040 Why I'm NOT a Complementarian

We walk through the deeper reasons we can no longer hold complementarianism, focusing on Bible reading frameworks, power, and the new-covenant identity of believers. We explain why historical context, Genesis, Jesus’ teaching on authority, and adoption to sonship reshape how we think about women in ministry and leadership. 

• Defining complementarianism and egalitarianism in plain terms 
• Why our minds changed without re-litigating the “big three” passages 
• How hermeneutics and historical context steer interpretation 
• Reading Genesis 1 to 4 as unity and shared priestly calling 
• Why “helper” does not mean subservient assistant 
• What matriarchal authority in the Old Testament reveals about household power 
• How Greco-Roman culture influences New Testament household codes 
• Why Jesus’ “not so with you” challenges hierarchy systems 
• Adoption to sonship as legal status that impacts church life 
• Priesthood of all believers as a shared calling for men and women 
• Practical Q&A on gifts, parenting, church choices, and finding resources 

Resources mentioned:

• Substack
• Eve as first theologian and priestly representative:
  • Article: Transforming Eve’s Legacy
  • Podcast: Women in Context: Eve (Gen 2-4)
  • Article: Eve the first theologian
• Subscribe to my patreon for full explanations and lectures of the 7 Reasons Complementarians believe in Hierarchy pre-fall https://www.patreon.com/c/WeWhoThirst
• Instagramseries:
  • Does Adam being formed first mean he’s the boss?
  • Does woman as “helper” mean she’s subordinate?
  • Adam named Eve, so is he in charge?
  • Humanity is referred to as “man,” so therefore are men in charge?
  • Did Satan come to Eve first to undermine God’s creation order?
  • Does God speaking to Adam first after the fall mean that he (Adam) has primary responsibility?
  • Since Adam represents the human race, he’s responsible, not Eve?
• Matriarchal Authority Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO-E36xt_2E

Transcript

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The Moment Everything Shifted

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:24

What changed my mind about complementarianism was not the passages you hear everybody discussing and arguing. It was a completely different set of systems, structures, and themes throughout scripture that when I saw those, I no longer could hold a complimentarian position. Hi,

Why This Story Matters

Jessica LM Jenkins 0:45

welcome back. I am so glad you were here. It has been nice for me as a podcast host to have a break for the summer while my kids were home from school. And now that they are back in school, I cannot wait to get back into the Women of the Bible in Context podcast. Today we are starting our fall season off strong with an episode I'm titling Why I'm Not a Complimentarian. I asked my followers on Instagram which of several options they were most interested in, and this hands down got the most votes. At the end of the podcast, after I give my reasons I'm not a complimentarian anymore, I have some questions from my followers on Instagram that I will also answer that are related and somewhat practical. So we can get into it, but I want to give a little bit of background so you understand this shift and my story. Because what I'm sharing today is not an argument against complementarianism, though I think a lot of the points I'm gonna say could be used in a broader argument, but this is more of a story of what changed my mind. And what God used to change my mind might be completely different than what he needed to use to change somebody else's mind. And that's okay. Different people process life differently and have different deep-down internal questions. And so how that change occurs is not going to look the same for everybody. And so I'm not trying to convince anybody out of their complementarianism or into my point of view through this episode.

Complementarianism Vs Egalitarianism Defined

Jessica LM Jenkins 2:27

I am sharing the things that when I really look back and say, what was it that fundamentally shifted the pendulum from me from believing a con, let me also give you definitions for those who are like complementarianism? What is that? So complementarians, and I'm lumping every type of complementarian together in this, um, generally high level believe that um spiritual leadership in the church, so pastor, bishop, priest, whatever your church calls the person in charge, rector, um, that is male only. Um only men can be pastors in the church. Some complementarians even believe women should not teach the Bible to men at all, um, even teenage boys. They believe that husbands are the authority and head of the home. Head being used not in a literal but in a metaphorical sense, they're implying authority. And so basically, it is a system where men are in charge and women support and help. Um, and they they largely focus um their beliefs for complementarism on what I call the big three passages. You have Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11. Ephesians 5 is wives submit to husbands. Uh, 1 Timothy 2 is women should not teach or have authority over men. And then 1 Corinthians 11 is women was made for man, not man from woman. Um, God is the head of Christ, and Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman. And so those passages are what by and large most complementarians hang their beliefs on, those big three. And actually, those big three are not at all why I am no longer a complementarian. Um, and we'll get into that in a moment. Egalitarians believe that men and women are equally called and gifted by God for ministry, and that all avenues of leadership and ministry are open to those who are called and gifted. Um, your physical chromosomes and body parts do not get to dictate what you can and cannot do in the kingdom of God. And egalitarians believe that marriage should be mutual, mutual submission between the husband and wife working together in unity as a team. And I bring up the mutuality and the um mutual submission because I had uh a man say to me once, he's like, My parents had an egalitarian marriage, and really his mom was just in charge. And there's a lot of misconceptions that if the woman is running the show, it's egalitarian. And that is not an egalitarian message, a marriage where one person is kind of in charge. It's a truly mutualist or egalitarian position means that the husband and wife are working together as one flesh in unity or working towards that goal. It does not mean the woman is in charge, it does not mean the man is in charge. It means they are working together, both having equal voice, both having equal vote, but not one superseding the other in decision making. So that's basic definitions of complementarianism and egalitarianism.

