You ever heard of culottes? They are those strange garments fundamentalists make their women wear when britches are more practical. They look like skirts from a distance, but once the wind hits, the secret’s out. They are pants are designed for modesty, when skirts could hike up, but made to look like dresses. They exist to give the appearance that dresses are worn even at inconvenient times, so as to keep their conviction that pants on women are of the devil. They let you keep the rulebook in one hand and your tennis racket in the other. And that is exactly what much of modern complementarianism has become. It is feminism in ideological culottes. It looks modest, spiritual, and obedient, but beneath the ruffle it is still rebellion.
Allie Beth Stuckey has made a career out of sewing those culottes. She says the right words about female pastors and submission. She declares she would never preach from a pulpit. Then she undercuts it all by insisting that women are just as gifted, just as capable, and just as qualified as men to do so. According to her, women have all the same tools in the box, but God simply doesn’t let them use them. That is not complementarianism. That is feminism wearing a denim skirt to church and asking to lead the Sunday school. It preserves rebellion beneath the illusion of order. It does not challenge the assumptions of feminism; it baptizes them.
Stuckey said of herself, “Even though I know I am mentally and physically capable of stepping to a pulpit on Sunday morning and delivering a more biblically sound, exegetically exquisite, persuasive, and dynamic sermon than many male pastors in America today, I can’t do it because that is not the realm to which God has called me as a woman.”
That’s so pious of her, isn’t it? What an incredible woman, being equally suited to pastoral ministry to men, and abstaining in order to give God space to be obsessive-compulsive over how he’s ordered things. But the truth is, she’s not - in fact - as capable as many (biblical) men. She’s poorly suited to it, because God said that she’s poorly suited to it. In fact, because God is reasonable (he has reasons for doing things), one can rightly assume if women were made as capable as men for pastoral ministry or preaching, there’s no reason to believe he would not have given them the role.
This is why young women walk away from Scripture shaking their heads. They are told God gives them the same gifts as men, the same intellect, the same aptitude for leadership, and then they are told they cannot use them. They are not given a reason, only an appeal to “order.” Order becomes the god behind God. That kind of teaching does not defend Biblical womanhood. It makes God sound petty and inconsistent. It reduces divine design to divine preference. It turns the Creator into a celestial neat freak who just likes His lines symmetrical. Feminism in culottes keeps God’s rules but strips them of His reasons.
FEMINISM WITH A SKIRT ON
The reason culotte theology spreads so easily is that it flatters both sides. The culture hears the feminist premise, the church hears the conservative conclusion, and both nod in approval. “Women are equally gifted, equally capable, equally intelligent, but should refrain from leadership for the sake of order.” That sentence could be printed in Christianity Today or Cosmopolitan with the same applause. It satisfies the feminist demand for equality while soothing the evangelical demand for propriety. It is rebellion that has learned to curtsy.
This counterfeit theology invents a God who restricts for the sake of formality. It teaches that gender roles exist not because of nature or creation, but because God likes things tidy. The results are predictable. When women believe they are capable of the pulpit but barred from it, they will either resent the rule or reinterpret it. You end up with women preachers who assure everyone they are not pastors, just “Bible teachers,” as if God’s concern were the job title on the bulletin. The modern evangelical landscape is full of these culotte ministries, where the only difference between rebellion and obedience is what it calls itself.
The irony is that this view does not exalt women; it patronizes them. It tells them that they are essentially men, only nicer, and that their obedience consists in pretending to be less than what they are. True honor would tell them the truth: that womanhood is not a reduced version of manhood, but a completely different design. When the Church refuses to say that out loud, it trains women to be ashamed of their created purpose. Feminism offers them counterfeit equality. Soft complementarianism offers them counterfeit humility. Neither offers them joy.
THE OCD GOD
If Stuckey’s followers believe that men and women are equally gifted but differently ordered, they believe in a God who acts without reason. That is not the God of Scripture. The Bible grounds male leadership in the created order itself. Adam was formed first, Eve second. Adam was commanded, Eve was deceived. The structure of creation is not an afterthought. It is the revelation of purpose. To call that structure arbitrary is to accuse God of vanity. He does not make rules because He enjoys rules. He commands because His design demands it.
God’s order is not a filing system. It is the architecture of creation. Every command reflects His wisdom. Every role reflects His intent. When men lead, they do what they were made to do. When women help, they do what they were made to do. The harmony of the sexes is not social choreography; it is spiritual physics. Break it, and the world splinters.
