Drafted Into the Church’s Gender War

The hidden cost of evangelicalism’s never-ending battle over women’s roles

I’ve been in theological education for ten years. I spent five years earning my master’s degree in theology, and I’ve been working on my doctorate for five more. (Yes, this is an absurdly long amount of time to be a student. Yes, my parents are worried I’ll be in school forever.

When I started seminary, I had no idea what kind of career I wanted; I just knew that I was supposed to study the Bible. It only took a few semesters for me to discover that God was leading me to study political theology—the area that focuses on our common life together, political systems, and Christian approaches to advocacy or resistance. In contrast to political theology, I never once felt called to study the theology of gender.

Federico Zandomeneghi, Young Woman Writing a Letter, 1874.

But by the time I graduated, I had spent just as many hours studying gender as I had political theology. I exegeted key passages about women in the Bible, researched a theology of women’s ordination, and the history of women’s involvement in the church. None of it was inherently interesting to me, and at the time, I had no desire to preach or pastor. So why did I do it?

Because I had to.

I was a woman at a conservative evangelical seminary, which meant that I was the subject of constant scrutiny. Every time the Southern Baptists considered another resolution about women, or the non-denominational megachurches in our area got flak for having a woman give a “message” on Mother’s Day, the fight reignited in our classrooms, and female students were expected to have their defense prepared.

Although I wanted to focus my time and energy on political theology, I was drafted into evangelicalism’s gender war against my will. I’m not alone. The women fighting this battle are not a voluntary army. Most would rather use their gifts elsewhere, but few draftees are given exemptions or deferrals, and no one cares about your conscientious objections to the war.

Molly Lamb Bobak, Basic Trainees Learning to Stand at Ease, 1946.

This is the unacknowledged cost of evangelicalism’s never-ending gender war: Christian women who have various gifts to offer the kingdom of God are funneled into a narrow focus on issues of gender. The hours and effort women like me spent studying gender were hours and effort that could have been spent researching the issues that actually interest us. The papers we felt obligated to write on Ephesians 5 or 1 Timothy 2—texts on the frontlines of the gender war—could have been written on other biblical passages that our churches need help interpreting. The elective courses we took on gender could have been electives in areas of theology where our churches desperately need greater instruction, and our society needs Christian wisdom.

For example, my first New Testament paper was on a set of household instructions in Ephesians 5. (Hint: “submit to your husbands” is the part most of us remember.) I spent countless hours on that assignment, examining every angle of the text, parsing the original Greek manuscripts, and preparing to answer every possible objection to my argument. After turning in the assignment, I was stunned to discover that most of my male classmates had consulted a few commentaries, typed up the party line, and called it a day. For me, the assignment was a slog; for them, it was a stroll. I turned to the only other woman in the class to see if she shared my exacerbation.

“Must be nice to not be affected by the outcome of your exegesis,” she said.

Defining Terms

Complementarian — The view that men and women are equal in dignity and worth but have distinct, God-ordained roles in the home and church, with certain leadership roles reserved for men.

Egalitarian — The view that men and women are equal in dignity, worth, and authority, with leadership and ministry roles open to both based on gifting rather than gender.

It wasn’t only the egalitarian women who felt compelled to spend so much time studying gender. My friend in Greek class was solidly complementarian, as most women at the seminary were. They were not trying to defend their calling to preach or pastor; they became experts in gender theology simply to defend their place at the seminary at all.

These faithful women were not fighting against the patriarchy. They wanted to serve Christ’s people in whatever capacity their churches or denominations allowed. They had no desire to steal anyone’s pulpit or usurp any man’s position of authority. But when radical factions within their denominations pushed for ever more specific and extreme restrictions on women’s roles, they had to be ready. Like me, they were drafted into a war they didn’t want to fight.

Molly Lamb Bobak, Canadian Women’s Army Corps Parade Through the Town, 1944.

While I persisted in my commitment to study political theology, many of my female friends in seminary made the pragmatic decision to switch their specialization to gender, capitalizing on the hours they had already spent studying it. Some started parachurch ministries focused on gender issues, others wrote books or articles about women in the Bible, and others coached women in ministry. Many of the women who decided to continue in academia, pursuing PhDs and professorships, looked at the gender work they had done in seminary and reasonably concluded that it would be a waste not to continue in the same lane.

I have known so many women—talented, faithful, curious, engaging—who ended up spending most of their careers focused on gender when they didn’t even want to in the first place. They wanted to study, write, and teach about other parts of the Bible, other areas of theology, or other issues deeply affecting the church, but they ended up spending much of their lives working on gender. They had other gifts and other callings that were all overshadowed or left behind by being drafted into evangelicalism’s gender war.

Baker, Ernest Hamlin. For Every Fighter a Woman Worker. 1918.

Questions of gender are important. Correctly understanding what the Bible says about men and women matters for those who fall on either side of the complementarian/egalitarian divide. I am thankful for the women who have done the exegetical, theological, and historical work that so many of us have benefited from! Yet I do mourn the energy, time, and attention that this one meaningful question has stolen from other areas of great importance.

It seems unlikely that Christians are going to come to a permanent peace on the battle over women’s roles in the church. The best we can likely hope for this side of eternity is that we would seek faithfulness within our camps and a ceasefire between them. But I do hope that we can discipline ourselves to stop before we unnecessarily open up a new front in the church’s gender war. Because every time we do, more soldiers get drafted into it.

Egalitarians worry that losing the war will result in gifted women being silenced or ignored. Complementarians fear that losing the war will cause the church to veer away from biblical faithfulness. But both sides also need to recognize the cost of a never-ending gender war. It reroutes faithful and gifted women away from their true callings, in both egalitarian and complementarian churches, and deploys them into a battle most of us don’t want to fight.

Kaitlyn Schiess is Sr. Editor at Holy Post Media, co-host of the flagship Holy Post podcast, host of Curiously, Kaitlyn, and host of Getting Schooled with Kaitlyn Schiess on Holy Post+. She is also the author of The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here (Brazos 2023) and The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor (IVP, 2020). She has a Master of Theology (ThM) in Systematic Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and is currently a doctoral student in Political Theology at Duke Divinity School. She loves cooking for a crowded kitchen, reading in any spare minute she has, and teaching Sunday school to little kids.