didn't just say what the Bible says.
And always, always, always, there's a significant group who thinks that we've been far too hard and fierce, uh, and, and harsh.
Um, I think partly just because.
it was sort of explicit at all.
And the same is true whenever we talk about, um, sexuality.
Uh, I've been preaching on, um, sexuality quite a bit recently because of what's going on in the Church of England.
And, uh, there will be a letter from somewhere like Hong Kong saying, I'm so disappointed that All Souls is going to be starting to host gay weddings.
But I did not say that.
And then the next day, the, the formal complaint, uh, you know, referring me to the will come in as well.
It's the same sermon.
And yet.
Somehow I've been heard in the two opposite ways when I said nothing like either of those things.
So how can something the Bible says is this good be so divisive?
If it is a profound mystery, why does it cause so much pain?
And the passages suggest this is a good truth.
In fact, I think the passage suggests this is about unity in particular.
So let's look at Ephesians 5 first of all, um, and start at the end with verse 33.
Uh, even before I heard Andrew's sermon, this had made it into my Ephesians 5 wedding sermon.
But isn't verse 33 the marriage that you would want?
Isn't that the marriage that you'd want for your children?
Isn't that the marriage that, uh, you would want for your best friends?
Isn't that the thing that you wish your parents had had or are glad that your parents had?
A relationship where somehow after 60 years of marriage, um, There is love for
the wife as for himself, and there is respect from the wife for the husband.
Um, do you see how, uh, just the final verse, we're landing this as this is something good.
And then the profound mystery is that all of this refers to Christ and the church, verse 32.
Um, so if you do not teach Christ, complementarity and complementarianism and difference between men and women in roles in marriage, then
assuming that it is true and is here in the Bible and is good, then to that extent you are distorting people's ability to understand God.
uh, what it is like in particular between us and God.
Um, and again, this may not be a Sydney problem, may not be an Australia problem, but, um, in England, I think we very quickly hold back this truth.
Again, partly we think we'll get there when people are ready for it.
Um, but actually you're holding back on the relationship between God and his people.
Uh, the relationship between us and God is like The relation between a bridegroom and a bride in marriage.
Um, so if you think the day when you see Jesus face to face will be a good day, uh,
if you think your relationship with God is a good thing, uh, is part of what is good.
then you'll want to talk about this.
And I remember, um, when the penny dropped for me that, that this passage was saying much more than what I thought it was saying there.
I thought it was saying that God is sort of like a preacher, uh, and like preachers, you know, you're on Saturday night
or earlier than that, if you're a more organized person than me, you know, desperately looking for a great illustration
and, you know, there's God thinking, I just want people to understand, uh, the relationship between me and them.
I wonder what I'll use and like looking around and finally lands on marriage.
Oh.
Okay, well, it's a bit like marriage.
We'll pick on that and explain it.
And, um, somebody patiently said, no, no, it's the other way around.
Uh, that God's had all this mapped out before time began and that the creator created marriage so
that within our creation, there would be an appropriate analogy to give us for what it is like.
As he relates to us, and it's similar in Ephesians to chapter three and what it says about fatherhood.
Um, but again, think just some of the wonder of that, that God is like a bridegroom in terms of how he feels about us.
Uh, He treats us in the sort of way that these verses says a husband should treat loved, gave himself up for her, uh, no one ever hated his own
flesh, uh, the loves and nourishes and cherishes, um, And just like, um, the creation analogy of the father, um, our fathers can be problematic.
Uh, mine died when I was, I was very young.
So simply there's just a lot of absence there.
Uh, but yet the image remains.
Um, enormously profound and accessible.
Again, imagine we didn't have marriage much.
And we all sort of reproduced vegetatively.
Um, and you had instead to have, I don't know, God, God is a bit like your line manager or whatever you think the next best
relationship you have compared to marriage, um, And, and it just would not be, there's a light manager laughing over there.
There you go.
Uh, it would not be the same.
Then, um, in terms of the complementarity in this passage, um,
again, because I'm preaching on this at a church where there are a wide range of views held, um, I've been reading lots of the
sort of material that's going the other way from me and trying to work out what are the really big decisions you have to make.
So I think for Ephesians 5 and for a number of the other passages, is this material, uh, is it asymmetric?
In other words, is it saying different things to men?
Is it accidental that it goes, men do this, women do that?
Uh, and is it.
reversible?
Could you just as easily, uh, swap them round?
And, um, you have obviously a symmetrical 21, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Um, and it is certainly true within Ephesians that the things that husbands are commanded
to do and wives are to do here are, uh, possible of being commanded for other people.
So the fact that, uh, all men are included in verse 21 means there's nothing, uh, inherently unmanly about submitting.
The fact that, uh, 5 verse 2 commands everybody to love.
It means there's nothing sort of, uh, un female about doing the things that are commanded in verse twenty five.
Um, but, are, are these just sort of random examples?
Could you just swap in, uh, and make the same points Paul is trying to make by saying we really need our children's leaders.
to submit to the children's worker in our church, or we really wish that our
musicians would love the church rather than just play the violin or whatever.
Could you just do this with any, any example?
And I, with these passages, cannot see that you can.
I just cannot see that they're not deliberately one way around, and only that way around, and done deliberately.
So, um, the, the, The other pairs here, so you have the, the children and the parents, the, in
the ESV, the bond servants and the masters, uh, they're deliberately patterned, they're parallel.
In Ephesians, they're all, uh, three pairs within the household.
One Peter adds the government.
Uh, and again, you have the parallel between, uh, between the government who I hate to submit to and me, uh, who has to submit.
Um, and nowhere in the New Testament do these come the other way around.
Uh, always, uh, always this way.
And the, the links to Christ and the church, this is a profound mystery, which refers to Christ and the church.
Again, as I read it, secures it as it must be this way around.
Christ loves us.
It's that he loves me, not that I love him.
I do love him, but he loved me while I was still a sinner and while I was not loving him.
And that is profoundly important.
He sacrifices for me, uh, not me for him.
Nannies be careful saying that my wife gives up huge, huge amounts.
Uh, there is massive sacrifice.
I hope between both parties in a relationship, she's allowed me to be here rather than at home with our teenagers.
Um, but The passage is calling me to give up everything for her.
Um, and again, I think that is a good thing for the verses to say.
I'm imperfect, I'm sinful in how I do that, but these verses are good.
And similarly, the other way around, uh, the church submits to Christ, uh, not him to us.
And again, this in our Church of England disputes on other issues becomes profound.
Do you actually believe in a Jesus who can tell you what to do?
Where you, not that that is everything that submission means, but that actually I am submitted to Jesus Christ
and I'll say later on, I think this becomes divisive partly because we all of us find submission difficult.
And that actually is not a gendered thing.
That is all of us.
In the Church of England, we're having a big dispute about marriage and our bishops are being very creative with the word marriage and
what is a marriage and what isn't a marriage and saying that Uh, the doctrine is unchanged, even though it clearly has been changed.
Um, but, but any number of things tie in here.
Um, including, um, the, the sort of idea, so when I preached on 1 Corinthians 11 recently, and found
myself needing, in fact, an entire sermon on transgender issues before we could even get to the
difficult sermon about men and women in church, because, uh, again, it non reversible and asymmetric.
Uh, you cannot just, uh, take the genders out of this, the sexes out of this, and not destroy what this is saying.
Interchangeable humanity would, would undo this.
So when I, uh, preached on Ephesians 5, I had a go at defining, uh, what I think submission means.
