Separate but Equal: The Great Lie behind Jim Crow and Progressive Complementarianism

Women’s roles and responsibilities have been debated for centuries. Today, this debate has two distinct sides within evangelicalism: egalitarianism and complementarianism. Though, in theory, such debates should be about both women and men, they tend to focus explicitly on limiting women. The question is often framed, “though men and women are equal, are their roles limited, separate, and thus complementary?” The truth, however, is that only women’s status is being questioned, for men’s roles—even if separate—are not limited. It is significant and telling that men are the defining subject and women’s positions are presented as contingent upon relationships with men.

Certain evangelical scholars and church leaders try to walk the tightrope between these two sets of ideas yet remain predominantly in the complementarian mindset. We have dubbed such views “progressive complementarianism” in this article. The progressive complementarian stance seems innocuous but is, in fact, an antithesis of either egalitarian or complementarian scriptural interpretation. In progressive complementarian churches, women may be given a title such as “director” while their male counterparts are “pastors.” They may also be expected to perform a job similar to their male counterparts but with no title at all. While these examples may, at first, seem like steps in the right direction, they unveil flawed logic that Christians on either side of the egalitarian/complementarian divide cannot defend biblically.

A Jim Crow Analysis

There are connections between such regulations of women and the Jim Crow idea of separate-but-equal. The separate-but-equal policy in the United States created rules to control the Black community, much like progressive complementarianism focuses on controlling women within the church. Both seek a middle way while still limiting those, and only those, whom they claim to free. NT scholar Love Sechrest speaks of “regimes of control” as part of her explanation of mass imprisonment as a tool of “the New Jim Crow.” She extends this to the “metaphorical prisons” experienced primarily by women and girls of color.¹ We believe this terminology also describes the treatment of women who are confined in “metaphorical prisons” by “regimes” of progressive complementarianism.

Jim Crow was an 1828 minstrel character created by Thomas D. Rice, a White actor who performed with hands and face painted black (and often with red protruding lips), depicting stereotypes of Black culture. This character became a demeaning African American stereotype. The term “Jim Crow” became synonymous with federal and state-sanctioned segregation laws in the United States, especially the southern states, much like the term “apartheid” with state-sanctioned segregation in South Africa. A key feature of Jim Crow policies was restricting use of public facilities and services by African Americans. These laws created separate facilities for Whites and Blacks, institutionalizing limitations on African American economic, educational, political, and social outcomes.²

Thus, Jim Crowism provided the foundation for the concept of separate-but-equal with its institution of racially separate public facilities. Restrictions on residential zoning, educational access, and religious institutions further marginalized the African American community by ensuring limited financial gains and limited educational access and achievements. This era ranged from 1877 to the mid-1960s until it was dismantled by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.³

This article explores parallels between certain biblical texts, concentrating on the OT, that were used to subjugate the Black community and how certain verses are similarly used to subordinate women within the church. Ultimately, this type of separation always restricts one group (e.g., Blacks, women) while the other group has no such restrictions (e.g., Whites, men). No matter the intentions or justifications of this type of separation, the group already viewed as socially superior will continue to enjoy an elevated status. Therefore, in progressive complementarian church environments, women will always be seen as inferior to men. Such values that “allow” women certain leadership positions (such as deacon or committee chair) and public ministries (such as worship leader or children’s pastor) may appear infinitely preferable to positions that fully restrict women. In fact, however, they create situations where women are always separate but never equal.

Does the Bible Consider Women Separate but Equal?

Many of the issues that arise in the progressive complementarian mindset come from a misinterpretation of 1 Tim 2:12: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (NRSVue).⁴ A telling observation is that progressive complementarians seem to hold to the first part (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man”) but not the second (“she is to keep silent”). While they do not enforce women’s silence in churches, by allowing only limited speech they effectively bar women from having “authority over a man.” Furthermore, there are several contextual factors at play regarding this verse. An example is Paul’s instruction that men “pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument” (2:8 NRSVue), but progressive complementarians largely do not regulate men’s prayers. One of many examples of the difficulties involved in translating this verse is the translation of anēr and gunē, terms for “man” and “woman” that can also be translated “husband” and “wife” depending on context. Consider, for example, the Common English Bible’s wording of 1 Tim 2:12: “I don’t allow a wife to teach or to control her husband. Instead, she should be a quiet listener.” In short, any policy that excludes half the church from leadership based on one verse, even one passage, is an extreme restriction.⁵ Other NT texts, especially those that affirm women as leaders—such as Junia, Lydia, Phoebe, Priscilla—highlight the extreme nature of such policies.