Complementarian feminism cannot last because it borrows its assumptions from the enemy it pretends to resist. It keeps the vocabulary of obedience while discarding its logic. It creates churches that sound conservative and think progressive, pulpits guarded by men who secretly wish women would do the job better, and women who believe they could. It produces order without conviction, authority without confidence, and marriages that look polite but feel inverted.
THE ARBITRARY GOD
I teach my kids that everything has a place, and live by example. Shoes go where shoes go. Pocket knives go where pocket knives go, and so on. But with few exceptions - like a gun by the bedside to kill bad guys - where that place happens to be is completely arbitrary. We could just as easily put our collection of unused Walmart bags in a cupboard as opposed to a drawer, or family Bible on the corner bureau instead of the mantle. I just like stuff to go in a specific place because order makes me feel less chaotic.
But God is not this way. He has no mental foibles. He never feels chaotic. But feminists masquerading as Complementarians would have you believe God made men preachers and made women church secretaries (or made men protectors and made women nurturers, whatever role of which you’re speaking) for no better reason than where I put empty Walmart bags. He just likes order. But as I’ve heard David Morrill as Protestia point out, marital problems arise when women think their gender role was assigned by divine fiat from the ‘flip of a coin’ rather than by good reason. The reason God assigned the gender roles he did are absolutely assigned for legitimate reasons; men and women are not equally gifted, despite both being equally created.
If God’s commands about gender were arbitrary, then He would be nothing more than a cosmic hall monitor with a clipboard. But that is not the God of Scripture. His commands reflect His character. His order mirrors His wisdom. The division between men and women is not the product of divine fussiness. It is the blueprint of creation itself. Paul does not appeal to “order” as though God simply enjoys symmetry. He appeals to history. Adam was formed first, Eve was formed second, and that difference was deliberate. The sequence was not a mistake. The hierarchy was not cultural. It was baked into the design before sin, before culture, before the Fall. God did not become a complementarian after Genesis 3. He was a patriarchist in Genesis 2 (and remained that way).
When Stuckey and others claim that women are equally gifted but divinely restricted, they present a God who ties His own hands. They make Him sound like a tyrant who imposes structure for amusement, who builds fences just to test our obedience. But Scripture tells a different story. The commands flow from creation itself. God orders what He has designed. He forbids women to teach or exercise authority over men because He did not shape them for that role. When we try to reverse those roles, we are not challenging social norms; we are challenging the architecture of Eden.
Eve was created to help Adam, not to lead him. She was made to multiply, nurture, and complete, not to govern, direct, or command. These are not punishments. They are privileges. When a woman fulfills the calling for which she was made, she is not forfeiting dignity. She is displaying glory. But when she claims equality of gifting with men, she is not rising above oppression. She is sinking into confusion.
THE REASONS GOD MADE MEN TO LEAD
Paul roots his entire teaching on gender in the created order, but he also gives several practical and spiritual reasons that reinforce that design.
First, women were created to help, not to lead. (1 Timothy 2:13)
Creation order reveals leadership order. Adam was formed to lead; Eve was formed to assist. The woman’s glory is in complement, not command. The order of creation shows the order of authority. To reverse it is to play God’s story backward. Men do not exist to help their wives (with their careers, goals, and vision). Women do exist to help their husbands (with all those same things). It’s not enough to admit that each gender has their role; one must also confess that roles were designed with our aptitude in mind.
Second, women are more easily deceived. (1 Timothy 2:14)
Eve was not the first sinner (Adam abdicated his role of keeping her in line), but she was the first one tricked. That distinction matters. The same tenderness and receptivity that makes women wonderful mothers and nurturers also makes them vulnerable to subtle spiritual manipulation. Scripture is not insulting women when it says this; it is explaining them. When men abdicate leadership, women are left to fight serpents they were never built to confront alone. Ask any polemicist anywhere which gender is more easily led astray by false teaching; and it’s not even close.
Third, women are more easily distracted from the main point. (1 Timothy 4:7)
Paul tells Timothy to avoid “old wives’ tales,” a reference to sentimental, story-driven diversions that substitute feeling for doctrine. The modern Church is full of them. Every women’s Bible study at the local megachurch has a pastel cover and a dozen emotional anecdotes for every sentence of theology. Women have a gift for empathy. But empathy without discernment becomes idolatry.