Uh, and I did quite a lot of what it doesn't mean, but here's my definition if you'd like it.
Uh, within the mutual partnership that is a marriage, submission is a voluntary, principled decision of a wife to defer
to the leadership of her husband within the limits set by Jesus rule for the greater flourishing of the entire household.
Um, I'll say that again, and again, there'll be better definitions I'm sure in this room.
But within the mutual partnership that is a marriage submission is a voluntary principled decision of a wife to defer to
the leadership of her husband within the limits set by Jesus rule for the greater flourishing of the entire household.
And, um, I want to say that that, uh, that is good, and, and ought to be obviously good sounding to us.
Uh, except that, uh, we live in cultures that do not like the idea of leadership and do not like the idea of authority.
But, um, let me give an illustration.
Um, illustrations are not perfect, but, um, When I have the time, my, uh, sport
is to go out, uh, for fun on the river Thames at night in tiny little kayaks.
And I've been doing that for about 25 years.
And, uh, the club when I joined it was, I think I can say this now it was lethally dangerous.
Um, in that we would, we would, um, the, the, the river gets up to kind of six or seven knots through the bridges.
There are hazards we would, um, we would head out in very unsuitable boats at night in the dark with no lights.
And we would just sort of peg it down the middle as fast as we could.
Um, and it was a lot of fun.
But now when my club goes out on the Thames, um, we have to designate a leader.
Um, and sometimes I'm the leader.
Sometimes I'm not, we take it in turns.
And within the club, we have a range of very experienced and capable men and women, uh, but we
recognize that on the Thames at night, it is the decisions are too important to just leave to chance.
And, uh, when we're out on the water, I submit to the leader, uh, whether or not, uh, they know more than me or less than me,
whether or not I agree with their decisions, whether I think they're going to, you know, we're going to keep us out too long, we're
going to be tired, we're not going to get to our drink in the bar, um, because I submit to the leader and when I'm the leader.
Um, I will try and include everybody in the decisions.
Uh, we talk before we launch, we talk as we go, uh, we discuss what's around the corner.
Um, the leader, if they're any good, uh, does not get what they want.
Uh, that is not what leadership is.
They don't get to go to the place they think is fun.
Um, Instead, the leader does what is best for the group, but it is extremely important to have
somebody calling out the decisions and chairing those discussions and occasionally making the calls.
Uh, when somebody is in danger, the leader shifts mode and shouts commands and we all obey.
Uh, there was one night where, uh, we had just made it through a bridge.
The current was so fast, we only just got through.
One guy lost all his sort of energy at that point and flipped and went back through the
other side of the bridge towards a wire at head height, uh, and disappeared down river.
Um, at which point you, you, you cannot just sort of have a discussion.
Uh, at which point the leader tells you what's going to happen, what you're going to do and how you're going to make the person safe.
And, um, the more training I did, uh, the, the more shocked I was at how much leadership we were expected to show.
Um, so again, there's someone else in the room connected to that, that canoe club
who, uh, his niece has also done this training, but that, that, that actually you get.
severely told off on that training if you are unwilling to deliver leadership and decision making.
Um, so the death of Jesus in this passage is here to say the kind of leader that is good, uh, the model,
the motivation, uh, the amount to which you would lead in a way that is for the good of the other person.
But at no point does this passage back off from the idea that submission is goods.
And that that sort of, uh, leadership is good.
Uh, again, when I preach on this, um, I say that unless, uh, Bill is out there on the cross, uh, in the
garden nailed to a cross and dying for her, he has not yet reached the point where he is loving her too much.
according to the parallel that we're given with Jesus.
Um, and again, when I'm preaching on this, I always say some of the things it does not mean.
Uh, domestic abuse is a real thing and is done to, uh, to wives by husbands.
And these verses are not saying, uh, that, uh, that anybody should stay in a home where they are not safe.
Uh, and in fact, uh, the, the, the same sort of applies in any leadership, it is Jesus first.
Uh, and then under that, uh, it is the leadership within the family.
Okay.
Um, I'm going to move from Ephesians five, the immediate verses just out into the context and we're going to speed up at this point.
Um, so.
In the verses, this is good.
Within Ephesians 4 and 5, I just want to make the point this slots into all of
the good things that Paul is recommending for a church that loves Jesus Christ.
So 4 verse 1, this is an example of what it is to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.
That is the headline, 4 verse 1, and then husbands love your wives, wives Submit to your husbands is just part of that, or
taking the next level in 4 verse 17, um, we are called to no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
And then only across the page, he's giving this as a specific example of what it is, um, to have the thinking of Christ.
worked out in your life, or even 5S1, uh, the closest sort of heading marker.
Uh, this is what it is to be imitators of God and to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave
himself up for us, uh, very specifically the same language as is then used for the husband.
Uh, that this is all part of the, the beautiful life that Paul is recommending.
So again, if we do not teach this, if we withhold this from our congregations, uh,
we're actually making it harder for them to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
Harder for them to escape from a futile Gentile way of living and harder for them to imitate God.
But even further out in the context of the whole letter, um, I sometimes like to say that what is Ephesians about?
It's about, um, 3.
10 until 1.
10.
Uh, so what is the point of church?
What is the point of trying to live a Christian life?
Three verse ten, uh, all of this is so that through the church, the manifold wisdom
of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
The astonishing idea that, uh, when God wants to.
show Satan and all the angels that he knows what he's doing and that he is wise.
He does not show them some incredible galaxy that he created.
He's not show them some astonishing thing from physics that only he understands.
Instead, he says, come and have a look at the church.
Like We'd all gathered in some enormous stadium for the big reveal.
And then disappointingly, it's just, uh, you know, Bill and, and Jill and their 50 years
of marriage kind of in the middle of the stadium and all the angels are there to look.
And because the church is then what he describes in chapters four, five and
six, and that this is what God is showing them all the way through until 110.
which is the plan for the fullness of time to reunite or to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Uh, so again, if God is prepared to show the things in chapters four, five, and six to the angels, uh, then again, why, why
would we not talk about this, uh, demonstrate it, be willing to, to let people into what it's like for us and share it to others?
Okay.
I'm going to, um, bounce.
across a few other passages, again, just trying to prove the thing that you believed
already before you arrived, which is that the Bible thinks that this is good.
So in 1 Peter 3, you have in the first seven verses, the parallel section on wives and husbands there.
And again, Just to say, it's not an aberration in the book.
It's not an extra.
It fits entirely within the main sweep of the book.
So from 2 verse 13, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution.
And then again, he works through, you have Uh, the emperor, you have what servants do, you have wives and husbands.
Um, and in the, the whole sweep of the book, uh, this is all working out to verse nine.
Again, this is how to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous lights.
Um, and It doesn't identify this specifically, but the whole book is about, 4 verse 4, uh, living as a Christian in
a world where they are just surprised when you don't join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you.
Um, so again, this isn't something that we do only when the world around us says, yeah, okay, I can see why you do that.
That makes sense.
Uh, this isn't only a teaching for, for the days of the patriarchy.
Um, somehow this whole package is for living in the world where it will be seen even in a context where we'll be misunderstood and mocked.
And yet that displays, uh, displays the glory of God's and also is an answer
to the kind of persecution and questions and suffering that they're facing.
And even within the, uh, within the verses, again, you've got some things that are good.
Uh, so for the wife, there is the hope that their husband might be won over by this.
Uh, again, I don't, I don't think the Bible tells us whether The relationships are
set up this way because men are good at something or because men are bad at something.