The Personal Cost Of Changing

Jessica LM Jenkins 5:55

And what may surprise you is when I started reconsidering my complementarianism, I didn't want to because I was completely raised in a complementarian background. My family were complementarians. I was educated both in college and seminary in complementarian schools. Everybody I knew were complementarians. My church was a complementarian church. I knew if I reconsidered this and changed my mind, it would come at personal cost. I would no longer fit in the circles I was used to being in. And that was terrifying for me. Um, and ironically, the reason I ended up considering my complementarianism is because my husband was like, Jessica, I'm not sure I believe complementarianism anymore. And I want you to reconsider your beliefs. And I really didn't want to. But as a complimentarian, I had to be a good submissive wife, because wives submit to your husbands. So I had to submit to my husband and reconsider my beliefs. And here we are. But what may surprise you is that as I've walked away from complementarism, none of those top three passages are what changed my mind or what influenced my decision. As I've read authors and theologians and listened to perspectives from both sides, I've realized that so much of what one believes, either complementary and egalitarian, or some other mixture of a position, what somebody believes about women's roles, rights, voice, et cetera, depends less on your interpretation of those top three hotly debated passages and more on the hermeneutical and structural framework you bring into your study of those passages. What I'm saying is if you bring a specific hermeneutical point of view, if you bring certain presuppositions into your study of Genesis 5, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11, Genesis 1 through 4, etc., you will likely come to one or the other conclusion, not because of those passages, regardless of what people say, but because of what you brought to the conversation. And as my underlying framework shifted, therefore my interpretation of those passages shifted alongside it. So this may be a disappointment to some of you listening, but I'm not going to discuss really the top three passages at all. They are important and deserve discussion. And someday I'll likely do a podcast episode on each of them. But for today, that's not because for me, that's not what shifted. They are hugely important parts of the conversation. I am not denying that at all. But for me, that was not the found, that was not the foundational piece that shifted. I had to, I noticed things underneath. And so here are some of the things, I'll give you a peek, uh, that we're going to talk about in this episode that helped me shift from one to the other. Hermeneutics, your, as I already said, your hermeneutical framework on how you interpret the Bible builds up into your systems of a theology of womanhood. So hermeneutics, um, my interpretation of Genesis 1 through 4, um, learning about matriarchal authority in the Old Testament really unlocked something in my brain. Jesus stance in the gospels against those who seek authority and hierarchy. That was really crucial. And then recognizing that believers in Christ, in his new kingdom, have a new social status separate from the world, I feel like was one of the final um nails in the coffin of my complementarianism. And I was like, I cannot stay in this system with these theological underpinnings. So let's start walking through each of those. But first, I do want to clarify again, definitionally, just so that we're clear, clarity is important. When I refer to complementarians, which I will do all throughout this episode, um, in my mind, I have two different groups in mind because there's lots of various complementarian beliefs out there. You have super patriarchal, um, really hardcore. They don't even like the term complementarians. Um, they prefer patriarchalists or hierarchicalists or something else. You have those, you have soft complementarians that believe women can teach men and do everything, except they can be an associate pastor, just not a senior pastor or a bishop. Like you, we there's a broad swath in complementarianism. Um so I'm I'm telling you who I'm referring to when I say complementarians believe there's certain complementarians that I'm thinking about. And part of the reason I'm using these complementarians is because the first group I was raised with them. So this is complementarians who they just basically want to follow the black and white words on the page. Um this is what I was raised with. Um, they're not trying to create huge systems of complementarianism. They just look at the Bible, black and white words, and it says wives submit to husbands, and they're like, okay, that's what we have to do. Um they look at 1 Timothy 2, women should not have authority or teach men. Okay, women cannot teach men. Period. And now we have to define what a man is, but women teaching the Bible is absolutely not an option. So that's kind of the first group I was raised with. They just want to, but they haven't done a lot of writing on that. Um, but it's what I'm intrinsically in my body most familiar with because that's how I was raised. So there's the complimentarians I was raised around. Um, many of them honored women, loved women. Many of those people empowered me and helped create who I am today. Um, they just wanted to go with the very clear, what they consider the plain reading of scripture, which I can understand in their context. The other group of complimentarians that these ones I'll pick on more, partly because they wrote an entire book on it that is over 500 pages long. That is the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. That is the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, CBMW, the John Piper, Wayne Grudom, Kostenberger, et al. That group of complimentarians has written extensively, Denny Burke, through the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Their 500-page treatise on the topic is Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a response to evangelical feminism, um, uh edited by John Piper and Wayden Grudum. And so that is what those two groups, when I talk about complimentarians believe, um, I'm either going to be referring to episodes from my childhood and growing up years, or um, which I don't have like things for because of stuff I experienced as a kid, or I'm going to be referring to writings, um, either specifically or generally by CBMW, John Piper, Wayne Grutham, etc. Um, so just so if there's complimentarians like, I don't believe that, maybe you don't, but I'm I'm two buckets. My growing up and the big names who've popularized coined the phrase. Um, because people, the the phrase complementarianism wasn't used a lot till the 1980s-ish. So right around when I was born. Before that, people absolutely believed that women should not be pastors and wives have to submit to husbands. That belief system is not new. It just didn't have a name until the CBMW, Piper, Grutem, etc., gave it one in the 1980s. Um, but the the churches I grew up with were a, they're a, they consider themselves regular Baptist. And some of you are gonna giggle. The regular Baptists I was a part of moved away from the Southern Baptist back before the conservative resurgence was started around 1979, um, so 80s, 90s-ish. Um, the regular Baptists I grew up among, they were fundamentalist adjacent, Bill Gothard, IBLP, adjacent, but not completely enmeshed in those circles. Um, and this group of regular Baptists, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, Garb, if you're familiar with that, they split off, moved away from the Southern Baptist early 1900s. I'm not sure on the history there, but long before the conservative resurgence, um, because the Southern Baptists were allowing women to be pastors pre-conservative resurgence, which is part of the reason they had the conservative resurgence. So I grew up garb churches, and then so I'm either talking about them, things from my childhood or C uh or CBMW style complementarianism. So hermeneutics,

