1 Introduction

As Australians publicly debated same-sex marriage, Jill,¹ a Sydney Anglican woman in her forties, had an ‘epiphany’. In 2017—the year of the same-sex marriage plebiscite—Jill was doing advocacy work with queer Christians and Christian victim-survivors of violent marriages. She realised that ‘even though their context might seem at face value very different,’ queer Christians were ‘being told the same things that wives in abusive marriages are being told.’ Jill explained:

the message to anyone who is unhappy because of any kind of sexuality or gender or relational experience is, ‘your unhappiness is sinful, you’ve got to strive to overcome it by prayer and whatever we put you through to correct you’, whether that’s marriage counselling or courses on how to submit better, or conversion therapy … the basis for that is, your current unhappiness is your sin.

Jill’s experience shows that for Christians who are unhappy in their intimate relationships, or because church teaching has prevented them from pursuing a non-heteronormative relationship, their unhappiness is read as the fault of the individual (not the Church) and as sinful. Her comments also link the regulation of queer sexualities to dominant Christian discourses on gender, namely complementarianism. Prompted by Jill’s observation, we consider how linking unhappiness and sinfulness contributes to the maintenance of complementarian norms.

According to the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), complementarianism is ‘the biblically derived view that men and women are complementary, possessing equal dignity and worth as the image of God, and called to different roles that each glorify him’ (CBMW n.d). In brief, these ‘different roles’ specify that men should lead, and women should submit. Those who cannot conform to these gendered ‘equal but different’ complementarian ideals, are not aligned with the community. The Danvers Statement—authored by CBMW in 1987—expresses ‘deep concern’ for the erosion of gender complementarity, the (supposed) subsequent ‘unraveling [of] the fabric of marriage woven by God’, and non-heteronormative intimacies (Piper and Grudem 2016, 83–84). Through statements such as this, Christian egalitarianism, feminism and homosexuality are framed as linked threats to gender-complementary ‘orthodox’ Christianity.

In Jill’s diocese, the Moore Theological College website lists gender complementarity among their key values, and the Sydney Diocesan Doctrine Commission produced a report on Human Sexuality,² contending that same-sex intimacies are a form of ‘disorderly bonding’ which ‘stand in stark contrast to the glorious potential of a gospel-bonded marriage between a husband and wife’ (Thompson 2015, 68, 78). Here, heterosexual, gender-complementary marriage is godly and ‘glorious’, whereas, same-sex intimacies are positioned as unbiblical, against Anglican values and, as Jill suggested, ‘sinful.’³

Non-heteronormative intimacies and ‘unhappiness’ in marriage call faith into question. Jill observed that a person’s ‘unhappiness’ and lack of alignment is read as a sign that they do not belong, their faith is insufficient, they are sinful. Feminist writer Sara Ahmed argues that right feeling is a way of indicating right ways of being in the world; ‘to share in the body of the nation requires that you place your happiness in the right things’ (Ahmed 2014, 27). Likewise, ‘happiness is a way of being directed toward those things that would or should make you happy. Happiness can thus also be a form of pressure’ (Ahmed 2017, 49). Following Ahmed, and listening to Jill, it seems belonging to the church requires happiness to be placed in the right things; theologically—and officially—‘in Christ’, but socially, in the right kinds of sexual and gendered identities and behaviours. While there is a long history in feminist and queer analyses showing how happiness and heterosexual marriage are conceptually linked in popular films, literature and fairy tales (Ahmed 2010, Gay 2014, Halberstam 2012; Rich 1986), it is less common to see such analysis of faith communities. One example is Jessica Johnson’s (2018) analysis of the now-dissolved evangelical megachurch, Mars Hill, which shows pastors can create and exploit emotional bonds, holding the congregation together in an affective community, which is often supported by the emotional and sexual labour of women.

In the decade since Australians were introduced to the possibility of a same-sex marriage plebiscite, religion, gender and sexuality have remained highly politicised, and weaponised against women and queer people (Possamai and Tittensor 2022; Poulos 2019). Against this backdrop, we argue that a happiness-via-heterosexual-marriage script circulates within Australian evangelicalism, particularly within complementarian discourse. We suggest that wanting to be seen as ‘happy’ or ‘good’ Christians and not wanting to be perceived as ‘unhappy’ or ‘sinful’, provides a rationale for why heteronormativity has become a sign of Christian living. We argue that conceptually linking relational or sexual unhappiness and sinfulness, directs criticism away from the church and complementarian readings of the Bible, and instead places an additional burden on those who are not happy or safe in heterosexual marriages. Thus, there is an urgent need for alternative ways of understanding happiness, unhappiness and sexuality within Christianity and the Bible.

