Why Does Matt Chandler Think Egalitarianism is the Opposite of Patriarchy?

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Is egalitarianism the opposite of patriarchy? Let's talk about it today for our Friday roundup. Hello, we are here on 3 days before my birthday. So, this is my birthday weekend. We're going to be planting in the garden in our new garden all weekend. So, we're very excited about that. Um but I want to talk about something that I actually wrote about a couple of weeks ago and then we didn't have a chance to talk about on Friday roundups because other stuff came up that was more timely Mhm.

[00:00:24]like Mother's Day and crazy posts and stuff like that. Um but this is something that I see repeatedly on social media and pastor's sermons. And I want to talk about one in particular that Matt Chandler did >> Yes, you keep talking. I'm just going to turn on some lights. Okay.

[00:00:39]So, last year Matt Chandler did a sermon in which he had this um he set up this spectrum, okay? And he had patriarchy on one side and he had egalitarianism on the other and then in the middle he had complementarianism. He had two different forms of it. Um uh [laughter] I think it was like careful complementarianism and convinced complementarianism. I don't even remember which one was supposed to be the good one but like there were two forms of complementarianism in the middle and egalitarianism here and patriarchy here. Um and that's what we see a lot is is we see these dichotomies where pastors are like, "Well, on the one hand we've got like the Doug Wilsons." Right? And and they're they're super patriarchal. And then on the other hand we have these egalitarians. And you know, we don't want to go to either extreme. We just want to be in the happy middle. And I see a huge problem with that. Do you want Do you want to tell us what the problem is, Becca?

[00:01:27]>> Well, it's a logical fallacy. Yeah. It's called a false dichotomy or an either/or. Whatever you you the false belief that there are only two options.

[00:01:36]>> Yeah, and it's also it's also setting up this spectrum wrong.

[00:01:39]>> Exactly. That was the other way is that like they're they're defining their terms wrong. Right? You have to look at not where do people Often when we have issues of ideological disagreement, we look at sides and we consider each side to be equal and equal oppositional force, right? What you actually need to do when you're assessing ideological debates is you need to look at what are the definitions of those sides to figure out if they are actually in opposition to one Yeah, so the definition of patriarchy is that men are in power over women and that power is exercised to men's benefit and women's detriment. Yeah, or even that's even more complicated than I would make it. The definition of patriarchy at its core is that men have power over women.

[00:02:24]And then you can argue about how that's done. You can argue about whether it's a good thing. You can argue about whether it's actually acted out or not. It doesn't matter. The definition of patriarchy is [clears throat] men over women. So what's the opposite of that?

[00:02:35]>> [laughter] >> It's not men and women together.

[00:02:39]It's women over men.

[00:02:40]>> Women over men. Yeah, and a lot of people actually here's a here's an aside. A lot of people also say yeah, so that the opposite of patriarchy is matriarchy. It's actually not because matriarchal societies don't actually function in the same way as patriarchal ones. They haven't yet found a matriarchal society where women exercise authority in the same way that men do in patriarchal societies. And so what So the true definition of matriarchy absolutely. How that often ends up acting out cuz I've seen studies where the patriarchy society center the father, matriarchy society center the children. And so it's like even like what we call a matriarchal society is not actually a matriarchal society. It's a child centered society.

[00:03:19]>> Yeah, and so so we got so I made up this I I I did one of my posts about this I I called the term gynarchy which is you know a term that people use as the opposite of patriarchy. But that's the point, okay? Think let's think about it.

[00:03:29]Let's take it out outside of gender and let's think about if we were doing the same debate in terms of slavery cuz I've seen it there too. What we would do that is we'd say okay, so you got American chattel slavery on the one side. Some people say so you got American chattel slavery or we have abolition. Right?

[00:03:44]>> [laughter] >> It's like no, you know, the the and and so what is what is the best case scenario? Well, obviously we don't want to be at either extreme so we have to be in the middle. SO NO, NO, NO, GROUND.

[00:03:52]>> We should not [laughter] be in the middle there. That's not something.

[00:03:54]That's not something. Because what happens is they're they're actually setting up the just the just and good thing as as an as an extreme. When the just and good thing is not the extreme, the just and good thing is the middle.

[00:04:07]So, this is actually If we have American chattel slavery on the one side where white people are enslaving black people, the opposite would be black people enslaving white people.

[00:04:17]>> Yeah, not black people and white people being equal. Yeah, it's actually a very old concept of Aristotelian philosophy, which is the morality of the mean. Okay, so people like it when we get nerdy. So, Aristotle and my philosophy peeps understand that I am doing this at a very basic level. Okay?

