Aimee Byrd says Complementarianism is ‘Misogynist’, ‘Rot’, and ‘Harmonizes with Racism’
This trajectory was set years ago
Theologian and author Aimee Byrd has released a blistering article condemning complementarianism and those who hold the position, castigating them as brutes hell-bent on subjugating women while mixing their motivations with racism and white supremacy.
Once part of The Mortification of Spin, a podcast she co-hosted with Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt, Aimee Byrd was sent packing and expunged from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals due to dissatisfaction with her polemical publications, particularly after her views of complementarian went from hard, to soft, to non-existent, which is merely another example of how ‘soft-complementarianism’ is just another word for “egalitarianism.”
For years the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s version of Beth Moore rebuffed any notion or concerns that she was on a progressive trajectory- a claim she categorically denied and then became upset that it was even suggested in the first place, despite ample evidence to the contrary. We noted our concerns with her four years ago, after we removed her book from our recommended reading list, two years before she was relieved of her duties on the show.
Byrd used to be far more conservative in her beliefs, hiding behind her denomination until she left it last year. Since then has cast off all restraint and tossed away the shackles of her former beliefs, putting her newfound egalitarianism to work by openly preaching and teaching during Sunday morning services, all the while growing more bold with her criticism.
In a new blog post, Byrd continues to sink into depths of disillusionment, Interacting with a Christianity Today post where author Chris Davis says that the restoration of Johnny Hunt (which we’ve roundly criticized as well) is “a mirror that shows us what happens when our convictions about complementarity rot into misogyny,” Byrd writes:
That is a loaded sentence.
It’s a brave post and plea. Complementarians don’t even listen to women, much less seek them for any positions of leadership. It is basic misogyny. Rot. Male superiority. And it harmonizes with racism. Of course it does, the common denominator is becoming quite an embarrassing elephant of disillusionment.
But here’s the problem. Davis’s plea is vulnerable and sincere. I don’t want to question that. Yet there’s still something he doesn’t see. He is still disillusioned in his very plea. Complementarians just can’t listen. It’s taken me many years and a lot of personal cost to accept this. They can’t. Because they foreground the (white) male voice. This is their posture.
She continues:
…if you are too busy feeling superior with your sole self, and your own version of the perfect Christian, you don’t see the underground. And that is where this movement of complementarianism is. Up there. It’s busy keeping others underfoot rather than seeing the crowded underground in their own death. Complementarianism sacrifices its own for their false security in “leadership.”
…Complementarians can’t listen because women’s voices are too disruptive to their sense of power, control, and male competence. To recognize their incompetence and need would counter their constructed value system of masculinity…
And concludes:
…it is a gift for any to see the rot in the complementarian system, and all other systems of false belonging .