Is Male Headship the Problem?
Discussions about domestic abuse within Christian circles can lead to difficult question: does complementarian teaching about marriage contribute to abuse? Some believe that assigning husbands leadership in the home inevitably creates unhealthy power imbalances. Others argue that the problem is not biblical headship itself but the sinful distortion of it.
This distinction matters because many churches hold a complementarian understanding of marriage while also wanting to protect women and reflect Christ faithfully.
Christians hold differing views on the Bible's teaching about authority within marriage.This article is written from a complementarian perspective - that husbands are called to loving, sacrificial leadership while wives are called to willing partnership and respect - but argues that biblical headship bears little resemblance to coercion or domination.
So how exactly does Christ-like leadership lend itself to domestic abuse? I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? Christ-like leadership will never lead to abuse. However, it would appear that there are sufficient Christian men and even sufficient church communities who have distorted God’s design for male headship into an arrangement of dominance and subservience that in no way reflects Christ’s love for his church for the claim to be made that complementarianism leads to increased rates of domestic abuse.
The problem is not God's design for marriage but the distortion of it. Abuse takes root when we forget that women and men are equally made in the image of God and equally precious to him.
Headship is distorted when a husband sees himself as the ultimate authority in the home rather than as one who is himself under Christ's authority. It is not Christ-like leadership to insist on making every decision, dismiss a wife's wisdom, demand submission, or attempt to discipline or control her. When that happens a husband has, perhaps without realising it, placed himself on the throne that belongs to God alone.
Submission can also be misunderstood. It does not require a wife to obey her husband regardless of circumstances, suppress her own convictions, or remain silent in the face of sin or abuse.
Because complementarian churches teach male leadership and female submission, misunderstandings of those doctrines may be more readily accepted unless churches intentionally teach their biblical limits. If Christian marriages are destructive under the guise of biblical headship and submission, we bring great dishonour to God’s name!
If therefore, our view of a godly marriage leads to a higher potential for abuse to occur, we must be extra vigilant to not let it be so. To quote Jason Meyer(1):
“We ask women in complementarian marriages to take the most vulnerable position in the relationship, which can quickly become a dangerous position when our views get distorted. The flourishing of the wife requires the husband to love her in a servant-hearted way. Therefore, we must be vigilant to call for husbands to love their actual wives, not just the idea of a wife. Husband, do you see your wife as someone to serve you or as someone to serve? Because we teach that husbands have God-given authority as leaders, we must maintain an extra vigilance against its distortion and abuse”.
The Challenge for Church Leaders
I want to highlight something here in relation to domestic violence and gender roles within many churches. We have male pastors and male officebearers.
Just as the quote above by Meyer notes that women take the more vulnerable role in our marriages, so too, they take the more vulnerable role in these churches. When a woman is suffering abuse in the home and seeks help, what are her options?
Some women in the church have been taught never to say anything negative about their marriage to anyone other than their husband. In order to get help, a woman first has to overcome that mental hurdle. For the sin in her home to be addressed, she will need to speak to her elders.
It’s entirely likely that her elders are the same men that her husband chats with after church on a regular basis, or who attend Bible study meetings with her husband, or with whom her husband gathers in companionable circles at birthday parties.
Meanwhile she herself may have had very little, if any, opportunity to connect with these men over the years in any way that feels comfortable to her. It’s possible that her elders will insist that they can only meet with her if her husband is present. If she does manage a private audience and she shares even a little bit of what is going on in her home with them (she may quite likely only share a little bit initially, to test whether it is safe to share more), how will the elders think about that information?
Without intending to, the elders will find it easier to imagine themselves in the husband’s position rather than the wife’s. As the elders proceed to engage with the husband and wife, the husband is likely to come across as more confident and secure and believable.
I put these thoughts here not to be critical of officebearers, but rather to try to show how hard it can be for a woman to share the problem she is experiencing in her home. More than that, the thoughts in this article form the basis of my plea to Christian men to go out of their way to show Christ-like leadership to the women in their care, so that they can thrive. It would be good to engage in healthy, community-wide discussion on what Christ-like headship (and submission) really is and looks like.
“We believe God has specially tasked men with protecting wives and flocks. Therefore, we should be first in line both in training men not to abuse their authority as well as in disciplining, even excommunicating, those who do.”(2)
Churches committed to biblical headship should also be committed to biblical accountability. If husbands are called to Christ-like leadership, churches must actively teach what that leadership looks like, challenge distortions of it, and protect those who are harmed when it is abused.
Godly male headship is not demonstrated by preserving male authority at all costs. It is demonstrated by reflecting the character of Christ - who used his authority not to dominate but to serve, protect and lay down his life for others.
How does your identity as redeemed child of God equips you to show Christ-like leadership (if you are a man) or godly submission (if you are a woman)?
Meyer, Jason, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/a-complementarian-manifesto-against-domestic-abuse/
Leeman, Jonathan, Does Complementarianism Lead to Abuse?: A Response to Mimi Haddad, “Helping the Church Understand Biblical Equality” and Kylie Maddox Pidgeon, “Complementarianism and Domestic Abuse”, 2023