Sexism, complementarianism and the Church: the Atlanta murders, Part 1
Murders by white men tend to get limited airtime. Murders of women and people of colour more so. I’ll be dwelling on this for a few issues.
Sex addiction, anti-Asian racism, misogyny or just ‘a bad day’. There are apparently many ways to read the murder of eight people in and around massage parlours near Atlanta this week. None of them make it better for the families of those killed.
The murders were by a white, Christian shooter claiming to be ‘eliminating temptation’ in the form of women in an area called a ‘red light district’ by locals.
The shooting has been labelled an anti-Asian hate crime by many, and you can understand why. Covid-related blame and resentment towards Asian people (fuelled by idiot jokes and cynical commentary around the origins of the Coronavirus pandemic) has surged over the last year in America (and The UK) and many in the Asian community express a sense of constant fear because of racist attacks. They point to the fact that six of the eight people killed by the Atlanta shooter were Asian women as evidence that race was a key motivator. You can see why they may feel that.
The shooter, on the other hand, a white man in his early twenties, has denied a racist motivation. Of course he would, you might say. But his explanation is not better.
He says he was ‘eliminating temptation’ by going on a shooting spree in what locals call their ‘red light district’. He’s a Christian. He calls himself a sex addict. His actions may well have been racist, and they may just as easily be understood as misogynist, his choice of victims more an accident of demographics in the massage parlour district he targeted.
But there is no cap on bigotries among those who would kill for their own ends. He could easily be a racist and a misogynist. And arguing over the interpretation isn’t the point.
The killings were probably contributed to by several factors. Our attitude to sex work, our theology of gender, the continued influence of misogyny in our society, racism emboldened by political agendas, the phenomenon of violent Christian nationalism and sexual puritanism all, I think, contributed to this horrific crime.
Over the next few issues of Beer Christianity (the newsletter), I’ll be addressing these factors, as well as examining the phenomenon of sex addiction and the question of whether it is ever okay to ‘humanise’ a murderer.
A key issue, however, is misogyny.
Church attitudes to women
Talking about the murders, author and abuse survivor Rachel Denhollander (who famously played a key role in exposing abuse by the US gymnastics team doctor) tweeted:
In the thread she identifies blaming women for their abuse (even indirectly), the impact of taught gender roles and talking about women as ‘temptations’ as part of the problem. She is right.
When we try to understand what would lead someone, described as “super nice, super Christian, very quiet” by a school friend, to kill several human beings with a gun, we have to understand what would make that possible for him. Teaching, directly or indirectly, that women are lower than men, less valuable, less worthy of empathy, makes it easier to kill them. All violent groups and philosophies, from the army to fascist movements, terror cells and cults, start by denying the humanity of the people they will encourage you to destroy. This does not have to be ‘said out loud’, either. It doesn’t even have to be conscious or intentional to have an effect. In fact, subtlety may be more effective. Most of us would find a direct denial of the humanity of another group (women, Asians or sex-workers for instance) hard to swallow. But a slow build up of rhetoric can turn ordinary, seemingly decent people into fully complicit participators in a genocide. We’ve seen that from Germany to Rwanda. The starting point is always the same: they are not as good as us. The final results may vary but the worst outcome is always possible when you convince people of that idea. Because once they are not as good as us, we are allowed to empathise less. And at that point, the worst is always possible.
Once you deny the full humanity of a person, even passively, you make it easier to harm them.
Patriarchal culture and church teachings do this far too often. We may not be taught that women are inferior in so many words, but that message is easy to glean when they are seen as second choice for the ‘important’ roles of preaching, teaching and decision-making. When women are encouraged to submit to men who may not be their intellectual and moral equals, on no other basis than because they are men.
These are the less vicious (than the more obviously appalling ones where abuse is ignored or justified) but more insidious contexts where a message of female inferiority is taught. And when that message is accepted, men will feel more free to hurt, denigrate, disrespect and, yes, kill women.
The fact that not every man who believes himself superior to women ends up killing someone is no comfort. There are too many cases (an epidemic of them, if you look at the statistics) in which men, motivated by a variety of reasons, feel freer to kill their wives, daughters or strangers than they would the male equivalents. The belief itself is wrong. Its consequences far too often tragic.
The Church cannot pretend that theology and culture around a ‘complementarian’ worldview (where men and women have separate, complementary roles) is not in some way responsible for this. As Rachel Denhollander says, and as we can all work out from the rhetoric that always precedes genocide, what is taught in churches is often part of the problem.