Hermeneutics And Historical Context

Jessica LM Jenkins 14:55

I believe, completely is the foundational element to your theology of womanhood. What you believe about scripture dictates how you're going to interpret scripture. That's a fairly obvious hermeneutical principle. And I've noticed that complementarians, again, the two groups I just described, typically interpret the Bible with minimal historical context, especially the garb churches I grew up in, they want the plain reading of scripture. What do they black and white and red words on the page say? They might do Hebrew-Greek word studies. Um they will go back and forth for stuff in their Bible, but they want to they want the plain reading of scripture. They do not want to bring in the situation in Ephesus, they do not want to consider um how the Aphrodite cult would have impacted Timothy as a pastor in Ephesus. None of that. They don't want to think about that. They're not thinking about Corinth. Um, they're they're much more focused on the black and white words on the page. They also emphasize commands. If there is a scriptural command, wives submit to your husbands. Women do not teach or have authority, they are going to emphasize that over everything else. A command is high-tier biblical principle. Um, somebody, a story that contradicts the command is just an illustration, maybe of a different principle, or maybe it's some people being disobedient to the command, but the commands govern everything. Those are like, especially for the garb, some of their foundational hermeneutical principles. Um the CBMW is they're looking broad. They're trying to create an entire theological system. The Garb isn't necessarily thinking theological system. They just want to know: can I be faithful to the plain reading of the text and can I obey these commands? That's their heart. They want to obey Jesus. I mean, the other ones do too, but they want to obey Jesus and they just what's straight in front of them. A lot of the garb pastors are less educated, etc., and so on. CBMW wanted to create an entire framework of biblical womanhood that ties all of scripture together. They often really emphasize Genesis, which we'll talk about here in a minute, um, as well as the other big three passages, but they read the big three passages into their interpretation of Genesis. They refuse to take Genesis on its own and then come to the big three later. They have to read them together. So everything they see in Genesis is filtered through 1 Corinthians 11, especially, um, as they work through that. So, and they don't use, they still don't use a whole lot of historical context. So, for me, as I started reconsidering my complementarianism, I had come up with her, I had learned hermeneutics in Bible college from a linguist Hebrew professor and my expository preaching professor, which is a whole other side story, um, on how to study the Bible according to the intent of the author. Authorial intent was taught me in garb and southern Baptist schools. And as I logically looked at it, I was like, we can't know authorial intent if we don't know historical context. I know you guys like to ignore the historical context, but in my mind, you can't understand one without the other. And my um Hebrew professor in Bible college started bringing in historical context. I just think he didn't go far enough, and that's okay. Um, but he really gave me that foundation of you have to understand historical context and you have to understand who the author of scripture is speaking to. Um and you interpret scripture according to who you think they're speaking to and that situation. And so I had this hermeneutical framework that I had learned through the years, but I had never sat down and applied it to the big three passages or my complementarian beliefs. And so when my husband told me that I needed to reconsider, I was like, okay, great, this is a fantastic time to take my hermeneutics and watch it play out throughout all of scripture and to see once I take my fundamental belief that historical context matters, which diverges from my garb upbringing, how am I going, where am I going to land if I start reading all these passages using a lot of historical context? So that shift in the hermeneutic philosophy for which I approached scripture impacted the trajectory of my study and impacted where I ended up in the end. So I would say hermeneutics is the foundational piece of why I'm not a complimentarian, because by and large, a lot of complimentarians don't put a lot of emphasis on historical context. There are certainly some who do, but many of them, especially the garb in which I was raised, do not. And I decided everything I believe is going to be rooted largely in historical context. So that's a hermeneutical decision before we even get to a discussion of women.

Reading Genesis Without Overlay

Jessica LM Jenkins 20:00

The next thing I did is I looked at Genesis. I was like, I'm not going to take the New Testament and overlay it on top of Genesis. I'm going to look at Genesis in its historical context and decide what I believe Genesis one through four is teaching about women and mankind. And when I did that, I realized, I came to the conclusion that women are created in God's image, which that I was taught in my garb and Southern Baptist circles. Um, but women are created in God's image, and they were created to be priestly representatives alongside men. It was not that man was created to be priest and king and woman was created to be a baby incubator and sandwich maker. It was that when God placed Adam in the garden and he said, You are alone and it is not good, it's because he placed Adam into the garden to be a priest. There are two words used in the Hebrew that, whenever they're used together, indicates a priestly role. God put Adam into the garden to be a priest. And when God said, It is not good that you are alone, it was not, it's not good that you're alone because you can't reproduce by yourself. It wasn't, it's not good that you're alone because nobody's gonna make your sandwiches while you do your ruling work. It was, it's not good for you to be alone because the job of being a priestly representative is too big for you to do by yourself. And so God created woman because man should not be leading spiritually alone. And I have an entire episode on Eve. I have multiple articles on Eve. Um, I have two whole chapters devoted to this in my forthcoming book, coming Lord Willing, 2028 for Intervarsity Press. Um, and I'll link the stuff I already have out um in the notes on this podcast. So I'm not gonna dive into everything Adam and Eve because I've already done that. Um, but that fundamentally changed everything for me because when I saw, oh, Adam is there to be a priest and Eve as the helper, which is not a secondary subservient role. I've written a lot about helper as well. Um it's not a secondary subservient role. It is a rescuer, a military results. Rescue. Imagine if you're a Lord of the Rings fan. Um Aragorn and his army are being overrun, and all of a sudden they look up, and on the hillside far away, Gandalf and the horsemen come over the ridge. Gandalf's spear is shining bright light and they gallop down to save Aragorn and his army. That is the picture of helper. Gandalf is the helper. He is the reinforcements. He has arrived to save the day. That is what the Hebrew help word helper implies. Not as Wynne Grudham says, the subservient helper who places themselves under. It is the rescuer. And so when I looked at Genesis and I saw woman as rescuer and man, it is not good for him to be alone because a man should not be spiritually leading alone without female input. That fundamentally changed everything I believed. CBMW, I used Grudom's systematic theology for this because he wrote it out and very nice, simple for me to interact with. They have seven reasons for that, which I have an Instagram series way back on my Instagram. Also, you can go to my Patreon, um, www.patreon.com backslash we who thirst. Um, and you can subscribe and get my lengthy series walking through and debunking the CBMW, specifically Grudom's seven reasons for hierarchy pre-thoughtfall. Um basically they have lots of reasons. The big one that everybody just comes back to is Adam was created first, so therefore he's in charge. And I debunked that both on Instagram and on in that series. Because Adam and Eve are created for unity. In Genesis 1, man and woman are spoken about as a unified essence of humanity. In Genesis 2, yes, Eve is created later, but she's created out of Adam's side after he realizes that it's not good for man to be alone because men and most spiritual circles I've ever been in are perfectly fine being alone without female input. And I believe in Genesis, God is telling both ancient Israel and us today, hello, wake up. You shouldn't be alone. I gave you woman for this priestly representative role, which we're going to come back to priestliness towards the end of the episode. So for me, looking at Genesis as it was, without reading the New Testament over top of it, I saw great unity between men and women. I saw a woman come in as an ally, as someone whose intellect and voice and gifts were designed to partner perfectly with men for the representation of God to the world and the world to God. Unfortunately, Eve failed spectacularly and was deceived by the serpent. But she was also the first theologian outside the garden. The last thing Adam does in the corpus of Scripture is have sex with his wife. That's the last thing he does. Eve speaks theological statements repetitively in Genesis chapter four, which we always stop at Genesis chapter three. She speaks theology in chapter four, showing that God is a midwife who cared for her needs and shows a reconciliation with God that we never see on behalf of Adam. I love Eve. Um Ingrid Farrow in her book, I believe Deeming Eden, she does a really good job with Eve. Again, I have two chapters on woman in Eve in my forthcoming book, and I'll link articles below. But seeing Genesis like that, definitely listen to the very first podcast episode of The Woman of the Bible in context. The very first episode, episode one, is on Eve. Definitely go listen to that if some of this sounds new. The next