I think it might be just as likely that, um, that submission and headship is there in marriage because men are bad at living unless it's that way.
Um, but what is clear is that, um, The Bible says how to live and offers these great, great
incentives, like, would you like your husband to be in the new creation for all of eternity?
Would you like him to be won over?
If you would, why not do this?
And for men, uh, just at the end of verse seven, so that your prayers may not be hindered.
Again, that actually good treatment of your wife.
in terms of verse 7, has this fantastic goal that actually teach this, do it, live it, and you would be able to pray.
Then, um, since we're in War College, I thought I should probably nudge at some kind of Bible overview or biblical theological survey.
So, um, just Just to turn back into Genesis, um, and again, in all the debates we're having in the Church of England on,
um, sexuality, it has helped me and sharpened me on the, uh, the enduring value of Genesis 1 to 3 into every situation now.
So when Jesus is questioned about marriage in Matthew 19, uh, he says, this is where to go.
when he's asked a very difficult question about his culture's assumptions about
divorce, he disagrees, and he reestablishes the norms from Genesis 1, 2, and 3.
Um, and again, in Genesis 1 and 2, the relationship between men and women is good.
Uh, you have, um, you have God's image, male and female, he created them.
You have a world where The world is not very good, uh, 1 verse 31, until he has made men and women.
You have, uh, chapter two and the thing that is not good, uh, and, uh, again, we were preaching on this recently.
Uh, it is not good for men to be alone.
Um, I don't think that is about loneliness.
Uh, at all.
Uh, I think Adam had access to, uh, the Trinitarian God for conversation and friendship.
Uh, so I think probably he was not, um, not as lonely as you might think.
Uh, but it is not good for the things that humanity is for.
Fill the world, uh, subdue it, care for it.
Uh, and, uh, Men are entirely incapable of filling the world on their own.
You have the song in Genesis 2, or the whatever it is, verse 23, that Adam says,
again, that the total delight, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
And I was preaching 1 Corinthians 11 recently, which again goes back to the order in creation.
Man created first and then woman second, and looking at Genesis 2 for that, it struck me again.
that they are entirely joyful about that.
Uh, this is, this is the happiest song in the Bible potentially, uh, when he sees the, the woman who's been brought into this garden with him.
Uh, again, this is not meant to be a negative, hard, difficult thing.
This is a good and a positive thing.
And then you have Genesis three, um, and in particular, um, the verse addressed to the woman
in verse 16, um, but also the sort of blaming section, uh, What's the, the wedding joke?
Uh, that the, um, the, the man blamed the woman, the woman blamed the snake and the snake didn't have a leg to stand on.
Uh, in the, but the, the destroyed relationship, uh, and in particular, the curse, your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
that in there captures, uh, the distorted, cursed, broken, uh, of everything that was in there and was good in Genesis 2.
So I, I would say, uh, as I read this, that complementarianism is there before the fall, uh, is part of the good.
Again, that is a fundamental question to get your head around.
Uh, if it actually only appears after Genesis 3, uh, and, uh, also if you say beginnings and ends are really important.
If this is only there in the world of sin, that's one thing.
If it's there before and is the model for the relationship between Christ and his church in the future, uh, then this is a good thing.
Um, and Genesis 2, uh, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.
Uh, again, makes it just so much more sad that this is a divisive topic, doesn't it?
This is essentially uniting.
Uh, the goal of all of this is to is that two different things are brought together in love and support and care and fruitfulness.
A friend of mine, I had a talk on this recently, I pointed again, maybe this may be obvious to some of you,
but the, the become one flesh that is true in marriage, in sexual intercourse, but is also profoundly true
in the child that is produced, that that is a place where the two, the male and the female are brought.
indissolubly together.
Uh, and that the whole thing about this, I'll say some more on that in a bit, but it is about generating fruitfulness.
Um, then you, you run through the Old Testament.
I, I'm just going to briefly mention Deborah because it's a, an All Souls story.
So I was invited to speak, uh, at All Souls on a, uh, a week away, uh, several years.
Um, before, uh, I ended up as rector and, uh, you know, you pick up things when you go as a visiting speaker, don't you?
And I picked up that questions about men and women in church were quite stressful,
uh, partly because we had a question time at the end of my talks on judges.
And there were a number of questions about Deborah and about, uh, and, and the person
who was hosting the question time said, don't answer those, don't answer those.
We'll just bury those.
We don't answer it.
And I'm, and so I, as a naive as to thought, no, I'd quite like to answer those questions.
And not only do I want to answer those questions, but I began the answer, um, by saying, well, as a.
Complementary and I would say, and there was a sort of audible intake of breath, uh, the idea that somebody would identify themselves that way.
Um, I think, um, and I said this in the answer, um, I think Debra is the ideal complementarian woman.
Uh, so she is fantastic.
Uh, she is courageous.
She is strong.
She does her best to get a barrack to take the lead.
She would, she's trying to, you know, bring complementarianism into things.
Uh, but in the end, the people need saving and chapter five.
It takes us through those issues, I think really hits one of the few places in the Bible where we have a narrative and a poem next to each other.
And the themes of it, there's the obvious one about, uh, if you do this barrack, then you will not get the glory.
The glory will go to a woman.
And there's this fantastic stuff about Deborah and about jail, who is my favorite story in the Bible and has been since I was seven.
Um, but, um, Even more than that, there is a theme in there about willingness and volunteering.
Um, the tribes that did volunteer, the tribes that stepped forward, the tribes that offered themselves in the day of need.
And through all of the song, Deborah is standing there singing it.
If you look at Judges 5 verse 1, singing it with Barak.
So it's slightly Kermit the Frog is the image in my head, but he's there next to her
singing as he sings this song about how terrible it is when people will not volunteer.
and will not be willing to step up to take the lead when they're presented with that task by God.
Again, I, I think this is an entirely complementarian passage, uh, with, and again, it helps with the idea.
We have this strange idea in some circles that, uh, if you're a good complementarian woman, you don't express your opinion.
You don't disagree.
You don't challenge.
Whereas Deborah clearly, uh, is capable of all those things.
Uh, and yet, The whole chapter is about, please would Barak, would you take the lead?
He says, no, he gets no glory.
Um, 1 Kings 11, um, we preached on the last two weeks, and I'm going to let you into some of the questions
that were asked there, just in case the questions that you'll put on slider are not sort of fierce enough.
Um, and, um, Um, the,
the, again, it struck me that this is a gloriously positive passage.
Uh, so it is about, uh, how the woman can do ministry.
So the end product, I had to point this out to someone in our congregation who had thought I had sold the past and been entirely,
uh, far too liberal, but you know, she, the, the, the end product of the chapter is she does pray and she does prophesy.
I was like, Oh yeah, that's a good point.
Never thought of that.
Um, but also, um, it is about.
glory.
Uh, everybody in the chapter is glorious and displays glory.
Uh, it is about image.
I think it, um, I found in case you've not seen this before, I was taken to chapter 15
verse 49, which I found very helpful where it says that, um, we all bear the image of Adam.
Um, so When 1 Corinthians 11 says that the woman, that man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man.
I don't think at all that is denying Genesis 1, that women are in the image of God equally.
I am in the image of Adam.
That does not deny the fact that I'm also in the image of God.
Um, And it has this glorious section that I quite enjoyed preaching about the fact that, uh, none of us are independent of women.
