From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw – Fortress Press
Sally Gallagher, a sociology of religion researcher, has studied the complementarian ideas in evangelicalism for years. She argues that the majority of evangelicals cling tightly to the delineation of men and women’s roles not for biblical or theological convictions but for political and social reasons. Gallagher’s research shows that although many evangelical households function in a pragmatically egalitarian way, the verbal assent to male headship remains a nonnegotiable element in their preaching and teaching. How has male headship or structure of the so-called traditional family become nonnegotiable to many Christians even as our country has been striving for decades toward gender equality? One would have to rewind fifty years and move into the realm of American politics to understand how.