In evangelicalism, there is a conceptual slide between ‘right’ sexuality and ‘right’ belief. As a result, a happy heterosexual marriage, lived according to the complementarian ideals of men’s leadership and women’s submission, becomes a marker of faith. Any ‘unhappiness’ in marriage, singleness and nonheteronormative intimacies can render a person’s faith suspect (DeRogatis 2015; Johnson 2018; Sadgrove, Vanderbeck, et al. 2010; Sessions 2022). We focus on two Australian evangelical communities, the Sydney Anglican diocese and the Baptist Association of NSW and ACT (BANSW/ACT), arguing that this alignment of a happy complementarian marriage with Christian identity, creates a spiritualised happiness-via-marriage script which can become a source of harm.

For many Christians, conforming to dominant evangelical sexual scripts is fraught. The requirement to maintain sexual ‘purity’ falls disproportionately on women and can inform their sense of identity and belonging, even though they may not be able to embody ideal Christian femininity (Gaddini 2022). For Anglican domestic violence victim-survivors, the imperatives to forgive and submit to their husbands are cited as contributing to instances of abuse (Powell and Pepper 2021), and some queer Christian survivors of change and suppression practices ‘live in a constant struggle to maintain their diverse gender, sexual identity and faith in the face of varying degrees of rejection from both LGBT and religious communities’ (Jones, Brown, et al. 2018, 4). In response, we highlight the importance of offering alternative scripts that reclaim unhappiness as biblical and foster inclusive, expansive ways of doing Christianity and gender.

We proceed by outlining what the happiness-via-marriage script is and move to consider how a promise of married happiness operates as a disciplinary device. We suggest that in evangelicalism a happiness-via-heterosexual-marriage script informs complementarian teaching, simultaneously constructing orthodoxy and orthopraxy, while regulating gender and sexuality. We explore how this script is particularly concerning for queer Christians and women in abusive marriages. Recognising that Scripture can be both a source of harm and healing (Rambo 2020), in the final section, we turn to Psalms and Song of Songs to recover unhappiness and alternative gendered and sexual scripts.

2 Method

This interdisciplinary paper offers a sociological and theological reading of the happiness-via-marriage script. It is informed by the lived experiences, stories and testimonies⁴ of Sydney Anglicans, as ‘bodies, emotions and extraordinary experiences are critical to any analysis of how religion is situated in social life’ (Ammerman 2016, 90). We read the stories of Sydney Anglicans alongside social, theological and ecclesial texts, to explore the circulation and consequences of a dominant happiness-via-marriage discourse and propose biblical alternatives. In doing so, we combine Shorter’s sociological work with Hutton’s Hebrew Bible and domestic abuse work to bring new insights to studies of religion and gender.

Interviews with Sydney Anglicans were conducted by Shorter during her PhD fieldwork, between July 2019 and November 2020.⁵ Shorter attended three parishes and conducted twenty-eight interviews with people from each parish, and some purposively selected clergy and queer Anglicans. We draw from life-stories shared during interviews.⁶ In hearing these stories, we have employed a ‘feminist ear’ (Ahmed 2017; 2021). As Christian (Anglican and Baptist) feminist researchers, we have attuned our ears to those who are not aligned with the ideals of the happiness-via-marriage script as it is employed by advocates of complementarianism. In becoming attuned to these stories, we rethink our understanding of lived Christianity, as well as our reading of Scripture and ecclesial discourses.

Christian communities are interpretive communities, gathered around the Bible and its interpretation (Dalwood 2019; Vanhoozer 2016). Hence, we explore texts referred to in faith communities. This gives context to personal stories and highlights shared cultural scripts and discourses. We consider complementarianism to be a dominant ecclesial discourse in conservative evangelical communities (Shorter 2021). We pay attention to how complementarian scripts circulate through Sydney, by drawing examples from publications by Anglican and Baptist leaders.

