Prominent evangelical leader Beth Moore, who announced in March 2021 that she was leaving the Southern Baptist Convention over its treatment of women, among other issues, recently apologized for supporting the primacy of the theology of “complementarianism.”
This belief asserts that while women and men are of equal value, God has assigned them specific gender roles. Specifically, it promotes men’s headship or authority over women, while encouraging women’s submission.
As a scholar of gender and evangelical Christianity who grew up Southern Baptist, I watched how complementarianism became central to evangelical belief, starting in the late 1970s, in response to the feminist influence within Christianity.