The patriarchy that continues to appear in biblical text is a “mere accommodation to the reality of the times and culture; it is not a reflection of the divine ideal for humanity.”35 Patriarchy is created by people, not ordained by God.

The reason the teenage girls in our youth group were forced to put on baggy T-shirts wasn’t because Jesus cares that much about bra straps. It was because the leaders at that camp had confused nineteenth-century ideas about women’s purity (not to mention male culpability) with what it meant to be a Christian woman.

I do not see a conflict between my feminist identity and my cooking skills. I don’t have a problem with women, or men, taking pride in domestic prowess. What I do have a problem with is how we continue to teach the cult of domesticity to modern Christian women.

Ironically, complementarian theology claims it is defending a plain and natural interpretation of the Bible while really defending an interpretation that has been corrupted by our sinful human drive to dominate others and build hierarchies of power and oppression. I can’t think of anything less Christlike than hierarchies like these.

The church teaches what it believes to be true.

Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world.

Indeed, the further removed medieval women were from the married state, the closer they were to God. After the Reformation, the opposite became true for Protestant women. The more closely they identified with being wives and mothers, the godlier they became.

As women’s activities were redirected into the household, women became less “collective, visible, and active” in the late medieval parish.

From my experience as someone who grew up Southern Baptist and remained in conservative evangelical churches throughout most of my adult life, inerrancy creates an atmosphere of fear. Any question raised about biblical accuracy must be completely answered or completely rejected to prevent the fragile fabric of faith from unraveling.