Complementarianism, Gender and Evangelism

Rosie Clare Shorter is a feminist researcher. She teaches at The University of Melbourne, Australia. She is on the executive of The Australian Women’s and Gender Studies Association, and was a co-convenor of the religion thematic group for The Australian Sociological Association from 2023-2025.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Complementarianism, Gender and Evangelism in the Sydney Anglican DioceseChapter 1. Orthodox and Out of Step: Retelling the Story of Sydney AnglicanismChapter 2. Complementarianism, Orthodoxy and Gender RegimesChapter 3. Sydney Anglican Identity and the Call to be ‘Counter Cultural’Chapter 4. Inequality and the Cover Story of ‘Equal but Different’Chapter 5: Power, Preaching and ‘Plain Teaching’Chapter 6. Complementarian Discipline: Heteronormativity and EvangelismChapter 7. Complementarian Disruption: Women PreachingConclusion: Imagining the FutureReference

Complementarianism, Gender and Evangelism is, at once, a nuanced critical analysis of the deployment of gendered power in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, and a generous appreciation of the stories and struggles of individual Anglicans. By a careful listening to these stories, Shorter shows that the Diocese's conflation of Christian faithfulness with the evangelical doctrine of complementarianism serves only to abuse and traumatise the Christian body, especially those parts of the body which are neither male, nor heterosexual, nor white. As an Aboriginal theologian, I especially appreciate the ways in which Shorter demonstrates an awareness of the intersectionality of her work with decolonial and anti-racist labours. For the complementarian disease is indeed a constitutive part of an enduring colonial assault on black and diversely gendered bodies and, through them, on the earth itself. I commend Shorter's book as essential reading for anyone who is trying to understand both the failure and the promise of euro-conditioned Christianities.