And we imagined, uh, you know, the, the, the most powerful bro that you could, uh, when he was a baby and how he was entirely dependent on
the woman who carried him, uh, and gave birth to him and then nursed him, uh, and that he was entirely unable to do anything for himself.
Um, and 1 Corinthians 11 belongs within its section, uh, which is all about, I think, uh, come to church for the good of other people.
I think that, that 8 to 10 is sort of come, go to, into your life for the good of other people.
Uh, 11 through to 14, come to church for the good of other people, which includes come to church, uh, in the body that you were, you were made in.
come to church as the man that you are or the woman that you are.
Um, 1 Timothy 2, um, again is talking about, uh, what pleases God.
So this is, uh, verse 3, um, and it's, it's talking about, uh, therefore, so sorry, let me just get it open.
1 Timothy 2, uh, verse 3 is talking about how we behave and says, this is good.
It's pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior.
And then verse 8 begins with a, with a then, with a therefore, uh, and that,
that the men should pray in this way and the women should behave in this way.
And then we head into chapter 3 where, uh, eldership is, uh, sexed.
Is, uh, assumed to be male, and again, 3 verse 15, uh, this is all gloriously good and surprisingly good.
If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of gods, the family
of gods, uh, the, uh, place that is a bit like the household described in Ephesians 5.
Uh, within which wives and husbands and children and parents and servants and masters behave in the ways that make for good order
of the households, uh, and the household of God, which is the church of the living gods, a pillar and a buttress of the truth.
Um, so the, the, the kind of ordering that he's been talking about is what secures the kind of church
that leads to, uh, the truth of God being held up or whatever it is that pillars and buttresses do.
And then just to finish the Bible in Revelation 21, which is also where lots of Old Testament material lands from bride and husband, God
and his bride Israel, and lands with a relationship that will be wonderful and loving and asymmetric and non reversible for all eternity.
Again, all saying that this is not peripheral, the Bible is not embarrassed about this, this is all good where it lands.
Okay, so, um, that's a survey of some biblical material.
Um, and again, as I said, it may be that I'm only talking to myself here in Sydney.
Uh, that you all know this is good.
Uh, you know it's good for women and for men.
You know that it is good for marriage and good for the children, uh, that those marriages may produce.
You know that it is good for profound reflection on the nature of God.
You know that it's good for evangelism, uh, especially of husbands, it seems.
You know that it's good for churches, which is good for the truth.
Um, uh, but again, from our, um, strange, thin, distorted place in England, uh, I think we
are learning a lesson about, uh, from what's happened in the last 20 years on sexuality.
Um, that there are multiple, multiple, multiple churches who have always believed what the Bible said about sexuality,
uh, have always, uh, held it firmly, uh, within their leadership teams and are actually, we're now discovering.
Are willing to be public about it.
There've been some wonderful, glorious moments where people who had been silent and are stepping forward and speaking.
Um, But, if you think something is true but you're reluctant to teach it, uh, you don't bring it up, you don't
talk about it, you don't allow it to be disagreed with, eventually no one in your church will believe it.
Because the culture is communicating to your church all of the time.
The statistic isn't there for parents, about the percentage time you have with your children compared
to the percentage time the culture has with your children, it's like 99 percent or something.
But the same for churches pastors, um, that people are reading things.
thinking, talking, engaging constantly, and that's not a problem because God's Word is powerful and, uh, takes thoughts captive.
But if you then make the decision not to teach, not to present the bits of the Bible that are about
this, uh, you avoid the discomfort, you avoid the hostile questions and the difficult conversations.
But again, the same has been true of sexuality.
I've had people walk out of talks that I've given who have then walked walk back in as Christians a couple of weeks later.
But without the sort of, oh, I can't believe you've just said that moment, they would never have been confronted with what the gospel really was.
I'm not saying this issue is a gospel issue in the same way, but if we won't teach
it, eventually our churches will, uh, by default believe what the culture believes.
Okay.
I'm going to suggest that we pause and have a stretch before I go to point two.
Is that a good idea, Jane?
Um, you can be using Slido right away.
Should I try and put that back?
And that didn't give you a couple of minutes to stretch.
And what we've got in the The second part is some suggestions from me of why this is so divisive.
Um, I'm expecting you to find some of them less relevant to your situation.
You may find some of them unconvincing entirely.
Uh, one or two of them, I think I could show you biblically.
Some of them are simply from my experience, which I offer to you to see what you think.
So, um, Why is this divisive?
Well, again, I've said it's about unity, but it is also about, about division.
So we are talking about the fact that men and women, uh, are dimorphic.
There is within our species, this difference between men and women.
They are, they are not the same.
And, um, When we came to preach 1 Corinthians 11, we're working through 1 Corinthians.
Uh, I, uh, delayed for two years from the end of chapter 10 before we actually got to chapter 11.
Um, so please don't read anything into the last half hour and imagine courage or any of that.
Um, but when we came to it, I thought, actually, I cannot just launch into the, this talk that I gave on this chapter the last time I preached it 10
years ago, because, um, The discussion about gender and sex and transgender has moved to such a degree, we've got to talk about that first of all.
We've got to talk about whether men and women are real before we can talk about how men and women relate in church.
And in God's timing, the Sunday I picked turned out to be The Sunday, three days after the cast report was published, uh, in England.
So again, the, even in the week that I was writing the sermon, the discussion in our country moved enormously
with about 900 newspapers trying to pretend that they'd agreed with her all along when they definitely hadn't.
Um, but, but if we're actually saying men and women are.
different and that that is biologically rooted.
Sorry.
The cast report was a major review of our health service in the provision that had been made for those presenting with gender
dysphoria, where we had been, um, accelerating massively the offer of, uh, therapies and then even surgeries from quite early age.
And finally, somebody said, do you, do you have any evidence that is actually doing good, not harm.
And maybe we should stop.
Um, So, yeah, so I was able then to preach that first sermon about the nature of identity
and humanity about actually, uh, to be male and to be female is, is essential to our biology.
And as I said earlier, it is, it is generative.
And I got this from a man called Christopher West, uh, who visited, was brought over to England to speak to, uh, a broad range of us.
I think he was brought over because he is HTB's second favorite Roman Catholic.
Uh, so that's why he was a good choice for someone to bring over.
Um, and he did this brilliant thing with, which again, just, I'm not very good at Latin, I think, but, um, the gen in Genesis.
is the same gen as in gender and in generations and generative.
Um, and that's not accidental.
You need two genders in order to generate the next generation and that this is where the fruitfulness comes from.
And he, he did a brilliant presentation on that about why therefore, um, same sex marriage was not a good idea.
And then the complementarians in the room went up to him and said, hang on, the logic you've just
used, doesn't that mean that, um, men and women are different and should be different in church?
And he said, well, yeah, I'm a Roman Catholic.
Of course I think that.
Um, but he hadn't said that to, um, to everybody else.
Um, but, um, If we have here a a binary dimorphism, a difference, then actually it's not
surprising this teaching will strike me differently from how it strikes the women in the room.
Um, actually if we had longer, a conversation I've had frequently with students
over the years is the one that goes, okay, you don't like what's in Ephesians five.
Tell me who has the harder job, the woman or the man.
And again, initially people will say, Oh, clearly it's the woman having to do this hideous submission thing.
And then you read through and you read through and you think, actually.
Uh, the thing that to be like Jesus and, and sacrifice, but it's not surprising if this lands on us differently, um, Genesis three, I think
tells us that we should expect this to be difficult because the relationship between men and women has been specifically cursed by God.