Examples from the OT will show that the idea of women being regulated to certain work within the church is not in harmony with biblical standards. The best place to start is the beginning, with creation, since that story has also raised concerns about the status of Eve.

The first aspect of the creation account to address is the idea of Eve being Adam’s “helper” (Gen 2:18–20). The Hebrew word is ezer (“helper”) and is used more often in reference to God than to anyone else (Gen 49:25; Exod 18:4; Deut 33:7; Pss 20:3; 21:1–2; 115:9–11; 146:5, etc.).⁶ Translations of ezer that grasp the meaning of 2:18–20 include “partner” (CEV, NRSVue, etc.) and “companion” (The Message, NET, etc.). While Gen 1 does present men and women as equal (1:26–27), Gen 2 does not present women as separate-but-equal.

Indeed, God creates both men and women equally in the image of God, and God gives them both dominion.⁷ Though distinct as man and woman, separate spheres of work or authority do not describe their relationship. Therefore, there is nothing intrinsic to the design of creation that subordinates women. Only after sin enters the story do we read that the husband will rule over the wife (Gen 3:16). It is sin that created inequality between the sexes, for originally God did not intend for one group to dominate another. Before sinning, Adam and Eve were entirely equal without distinction in rank. Humanity has cultivated male rule.⁸

There are also numerous OT examples of women leading and teaching men. Hagar names God (Gen 6:13), and the biblical author uses her words to teach men and women, ancient and modern, about God. Zelophehad’s daughters bring a matter to Moses who then consults God about it (Num 27:1–11). God confirms that the daughters are correct and should be granted their request. God rewards these daughters for speaking up and questioning norms, and the biblical author considers their words instructive. Though such women lived in patriarchal cultures that regulated their separate spheres, God and Scripture highlight their equality.

Deborah goes with Barak into battle, and she has authority over him. Therefore, she has the lead role in the deliverance of Israel.⁹  This means that Deborah is a woman occupying a commanding space on and off the battlefield. As a judge and prophetess, Scripture showcases her leadership in social, political, and spiritual domains. As the story progresses, Jael does what the entire army of Israel cannot do when she invites Sisera, an enemy of Israel, into her home and then kills him with a tent peg. For this, she is highly praised in Scripture, even referred to as “most blessed of women” (Judg 5:24). These are only a few examples of the OT women who unashamedly taught and led men, who operated outside the established norms, and who questioned the patriarchal status quo. They were not chastised for their words and actions but are instead championed by the biblical authors and thus by God.

Does the Bible Separate Blacks?

The concept of separate-but-equal is ideologically rooted in White supremacy and historically linked to the transatlantic slave trade, in which slaveholders justified owning slaves by classifying them as subhuman. Riggins R. Earl Jr. notes that Whites “were of the persuasion that physical blackness was a definite sign that slaves were created inferior by God.”¹⁰ Whites considered themselves superior to their African slaves, so much so that they believed they had no soul, which was used to justify their inhuman treatment. However, as slaves began to accept Christianity, slaveholders continued to argue their superiority over their slaves with a divine sanction that allowed them to “save” the souls of their slaves. At the same time, their economic, political, and social salvation remained unchanged. Full equality was perceived as reserved for the eschaton, as seen in the statement made by the Society of the Advancement of Christianity in South Carolina: “No man or set of men in our day, unless they can produce a new revelation from Heaven, are entitled to pronounce slavery as wrong. Slavery as it exists at the present day is agreeable to the order of Divine providence.”¹¹

The ideology of White supremacy created a flawed hermeneutic justifying the subjugation of African slaves that continued to influence segregation policies after slaves were officially emancipated in 1863. Their status as such was realized in 1865,¹²  resulting in segregationists adopting the same self-serving biblical hermeneutic that had been used to justify slavery, a new caste system to replace the old.¹³ This flawed hermeneutic centered on their belief that segregation had a divine origin, as had the subjugation of slaves; both were part of the design of creation. Therefore, segregation “benefited” Whites and Blacks because it was a part of the natural order, and it was justified by using the Bible inaccurately—claiming, for example, that bloodlines needed to be kept “pure” for each race.¹⁴ Their main scriptural foundations centered on the curse of Ham in Gen 9 and the Tower of Babel in Gen 11.