[00:04:39]>> [laughter] >> Aristotle's real difference from Plato, Socrates, like his his predecessors was this idea that too much of either end can be a negative. Right? So, say that you have someone who is courageous. Right. Courage is not the absence of fear. The absence of fear is foolhardy >> [snorts] >> foolhardiness. That is also a vice. So, you have foolhardiness and you have timid timidness. Like being too timid.

[00:05:11]Thank you. Foolhardiness and timidity and then the middle is is courage where you're not being brash, you're not being unwise, but you're doing the hard thing even though you don't want to do it, right?

[00:05:22]And that's what we're seeing here. It is what's happening is they people are comparing one vice with the virtue in the middle [laughter] and calling the virtue in the middle the other vice. Yeah, and they're doing that with a purpose. And that purpose is to make themselves look like the virtuous ones by putting themselves in the middle.

[00:05:41]>> still the vice. They're still the vice.

[00:05:43]Because the thing is, okay, so what complementarianism says is that men are in authority over women, but we just don't do it as much as the patriarchalists do. Yeah, that's what they say, right? But like as soon as you believe that men are in power over women, you're on that side of the spectrum.

[00:06:01]Like [laughter] and and I mean Keith is going to write a post about this soon, but there's actually a lot using the Bible you can defend hard complementarianism. Like you can defend patriarchy and you can defend egalitarianism. You can't actually defend soft complementarianism. No, using the Bible. Um so what what's essentially happening is that people want to believe that men are in authority over women, but they don't want to think of themselves as bad guys.

[00:06:23]So they say, "Oh, we're not that bad."

[00:06:25]And oh, we'll let women do some things, just not the things that actually make me lose power. Um and that's what's happening, right? And so we see this all the time. We see these false dichotomies of patriarchy and egalitarianism, and we don't want to go to either extreme. So you don't want to go to the extreme of justice?

[00:06:40]>> [laughter] >> Like that I just I just I really find that wild.

[00:06:44]>> Yeah, like the actual extreme would be like a focus where, okay, well because women have been assaulted and harmed and abused for so long, now in order to rectify things men are going to now have to be abused, and women are going to have all the positions of power, and they're going to use that power to denigrate and abuse and assault men, and men are going to get to say nothing about it because they're told it's God's position, and also this is just retribution for what happened earlier. That's the unjust extreme.

[00:07:13]>> Yes. The middle ground of what if we just stop doing bad things to each other because we're all equal is not an extreme.

[00:07:21]>> Yeah, exactly. And it's very much what Jesus called us to, right? Like, you know, love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:07:27]And so men, if you truly love women, you would not want to subject them to something that you yourself would not want to be subjected to. Mhm. You know?

[00:07:36]And Paul wrote over and over again, like you know, in Christ there is no male or female, slave or free, Jew nor Greek, for we're all one in Christ Jesus. And that is the principle by which we should be living.

[00:07:48]And we've got so many other Check out if you go if you go and look on my page, on my channel, there's a a thing called playlists. And if you go on those playlists, I have my starter pack on complementarianism. So if you want to find out more and go more in depth on why complementarianism really is harmful to women and isn't the best biblical interpretation at all, there's way better ways to look at the original Greek, to look at the passages in context, to look at the life of Paul, because Paul himself had women teaching, had women apostles, had women doing all the work of a pastor, >> [laughter] >> like then then check out that list. But I I just I I want people to be aware that there is a concerted effort to make egalitarianism seem extreme when it isn't. And we see this too with the word feminism.

[00:08:38]Um like all over the place in Instagram reels and social media. Mark Driscoll does it all the time. Like they rail against feminism. Like oh how awful feminism is. It's like do you know what the definition of feminism is?

[00:08:52]Well, Mark Driscoll does. Yeah, feminism Yeah, feminism is the belief that men and women are equal. Yeah, I think that's what Mark Driscoll has a problem with, to be very fair.

[00:08:59]>> all it is. Now, you can argue that there's political things that have often that often people who identify themselves as feminists have pursued that you may not agree with. Sure. Um but that's not feminism, that's politics. Feminism is just simply the belief that men and women are equal.

[00:09:18]And when people say that has been the downfall of society, it's like why is it so scary to people that women be equal to men?

[00:09:27]Like why is that seen as an extreme?

[00:09:29]Well, and I think what we're seeing is as women actually do have rights, kind of for the first I am really the first generation who actually grew up with equal rights.