Matriarchal Authority In The Old Testament

Jessica LM Jenkins 26:53

big piece for me that helped change my mind was learning about matriarchal authority in the Old Testament. I grew up under Gothard's umbrella theory. There is God, and then man is the ultimate authority. Woman is under him, and then kids are under her. Everything in life is ordered by circles of authority and submission. Everything, school, job, government, family, all of life is structured around authority. And we'll get to Jesus' thoughts on this. Um, that's one of my next things. But every the women in the Old Testament were viewed through this umbrella theory, Ephesians 5-esque, um, authority point of view. So they could not see women as independent actors in the Old Testament who had authority in their homes because women are just supposed to submit. I remember listening to my parents and my grandmother talk about a phrase that I I mean, I can remember exactly where I was at in my grandma's living room, and she had her wall phone behind her. This is 90s, uh 1990s, like clear as I can picture it. Um, and my parents and my grandmother are talking about a wife is only as submissive to God as she is to her husband. And that stuck in my mind for years. Um, even though husbands were, even though husbands were supposed to be kind and gentle and collaborative in their leadership, there was zero question that a husband is the absolute boss. If he said jump, the only correct response from a wife is how high while she's in the air. Um, and that is what I absorbed. That may not be exactly what my parents and church were trying to teach, but that's what I heard and that's what I learned, especially when you put Gothard's umbrellas of authority on top of phrases like a wife is only as submissive to God as she is to her husband. And so as you read Sarah, as you read Deborah, as you read JL, as you read the Proverbs 31 women, every one of those passages are interpreted not according to their historical context, but according to Ephesians 5, where wives have to submit to their husbands and everything all the time. And they are interpreted with a misunderstanding of ancient patriarchy. The assumptions about ancient patriarchy, when they did try to think about historical context, is that the ancient Near East was basically like what's happening in Afghanistan today, where women have to be completely covered, they're not allowed to talk to men, they're not allowed to go anywhere without men, they have no voice, no representation. They are literally just silent baby makers and dishwashers. Um and that was kind of like Shehira law, Afghanistan is what we thought the Old Testament was like. Um and when I started actually researching Old Testament and learned about matriarchal authority and how the matriarch had a comparable authority to the patriarch in the ancient Near East, that changed everything. Because in the ancient Near East, Old Testament, I'm not talking Greco-Roman. Um, if we brief aside, if we look at ancient cultures, um the Greek culture is actually the most patriarchal misogynistic culture of the ancient um Mediterranean world. Egypt is probably the most gave women the most rights. Greece gave women the least rights. Um, Rome marginally better than Greece, but primarily only if a woman has money and is a citizen, which is pretty hard. Most women in the Roman Empire were not citizens and were not rich. Um, Greco-Roman culture is actually a step back in women's status than the Hebrew Semitic culture of the Old Testament. Take that into consideration when you read through your Bible. Women had higher status, especially pre-the Kingdom age in the Old Testament. They lost status as power was centralized in Israel. Um, Persian women had quite a bit of power, so they may have gained some status during the Persian age when Cyrus and Darius and all of them are ruling. Um, so status ebbs and flows. Women in Egypt, high status. Um, women carried some of that into the pre-monarchy, pre-David, pre-Solomon Israel. And then they would have lost status around the centralization around the kingship and the temple. And then they could have gained more status back under the Persian rule because Persian women had um greater levels of property ownership and voice and ability to divorce and all of those things. And then it tanked even more under the Greco, uh, under the Greeks and the Romans. And so we cannot look at the Bible as a monolith where the culture stayed static for the entire time. Women in the Old Testament had a significant, especially mothers, free women mothers, had more power and authority than I ever conceived they would have had in the Old Testament. And so the household laws, maybe I will talk about Ephesians 5 a little bit, the household codes in the New Testament are a reflection, not of what I believe is God's eternal desire for men and women, but a capitulation and a recognition of how these churches have to exist in a Greco-Roman world where wives are legally required to obey their husbands by Roman law and where women just don't have the same status that they did when the matriarch, I love this, Victor Matthews and Doncy Benjamin talk about it in their book Social World, um, the social, I'm slaughtering the title, but the social world of the um Old Testament. They talk about how if uh the white, a woman had complete carte blanche authority over food. Um, and if she rationing the food, because they don't have grocery stores, so whatever you get from your harvest, you have to ration for the next year. If she gave her husband his, if the matriarch gave the patriarch, the man in charge, supposedly, if she gave him his ration for that meal, and he's like, I'm still hungry, I want more, or I don't like this, I want something else. And she look looks at him, she's like, uh no. Him arguing back to her about that was seen by the ancient people as stupid and laughable as a human arguing with the gods about the length of their life. You would be better suited telling the god that you deserve to live a hundred more years than he was planning on letting you, as you would telling the matriarch to give you more food. Like it was a comparable, like this is just ridiculous that you would question her authority in this matter. Um, for the patriarch, not one of the sons, not a worker, the man. They had a comparable authority alongside each other. He represented the household in external ways, and she had an incredible amount of authority in the household. And the household's not just like our household today, where it's a nuclear family. It is like business, religious, a whole lot of things. If you want to learn more about matriarchal authority, I have an entire hour-long YouTube video with illustrations on the screen. It's really cool on my YouTube. I'll try to link that in the comments on this as well, where I walk through all of it with visuals to help you understand better than I can explain right now. But understanding matriarchal authority helped me see Sarah, the Proverbs 31 woman, as in a different