The feminist hermeneutic we use in analysing Song of Songs and Psalms is akin to the ‘feminist ear.’ Historically, the majority of biblical interpretation has been by and for (white) men. Gendered interpretation continues to be representative of much modern scholarship, but interpretive biases are not embedded in the original text. We use a feminist lens to recognise where interpretation of a biblical text might derive ‘from specific, culture-bound prejudices’ (Falk 1993, 232), including exegesis which aligns with a complementarian happiness-via-marriage script. Such prejudices ‘are incompatible with the cultural sensibility that created the Song’ (ibid) and, we would argue, the Psalter. We chose to re-read Song of Songs and Psalms as they were mentioned by interviewees as potential resources. Our feminist hermeneutic highlights where texts, such as Psalms 113 and 61, allow ‘unhappiness’ and where Song of Songs 5:9–16 eschews gendered roles.

3 Spiritualising Happiness and Heteronormativity

Promises of future happiness create scripts which orient us toward certain choices because they will—allegedly—make us happy (Ahmed 2010; 2017). Happiness scripts direct and regulate behaviour by ‘providing a set of instructions for what women and men must do in order to be happy, whereby happiness is what follows being natural or good’ (Ahmed 2010, 59). Thus, happiness creates ‘ “scripts” for how to live well’ (ibid), as the supposedly ‘normal’ and ‘good’ choices of heterosexual marriage and childrearing are presumed to lead to happiness. The pressure to find happiness in (only) the ‘right’ or ‘normal’ places can produce unhappiness as other choices are invalidated. Happiness scripts apply pressure by offering happiness as the reward for living well, for making ‘normal’ choices, and by depicting non-normative life choices, ‘not marrying, not having children’ (Ahmed 2017, 63–64), as not only deviant but ultimately unhappy. Accordingly, the promise of happiness also acts as a threat: following other paths results in unhappiness. Therefore, happiness scripts operate as a disciplinary device, employing ‘a double system’ of ‘gratification-punishment’ (Foucault 1995, 180). Within evangelicalism, the threat of unhappiness weighs heavily as it is spiritualised. We hear this in Jill’s words, ‘the message to anyone who is unhappy because of any kind of sexuality or gender or relational experience is, “your unhappiness is sinful.” ’

We suggest that for Christians, the happiness-via-marriage script spiritualises Gayle Rubin’s ‘charmed circle’ of sexual hierarchies. Rubin (1998) argued that systems of sexual hierarchies, whether religious or secular, establish the boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sex. In evangelicalism, the hierarchy is not only between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ but what we might call ‘Christian, and therefore happy’ and ‘sinful, and therefore unhappy’ sex. For Rubin,

sexuality that is ‘good’, ‘normal’, and ‘natural’ should ideally be heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non-commercial. It should be coupled, relational, within the same generation, and occur at home. It should not involve pornography, fetish objects, sex toys of any sort, or roles other than male and female. Any sex that violates these rules is ‘bad’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘unnatural’. Bad sex may be homosexual, unmarried, promiscuous, non-procreative, or commercial.

Rubin 1998, 152

Intimacies which are deemed good and happy sit within the ‘charmed circle’, while those falling outside the circle are marginalised and, in some cases, criminalised. Rubin (1998, 152) argued that this works to ‘rationalize the well-being of the sexually privileged and the adversity of the sexual rabble.’ Happiness-via-marriage scripts encourage following the path of sexual privilege so that we might be happy and avoid becoming ‘sexual rabble.’

In evangelicalism, those cast as ‘sexual rabble’ are read as ‘impure’ and ‘sinful’. This is evident in conservative evangelical dating and marriage advice literature. For instance, in the widely read advice manual for evangelical youth, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris (1997, 69) described a couple who had pre-marital sex as ‘violating each other’s purity’. Here, emotional shaming is used to direct young people (particularly women) away from non-married intimacies, while a happy lifelong marriage is the promised reward for practicing purity (Shorter 2019). This limits options for everyone, but particularly for women and queer people. Queer and women Christians who do not follow the happiness-via-heterosexual-marriage script become both religious and sexual ‘rabble’ (Rubin 1998). In a hierarchical schema, being unmarried or in a queer relationship is ranked lower than a heterosexual relationship. And because a heterosexual relationship is within the charmed circle of ‘good’ and ‘natural’, the happiness-via-marriage script promises that normative choices lead to happiness; those who are single or queer are implicitly ‘not good’, ‘not normal’ and ‘unhappy’.