The “Curse of Ham”

Segregationists misinterpreted Gen 9, and it became a leitmotif of their ideology by assigning ethnicity to the three sons of Noah.¹⁵ They promoted a belief that Shem and Japheth were European whereas Ham was African.¹⁶ The biblical text describes the population of the world that developed through Noah’s sons after the flood. However, the Bible gives no classification of ethnicity or race for Noah’s sons. These three brothers, of course, were ethnically homogeneous. It is no surprise, therefore, that Genesis does not present them as progenitors of the three races. Furthermore, the geographical region into which Noah and his sons were born is Mesopotamia, which today overlaps the countries of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Noah and his descendants were people of color, but there is no indication of any of them being European or African in their ethnicity.

In Gen 9:20–27, because of Ham’s disrespect for his father, Noah’s son Canaan and Canaan’s descendants were enslaved. Ham had four sons, but Canaan was the only son cursed. Therefore, if one ascribes to the segregation interpretation of the curse of Ham, in which all the descendants of Ham are African, then how does one differentiate which quarter of these descendants were of the lineage of Canaan?¹⁷ In addition, Gen 10 depicts the regional cultural ethnicities of the sons of Noah, none of which are European or African. Some claim that Cush, Ham’s oldest son, was African, which, if accepted for the sake of argument, does not even remotely support the curse of Ham being linked with the enslavement of Africans. Sadly, the idea of the curse of Ham has been so prominent that it has influenced how some Christians understand contemporary African identity, even into the twenty-first century.

The Tower of Babel

Segregationists also argued that the Tower of Babel in Gen 11 shows God’s disdain for integration, indicating that “the development of different languages was not merely natural or accidental, but served as a Divine purpose, in becoming one of the most effective means of preserving separate existence of the general racial groups.”¹⁸ However, the biblical text describes confusion of languages, not separation by race. The text indicates a separation by geographical proximity, which was permeable rather than unchangeable. The text certainly does not support the separation, certainly not the enslavement, of Blacks or any people group.

In the Bible, there is “no mention anywhere of racial segregation,” a truth that James Buswell argues the segregationist apologists were aware of.¹⁹ However, this knowledge did not deter them in the pursuit in maintaining pure bloodlines of races, insistent “that each of these three groups [descendants of Shem, Ham, Japheth] was to keep to its own tongue and family and nation.” Because of this view, they asked, “do we not face the fact that God drew the lines of segregation (or separation) according to His purpose?”²⁰ If what Buswell asserts is true, that segregationists understood they had no biblical foundation, it exposes the insidious need to maintain White superiority at all costs, even to manipulate Scripture to support their agenda. Acts 17:26 states that God “allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live” (NRSVue). Segregationists asserted that this verse promoted their agendas of geographical separation and opposition to mixed marriages, as seen in their misinterpretation of Scripture below:

Since Christ and the apostles taught the love of God for all [humankind], the oneness of believers in Christ, and demonstrated that the principles of Christian [personhood] and charity could be made operative in all relations of life, without demanding revolutionary changes in the natural or social order, there would appear to be no reason for concluding that segregation is in conflict with the spirit and teachings of Christ and the apostles and therefore un-Christian.²¹

Segregationists perceived any change to the status quo, or as they refer to it, the natural order, as a revolutionary change. The status quo served them as the dominant culture and race, and therefore, anything to disrupt this (e.g., desegregation) was seen as revolutionary and not needed.

Despite building their separatist agenda on sand, they were able to establish a mindset of racial superiority after slavery. The church embraced this worldview and promoted the separation of the races even in worship, as seen with the creation of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen in 1794. Allen established this denomination after a physical altercation with White parishioners during altar prayer when Black parishioners had knelt in prayer beside them but were physically manhandled and made to get up and move to the balcony.²² Subsequently, Blacks of various denominations had to establish their own churches due to segregation.

Fortunately, segregation was dismantled, and desegregation arrived in 1954 with the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision by which segregation was deemed unconstitutional. The downfall of segregation was based, not on its lack of a biblical mandate, but on its inherent social inequality. With their underlying belief of superiority, most Whites did not embrace equality with or for Blacks, whether in their personhood or their institutions. Therefore, Black economic, political, and social power continued to be inferior to that of their White counterparts, creating a hypocritical dual citizenship of sorts with those who had and those who did not.

Michelle Alexander suggests that this is still ongoing today via the prison system. She believes that mass incarceration of Black Americans demonstrates a new Jim Crowism. She claims that they “repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.”²³ As mentioned in the introduction, we believe this institutional control is analogous to the “metaphorical prisons” of progressive complementarianism.