light. And to see that the household codes in the New Testament are not God's reflection of all time. God did not, there's not one wife submit to husband type command in the entire Old Testament. And that is when women had some of the highest status. And so if God isn't telling the high status women who can tell their husband how much he can or cannot eat, if he's not telling them to submit, maybe the command that women submit to their husbands in the household codes is culturally bound more than it is an eternal principle. And again, for me, that's how my brain worked. And my brain started going, oh, this is mutual. Of course, in Ephesians 5, it's also submit one to another, wives to husbands. Paul starts with mutual submission before he gets to wifely submission. But um, most complementarians really do not like thinking about that. And they want to say the mutual submission only applies to the church, not um not the home. It has to be hierarchy in the home. Of course, that argument falls apart in the Greek grammar because the wives submit to husbands verse borrows the verb from the submit to one another verse. There is no verb in the phrase wives to husbands. It is submit one to another. Everybody, masters, slaves, wives, husbands, children, parents. Everybody submit one to another, wives, husbands. Um, and so the Greek ties those verses together. A lot of your English Bibles have a bold heading between submit one to another and wives to husbands. They're breaking up a Greek sentence. You literally cannot do that. So learning about matriarchy in the Old Testament and matriarchal authority was really crucial for me because it undercut. Um, I just no longer could believe that God would baptize misogynistic Greco-Roman culture that believed women are deformed men rather than image full image bearers. That's what Aristotle believed, that women were broken, deformed men, that there was a failure in gestation, that the human did not turn male, so it turned female instead. She is handicapped, basically, a handicapped man, less than, um, less logical intellectual ability, all of it. Um so that is what's undercutting or undergirding the Roman household codes because they had household codes outside the New Testament once. This was common in their culture. And then Paul rewrote those to challenge the church to value women. That's actually what's going on. God is not baptizing misogynistic Greco-Roman culture to say women should always be under men. God is saying you need to reconsider how you view women in a subtle way. And that deserves a whole episode on its own. Um one note I want to make there, though, um, is that many complimentarians, I'm using hierarchy a lot. Many complimentarians reject that they do not want to call their beliefs gender hierarchy. Um, Piper and Grudum on um in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood say, and I'm reading, say, we certainly reject the term hierarchicalist because it over-emphasizes structured authority while giving no suggestions of equality or the beauty beauty of mutual independence. Which, to give them the most benefit of the doubt, they do very much emphasize the equality of personhood between men and women, um, and the fact that men do depend on women mostly for unpaid labor, um, which they don't say, but that's my aside. Um, but they really do create a hierarchy because when they define masculinity, masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women, while defining femininity, that was on page 35 of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, by defining femininity as on page 46, a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strengths and leadership from worthy men. So basically, being a man, according to John Piper, is to lead, provide for, and protect. And being a woman is to affirm, receive, and nurture the leadership of a man. Um, in essence, as I heard a pastor in a sermon once say, men lead, women follow, which they do say men lead. Later, Piper, I believe it's Piper, um, he defines biblical submission, and I'm reading this is page fifty from page 53. He defines biblical submission as the divine calling to honor and affirm her husband's leadership. And so for the CBMW complementarianism, submission, which overlaps with his definition of femininity, even though he doesn't use the word in the definition for fresh femininity, for CBMW style complementarianism, their ontological definitions for masculinity and femininity for men and women are basically authority and submission. God designed men to lead, God designed women to follow, men have authority, women must submit. That is ontologically the core of how they define men and women. And I do not see that match up to Genesis. I do not see that match up to matriarchal authority in the Old Testament. And it creates, even though they're both image bearers, it creates a hierarchy. It just does. They can deny it till they're blue in the face, but when you read their words back to them, he has authority, she must submit. That is not mutual. That is the definition of a hierarchy. And their definition, because they they back to Genesis, they say this happened pre-fall. God designed in creation before sin that men would lead and women would follow. They see this as eternal in the new heaven and new earth. Women will still be have, they will still be joyfully affirming male leadership for eternity. And as I processed that, I was like, I can't do it. I cannot believe it's one thing, which is kind of what I was raised in the garb circles. It's one thing to say a wife has to submit to her husband. That's a role. She chooses to submit. She chooses to marry this man and she walks in knowing. Like my I chose to marry Kevin. I walked into the marriage. I will submit to this man for the rest of my life. Before that, I'm a single woman. I don't have to submit to him. Once I marry, it's a role as wife, wives submit. But a woman doesn't have to be a wife. Um, a woman doesn't have to go to a pastor's church. Yes, lay people submit to their pastors, but I don't have to go to his church. It's one, it was one thing for me to view my complementarianism that way. I can choose this role, which requires submission. It's another to say, my essence, my very essence as a woman is characterized by submission that is eternal for all time. Can't do it. I don't see it in scripture. As much as they want to argue that it is, it's just not, and I couldn't do it. And along with my unwillingness to see submission for women as an eternal mandate for all time, for every woman everywhere, to try to find ways to submit to the men in their lives according to their various roles. Um, it's not that a woman. I do want to be clear, Piper and Gruder are not saying that I have to submit to my male neighbor next door. Um, but they are saying I do have to find ways to affirm his leadership, which just feels weird because that feels like an intimate thing to do with like somebody I don't even know. Um, and that's where Jesus' words against hierarchy come in. Because this