Uh, that I think, again, the end of that verse that I read is talking about the fact that men and women will tend
to be in conflict and will be like that in the same way that the ground tends to produce thorns and thistles.
My, um, my other weird hobby, uh, is, uh, as well as kayaking, is scything.
Uh, and my wife and I booked on a romantic, uh, scything course quite soon after I get back home.
And we have his and hers scythes, uh, and, and it's brilliant.
But the reason I would say is there's a little patch of ground that for 35 years has grown only brambles and nettles.
Um, and the fact that I'm here now means that I am losing.
The fact that I'm not there scything right now means that by the time I get there, the nettles will be taller than my head.
Um, if we expect that in a field, Why are we so surprised, uh, in our marriages, in, uh, the relationships between
men and women on a staff team, the relationships between men and women in a college, uh, that those are difficult?
Um, there was a phrase from someone that I'm going to talk about in a second, uh, which was the claim that marriage is varsity.
Have you heard that claim?
That the sort of the idea was that you're a kind of normal Christian until you get married.
And then when you get married, the sort of the challenge of trying to be married and
live with your own sin in a marriage is the thing that really makes you a good Christian.
And I think that's wrong.
Um, uh, I believe in one Corinthians seven.
I've noticed that, um, that countries that begin with a tend not to believe in one Corinthians seven.
Uh, and I only think of America.
and Australia when I say that.
Um, when, uh, when we did a, uh, question time at our church on 1 Corinthians
11, uh, I gave away in the question time, the survey we'd done of our church.
Our church is over 50 percent single, um, which is partly a feature of being the centre of London.
Lots of younger people were also the kind of church that you might go to if you'd had
a, an unhappy divorce and you wanted somewhere to go where everyone didn't know you.
Um, but, um, so I threw out this statistic and someone put in the, in the Q and a.
On Slido, 50 percent singles.
That's a disaster.
I think they were probably American or Australian.
Um, but it's sort of singleness, I believe is good, but, uh, it is certainly true that when you marry two
sinners into one body, that the curse of Genesis three is experienced very profoundly and very clearly.
Uh, the thorns and the thistle.
So it's not surprising.
We found this.
divisive.
Um, something on being a narrow or a broad complementarian.
I only put that just to prove whether I'd read Jane's book, um, about this, but, um, so a narrow complementarian is someone
who believes that these truths apply into the spheres where the Bible talks about them, into the home and into the church,
because it is a bit like a home, but that it does not apply into how men and women conduct themselves in wider society.
Uh, and whereas a broad complementarian is someone who.
thinks that it does and has strong applications elsewhere.
And the, um, the only thing I thought I'd mention here is that, um, it struck me
going to All Souls, that All Souls is sort of messily complementarian as I'd said.
Uh, and so we have, um, quite a dialed back list of ways in which complementarianism applies, but that is
in tension with the fact that All Souls is is sort of the broadest, broad thing that I've ever been part of.
As in, uh, every truth that we believe, we want the whole world to believe.
And we want, we're committed to influencing policy and politics and workplace and all of life.
Um, so the complementarianism of all souls sits quite unhappily in that.
So I'm quite happy as a narrow complementarian, uh, because I'm pastoring people about their marriages
and we're making choices about what we do on our staff team in our church family, and I'm not.
really that bothered about what is going on, uh, and the kind of jobs people are choosing
and the way they conduct themselves at work, other than I'd love them to be godly.
Um, but actually, if you are a committed to, uh, making the whole world like the kingdom of God kind of church, which
all souls is, then to believe Confrontarianism and not do that with it, uh, is a, is an uncomfortable, uh, thing.
Um, here's one I think I want to talk about just for a little bit.
I'm I don't know what you would think, uh, but it's common parlance in England
to say that this is a secondary issue, but that it is an important issue.
Um, so it's secondary as in what you believe on this does not affect whether you go to heaven.
Uh, it does not cause me to divide.
I don't need to break communion with anybody if they disagree with me on this and I would like
them not to break communion with me because of what I believe on this, but it is important.
in that it does affect what you do in church and what you do in marriage and how you live your life.
Um, but just observation that that is a very difficult place to live and operate.
Um, and so most churches don't really try.
Uh, so most churches I think are either egalitarian or complementarian.
Uh, even though if it's a secondary issue, it ought to be possible to try and live together.
Um, and the only two places I've been that are really trying was Oak Hill college.
When I was there as a student, uh, and, uh, all salts where we have, uh, arrange on the staff, uh, and, uh, we're trying to honor.
both positions while making decisions that are in line with the complementarian position that the church has taken.
Um, and, uh, so here are some ways in which that's quite difficult.
I'm often accused of, um, believing things that I don't believe about female clergy and female bishops.
Uh, so as in, I'll be accused of thinking that they're terrible people for, for being female clergy and female bishops.
I don't believe that at all.
So I want to correct that misunderstanding.
Uh, but when I sit down with Bishop Sarah and say, no, no, no, no, no, you've got me all wrong.
It's just not a big deal for me.
or something like that.
Um, you can probably hear why she finds that a deeply offensive and regressible thing for me to say, because it is a big deal for her.
Uh, cause I'm saying that actually I cannot recognize her as the spiritual head over me, uh, in our church, but I'm trying to say it's, it's okay.
It's only a secondary issue.
Uh, but the only.
in there is a quite painful part of the relationship to negotiate.
Um, also it leads to questions about whether you're consistent.
Uh, so in the Q and A at All Souls last week, um, one of the questions that came in was this, you are contradicting yourselves.
If you think women shouldn't preach, why do you train them to do it outside of All Souls?
So again, and this is the position I've held at St Helens as well, is that we
give exactly the same training to the men and the women on our training schemes.
We give them the same tools in Bible handling.
We teach them in the same way, how to give talks, and at All Souls in particular, though this actually would have been true at St Helens as well.
We are.
keen to support them as they make their own conscience decision about what spheres they can or can't use those, uh, those gifts in.
Um, but you hear the accusation, you're inconsistent.
If you think it's wrong, you should stop them.
Uh, whereas again, if I think it's a secondary issue, I think I want them to make their own decision.
Um, I've had a whole series of, of awkward conversations on this.
There was one in particular where a local vicar put me on the spot and said, do you think I'm a false teacher?
Um, and happily I, I thought for a second before answering, and I realized that she meant because I am an ordained woman.
Um, and so, um, and the trouble was the truthful answer was, um, I do think you're a false
teacher, but not because you're an ordained woman, which is quite a difficult, um, line to deliver.
Uh, in a sort of happy, friendly chat where I wanted something by the end of the conversation.
Um, so, um, here's what I tried to say, but again, you might want to ask about this.
I said, well, I, I don't.
No, but let me, maybe it will help if I say Liz Goddard, uh, people know Liz Goddard, she wrote, um, the book, one of the books with Claire Smith.
No, Claire Hendry.
That's right.
Uh, which is a helpful conversation between two, uh, women who take opposite views on this.
Um, and, um, so what, so Liz Goddard, for example, I think is a good evangelical Christian and a good Bible teacher.
I couldn't in conscience do what she does, uh, and I also couldn't go and be her curate.
Um, but nor do I think she's sinful for doing what she does.
Uh, and certainly I don't think she's a false teacher or does it have communion breaking consequences for me.
Um, but again, you can see that's a slightly awkward conversation.
Uh, it's secondary, but it might not be for the person I'm talking to.
Um, me too, and the sexual revolution.
So, um, we're having this conversation in a world where life is not good for women in Western societies.
And I think that is, that is enormously important.