Progressive Complementarian Churches

Though not a one-to-one equivalent, especially in terms of the violence against Blacks perpetrated and tolerated during the Jim Crow era, the same idea found in the rebirth of Jim Crow holds true for progressive complementarianism. Such congregations and ministry organizations, to varying degrees, still refuse to give women the same titles, positions, pay, and authority as men but expect these women to do the same jobs. There is still a hierarchy, a caste system, that separates and limits certain members of the group.

Examples of this are found throughout the nation and the globe. Thousands of congregations identify men as pastors or ministers but women as directors or coordinators. One example with which we, the authors, are personally familiar, is a congregation with two primary male pastors, additional male staff pastors, and one female director for the women’s ministry. The complementarian theology highlighted within their leadership stance showcases their separatist mentality. Throughout the world, further examples of progressive complementarian theology are found. The Tri-City Church of British Columbia, Trinity International Church in Paris, and The Crowded House located in the United Kingdom are examples that underscore the global pervasiveness of this distorted theology. The latter’s website articulates both equality (“All men and women . . . have inherent and equal dignity and worth”) and separateness (“Healthy oversight . . . must be done by suitably gifted and qualified men”).²⁴

Names of these types of churches could fill multiple pages. Their leaders, who openly state that they restrict women, may believe they are more open-minded than their more conservative counterparts, but in actuality they merely utilize a different form of control. While women in such churches may experience a bit more freedom and enjoy the illusion of some types of authoritative positions, the unfortunate truth is that the men in charge still govern all the decisions. Often the claim is that women can have many roles in the church with the one restriction that they cannot be called pastors. Not only is this unsupported biblically, but these female “directors” often do the same job as the pastors, with the differences being authority, power, opportunities, and pay. The implication then becomes, at best, that one can loophole God’s mandates with simple nomenclature and, at worst, that women should be regulated to a lesser status for the same labor. This then prompts the question, can true equality exist within any form of forced separation, whether it is a separation of race or gender?

The Ideal

The ideal is a world with no caste system that keeps some repressed while elevating others. This is a world without Jim Crow in any form, and a world where women pursue the calling God has for them without restrictions. Therefore, there is no reason for progressive complementarians to limit how God uses women in ministry. They may claim equality, but much like the Jim Crow laws, such equality is a lie and the “insistence that ‘equal worth’ manifests in unequal roles”²⁵ lacks biblical precedent and is insulting to women.

One’s ministry should be dictated by God’s calling, not by gender. As NT scholar Ben Witherington notes, “ethnic, social, and sexual distinctions continue to exist in Christ, but they do not determine one’s soteriological, spiritual, or social standing in the body of Christ, nor do they determine the ministerial roles one can play in Christ. That is a matter of who is called and who is gifted by the Spirit to do certain tasks in the Church.”²⁶ Another Bible scholar, Craig Keener, has addressed the importance of calling when discerning his own beliefs about women in ministry, “I would have to be pretty sure of my position before I used it to judge another person’s call, because if I made her stumble, it was none other than God to whom I would have to answer.”²⁷ The ideal is that, just as in the Garden in Genesis, men and women experience true equality and men do not try to rule over women but instead coexist in harmony.

God’s calling is supreme over everything, including over ministry positions. Anything less “take[s] power away from women . . . teach[es] men that women rank lower than they do, [and] teach[es] women that their voices are worth less than the voice of men.”²⁸ Progressive complementarianism is in some ways more dangerous because it seems innocuous compared to outright complementarianism, just as Jim Crow appears preferable to slavery but falls woefully short of God’s ideal. The creation account presents the ideal because

there was mutuality, equality, and harmony between men and women. . . . The fall destroyed the mutuality and harmony between men and women, resulting in millennia of male domination in both the church and in marriage. In Christ, that consequence is undone, and the mutuality and harmony of marriage is potentially restored . . . if the church allows it.²⁹

Conclusion

Progressive complementarianism is not an acceptable solution. It may at first appear to be a middle ground to appease everyone, but it discreetly demeans women. To adapt a statement by Aída Besançon Spencer, a leading egalitarian scholar, progressive complementarians “are repelled by egalitarians yet not attracted to rigid hierarchists, so they settle for a moderate complementarian position.”³⁰ Jim Crow provided a “solution” to America’s racial problem by dividing people by race while demanding “equal” treatment. However, separate-but-equal proved an impossibility because Black Americans confined to “metaphorical prisons” could never live as equals.