Listen to a women’s Bible study and you’ll hear the strangest claims pulled out of the Text, bizarre side-notes that betray the point of the passage, chase rabbits, and magnify details of triviality to craft sermons that miss the forrest for the trees. Sociologists claim women are more “detail-oriented,” so perhaps this is why women preachers almost always focus on trivialities within the Text rather than its major point, but listen to Beth Moore or Joyce Meyer and you’ll see this is true.
Fourth, women are more easily influenced. (2 Timothy 3:6–7)
Paul describes false teachers who “creep into households and capture weak women.” He is not describing weak-mindedness but soft-heartedness. Women are designed to absorb, adapt, and respond. That is what makes them good mothers and wives. But outside of male headship, that same pliability becomes dangerous. It is no coincidence that nearly every spiritual fad in church history finds its first audience among women.
Recently, I heard Joe Rogan hypothesize that women change their political beliefs more often than men, almost always adopting the position of their husbands. He cited a claim from an evolutionary biologist who claimed this is from thousands of years of human history in which a competing war-tribe would regularly take the wives of their slain opponents as their own. Changing their worldview and religious beliefs to conform to their new tribe was necessary for survival, and so this became engrained in them (we obviously know the reason isn’t evolutionary, but Biblical). When I met my wife she voted Democrat because in her 19 year-old brain, “guns hurt people.” I simply told her that she could never, ever vote Democrat again or I wouldn’t marry her. She simply nodded, “Okay” and I’ve had a Republican wife ever since. Men are not so easily converted to new ideas.
False teachers aim for women, and I’ll tell you that with my authority as Polemics Santa. Virtually all discernment ministers will acknowledge this. I’ve had several female writers on staff at Pulpit & Pen over the years, some of them very good, but only for a while. Eventually, they would come across a new teaching or new teacher, and disappear into the sunset, having chased a completely new fad or theological direction. It became so bad (and predictable) we eventually just swore off another female writer. And I could name you several more prominent female discernment teachers (from Janet Mefferd to Christine Pack to Amie Byrd to Erin Harding, who have done 180-degree turns theologically and ideologically (sometimes, doing 360s, winding them back to where they already were. Megan Basham hasn’t done this, but almost all female discernment types do, and I pray that she’s the exception that requires me to use a qualifier like “almost all.”
Fifth, women are more resistant to authority. (Genesis 3:16)
After the Fall, God declared that a woman’s desire would be “for” her husband, meaning to rule over him. The curse amplified an existing tension: the longing to command rather than follow. That instinct is not limited to wives; it is endemic to all women. It is why female leadership in the Church so often becomes emotional manipulation instead of spiritual authority.
These are not defects. They are distinctions. God did not design women to fail at male tasks. He designed them to flourish at female ones. The Church that asks women to lead is not empowering them; it is setting them up to break under a burden they were never meant to carry. There are many others, including that in part, because they are the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7), women will follow men naturally, but men absolutely do not want to follow women, and that’s why churches with female pastors have almost exclusively women in the pews. Men won’t countenance it. I’m reminded of Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, in which he recalls telling a dainty man he wasn’t fit for the pulpit because he had a ‘narrow chest’ and couldn’t expand his weak lungs enough to get the air to project his voice. In the days of amplification that may be less important, but our hesitation to follow women is the same reason men have a hard time following physically weak or fragile men. Preaching is fighting the devil, and women and sissy-men weren’t made to fight.
GOD’S ORDER IS BEAUTIFUL, NOT ARBITRARY
When you tell women that God made them equal in gifting but unequal in opportunity, you make His Word look irrational. You make obedience feel like servitude. And when women grow tired of obeying a God who seems unreasonable, they stop obeying altogether. That is why soft complementarianism always decays into egalitarianism. The seeds of rebellion are planted in the soil of confusion.
God’s order is not arbitrary. It is logical, beautiful, and kind. His restrictions are not restraints; they are instructions for flourishing. A man who leads well dignifies his wife. A woman who follows well glorifies her husband. When both obey, the result is harmony, not hierarchy. The Church is not less radiant because women do not preach. It is radiant because men lead like Christ and women serve like the Church He died to redeem.
The real issue is not who stands behind the pulpit. It is whether we trust the wisdom of the One who designed us. Feminism in culottes tries to compromise between God’s order and man’s pride. It wants women who lead like men and men who apologize for it. But God’s pattern is older than rebellion and stronger than fashion. The question is not whether women can preach as well as men. The question is whether we still believe the Designer knows His design.
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