Complementarians and their responsibility
This does not mean that all complementarian theology and culture is evil. We progressives are not supposed to say this, but it is worth saying. There are women and men of good faith who hold to complementarian theology because, in their interpretation of Scripture, separate gender roles make the most sense to them. I cannot say I agree with their thinking, but their position is at least legitimate, even if I don’t agree. There are countless complementarians who work out gender roles in ways that are at least as equitable and consensual as households who divide labour on a different basis. I have known many complementarian men who showed more respect to women than Christians with a different philosophy and I have known many intelligent, strong and capable women who found complementarianism’s interpretation of Scripture convincing and found the theology and lifestyle perfectly reasonable.
I am not one of them anymore. But I think we tread on dangerous and unhealthy ground when we write an entire way of thinking off without engaging with it in a deep, open and respectful way first.
THAT SAID…
Within the complementarian camp, it is far to easy to hide behind the reasonable and loving theory of mutual submission and heavier responsibility (and sacrifice) on men, while practically perpetuating entitled, lazy, arrogant and abusive male behaviour. Which is why complementarians have to be more vigilant than anyone that their teachers, leaders and adherents are not simply denigrating and disrespecting women.
It is too easy within this culture for women to be undervalued and exploited. So, if it is to have our respect, then complementarianism should be the most vigilant enthusiastic in denouncing and dealing with abuse. Theirs should be the loudest voice in making clear that their division of roles is not about seeing women as lower, as having value only in procreation or sexual attraction or unreciprocated service. And if complementarianism can’t do that it does not deserve our respect, whether or not we choose to tolerate it.
Teachers and leaders in this tradition cannot just pay lip service or do as much as non-complementarians do to combat violence against women. All traditions must speak out (and speak out much more than they have so far) about violence against women. All traditions must examine whether their teachings are unintentionally providing safe harbour for abusers and extending the torment of victims and survivors. But complementarians have an added responsibility. They need to recognise that misogynist will hide in their community and try to justify their behaviour and beliefs with a patina of Christian rhetoric. That cannot be allowed if complementarianism is to retain any semblance of respect from the rest of Christianity.
For myself, I think it is too easy within complementarianism to put one gender over another. I think all forms of identity politics and identity-centred ideology will have this danger inherent. I think it likely that a philosophical framework that separates people on the basis of how they were born and ascribes rights (like leadership or the right to speak) on that basis will probably end up justifying and even systematising oppression.
The result will too often be that frustrated, disturbed or even over-zealous young men will get the impression that killing a few ‘bad’ women, while extreme, is probably justified.
It is too little, too late, to denounce them once they reach that point. The journey they took to get there involved many points where they could have turned back, but instead they were encouraged by a both church and the rest of our patriarchal culture in believing they’re just women.
Feminism is necessary and needs all of our support
The work that needs to be done is not just by the Church. The oppression and/or marginalisation of women is endemic and ubiquitous. But it doesn’t have to be. We can play a part in changing things. But Christians have a duty always to recognise the plank in our own eye, even as we are called to build the transformative influence of the Kingdom in broader society. With that humility we can work alongside people with whom we do not always have to agree on everything, in pursuit of a higher goal. We can disagree on some aspects of rhetoric or theory, even on the details of what a better future looks like. But if we value all human beings as images of God, and if we have eyes to see the disproportionate weight of fear and pain carried by women, we must all recognise that the movement of feminism is necessary and deserves our support.
The Atlanta killings are not aberrations. They are expressions of the deeper problem that must be addressed.
We can’t order our world purely around how disturbed or evil people might interpret it, but neither can we pretend a dubious philosophy has no influence or responsibility. Particularly when it interacts with other factors, like purity culture and a disdain for sex workers (more on that in a later issue).
I don’t want to throw proof texts at people who have built an ecclesiology and a theology of relationships around more, I’m sure, than one or two isolated verses. But I do think that when Paul says that there is now, in Christ, no Jew nor gentile, male nor female, it must mean that God wants us to recognise his image in women as well as men. If we do, we cannot be content to watch half of the world’s population routinely reduced to indignity, suffering or fear. Justice, compassion and empathy demand that we seek change.
In the next issue: how racism contributed to the Atlanta killings and how even ‘good’ politicians were a part of it.
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