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Complementarianism as Doctrine and Governance: Narratives on Women’s Leadership Among Second-Generation Asian Americans

  • Research Note
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Review of Religious Research

Abstract

The role of women in evangelical churches remains contested as different groups attempt to shape the gender subculture. Included is a growing population of second-generation immigrants who have the potential to influence future debates. I explore how 23 second-generation Asian American congregants in a multi-lingual Taiwanese evangelical church that experienced a schism over women in pastoral leadership discuss the complementarian belief as it relates to doctrine and governance. Further, I examine narratives used to describe the schism and find that doctrinal narratives predominated over narratives of inter-generational conflict. Last, I find that the complementarian belief also informed understandings and participation in lay leadership. Findings suggest patterns for how doctrine and governance may interact and have implications for the relationship among ethnicity, gender, and religion. I propose further research interrogating the relationship between doctrine and governance and the way religious, gender, ethnic, and immigrant identities may or may not interact.

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Notes

  1. These are pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of these two churches.

  2. Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 11:2–16; 1 Timothy 2:11–15.

  3. The one respondent who was not complementarian was also not egalitarian. This respondent simply said they did not know their stance.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Mary Blair-Loy, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Jeffrey Haydu, David Johnson, Brad Smith, the UC San Diego Honors Seminar, and the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice University for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. A warm thanks to Adriana Garcia, Catherine Yuh, Paul Abraham, Joy Chan, and Sharon Chan for generative discussions on the intersections of race, religion, and gender. Because findings are based on a qualitative dataset that involves human subjects concerns, data are not able to be obtained by journal readers.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208265, New Haven, CT, 06520-8265, USA

    Esther Chan

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Correspondence to Esther Chan.

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Chan, E. Complementarianism as Doctrine and Governance: Narratives on Women’s Leadership Among Second-Generation Asian Americans. Rev Relig Res 57, 435–452 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-014-0186-x

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