Let me give you an example from a different passage in one Corinthians.
I spoke on one Corinthians six, uh, which teaches that, uh, you should, uh, Take
care of what you do with your body sexually because your body doesn't belong to you.
It belongs to Jesus.
Um, and I chose against the advice of my staff team to use my body, my choice as a sort of illustration conversation partner.
So my body, my choice, which has been a, uh, an excellent campaign all around the world, uh, attacking
the, hideous male idea that men have some kind of right to the bodies of women to do with as they wish.
But my body, my choice, I'd suggest is not a Christian idea.
It's not my body.
It belongs to the Lord Jesus.
And I mean that in an entirely gender equal way, my body, her body, anybody's um, but because I was giving that sermon in a
world where enormous harm is being done to women, uh, in which that slogan has been a helpful tool to mitigate those harms.
Uh, it, it, it actually, that, you know, the conversation you're having is not sort of on neutral grounds.
Um, and even more, cause I think there could be an opportunity to join the conversation in a better way.
So, um, here's a book you may have come across people.
seen this book, found this book.
Uh, Louise Perry is not a Christian.
Um, no fan of Ephesians five in particular.
Um, she writes for the new Statesman as well as other places.
And she was a mainstream liberal feminist who began doing work with female victims of male sexual violence.
And she found that the things that as a liberal feminist, she was supposed to say to them were not just useless.
In providing comfort, but actually dangerous, uh, in terms of what they, uh, what they did.
She said her conclusion, the sexual revolution has been bad for everyone and it has been terrible for women.
Uh, and, uh, and she says, we need a technology.
Uh, we need a technology that discourages short termism in male sexual behavior, protects the
economic interests of mothers, and creates a stable environment for the raising of children.
And we do already have such a technology.
It's called monogamous marriage.
Uh, so she comes out strongly in favor of marriage and fascinating other stuff about, uh, dating.
But all of her book is posited on the idea she's come to that men and women are different.
And again, it's fascinating reading as she goes through it.
I don't buy all of her evolutionary sort of biology explanations for it, but it's absolutely fascinating.
I'm not sure we have time, but I was going to do a couple of quizzes.
So let's just do the quiz.
So which of these statements are true?
Is it true that men and women have different thickness of skin?
Raise your hand if you think that's true.
If you're online, be glad.
Okay.
Some people say that is true.
It is true.
Uh, 25%.
thicker skin men have.
Uh, is it true that men and women have a different second longest finger on their hands?
Raise your hand if you think that's true.
A few more, it is true.
So, uh, the, for the man it is the ring finger, for the woman it is the index finger,
which means you can check now and see if you're appropriately manly, uh, or womanly.
Um, I'm a bit dubious about myself, uh, on that.
Um, how about during exercise, men and women have a different primary fuel, true or false?
Is in fact true, uh, true men tend to use carbohydrate where women use fat.
Uh, and is it true that men and women have a different sensitivity to cold temperatures?
Okay.
There's a lot of nodding for that, except that in our household, it's the
wrong way around, um, again, in many ways, but, um, that is all a little bit.
Frivolous.
Just check.
Can I know.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
And then it there, there, this is just the differences tend to overlap.
Here's one in particular that demonstrates that I should not put myself forward as stronger than women because you'll
see I'm one of the weakest male in data and the strongest female athlete will be significantly stronger than me.
Um, but in her book, um, The, I think the most shocking line in the whole book,
uh, most men can kill most women with their bare hands and not vice versa.
Um, I spoke to a father in our church.
Uh, I've been reading the book, I've been talking about it and I said, isn't that a brilliant book?
He said, no, it's a horrible book.
Uh, father of daughters.
reading about the world in which his daughters were growing up.
Um, again, I've been reading some of the news articles this week.
Uh, and, uh, the one I read today, a woman has been killed on average every four days so far this year.
Uh, I thought I'd check what it is for the UK and it is every three days.
in the UK.
On this then, there is a sort of, um, Cassandra feeling.
So Cassandra in classical mythology, her curse was to be always right and never believed.
So she warned the city, she warned the city, they didn't believe her, but she was right.
Um, in the area of, uh, male violence against women, it might actually be that
complementarianism has the answer, and yet everybody's convinced that it is the problem.
Um, and again, if, if we would talk about it.
And gender stereotypes.
Um, so again, in the question time at church, we had, how do we distinguish between
social constructs that hinder women and the God given differences of women to men?
Um, see the moment you say that men and women complement each other, you, and probably are there some questions
on this that James can answer, uh, on, uh, you know, how and how does that play out and what are the differences?
And the problem is we get so much of our practical information on how to do that from role models.
most of whom are not the Bible, often bad ones.
So again, I just thought you'd be bored by now.
So here is a game that I've done with our Church Weekend Away on this.
You may not know who those two people are.
If not, I'm happy to tell you, but well done.
So the one on the left is Andrew Tate, who is a YouTube social media influencer, and not a peripheral one, or at least not in England.
So in my children's schools, um, the schools all of them, uh, ended up having to engage directly
with his ideas because massive numbers of young boys were watching his stuff and agreeing with it.
He's a self confessed misogynist.
Uh, his material is about how to disadvantage women for your own gain.
He is currently on trial for sex trafficking and rape.
Um, so that is Andrew Tate.
And then, uh, next who, uh, was huge in the UK anyway, about 10 years ago.
Uh, loads of people were listening to his sort of shock preacher, uh, uh, and in particular how to be a real man.
So the game I played with my church weekend was, uh, Tate or Driscoll.
Okay.
So, uh, can you tell the difference?
So who do you think said this?
Was that, uh, there's a large contingent of men out there who don't want to wear makeup, don't
want to be girls, who don't want to be told they're toxic because they want to go to the gym.
Uh, do you think that is Tate or Driscoll?
Okay, that is Tate, actually.
There you go.
Um, the point is it's hard to tell.
That's the only point.
Uh, uh, I'm very confrontational, not some pansy ass therapist.
Uh, who's that?
Could be either.
That is Driscoll.
Um, when men try to act in a masculine way, it's toxic masculinity.
They demonize us.
They shame us.
That's tight.
That is tight.
Uh, okay.
How about this one?
The problem with the church today, it's just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chickified church boys.
60 percent of Christians are chicks and the 40 percent that are dudes are still chicks.
Um, who's that?
That is Driscoll.
That's, that's more obviously Driscoll.
Um, we're not going to call toxic masculinity if someone breaks into our house and you want to defend you.
So again, you can hear the defense of this.
I'm allowed to be a toxic kind of man because one day you might need me to defend you.
That's tight.
Uh, if you're over 15 and like cartoons, you are a loser.
I like cartoons, uh, anime, Dragon Ball Z, which is huge in our house.
Uh, no excuse, plus any woman loses respect for you grow up, uh, that is taped.
Um, but it's the, it's the D one, the sort of chick fights, uh, one, um, which is where, uh, maybe I'm about to lose the
audience here, but I think I am significantly chick fights, um, in that, um, I, um, I grew up in a single parent home.
As I said, my dad died when I was young.
Uh, I grew up with, with the assumptions that.
That, that my home was normal.
We all do.
I got married to, uh, Claire who comes from a highly gendered home, non christian home, but highly, highly gendered home.
There were men things to do and women things to do.
And all of our marriage, we've had this negotiation where she will just wait for me to do the man things and I'll be totally oblivious.
that I'm supposed to do them.
And, um, my father in law has two sons in law.
Uh, one of them is me, chickified me.
