“’Gender apartheid’ in Afghanistan getting out of hand” by the Washington Post was the guest editorial in my local paper Friday, September 8, 2023. They said, “An August 30 report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says that the majority of the 100 religious edicts issued by the de facto government since August 30 directly enforce severe restrictions on women and girls.” Now girls are flogged for leaving their house and going to school.

Before you shake your head at this and wonder how they can do it, I will tell you. Their religion tells them so. Just as most Christian religions today tell women they are to submit. Just as The Gospel Coalition tells women they must submit; just as the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood tells women they must submit; just as the Keller Center tells women they must submit; just as the Southern Baptist Convention tells women they must submit; just as many churches, institutions, seminaries, books, podcasts, blogs tell women they must submit.

The Bible tells men and women they are to submit to each other. That means no little-gods in control.

Let me tell what happened to me so you can see this in practice. I have told this story before.

This is what I wrote in 2016 and it is as true today as it was then.

If she had worn a scarf on her head, I would have expected the words that came out of her mouth. But she was a Christian, young and beautiful, working in a Christian bookstore.

I had stopped by a few months previous and left my book Dethroning Male Headship: Second Edition for them to sell and take the proceeds. I wasn’t asking anything from the sale. So I stopped by to see if the book had sold. Of course I knew they would not even attempt to sell my book, or even read it. Which is exactly what the young woman admitted to.

She said she could not get past the first few pages. I can see why. The first few pages explain the vast difference between egalitarian and complementarian beliefs. The complementarian view is so ingrained in her young life that she could not in good conscience even read that she might be wrong.

I suspect my book appeared as the serpent in the Garden of Eden to her. Unlike Eve, she would not be tempted.

You are either equal or you are not. She had chosen to believe that she was not. She had also chosen to believe that the Bible says so.

I was amazed and astounded at the conversation. I could not believe that young women are so willing to swallow complementarianism and its full expression of female submission to all males.

She quoted Timothy and Titus and said that women are to be the housekeepers. I pointed out that she was working, and she said that women could work but still were to be the housekeepers. Then she said that women were not to have careers. I asked her “what is a career?” I have been a secretary for over 35 years and she is working in a bookstore. Are those careers? She said that a career was where you could “climb the ladder” to a higher job. I laughed and told her that I suppose both she and I could climb the ladder. She could aspire to own the bookstore where she worked, and I could have been (it’s a little late for that now) like Carly Fiorina who began as a secretary and was a presidential candidate in 2016.

Where is this young woman going? She has been told that she cannot have a career (and who decides what a career is?) and she has been told that all males are superior to her. Even though she is still single, she has been led to believe that her husband will support her because the Bible says men are to provide the bread for the family. She has been led to believe that she can work outside the home if she has to, but that in doing so, she is working outside the will of God.

She said “God created sex” which will make this young woman inclined to believe anything she reads by Timothy Keller (a section called “Glory of Sex” – in his book Real Marriage of which they have two copies in their bookstore), Mark Driscoll, Ed Young, Jr., (Fifty Shades of They), and a myriad of other sex preachers. She will believe Beth Moore when she says that women tempt men today like the devil tempted Eve (When godly people do ungodly things), which was the way of thinking that began the witch hunts and resulted in women being burned as witches because “women listen to the devil.”

The serpent said “you will be like God” and now it is men who have chosen to be like God, and they teach that all females are to bow down in submission before all males. Jesus does not teach that God has given males the right to have females bow down before them.

Complementarians never quote Jesus when pushing their theology. Paige Patterson and his wife Dorothy Patterson, John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Mary Kassain, and all others who began this complementarian indoctrination of our young men and women in church, and those who continue to teach it, owe all Christians, and society, an apology for their abomination of the gospel.

There are two words you need to remember when discussing female equality:

Complementarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are of equal worth, but must submit to all men at all times, in church and in their own home. It is also called patriarchy.

Egalitarian: the religious belief and lifestyle that women are equal – no buts. This is the belief that I subscribe to – there are no buts!

http://www.shirleytaylor.net

Books: Raising the Hood: A Christian Look at Manhood and Womanhood; Dethroning Male Headship; Women Equal – No Buts: Powered by the same Source; The Power of a Book: The Street Evangelist. Available on Amazon in print or kindle. http://www.amazon.com/author/taylorshirley