Complementarity, as it is unfolded in the Danvers Statement and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is still as urgent as ever. The Nashville Statement may feel more urgent because it addresses the current tragedies of so-called same-sex “marriage” and so-called “transgenderism.”

In 1987, I wrote the first draft of the Danvers Statement. Thirty years later, I gave input on the final draft of the Nashville Statement (2017). The former was foundational for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood; the latter expresses the Council’s abiding relevance and maturity.
Here at the five-year anniversary of Nashville, the leadership of CBMW asked me to reflect on similarities and differences between the two statements for their journal, Eikon (and allowed me to publish the article here as well).1 I address their question below, and then, as one of the early shapers and promoters of a “complementarian” understanding of manhood and womanhood, I also respond to some recent criticism.
Profound Unity
First, as a shaper of both documents, I see a profound unity and prophetic difference between Danvers and Nashville. The unity can be seen, for example, in the following similarities.
The Danvers Statement affirms that “both Adam and Eve were created in God’s image, equal before God as persons and distinct in their manhood and womanhood” (affirmation 1). The Nashville Statement affirms that “God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings, in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female” (article 3).
Danvers laments “the widespread uncertainty and confusion in our culture regarding the complementary differences between masculinity and femininity” (rationale 1), and the tragic effects of this confusion in unraveling “the beautiful and diverse strands of manhood and womanhood” (rationale 2). Nashville similarly laments the fact that “it is common to think that human identity as male and female is not part of God’s beautiful plan, [so that] God’s good design for his creatures is thus replaced by the path of shortsighted alternatives” (preamble).
Danvers cites the “growing claims of legitimacy for sexual relationships which have Biblically and historically been considered illicit or perverse” (rationale 5). Nashville names them: “It is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism” (article 10). “We deny that God has designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship” (article 1).
Both statements challenge “the spirit of the age,” especially its encroachments into Christ’s church. Danvers warns of “the apparent accommodation of some within the church to the spirit of the age at the expense of winsome, radical Biblical authenticity which in the power of the Holy Spirit may reform rather than reflect our ailing culture” (rationale 10). Nashville sounds a similar alarm: “Will the church of the Lord Jesus Christ lose her biblical conviction, clarity, and courage, and blend into the spirit of the age? Or will she hold fast to the word of life, draw courage from Jesus, and unashamedly proclaim his way as the way of life?” (preamble).
Prophetic Difference
The prophetic difference between the two statements is that Danvers confronts women who intend to be pastors, while Nashville confronts women who intend to be men. Danvers confronts men who are unwilling to lead their wives; Nashville confronts men who can’t lead their wives because they don’t have one — they are “married” to men.
As the term “complementarian” was coming into being in the 1980s, the antagonists were different from those of the Nashville Statement. For example, the subtitle of “the big blue book” Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is A Response to Evangelical Feminism. Thus, the antagonists that we were addressing in those days were voices like Paul Jewett, Margaret Howe, Gretchen Gabelein Hull, Gilbert Billezekian, Aida Spencer, Patricia Gundry, Craig Keener, Berkeley and Alvera Mickelsen, and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. I regarded all of these men and women not only as Christian but also as evangelical — at least at first. Danvers was, you might say, an in-house plea to family members to reconsider how they read the Bible.

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Written by Jared C. Wilson |
Friday, March 11, 2022
Leadership of all kinds is lonely and costly. It is tiring. For every person with a problem, he or she is essentially all that exists. Affliction has its way of self-centering. But all the problems that exist are the leader’s. And for spiritual shepherds who take it all seriously, there is “the daily pressure on them of their anxiety for the whole church” (2 Cor. 11:28, par).

But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.— Exodus 17:12
Once upon a time, when I was a pastor, I sat with a dying friend and read to her from 2 Corinthians. This was our second time through the letter together. She was resonating a lot with Paul’s talk of afflictions and “jars of clay” and thorns and weakness. But I began to think something else was at play here, and my friend might not have even been conscious of it. See, she was a leader. And while her illness, which eventually did claim her life, had by necessity caused her to withdraw from the fray of church service and thrust her into a fray of a different kind, when I read Paul saying “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15), I think it described her to a “T.”
She had poured out immeasurably over the years for her family, her friends, her church, and her community. She seemed a tireless servant, sacrificing constantly to live simply and therefore generously. She had been our church’s “queen” of benevolence. And she had been a tireless evangelist, maintaining several long-term relationships with unbelievers very dear to her, whose salvation she  labored for over decades. (She had high hopes and prayers that her illness and perhaps even her death would serve as a turning point for their receiving the gospel.) Given all of the hard work she had engaged in for so long, it bothered her somewhat to be in that vulnerable position. She had always been the one who helps, the one who takes charge. But sometimes leaders need to be carried too.
Paul assumes so. Continuing in 2 Cor. 12:15, he writes, “If I love you more, am I to be loved less?” Elsewhere: “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open . . . In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also” (2 Cor. 6:11,13).
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For the determined unbeliever, sheer denial of God isn’t enough. They must insist on defiling even the memory of God. It’s why Nero must not only invade the temple, he must sacrifice a pig to Zeus. It’s why Mark Studdock must not just be forced to deny God, but to “trample on [the crucifix] and insult it.” It’s why apostate churches must not just permit gay marriage, but must invite a drag queen to lead their service. It’s why it isn’t enough just to ignore the resurrection of Christ — we must insist on worshipping a demon in His place. We must insist on a day of trans visibility.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” (1 Corinthians 15:3–8)
Collectors, whether of motorcycles or moths, typically feature the most valuable parts of their collection in some prominent place. Nobody wants people leaving the Tower of London recalling only Queen Victoria’s collection of silver toenail clippers. Therefore, the crown jewels must be first and foremost in the treasury display.
Two days ago was Easter Sunday, on which we celebrate the most pivotal event in history. Because Jesus Christ has done the impossible, carrying our sins in his body, death is no longer the final word in once was. For centuries the events of holy week have been the crowning jewel not just for Christians, but for the West, which owes its entire system of law and governance to the basic truths set forth in the Bible, which stand or fall on the literal fact of the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:19). In other words, the resurrection is the best and brightest piece in our collection. There is no gift we presently enjoy that doesn’t trace its roots back to the splendour of the empty tomb.
One would think such a treasure would, whenever possible, be brought into the light. Especially in the midst of such darkness as we find ourselves in today.
But one would be wrong.
Instead, our leaders decided to take the driest, most inglorious mouse turd they could find, adorn it with glitter glue, and place it in a bomb-proof reliquary. And here I’m talking about the so-called “trans day of visibility.” A day arbitrarily set aside in honour of the mass-psychosis that has taken hold of our nation. A day to remember the multitude of youth being shovelled into Molech’s arms by activist educators, virtue-signalling parents, and sycophant media shills. A day on which we must give extra-careful consideration to the TikTok “influencer” with a 5 o’clock shadow and a patterned dress trying to argue that parents don’t have rights over their own children.
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