Complementarians should learn from moral clarity of Congress

Congress has a 9% confidence rating among Americans, according to recent data from Gallup. And yet, it’s more ethical than mainstream evangelicalism’s institution of complementarian marriage.

Discussion about addressing sexual ethics on Capitol Hill has grown over the past few months following the resignations of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D) due to allegations of sexual assault and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) due to allegations of sexual misconduct involving one of his staffers who later died by suicide.

With congressmen from both parties being accused of abusing women, the efforts to address House ethics have been bipartisan. Teresa Leger Fernandez, chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, said, “From the beginning, we’ve pushed to extend the prohibition against members having sexual relationships to ALL staff.”

Fernandez said she is working together with the Republican Women’s Caucus “to reform the culture of sexual misconduct on the Hill.”

During a news conference last week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson voiced his support for the reform.

“I can’t believe it would be acceptable in any situation,” Johnson said regarding members of Congress dating House staffers. “I think we should as a bare minimum in Congress have rules and traditions that are adhered to in corporate America, so that is an easy one for me.”

Power dynamics in workplace hierarchies

The reason businesses discourage or prohibit dating between people on different corporate hierarchy levels is that it creates a power dynamic that puts the person on the underside of the hierarchy at risk.

According to Thrive Law, “Power imbalances, particularly between managers and subordinates, can complicate matters, raising questions of coercion and consent.”

“Power imbalances, particularly between managers and subordinates, can complicate matters, raising questions of coercion and consent.”

This is why current congressional policies prohibit dating between members of Congress and their own staffers. But there haven’t been prohibitions against members of Congress dating other members’ staffers.

While it’s understandable that members of Congress could be attracted to a staff member, there’s still a significant power differential between them, whether they oversee them personally or not. As Fernandez said, “The power dynamic that leads to abuse exists for all staffers, not just those within the members own office.”

Two competing bills

In order to address these power dynamics, two competing bills have been proposed. Rep. Jeff Crank (R) is proposing a resolution that would require any member of Congress who desires to date another lawmaker’s staffer to disclose the relationship to an ethics panel.

But Johnson and Fernandez find themselves in a rare moment of agreement: Disclosure of such relationships wouldn’t remove the inherent power imbalance.

“At the end of the day, there’s a fundamental power dynamic here,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said when asked about the two competing views. “It should be a pretty simple line to draw.”

When a reporter asked her why it’s taken so long to address these power imbalances, Ocasio-Cortez replied, “Do you know what percentage of Congress is male? It’s about 75.”

Complementarianism’s power imbalance

Despite the differences across the aisle and between these two proposals, the basic principle behind the congressional reform effort is clear: Relationships where one person is in a position of authority over another inherently include a particular vulnerability for the person in the role of subordination.

So why don’t complementarians seem to understand this basic reality?

“It’s clear, as you study the Bible, that God has a divine order in society related to man and woman,” John MacArthur preached. “And God’s basic pattern is there are two factors in society: authority and submission. And God has designed that men be given the position of authority, and women the position of submission. … A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.”

“A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.”

Similarly, in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John Piper and Wayne Grudem argue, “To the degree that a woman’s influence over man is personal and directive it will generally offend a man’s good, God-given sense of responsibility and leadership, and thus controvert God’s created order.”

Piper’s concern about maintaining the power imbalance between men and women is so strong that he suggests women should not be police officers, military officers or even managers over men in the workplace.

Equal value but with different roles

When people argue that maintaining such power dynamics between men and women devalues women, complementarians counter that men and women have equal value despite being in different roles.

“This point is often missed by evangelical feminists,” Piper claims. “They conclude that a difference in function necessarily involves a difference in essence; i.e., if men are in authority over women, then women must be inferior.” So he suggests, “One can possess a different function and still be equal in essence and worth. Women are equal to men in essence and in being; there is no ontological distinction, and yet they have a different function or role in church and home.”

Similarly, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood argues, “Male and female were created by God as equal in dignity, value, essence and human nature, but also distinct in role whereby the male was given the responsibility of loving authority over the female, and the female was to offer willing, glad-hearted and submissive assistance to the man.”

Stacy Reaoch wrote for CBMW, “God values me just as much as a man but has a different role for me in this world.”

But the congressional debate exposes the problem with complementarianism. The question is not whether a subordinate has equal human worth. The question is whether the relationship hierarchy itself contains a power differential that makes the subordinate vulnerable to the point of a romantic and sexual relationship being unethical.

Partners vs. advisers and assistants

Complementarians often defend their gender hierarchy by arguing that managers and their subordinates in the workplace each have equal value as humans, despite being in different hierarchical roles. Thus, they argue the complementarian hierarchy doesn’t dehumanize women.

In the congressional context, the parallel would be that a staff member has the same human value as the members of Congress.

So complementarian men often argue that they value their wives by seeking their advice and by entrusting certain responsibilities to them that they are more capable of accomplishing than the husband. For example, a complementarian man who struggles with organization may entrust his highly organized wife to pay the bills on time. Or a complementarian man who has two job opportunities in different states may seek his wife’s advice for where they should move, rather than making the move unilaterally. Thus, they suggest they’re valuing their wives rather than demeaning them.

But the wife’s entire decision process gets delegated to her through the husband. He is in complete control, and she is at his mercy for whatever morsels of freedom he may hand down to her. Perhaps he’s a complementarian man who gives her a lot of freedom. But no matter how kind he may be, the relational structure keeps her vulnerable to his dictates.

It’s pretty ironic, given how morally bankrupt our political leaders seem to be, that they’d have a stronger sense of moral clarity than inerrantist complementarians. A manager and an assistant may have equal value as humans, but their roles have an unequal power dynamic that necessitates prohibitions against romantic or sexual relationships in order to protect the assistant. This is so obvious to Speaker Johnson that he says it should be “bare minimum.”

“There is no such thing as healthy complementarianism.”

Not only do complementarians fail to adhere to Speaker Johnson’s bare minimum, but they sacralize the power dynamic by requiring men to be in the position of authority, requiring women to be their “submissive assistance,” and then requiring the relationship to be both romantic and sexual. This is why complementarianism is inescapably abusive. There is no such thing as healthy complementarianism, just as there is no such thing as a healthy romantic and sexual relationship between a congressman and his female staffer.

In complementarian marriage, the two people may be described as partners, but they are not equal partners. The husband is the one who possesses final authority, while the wife is his “submissive assistant.” The wife may advise him, influence him and even be entrusted with significant responsibilities, but she does not possess the same authority over him that he possesses over her.

Applying complementarianism to sex

At least Doug Wilson, who is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spiritual mentor, is honest about these power imbalances when he applies them specifically to sex. In a 2012 piece for The Gospel Coalition, Jared Wilson quoted Doug Wilson saying, “The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course, offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage.” Doug Wilson continued, “Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the ‘soon to be made willing’ heroine.” And this: “True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”

Since it’s unclear to the complementarians among us, colonizers and their subjects or rapists and their survivors are not being treated with “equal value” and “different roles.”

Even Congress recognizes that human equality does not erase the ethical significance of unequal power. Complementarian theology, however, creates precisely such unequal power and then attempts to neutralize the ethical problem by declaring the people involved equal in value.

So as pathetic as it may be, perhaps complementarians should take a clue from the moral clarity of Congress.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.