A Call for Some Housecleaning at CBMW

By Aimee Byrd:

I don’t see how CBMW can move forward from this in a healthy way without cleaning house and publicly apologizing to those it has misled. How can CBMW speak to a culture with “widespread uncertainty and confusion in our culture regarding the complementary differences between masculinity and femininity” (from the first rationale in the Danvers Statement) when there is diverse teaching on both first order doctrine and complementary differences within their own council? And why should women be told to learn about biblical womanhood from men who base their teaching on gender and relationship on an unorthodox view of the Trinity? Furthermore, I know there are men in CBMW who do not agree with this teaching. Why are you quiet?  To quote Dr. King: “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Why do I get emails from a few, privately encouraging me to speak out while they remain publicly silent? Is it complementarian to encourage a woman to take the hits?Is it?

Complementarian men should respond to women with a listening ear and a resolve to better teach what headship actually means and what it does not mean. They should be reaching out to abused women, whose husbands and churches hide under the banner of headship and complementarianism, and call out the abuse and false teaching loud and clear. They should be working to help church leaders to recognize abuse and provide godly counsel and resources for those abused. And if they truly believe in complementarity, they above all should want to invest in women with solid teaching, since they know their value to the church.

But instead, when women like me plead for change, we are accused of being feminists or egalitarians or ‘thin complementarians.’ We are blacklisted and ignored. We are treated like women who won’t fall in line. Is that the beauty of complementarity?