Aaron Renn is very insightful when he’s offering cultural and sociological analysis. However, his most recent essay on complementarianism doesn’t engage either theology or history. In this case, his analysis of complementarianism goes awry because he takes his generalizations about Boomers (which are generally correct) and then uses them as axioms to interrogate a biblical doctrine. The result is that he makes some pretty basic theological and the historical mistakes.
Beyond Boomerism – Evangelical gender theology and why younger generations have to unshackle themselves from being overly wedded to Boomer thinking https://t.co/l2Kc93eC5v
— Aaron M. Renn ?? (@aaron_renn) July 17, 2025
He claims that Piper and Grudem enjoy pope-like status and that younger evangelicals won’t dare question them publicly. And yet it was only 2016 when Wayne Grudem got withering public criticism from younger complementarians about the Trinity and gender. Piper also has received his own fair share of criticism on a number of fronts. I admire Piper and Grudem as much as anyone, but I’ve disagreed with both of them both publicly and privately. To attribute to them pope-like status among younger evangelicals is just wrong. Yes, they are greatly admired (and deservedly so). No, they are not and have not been above criticism.
Renn also claims that Piper and Grudem invented complementarianism in the 1980’s. He claims that they did so as a repudiation of traditionalist views on gender. He’s factually wrong about that. Complementarianism was explicitly a reassertion of traditionalist biblical teaching against a rising tide of feminism within evangelicalism. Grudem in particular was motivated by the 1985 ETS meeting in Dallas, where the theme was about women in ministry. Of the 5-6 plenary speakers, Grudem was the only one who wasn’t an evangelical feminist. So he gathered a group of people to draft a confessional statement (Danvers) and to form a new organization (CBMW) to repudiate feminism and reassert a traditional view of scriptural teaching.
A year after the drafting of Danvers, the group realized that they needed a word to describe the theological proposition that was in Danvers. They chose the word “complementarian” to reflect the Hebrew term KENEGDO from Genesis 2:18. Piper and Grudem didn’t invent “complementarianism.” They helped coin a new term to refer to what the Bible always taught.
Renn’s analysis doesn’t reflect any of this. He speaks of complementarianism not as a theological proposition but as a sociological phenomenon that will die out with the Boomers. He couldn’t be more wrong about that.
If the biblical doctrine that “complementarianism” refers to didn’t exist before the 1980’s, then it’s an error that all of us should repudiate. But if “complementarianism” actually reflects what the Bible teaches, then it is never going to die.
All of this needs to be tested by scripture, but Renn doesn’t do that. He presents Piper and Grudem as doctrinal kingpins, and once they die so will their teaching. Time will tell. I predict Christians will go right on believing what the Bible teaches about manhood and womanhood, and what they believe will have substantial continuity with what Piper, Grudem, and Danvers have taught. In the meantime, it is way to premature to write “Ichabod” over the complementarian house. The reports of its demise have been great exaggerated.