[00:09:38]>> Yeah, and and and if you if we were American, a lot of those things would be taken away, but >> Yes, yes, but in in in in most of the Western world, yes. Yeah, because I'm millennial, right? Gen X, you grew up at the point that you were born, women were not able to have a credit card without a male cosigner, right? Like, how is that even like like I'm the first generation to be born to truly have the same Yeah, but at the point that you were born in Canada, when you were [snorts] born in Canada 30 years ago, I had a full year of maternity leave. Yes, no, I know. But I know, but what I'm saying is my entire life, right? And so that means that the boys in my generation are also the first generation where their entire life they have not had legal kind of leg up over women. There's simply going to be a corrective balance that's going to happen. We're going to start seeing men Yeah. um not doing as well. We're going to see a compensatory response. We're going to see this stuff happens. We know that societies function very similar to how an individual functions, right? When you're used to having things easier and handed to you and that stops happening, you flounder for a while before you find your footing. What's happening is people are seeing men floundering, I think, and instead of saying, "Oh, we need to support them so they can find their footing again." What they say is, "Oh, we need to put back all those protections for men and get rid of them for women because that's the problem."

[00:10:52]Yeah. When you have been given something for a long time and then it's taken away, you find a new equilibrium.

[00:11:01]They're going to find the equilibrium.

[00:11:04]You just got to let them flounder until they figure it out. And that sounds harsh, but I'm talking about that like in the societal ideas. Like if boys are raised to think, "You can be anything, but you don't have to work for it in the same way." And now they're realizing, "Oh, actually, where's the study that just came out that white men are now underrepresented in university with a lot of DEI stuff going away." Which is ironic.

[00:11:29]And but a lot of that is like, "Okay, so then you're going to now have a generation of white men who become dads who are going to look at their lives and are going to not have as much income earning potential, who are going to struggle, and they're going to tell their kids, "You go to school." Yeah.

[00:11:40]And that's how That's how it changes.

[00:11:43]Yeah. Right? Cuz that's These things do have an ebb and flow, and is it fair that right now we're in a really rough time for young men?

[00:11:51]No, but yes. Like, no for the individual, yes societally, and that's where that that tension is, and that's what the the patriarchals are like Nancy Pearcey saying that women suffered was a net negative. I'm like, if you're looking at male performance currently, maybe, but in 10 years, if you're looking at male performance, I don't actually think it's going to be the case, and definitely we're not when you look at the whole population, including, I don't know, women. Yeah.

[00:12:18]Like, this is the thing, right? And I think that's that's what they're they're missing is they're not willing to live with the consequences of their own behaviors and theologies. They say, "I want to be able to like, eat my cake and have it, too," which is the original way that quote went, by the way.

[00:12:34]>> Yeah. You know, they want to say, "I want to keep having the patriarchal stuff and also be able to say that I love women, and also I don't want men to have to deal with the fact that they've been raised in a patriarchal society, and it's it's just they're they're being ridiculous. Yeah. And I just want to say, too, like, the male loneliness epidemic is a real thing.

[00:12:50]>> It is. Um male mental health problems are real things, but they're also not things that women need to solve.

[00:12:55]>> And they're also things that don't need to be a problem. If men learn the social skills like I'm sorry, like They're things They're things that the church should come alongside. Like, all of us should be looking to help raise up boys and men who are emotionally mature, who are able to who have higher windows of tolerance, who are able to talk about >> with friendships.

[00:13:13]>> things, who have genuine friendships, right? But like, it's not your fault, single women, if the men around you are lonely. Like, this isn't something you need to fix. Yeah.

[00:13:23]And I think that's important to know, too. But, um yeah. So, just next time you're in sermon and you're hearing people rail against feminists or rail against egalitarians and and saying, "We need to, you know, the we need to we need to not go to either extreme. We need to be careful. We need to and and it sounds so good." Just remember that's a false dichotomy.

[00:13:43]And just remember that why are they so upset about women being equal? Why why does that make them so scared? Cuz I think that's a good question to ask.

[00:13:53]Mhm. Yeah? Anything else you want to add? No, I think that's it.

[00:13:55]>> Okay. Hey, announcements. October October 2nd and 3rd. Um, we're doing a simulcast. Well, not Becka and me, but Keith and Keith and I are doing a marriage conference um on October 3rd and October 2nd, the Friday night, um I'm doing a sex talk for women. And so, your church can sign up. It's a great way to have us there pretty much live. We'll adjust it for time zones, etc. Um, but you can get us there pretty much live. You can have an awesome event um but relatively inexpensively cuz I'm not doing a lot of traveling right now. So, we're going to put the link in the podcast notes. Check that out. Really excited about it. And yeah, I'll put the link to the the Substack article I wrote about this this false dichotomy as well. And you can see the the spectrum that Matt Chandler drew because it's pretty wild. Um, and and yeah. And we'll see how to correct it. And from now on, let's just do better. Sounds good. All right. Okay.

[00:14:46]I'll go turn this off. Yeah. Have a great weekend, everybody. Bye-bye.