I'm a vicar.
Um, and the other one owns his own garage and repairs cars for a living.
So it's just a nightmare whenever we, um, whenever we get together.
Um, And I feel that maybe Australia is more, uh, gender stereotypes, even than England is.
Um, and it just works out everywhere that it works out in dating.
Uh, I have regular conversations now with dating couples who.
where the man is insisting they apply Ephesians 5, uh, within the marriage, within the dating relationship
before they're married, even applying it to his right to demand sin from her, uh, because she should submit.
Uh, I think more normally though, um, there is a huge pressure on men and women to live out
the stereotypes, um, which is quite hard because they're massively contradictory and difficult.
Um, do you have the thing where, um, men are always quieter in prayer groups than women.
Um, and, and that it's the sort of, you know, men don't want to talk over women because that's toxic, but actually,
uh, also we're a bit shy and we don't want to get it wrong, but also we're waiting for the one to pray first, but
she's waiting for us to pray first because the Bible says, and you just have this swirling kind of nightmare thing.
Um, Claire's school was preparing every woman in the school to be prime minister.
It was when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, but you've also got to be beautiful and you've never got to be angry.
And your resting face must be peaceful.
And you've got to have children and you've got to do, and it's just.
But none of these stereotypes, Jesus, as far as I'm aware, did not play sports, not even once.
Uh, somebody's looking, but I'm not, just don't think he did.
Um, and, and so for that to be essential to what it is to be a man, um, and,
you know, King David wrote poetry, uh, and other various chickified things.
Um, Treat me the same.
Treat me the same is the next one.
Um, and, um, here I'm thinking particularly within church staff teams, um, and the, the question of
how men and women relate on a church staff team, but I guess it might apply in other areas as well.
My, um, my wife has run a couple of support groups in her time.
This is not noble charity work that she does.
She, um, Tries to help people work with me.
Um, the support groups entirely focused on people have to work with me.
One was, um, for those who, who do admin for me, um, she did nine months of doing some admin
for a kid's camp with me and realized everyone who ever works with me like that needs help.
Um, but then there was another support group and by support group, I just mean she occasionally chats to them.
Um, she says to them, be careful because Charlie doesn't treat women differently from men.
Now, what do you think?
Is it a good thing or a bad thing that I don't treat women differently?
Again, I'm not saying that is actually true, uh, but that is, that is my wife's view from having picked up talking to other people.
Um, one of my job references actually for all souls, uh, from a senior businesswoman in the city, uh, wrote that in
church environment, she felt she was treated with more respect, given more power, uh, than she is in her city job.
Um, and she was writing for a panel that she knew would be a bit nervous of this complementarian applying for the job.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing?
Um, I'm not saying I've got the answer to that.
We, um, we did, uh, diversity training in our staff team last week.
And one of the core messages was it's about making the appropriate allowances so that everybody stands in the same place.
It's not actually about treating everyone the same.
So, um, just turn to your neighbor.
Have you found anything difficult about working in mixed sex teams?
Does that make sense of the question?
You may want to say no.
Have you found anything difficult about working in mixed sex teams in the workplace?
Okay, let me interrupt again there.
Let me give you a few things,
a few things that I've either found difficult or found helpful.
Um, I think relating to the spouse is interesting and is actually gendered, or at least is gendered at this point in history.
So the, um, the female member of staff who is placed in a situation of conflict with
a man in the course of her ministry and the effect that has on her husband at home.
Uh, and his sense that he wants to leap in, uh, and either tell me to sort it out or to sort it out himself.
Uh, and the, the question of whether I am willing to have that conversation with
him or not, or whether I tell him to back off and that I will talk to my employee.
Uh, about this because she works for me and you don't.
Again, all of those, uh, again, I think we've been quite used to the fact that
it's hard for a wife to see her husband, the vicar, criticized and all of that.
But actually, the more that churches employ more and more women in senior
ministry roles, Uh, the more that we'll get that dynamic the other way around.
And I think it's gendered and needs thoughts.
Um, there is the, the Billy Graham rule.
Do you know what I mean by that?
In, uh, over here.
So Billy Graham would never be in a car or in a room on his own with a woman.
Um, and, uh, Yet, uh, some of those rooms are about the opportunity to develop in your career and the opportunity to be listened to and the opposite.
So it's how you work out.
So again, I'm sure, uh, you'll have your ways here.
We have, you know, huge windows and all our offices so that, uh, people can.
Come for supervision and line management.
Uh, we would recommend not doing that in a home.
My home is so not like a home that I do actually do it in my home on the floor of my home.
That is not at all my home, but, um, but it, it.
And I think there is something as well about being crystal clear in a complementarian
church about the nature of the opportunities that will and won't be available to women.
So, will they have the same opportunities of access to the senior pastor?
Will they have the same training opportunities?
Will they have the same development opportunities?
And again, I think if you have a theological reason why some areas are not available, then you ought not to
be ashamed of that or to hide it, particularly when people are making decisions about where they will work.
Um, I think there's something about the more discouraging nature Of some of the roles that we typically ask women to fulfill.
So the first time I was given any team leadership was a long time ago, and I, uh, line managed the very few people on my team in
the kind of way I like to be line managed, which was basically not at all, uh, and sort of left the person alone to get on with it.
Um, and it took me a while to work out that that was a very different experience for the female members of the
team than it was for the male ones because the men were giving lots of talks, uh, and were getting the kind of.
brutal affirmation that you get from talks.
You know, the people saying, thank you, or I hated it, or, but they were being noticed.
Whereas, uh, the kind of role we were asking the women to do was lots and lots of discipleship
and one to one work and pastoral work, where actually nobody was seeing them doing it.
And if we didn't do line management and I didn't say, how's it going?
And oh, that sounds brilliant.
Well done.
They were not getting that from anywhere else.
Um, Some of the women I've worked with have pointed out to me that their ministry is a lot more repetitive than my ministry.
So because I'm a sort of frontline preacher, I'm working through new material and new books, whereas particularly
when I was a student worker, my female colleagues would be, it's Colossians again, because it's September.
Uh, and then it'll be, you know, and, and, and actually finding ways of encouraging.
women to be theologically stretching themselves, working on new material, finding I found we had to pay attention to that.
Um, maybe you don't have this problem over here.
Um, certainly Moore College has been a real inspiration to us for, um, proper theological training for women alongside men.
Uh, though then someone told me the Australian government pays for it all.
So, you know, you're just doing it for free.
Uh, so I'm now less impressed, but, um, But, um, so I think we have a problem with
training, um, because in our denomination, uh, training for vicars is free, roughly.
Uh, but if you only think that men can be vicars, uh, then you need to pay attention
to how the women will be trained, unless you think women don't need to be trained.
Um, but there's also a question about what in any other profession you would call career development.
It's again, I think we have, become much more used to employing younger women.
Uh, but there's this sort of, what, why are you still in church work?
Well, sorry, you, are you, as if getting married, having babies was this kind of thing that, that would happen when you were 30.
Um, and You don't want to be a youth worker anymore.
Well, what, what do you do now?
Whereas I don't think that is responsible, particularly if I've encouraged someone to give up their job to come and work for me in the church.
If I actually mean work for me for five years until you are unemployable anywhere else.
Um, I don't think that actually is paying enough attention to, uh, what it is to be a man and a woman in the workforce of a church.
Um, and then this one has struck me more and more now that I am more often chairing the meetings.
Um, but the.