Trying to return to a perceived design of creation that prioritizes certain individuals over others based on skin color or gender disrupts God’s intentions for humanity. As long as people in power maintain a status quo, there will be a caste system that devalues people made in the image of God. Christians should instead be striving to return to the ideal of the Garden, learning from the great women of faith as they do from men, and recognizing the value of women called by God. Instead, progressive complementarians want to maintain a church where women are still inferior to men and have restricted freedom under the pretense of “progressive equality”—a church that is still separate but not equal.

Notes

1. Love Lazarus Sechrest, Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament (Eerdmans, 2022) 141–50.
2. Michael J. Klarman, Brown V. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2007) 8–14.
3. Klarman, Brown V. Board of Education, 201–7.
4. The word translated “have authority” in the NRSVue is authentein, a rare word which has a range of meaning including “to rule/reign; to control/dominate; to act independently; to be the originator of something; to murder.” See Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (Eerdmans, 2006) 220; Jamin Hübner, “Translating αὐθεντέω (Authenteō) in 1 Timothy 2:12,” Priscilla Papers 29/2 (Spring 2015) 16–26.
5. Complementarian scholar Thomas Schriener has stated of this passage: “Virtually every word in verses 11–12 is disputed” (Schreiner, “An Interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:9-15: A Dialogue with Scholarship,” in Women in the Church, ed. Andreas Köstenberger, Thomas Schreiner, and H. Scott Baldwin [Baker, 1995] 114). See also Jeffrey D. Miller, “Saved Through Childbearing? 1 Timothy 2:15 as a Hermeneutical Caveat,” Stone-Campbell Journal 20/2 (Autumn 2017) 215–25.
6. Mary L. Conway, “Gender in Creation and Fall: Genesis 1–3,” ch. 2 in Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical, Theological, Cultural, and Practical Perspectives, ed. Ronald W. Pierce, Cynthia Long Westfall, and Christa L. McKirland (IVP Academic, 2021).
7. Conway, “Gender in Creation.” Even the fact that God created Eve from Adam’s rib is sometimes used to force subordination upon women even though the Hebrew tsela (“rib”) also means “side,” implying equality rather than inferior status.
8. At some level this may have to do with men controlling the food supply once they had to work the land. See Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos, 2021) 27.
9. Clinton McCann, Judges (John Knox, 2002) 52.
10. Riggins R. Earl, Dark Symbols, Obscure Signs: God, Self, And Community in the Slave Mind (University of Tennessee Press, 2003) 13. See also Harry H. Singleton III, Black Theology and Ideology: Deideolgical Dimensions in the Theology of James Cone (Liturgical, 2002) 3.
11. James O. Buswell III, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture (Eerdmans, 1964) 29.
12. Although the Emancipation Proclamation was issued Jan 1, 1863, it was not until June 19, 1865, that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation Act was received by slaves in Galveston, Texas. Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19, is now a U.S. federal holiday to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation Act.
13. See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2012) 20–21.
14. Buswell, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture, 55.
15. Stephen Haynes, Noah’s Curse (Oxford University Press, 2002) 67.
16. Singleton, Black Theology and Ideology, 56.
17. Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (Holman, 2019) 65.
18. Singleton, Black Theology and Ideology, 57.
19. Buswell, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture, 57.
20. Kenneth Kinney, “The Segregation Issue,” Baptist Bulletin (Oct 1956) 8.
21. Buswell, Slavery, Segregation, and Scripture, 61.
22. Wayne E. Croft Sr., A History of the Black Baptist Church: I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired (Judson, 2020) 34–35.
23. Alexander, The New Jim Crow, 20–21.
24. https://thecrowdedhouse.org/what-we-believe, https://fiec.org.uk/who-we-are/beliefs/women-in-ministry.
25. Barr, Making of Biblical Womanhood, 19.
26. Ben Witherington III, What’s in the Word: Rethinking the Socio-Rhetorical Character of the New Testament (Baylor University Press, 2009) 115.
27. Craig S. Keener, Paul, Women and Wives: Marriage and Women’s Ministry in the Letters of Paul (Hendrickson, 1992) 3–4.
28. Barr, Making of Biblical Womanhood, 19.
29. Conway, “Gender in Creation.”
30. Aída Besançon Spencer, review of Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate, by Michelle Lee-Barnewall (Baker Academic, 2016), in Priscilla Papers 30/3 (Summer 2016) 28.