Jesus Rejects Status And Hierarchy

Jessica LM Jenkins 42:36

is the next thing that really helped me change my mind against complimentarianism. Um, especially after watching for years how complimentarian men on social media um are bullying and rude to people. Um, just toxic behaviors. And of course, my dad, who's a complimentarian Piper and Grudem, would all say, well, those men are not acting the way complimentarian men should act, it shouldn't be a reflection of complementarianism, um, it's just men acting sinfully. Okay, but I I feel like they're they're trying to separate what the system creates and say the system has no responsibility for it. But I think when you raise little boys, like I have a son and a daughter, if I raised my son saying your masculinity has an inherent authority in it, and your sister's femininity has an inherent submission in it as God's design, that's not going to grow up to be a healthy masculinity. Um, in rare cases, you might have men who can grow up and be like, you know, my authority should be used to benefit people, um, and I should protect people. But overall, when you tell little boys that they have absolute authority, it's gonna come out like the high schooler I know who's like, I really can't wait to get married so that I have someone to serve me. Great. That is an unhealthy marriage dynamic already. He wasn't uh he was like college. Um and then I was so that's what I'm I'm thinking and I'm processing all of these things of people just applying their complementarianism in abusive ways. See SBC sex abuse crisis. So many marriages I know where husbands are abusive and controlling, and um and the complementarians refuse to call them out on it. They don't even have the guts to say, hey, this isn't leading your wife like Christ. They just tell the woman to submit and the man gets free reign. And of course, my dad and Piper and Grudom would say, well, that's not the way it's supposed to be, but it's the way it is. And your system did kind of create this, Piper and Grudom. Um and so, and there's so many men who just uh again on social media, they double down on men lead, women follow, men lead, women follow. And even in Wade'em and Wait Wade 'Grutom and Piper. Um, I smashed Wayne Grudom's name together. Um, in Grudom and Piper, they even define masculinity and feminine by authority and submission. And then I remember Jesus' words. Matthew 20, 25 through 27. Jesus called them together and said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles load lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them, not so with you. Luke 22, 25 through 26, both of these are NIV. Jesus said to them, the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who exercise authority over them call themselves benefactors. But you are not to be like that. So I'm looking at how the CBMW system literally says men, authority, women, submission as their ontological underpinnings for their entire thing. And Jesus says, You, the church, are not to be obsessed with who gets to rule and who gets to be in charge. And I see an entire system that is structured to make sure everybody knows who gets to rule and who gets to be in charge. They can say it's a nice rule. They can say he's really kind and really great. It does not change that the entire system is set up so that everybody knows who gets to lord it over and who exercises authority and who does not have authority. And the fruit of that comes out in toxic social media patterns from immature people, both sides, men and women. But Jesus words, not so with you. As I've read those words and pondered those words, it has struck me that the Gentiles, unbelievers, are the ones obsessed with who gets to be in charge and who gets to be on top of the hierarchy. That kind of obsession and framework is not of Jesus. As the Trinity is completely unified, there is no hierarchy in the Trinity, as the Trinity is completely unified, and as mankind, humankind is made in God's image, male and female, so there isn't hierarchy in humankind because humankind reflects the Trinity, and there's no hierarchy in the Trinity. And Jesus says, This is not my way for my people. Instead, whoever wants to be great must be the servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. And then I see complementarian men, even Piper, Grudom, the Garb Circles, saying, Well, men shouldn't be stay-at-home dads. They should be providing and protecting. Oh, that's what I forgot with matriarchal authority. Back to that. We'll get there in a second. They say men shouldn't do those things. Women have to serve. Women were created to serve, to be the servant class, doing the unpaid labor forever and ever and ever. A man gets to retire, a woman does not forever and ever and ever. And this is not the way of Jesus. He said, not so with you. And I could not reconcile that with the complementarian hierarchy and authority structures I saw. Now back to the provision thing, because I forgot to mention this under matriarchal authority. Piper defines masculinity as a sense of benevolent benefactors, responsibility to lead, provide for, and protect women. Archaeologist, scholar, author, Professor Carol Myers has done a ton of work on women and social cultural stuff in the ancient Near East, particularly ancient Israel. And she talks about there were three main, for lack of a better term, gender roles in the ancient Near East. And again, I talk about this a lot in my YouTube video. But she says there's three main roles: there's to protect, procreate, and provide, alliterated, which is nice. Men stereotypically did the protection, stereotypically bigger and stronger, and they're expendable. So men typically did protection. Women obviously did the procreating because they're the only ones with wombs and breasts that can grow and feed babies. So women obviously did the procreating. But the provision was the responsibility of every single member of the household: old, young, male, female, child, adult, sojourner, member, everyone in the household, because it's their households were not just nuclear family, husband, wife, and two biological children. It was broader than that. Everybody in the household is responsible for provision, men and women. Women did about 40% of the providing for the family because the other percents were taken up with procreation. And the fact that women alongside procreation and women of all ages alongside procreative duties could provide 40% of the household's provision is pretty amazing. Men, because their protection responsibilities did not take them away from farming life as much as, you know, being pregnant and nursing does, they managed about 60% of the provision. And so, in Piper's definition that men have to provide for is a misnomer that doesn't apply to the ancient world. Even the Greco-Roman world, men were not the sole providers. Like we think the man goes to work and he brings home the bacon and the woman has the babies and cleans the house. And that's not the way it worked in the ancient world. Everybody worked out of the household, especially in ancient Israel. And by the time you get to the New Testament or times where you do have like day laborers and doing things, women were doing some of those things too. Um, you think of the disciples who are fishermen. The disciples are fishermen, they bring home the bacon while the women are doing what? Staying home and dusting their 10 by 10 house because the houses were tiny. Um, no, the women, the men might be in the boat catching the fish. The woman, women are they're processing the fish, they are mending the nets, they are doing half of the providing. So the idea that men provide and women, it's it doesn't even work. It doesn't match any of the ancient world. So as I looked at even the complementarian's definitions, I'm like, this doesn't match the world of the Bible. You are reading something else into your interpretation of scripture. This isn't what was the situation in the ancient world.

Adoption To Sonship As Real Status

Jessica LM Jenkins 52:04

So one of the last things that really sunk the nail in the coffin for me on complementarianism is our new social status as believers. Jesus is very clear throughout the gospels. Paul is very clear throughout his letters that the church is the new kingdom of God. The church is a new family of God. It does not operate by the same rules and structures as the world, as the Gentiles. Believers have a new status in Jesus. We are united. There's that unity again. We are united with Christ, and that brings us a new status. The first part of the status is that believers in Christ are adopted sons and heirs. Let me pause. Because today we adopt children because we just want a baby. I want a baby so bad, and I'm going to adopt kids, or because we want to bring a child out of foster care. There's lots of reasons we adopt today. In the ancient world, they didn't really adopt out of the goodness of their hearts, or just because they wanted a baby, they would adopt because they wanted an heir. They wanted a son, a legal person to carry on your family line and estate. And if you couldn't biologically have one, you could adopt one. Or in the case of some of the Roman emperors, they had they wanted this guy to succeed them, not that guy. So they would adopt the man that wanted to succeed them as a son. Adoption, legal adoption, was done of boys, not girls in the ancient world. Um, if you found a baby that was being exposed, you might bring it home, but it would be like a servant of some kind in your household, not a beloved child. So typically in the ancient world, Greco-Roman ancient world, um, boys are adopted and they're adopted as heirs, not just like, oh, I need five sons. No, they would adopt one heir. Um and so when God says um or Paul says by the Holy Spirit that we are adopted to sonship as sons, it is not necessarily a gendered um thing, though it didn't normally happen to women, but it's talking about a legal status being bestowed upon the adoptee. But what is beautiful is even though adoption, as far as I know, I could be wrong, did not usually happen for women, girls in the Greco-Roman world, in the kingdom of God, women are given sonship, legal standing as sons, heirs, which is a completely different legal standing than a daughter. A son has a complete, like today, my son and daughter have the same legal standing, no difference whatsoever. In the ancient world, a daughter does not have the same legal standing as a son. She just doesn't in the Greco-Roman world. In God's kingdom, everyone, male, female, gentile, Jew, old, young, slave free, everyone is adopted to sonship. Let me read the passages. Ephesians 1, 4, and 5. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adopt to adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. Galatians 4, 4 through 7. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out Abba Father. So you are no longer a slave, but God's child. Since you are his child, he has also made you an heir. Romans 8:15. The spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear. Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by him we cry, Abba Father. In the ancient world, imagine being a slave girl who is now told, You in the kingdom of God are adopted as the heir, as a son, as co-heirs with Jesus. Jesus is the firstborn, he is the primary heir, and we are all adopted as co-heirs alongside them. This was something my dad did talk about a lot growing up. He was a pastor, whenever this would come up, that it's significant for women that they are adopted as sons. But I felt like he didn't take it the next point because even when complimentarians do talk about this, they say it's a spiritual reality, not a physical reality. Women are spiritually adopted as sons, meaning we can access, we have full access to salvation, but it doesn't actually impact anything else in life. We are still hierarchically under males. So the women in the church with the legal standing as sons, that's not the same legal standing as a man in the church who has a legal standing as son. And I finally got to the point where I was just like, I can't. If I am adopted to sonship, that impacts everything. That says my primary identity before God is not biological female, it's legal son of the new kingdom, which is huge. Not that being a woman's not important, it's a legal standing. Again, we're thinking legal standing in the ancient world, which is huge. That is an erasement of all of the things that mean women don't have voice, don't have access, don't have power, don't have ability to right wrongs. That erases that and says, no longer do those things define your existence. Now you are adopted as a son. And for me, that helped move me away from complementarianism because I cannot any longer see my adoption to sonship as just a spiritual reality. It has to be part of how I view the entire body of Christ. That when I go to church, that man is adopted as a son, that woman is adopted a son. We all together are equally legal sons and heirs of God. Another thing, um, another thing that sounded very smooth. Another