And again, it may be specific to some contexts, but the, the extent to which men will talk over women, uh, and, uh, the, the
most egregious example, I'm not going to say where it was or how, but we were talking about the fact that women's voices are
often silenced, uh, and a woman was speaking about that, uh, when, and just to prove it's not theological, uh, a man who,
uh, is very solidly egalitarian, um, Utterly spoke over her, prevented her from speaking and took over the conversation.
Um, and again, that there are things you can do.
So I've been taught that the first voice that speaks is very important.
So if you're chairing who you call, that there's statistically, if the first voice you call is female, then
you're much more likely to get an even balance between men and women in what follows in the discussion.
If the first voice you call on is male, then you're much more likely to have a strong imbalance.
Um, and then we have noticed that, uh, We have lots of part time staff on our church, but they are disproportionately female.
Women are much more likely to job share, women are much more likely, obviously, to go on maternity
leave, and all of those things are points of difficult, known points of difficulty in a workforce.
To be part time, to be job sharing, to go off and leave and try and come back to your job, and
yet if we don't pay deliberate attention to how that would work, there's going to be trouble.
And then also coming out of 1 Corinthians 11, um, is it?
So the Louise Perry book is, you don't need to have sex like a man, which I think that's very helpful.
Do we also agree you don't have to do ministry like a man?
You don't have to lead like a man, you don't have to preach like a man, and then what does that mean?
Okay, well, we're nearly heading towards question time.
I'm going to, I'm going to, rattle through, uh, the others.
Um, you don't look like a minority, uh, is just a chance to tell you about my current most senior role in the Church of England.
So I'm hoping you'll be impressed by this, uh, which is that I am a member of the House of Bishops Standing
Commission on the House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests and the Five Guiding Principles.
Um, which is, um, which is to say, we have this settlement on how complementarians and
traditional Catholics will be allowed to exist and flourish within the Church of England.
Um, and, uh, and it is really, really difficult.
The first three meetings that I attended, um, were in fact entirely about whether I would
be allowed to be there next time, uh, because, um, uh, which was a weird experience.
I was appointed because we didn't have a bishop at the time.
Uh, there was no complimentary bishop.
I was appointed to represent the fictional future bishop that there would be.
And when the names were issued, uh, having carefully tried to balance who was on it, uh,
and we were allowed 30 percent cause that's the kind of minority position we are roughly.
Um, and they noticed that not one, uh, parish clergy person of either minority view
was on this panel apart from me and I was leaving as soon as the bishop arrived.
So there was a kind of uproar and we then had this discussion of whether I, whether
they needed complementarian clergy and traditional Catholic clergy in the room.
And what was fascinating to me was everybody in that room was an expert on minorities.
In fact, some of them have been chosen because of that expertise in disability, in ethnicity and in gender.
And they knew exactly how to challenge discrimination and fight against it, but this didn't look like a minority.
They were in fact entirely incapable of relating to me as a minority.
Um, and the campaign website I showed you is an example of that.
But, um, what I.
I want to bring you as practical and I hope helpful.
One of the things we've done as a commission is we came to investigate London and see
what London Diocese does for the relationships between the minorities and the rest.
And the thing London has that no other diocese has is a plan in that just it's written down what I can expect as a complementarian,
how I can expect to be treated, whether or not my ordination candidates will be seen by a complementarian bishop or not.
And, and the, so far we've been going for three years and this is our only
concrete finding, is that in general it's good to write down what your plan is.
Um, and again, in our churches, um, What would it look like if you codified how men and women could expect to be treated on
your staff team, in your ministry team, in terms of pay, in terms of access to training, in terms of access to sabbaticals?
Maybe you do this already, but would that be helpful?
Okay, I'm going to just rattle through the rest of them and go for questions.
So in our context, this has become a proxy for other battles.
So we're really arguing about sexuality or arguing about whether or not it is good for
minority groups to have their own bishops because that might be relevant for sexuality.
So, so content terrorism gets dragged in there.
always, uh, we are discussing this on a cultural slope, which is going in one direction.
So I, um, I was involved in the interview panel that appointed Bishop Sarah.
Um, and so I knew that London had a female bishop while the newspapers were still
confidently publishing stories with headlines like, no way it'll be a woman for London.
Um, and so in preparing my very mixed parish, uh, where I was Vicar one day a week, um, we
got ready to pass a resolution before I could Tell them we've got, so got, I got prepared.
Um, and then that went down astonishingly badly with the wider community that related to that parish.
Uh, and in particular with some of the sort of senior organizations that related,
no summoned in, uh, to speak to members of Parliament and all sorts of things.
'cause it was that kind of parish.
But in particular, someone who was a senior academic, uh, in a university summoned me and said, why have you lot, we dealt with this.
decades ago, 50 years ago.
Why have you lot not got there yet?
Again, you hear that, um, that the problem is you're still here.
And actually it was quite fun because my archdeacon is a traditional Catholic and they love him.
Uh, and he was really helpful because he would put out to them.
You, you, you, you love a traditional Catholic because they look kind of.
weird and eccentric and old and lovable.
Whereas again, this looks, um, or did then anyway, sort of younger and growing and looks like
I've, you know, I've done this cause I believe it, not just cause I'm eccentric and weird.
Um, and also I don't look quite as much when my churches don't look quite as much like I'm going to do the decent thing and die and go away.
Uh, and so on the cultural slope that everybody believes is only going in one direction, you're therefore having a much more painful conversation.
And the next one I've said, but submission is the gospel, uh, submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, uh, giving up my freedom, uh, as he did submit
to his father in Philippians two and was commended for it, glorified for it, uh, that actually we hate submission because we hate the gospel.
Um, culture wars are annoying, by which I mean this is a conversation that's almost impossible to have
in a rational way, because everybody has written 10, 000 words on everything that you're talking about.
And then finally, just to come back to what we've said already, um, the, Curse and its
effects and the mistreatment of women is real and is going on in our congregations.
So here was a question from the same question time last Sunday.
As a woman, I am just an object to men and I'm just here for them, and this passage confirms it.
I can't cope with that.
And I think modern dating has just made that worse because you are swiping through a series of objects that you're rejecting as you go.
You are typically making huge decisions about committing your life to someone before you really know them at all.
Uh, in particular before she has had a chance to know your friends and your parents and something about how you relate and how safe you are.
Um, and, uh, the Church of England has been slow on this, but is now taking domestic abuse seriously.
Um, and, uh, the statistics are terrifying on the numbers of cases of that there will be in all of our churches.
Um, and I think complementarism is good.
But also, I have sat with any number of women and had to explain that complementarianism is not an excuse for what is being done to them.
They are misapplying that chapter.
That does not give them the right to do that.
Um, so again, just to say, this is good.
We need to talk about it.
And actually it's better, uh, better to teach what the Bible really does say, uh, than
to leave boyfriend and girlfriend to guess and make it up and misapply the verses.
Thank you for listening to Moore In The Word,
a podcast of Moore Theological College.
Our vision as a College is to see God glorified by men and women, living for
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We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events, including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre.
The Priscilla & Aquila Centre is a Centre of Moore Theological College that aims to encourage the ministries of women in partnership with men.
Every year, the Centre holds a conference to encourage women in ministry and to assist ministry
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In 2025, the Centre's annual conference will be held on Monday, the 3rd of February.
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And author Claire Smith will be speaking about her new book, "The Appearing of God Our Savior, a theology of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus",
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To find out more and to register, visit the Priscilla & Aquila Centre website, paa.moore.edu.au.
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