Research in British evangelical communities shows that marriage and motherhood are expected norms for women (Aune 2008; Gaddini 2019; Llewellyn 2016), while unmarried women are considered non-normative, with women leaving churches due to this positioning (Aune 2008). Participants in Gaddini’s (2019) study on purity and marriage norms within an evangelical Anglican church in London, described church as a lonely place for unmarried women. Similarly, singleness and childlessness is considered unusual, even shameful (Llewellyn 2016) and ‘deviant’ (Gaddini 2019, 410). Vice Principal at Sydney’s (Baptist) Morling College, Gayle Kent (2016), argues that when (heterosexual) marriage and parenthood is the only template evangelical leaders can offer for adult Christian life, many struggle to embody the gendered and sexual norms of their faith community. Married heterosexuality and parenthood are expected, and endorsed through evangelical advice literature. In Shorter’s research, Susan, an unmarried Anglican woman in her forties, spoke to the implicit ranking of relationship status when she explained to Shorter, ‘in the complementarian world, single people, single women—men are probably ok, because they’re human—but single women, well we’re more of problem than anything else … you’re not an equal member of society, that’s for sure.’ Here, a single woman is not merely assumed unhappy, she is a problem. She is potentially less human than a single man.

In evangelicalism, dating and marriage norms are not only regulated through advice literature, but through ecclesial discourses and accountability practices which spiritualise heteronormativity (Page and Shipley 2020; Sharma 2008). Some people who spoke with Shorter had learned dating norms through conversation and prayers focused on heterosexual marriage, rather than through sermons or reading the Bible. Emily, a parishioner in her thirties, spoke about navigating dating, saying, ‘I feel like so much of the Christian sex ethic is based on tradition and religiosity; not the Bible.’ Katie, an unmarried parishioner in her twenties, who had adhered to the norm of refraining from premarital sex, spoke of her shock at learning some of her Christian friends had acted otherwise:

I recently found out that so many of my Christian friends were having sex with their boyfriends, and I was like, ‘what, people actually do that? like that’s allowed?’ It’s so naïve of me.

For Emily and Katie, sexual norms (both conservative and permissive) were learned through conversation and accountability, rather than directly from the Bible. Katie, who was in a new relationship when interviewed, said that she had ‘always felt the pressure to meet someone.’ She explained:

My previous experiences of church have sometimes felt like the goal is always marriage, and so the single people [are told], ‘oh we’re praying for you to meet someone’, and to dating people it’s, ‘when are you getting married?’ Like, there is always this pressure. And then I think when people get married they get kind of, oh, you’re there, we don’t worry about you.

We can think of this pressure as the result of knowing and internalising the normative expectations of a community—happiness should be found in the ‘right’ places, that is heterosexual marriage. As Ahmed (2017, 49) writes, ‘not to be heading in the right direction can mean being put under pressure, or under more pressure, whether or not that pressure is intended.’ In Katie’s experience, prayer becomes pressure to follow the prescribed path, and we see that while virginity is expected if unmarried, it operates as a transit lounge on the journey to marriage. As in secular happiness-via-marriage scripts, marriage is the destination (‘you’re there’). Unlike secular scripts, here it is a prayed for goal. Marriage then becomes an answer to prayer, a reward from God. To not be ‘rewarded’ by God, and to remain in the transit lounge, can make a Christian person seem less than ideal, and potentially sinful as surely a ‘good’ Christian would be rewarded with both marriage and happiness.

Normative expectations, such as seeing marriage as the ‘goal’ for life, are shaped by dominant cultural scripts which uphold heteronormativity (Page and Shipley 2020). Drawing on Adrienne Rich, Sarah-Jane Page and Heather Shipley (2020, 94) assert that heteronormativity is focused on ‘the needs of heterosexual men’ and while it ‘impacts everyone it particularly negatively impacts queer communities and heterosexual women.’ Page and Shipley conceptualise heteronormativity ‘as a metanarrative’ which:

[A]ssumes distinct gender-binaries, male and female, which are defined both as ‘natural’ and as having prescribed roles in life. Heterosexuality is seen as the normative sexual orientation; all other sexual orientations are categorized as deviations from this ‘norm’.

2020, 94–95

As metanarrative or script, heteronormativity promotes a ‘life-course model’ focused on maintaining virginity before marriage and enjoying procreative sex within heterosexual marriage. We agree that ‘Christianity’s dominant script prioritising heterosexual marriage and procreation overshadows the greater number of theological sexual scripts available, such as singleness’ (Page and Shipley 2020, 99). We build on this by naming complementarianism as a dominant ecclesial discourse.

