‘For Our Daughters’: Exposing Abuse Within Complementarianism

by John Ellis

I was well into adulthood before I first began hearing the stories of abuse suffered by females I grew up with. Many of their abusers were men in positions of authority. Their stories are not mine to tell, though. As an elder in a 9 Marks church, I had firsthand knowledge of an abuse situation happening within one of the marriages in our church. A few months after moving out of the state, I sadly learned that the remaining elders threatened the wife with excommunication if she didn’t return to her abuser. I have seen firsthand the devastation created, fostered, and left behind by complementarianism. I have heard about the ongoing pain and trauma suffered by past classmates and members of my youth group.[1] But I have not experienced it in the ways that so many women tragically have and are within complementarian spaces.

I’ve written about the problems and dangers of the purity culture and the Billy Graham rule, to be specific. You can read some of those articles by clicking here and here. And while I want to continue to use my voice and experience to help highlight the errors of complementarianism (and the error that is complementarianism itself), it’s especially important to hear from those who have suffered and continue to suffer under its weight. This is why I am grateful for Dr. Kristin Du Mez willingness to use her time, talents, and reach to help center some of those voices.

Dr. Du Mez’s new documentary For Our Daughters is heart wrenching and horrifying. It’s also really well done as it exposes the realness and rawness of sexual abuse happening within complementarianism. One of the doc’s theses is that the abuse isn’t accidental to the system but is part and parcel of it.[2] That’s a hard pill for many to swallow, I know. I encourage you to watch For Our Daughters (below), especially if you’re counted among those who find that thesis a hard pill to swallow. If you’re already sympathetic to Dr. Du Mez’s objectives I encourage you to not only watch it but to also share it on your social media feeds and with your friends, family, and church community.

I have one final thought I want to share: Women who bravely come forward to share their stories of abuse are often met with disbelief, scorn, and threats. The women featured in For Our Daughters will likely suffer retraumatization at the hands of those who will mock them and even threaten them. Pray for those women. Beyond prayer, show your tangible support for them by hearing them and then by lifting your voice in solidarity alongside theirs and help them expose the abuse. Full justice is coming in the New Jerusalem, to be sure, but it’s important for followers of Jesus to call for justice in the here and now, especially on those who hide their filthy deeds behind Christianity. For Our Daughters is a great aid in seeking justice for women who have and are suffering abuse within complementarianism.

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[1] It’s a bit of an anachronism to use the term complementarianism when discussing my childhood. I was 13 years old when the Danvers Statement was published. Besides, the pastors, teachers, and other authority figures within the fundamentalist world I grew up in would have considered Piper, Grudem, et al. as compromising new evangelicals. I have little doubt that they would’ve denounced (and probably did) the Danvers Statement as a compromising ecumenicalism. That being said, the gender distinctions and roles I was taught and saw lived out in front of me were most decidedly complementarian.

[2] This doesn’t mean, nor does the doc even allude to this, that all complementarian men either engage in abuse or cheer it on. It does mean that good intentions are no match for the problems inherent within complementarianism.