Priesthood Of All Believers

Jessica LM Jenkins 58:32

thing, um, priests. Um, in the Old Testament, priests were the mediators of the Mosaic covenant between God and man. They were the ones who could perform sacrifices. But the theme of God's people as priests flows throughout all of Scripture. Um in my book, I have this paragraph that says, God created Adam and Eve to be his priestly representatives. Yeah, under the Mosaic law, neither would be allowed to participate in the priesthood of Aaron. Adam, because he was not a Levite, and Eve because she was a woman and not a Levite. Even Jesus is a priest by the order of Melchizedek, not Levi, Hebrews 7, 17. The New Testament goes even farther to teach that all Christ followers, whether male, female, Jewish, Gentile, disabled, disfigured, or able-bodied, as members of God's new covenant are now priests. 1 Peter 2, 5 and 9, Revelation 1, 6, 5, 10, and 26. So throughout Scripture, we see this theme of God's people as priests. Adam and Eve are priests in the garden. Melchizedek was a priest. You have the Levitical priesthood, which limited the priesthood to able-bodied men between, I believe, the ages of 25 and 50 who had married a virgin and who like, and by able-bodied, I mean that they couldn't be disfigured in any way. They had to have all of their male genitals intact, um, except for circumcision, obviously. Um so they couldn't have like a broken leg and have a limp from that the rest of their life. They couldn't have had a testicle crushed. They had to be complete. So it's very limiting. Disabled people could not be priests in the Levitical priesthood. Um, old men could not be priests, young, super young men could not be priests. If you didn't marry the right woman, you couldn't be a priest. It was very limited because it had a particular purpose that we're not talking about today. But all through scripture we have this theme: Jesus is not a priest according to the order of Levi. He's a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. And the New Testament says all believers are priests. First Peter 2, 4 through 5 says, As you come to him, Jesus, the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And so, as I've pondered the priesthood of all believers, as I've pondered women being heirs, co-heirs, adopted as legal sons, I refuse at this point in my life to see these as just spiritual facts that impact my justification, sanctification, and salvation, but not how I actually live out to life in the body of Christ. I believe that all believers are priests, all believers are legal sons, all believers are heirs of the new covenant and share in that with Jesus. And so therefore, I cannot exist in a system. I cannot follow, let me say it that way. I cannot hold and follow a system that says men have authority, women submit, men lead, women follow. Because I do not see in the new covenant that working.

Reframing The Big Three Passages

Jessica LM Jenkins 1:01:54

So how do we handle the big three? We interpret them according to their misogynistic Greco-Roman context, because back to hermeneutics, that's how we handle it. And we can do episodes on those passages at some point. Um, while you're waiting on me to do episodes on those passages, um, there are many, many great books and great authors who go through those in detail. Um, some of the ones on my shelf, there's Nijay Goop does tell her story. There's Paul and Gender. Um, lots of authors do work in that. And so I encourage you to read and think about those passages, but for me, they were not the ones that changed my mind. Um, I am not a complementarian because I reject hierarchy at every stage of theology. I believe women are equally adopted as sons, co-heirs, and priests with their brothers in Christ and should have a social status in the church as well as a spiritual status because of it. Women have always had spiritual leadership among God's people from the time of Moses and even Adam and Eve through the age of the church, even when the presence of such leadership has been denied, hidden, or ignored or misunderstood. And I am not a complimentarian because I believe that there isn't a quotes plain reading of scripture. We either bring our own biases to the table or we work to learn the point of view of the original author, which again, with the whole provision conversation, thinking that men have to provide is bringing our biases to the table rather than understanding the way the ancient world worked, where everybody was providers. I am not a complementarian because I see God's family as being expansive and inclusive and focused on unity, bringing Jews and Gentiles together, men and women together, things that were split apart in the culture. God is healing those rifts. He is bringing together abled and disabled, white, black, male, female, rich, poor. And he is doing that for his glory and his name. And he is not doing it so we can set up fiefdoms and hierarchical structures in our churches, in our homes, and in our families. I hope that encourages you. I hope that helps you. I am happy to answer any questions, though I am not available for petty arguments. Um, you can disagree that I may be overreading spiritual status into how we function in the church today, and that is fine. But I am going to walk through the rest of my earthly life as an adopted son with the full legal status in the ancient world given to an adopted son. Um because sometimes in the ancient Roman world, they would adopt a daughter as a legal son to give her kind of a gender switch, which is really weird when we get uncomfortable about LGBQT themes. Um, but they would adopt a daughter as a legal son, even in Mesopotamia. They would do this in order, they didn't usually do it, but every once in a while they would do it. Um, so there is historical precedent for saying, okay, this biological female, we're not denying that, has the social status denied to her biology. And I believe as God adopts women as sons, he's saying hierarchy is a result of sin, not a result of creation. And in the church, I am transforming from death to life, from hierarchy to unity, God's people are supposed to look different. I firmly believe we will never see the end of patriarchy until the new end, new earth. We can fight against it. I believe it's part of the curse. It is going to plague us until God makes all things new. But when God makes all things new, there will not be men lead, women follow, men have authority, women have submission, because authority and submission are not ontological birthrights of gender and sex. But God has gifted us an ability to work together as brothers and sisters in unity. So let

Listener Questions And Practical Decisions

Jessica LM Jenkins 1:06:06

me answer some of the questions that came into my question box on Instagram. If you ever want to be involved in asking these questions that I ask on podcasts, um, either pay attention to my stories on Instagram. That's where I put them. Um, for some of you, if you're on, follow me on Instagram, my story. Stories may have gotten pushed way down in your bubbles. Go find me, interact with some of my questions. Every day I post, I have a poll or something. Click on it. You click on that poll, I'll show up. You ignore the poll, I'm gonna get like bubbled down five bubbles, and you won't be able to find me again. Um, or I also ask these questions in my email. Reply to the email. I love to hear from you. So please do that. So the first question, and I'm just reading these off in the order they kind of um were on my screen. Um, first question is according to complimentarians, what gifts are available to women from the Holy Spirit? This is a great question. This will depend on whether the complimentarian is a continuous or a cessation cessationalist of spiritual gifts, whether they believe some continue to this day or some no longer exist. Um but I would say complimentarians, whatever group of spiritual gifts they believe are still valid today, they would say all of those are available to women. Women just can't use some of them in the presence of men. So a woman could be gifted as a teacher by the Holy Spirit, but she's not allowed to teach men. She just has to teach women and children. Um so it doesn't deny her gifting, it just denies her location of gifting. Some churches inadvertently deny her gifting because they don't give women opportunities to teach anywhere. Um, I've been a part of churches where the only people who get to use certain spiritual gifts are staff and um pastors. Um, if you're not a staff or pastor of that church, there's a whole list of spiritual gifts that you can't really use because they only allow professionals to use those gifts. So that's a problem. Big, huge, ginormous problem. Not okay with that. Um, but complimentarians would say all gifts are available to all believers, but there are limits on how and where you would use those gifts. So, next question: how long of a process did it take to go from comp to egalitarian? Months, years. I would say years. It was a long process. Um a long process and a lot of life and a lot of thinking and pondering. Um, actually, it was less deep, deep study. I thought I was gonna have to like dive in and wrestle through like every single word study. And really, once the things I talked about in this episode clicked in my mind structurally, um, everything else just made sense. And it's like, oh yeah, that works. And I see that. And um, so it was that structural refiguring of the foundation, not arguing through specific passages that changed my mind. But it was a years-long process. How do my husband and I teach our egalitarian beliefs to our children? We're still working through some of this. A lot of it is just modeling unity in our marriage. Um, when they were little, we did teach them like daddy was the ultimate boss because we were complementarians then. Um and that comes up every now and then, and it's just like, oh, actually, we were wrong. Um, now we believe this. And, you know, just correcting it as we go. Um, next question Did shifting to egalitarian from complementarian involved a change in church? It has not so far. Um, partly because in our area there's not a lot. We're in Texas. Um, and it's the specific little location God has us in Texas. Um I know an hour either direction, there's some really solid egalitarian churches. The ones close enough that I can take my um children to um are either all complementarian or they, and that may be soft complementary and it may be hard complementary. You know, there's a spectrum, but they they fall in the complementarian. They're either complementarian or there's just something about the church that doesn't work with my family's um theological beliefs or neurodiversity or, you know, we have a chronic pain, illness, all the things. Um I, in many ways, would love to be in an egalitarian church, especially for my daughter. I think that would be really important. And it's just waiting for the right church at the right time. But we haven't changed yet. I have always existed in complementarian spaces. And though, if I'm honest, my soul is weary from it. Um, God will have to work and move when we when we can, when we go somewhere else. Um, I do believe there are things that are inherently harmful about complementarianism, um, but I believe that being part of a body of Christ is really important. And I I mean, there's lots of theological beliefs I believe are inherently harmful. And so just picking which to do when um and which to focus on when. Um, church is messy. It's a hard conversation to figure out where to go. And there's so many pieces, especially like if my family, we have a lot of neurodivergence in my family, and I'm not gonna say what belongs to what person. Some people have multiple, some people will have one, but we have CPPSD, we have depression, we have massive anxiety, we have autism, ADHD, um, PDA, chronic illness, chronic pain, sometimes um uh an immune suppressed immune system. So for us to attend church, there is so much more to consider than just complementarian egalitarian. Um, and sometimes, even though I would really love to be in an egalitarian church, I have to choose what is best for my autistic um family member above what I would prefer, because the style of this complementarian church might be safer for them to encounter Jesus than the style of an egalitarian church. So there's a lot to work through there, but it has not involved a change in church yet. Um, the next question is how do you find non-comp resources? I

Finding Non-Complementarian Resources

Jessica LM Jenkins 1:11:57

would say start by following um egalitarians. Um, many of them write books or they will have conversations with other people. Um avoid publishers like Canon Press or Crossway. Um they're just gonna, or Lifeway, they're gonna put out complementarian materials. They just are. And that goes into the next question, which was by the same person. What's the ratio of comp versus non-comp resources in Christian publishing? I have no idea on the ratio. I'm sure you could Google that maybe. I don't know. Um, but I do know there are some publishers that are steadfastly complementarian. So anything from that publisher is going to be complementarian. And if you're in circles that prefer those top two or three publishers, everything is going to seem complementarian because Lifeway, the Southern Baptist Press, is all compliment. It's just going to be compliment. They're complementarian. So they put that out. Crossway, which is kind of like Piper's group press, um, Reformed, whatever they're technically are Reformed Baptists, I'm not sure. That Crossway is just going to be complementarian. So if you look at on the binding of every book, there's the publisher. And if you see Lifeway or you see Crossway, it is 100% going to be complementarian every time. Publishers like IVP, which is what I'm publishing my book through, IVP, Baker, um, they might have a mix. Uh, Zonderbin might have a mix. I think they may lean a little bit more central or egalitarian, um, but they're they're probably gonna have a mix at those. They're they're broad, broad. They have a lot of authors um and they don't try to pigeonhole as much. Something like Brazos Press is going to be egalitarian. No complementarian at Brazos. So a lot of it, I can't say the ratio, like, because I don't know whether, you know, life way is bigger than Brazos, or, you know, I don't know those stats, but a lot of it will depend on the publisher. Um and so you can look and see who's publishing this. Andor you could, if you're like, I want to find resources that are not complementarian, okay, then go look at what IVP is offering, go look at what Baker is offering, go look at what Brazos is offering. Those will be non-complimentarian books uh for podcasts. Um, people like find people you respect, their voice, you think they handle the Bible well, follow their podcast, see who they recommend, see who is featuring them. Now, I would go on a complimentarian podcast if they would have me. So just because I go on a podcast doesn't mean I align with them. I will give um what I believe to be true to almost, with a few limits, almost anybody who will listen. So they may be much more progressive than me, they may be much more conservative than me. I will go speak what I believe to be truth to that audience. It doesn't mean I'm aligning myself with them. Um, there are a few things I'm like, absolutely not, but you get the point. Um, and so just just listen, start following non-complimentarian voices and check out like um Baker, IBP, Zonderman, what have the most breadth of voices and listen to a breadth of voices. That is really important. Well,

Closing Encouragement And Next Steps

Jessica LM Jenkins 1:15:04

thank you so much for our time together today. I hope this episode is helpful for you. I'm also planning on summarizing what I have said here in a Substack article as well. So you can be looking for that Substack. I'll be doing a series on why I'm not a complimentarian on social media as well.