Complementarianism is an ecclesial discourse which tells a story of Christian men and women (with no room for nonbinary people), where to be a Christian woman is to be submissive (to your husband), and to be a Christian man is to be husband and leader. Consequently, complementarianism requires heterosexuality, and forecloses the possibility of faithful Christian living if single or in non-heteronormative intimacies. While many Christian scripts focus on virginity and heterosexual marriage, complementarianism is particularly limiting for women and queer people as it teaches men’s headship/leadership and women’s submission as necessary for faithful Christian ministry and marriage. This pattern of headship and submission necessitates fixed gender roles (Giles 2002), informed by the belief that men and women are ‘equal but different.’

Although complementarianism draws on biblical texts, it is our contention that a happiness-via-marriage script informs this ecclesial discourse, attaching social and religious rewards for those who adhere to headship and submission. A promise of happiness therefore operates as a rationale for adhering to complementarian ideals. Mark Thompson (2012, n.p.), principal of Moore Theological College, wrote that the complementarian ideals of headship and submission are not ‘restrictive’ but ‘life-giving.’ Whereas Moore College graduate, and Song of Songs scholar, Kamina Wust (2021) anecdotally cites that in our (Sydney) evangelical milieu, it’s ‘typical for teachers to reduce this warning [the adjuration refrain in the Song] to a moralising statement about saving sex until marriage.’⁷ Prominent Sydney Anglican advocate of complementarianism, Claire Smith (2012, 229) writes that complementarianism has made her marriage ‘happier and stronger.’ When writers of complementarian literature invoke a promise of happy, flourishing lives for conforming to this ‘biblical’ pattern, they naturalise and spiritualise heterosexual marriage as the path to happiness.

Such comments show how within complementarian discourse, a happy heterosexual marriage becomes the reward for faithful Christian living. That is, ‘right’ sexuality is a sign of ‘right’ faith. As American scholar of religion Amy DeRogatis (2015, 45) has argued, the consistent message in evangelical advice literature is ‘sex is natural, biblically sanctioned, and—if practised in the proper arena of heterosexual marriage—sex can be a sign of salvation.’ This conceptual link is also evident in the ‘position statement’ of BANSW/ACT (2022): ‘Marriage is a covenant relationship ordained by God as a lifelong faithful union of one man and one woman. Sexual intimacy outside such a marriage relationship is incompatible with God’s intention for us as his people’, and in the Anglican report on Human Sexuality, which provides an extended argument against same-sex marriage, and neglects the validity of singleness. The report suggests:

It is only with the woman that man can be God’s image, and it is only with the man that woman can be God’s image. So again, to be united in this complementarity is essential for the humanity that God describes as ‘very good’

Thompson 2015, 61, emphasis original

Not only is heterosexual marriage, where men lead and women submit, depicted as the enduring biblical ‘orthodox’ pattern of doing gender and sexuality, outside of heterosexual marriage, people cannot fully reflect the image of God, and nor can humanity flourish.

Similarly, Sydney-based Christian sexologist Patricia and her son, Kamal, Weerakoon, a Presbyterian Minister, argue that experience which falls outside of heteronormative/binary gender ‘is a tragic declension from God’s purposes for human flourishing’ (Weerakoon and Weerakoon 2016, 329). Here, promises of happiness and flourishing are used to depict clearly delineated binary gender and married heterosexuality as the ‘good’ and ‘biblical’ model, while queer lives and queer intimacies are presented as deviation or ‘declension’ from the path to flourishing.

A person who diverges from a gender-complementary, heterosexual model is therefore read as suspect, unable to ‘flourish’, insufficiently Christian and potentially unsaved. To quote Jill, to all those who are ‘unhappy,’ the message is, ‘your unhappiness is sinful.’ Informed by a spiritualised happiness-via-marriage script, complementarianism is limiting and harmful for unmarried Christians, women in abusive relationships, and queer Christians, because it positions their visible lack of a happy heterosexual marriage as both their own fault, and a sign that they have deviated from the path of right Christian living and ‘human flourishing’. If happy married heterosexual sex is a sign of salvation (DeRogatis 2015, 45), it follows that non-married, non-heterosexual lives are read as not only unhappy and deviant but non-Christian. The spiritualised happiness script declares that a faithful Christian must be enjoying married sex and that, conversely, married Christian sex is always necessarily happy. This is not only limiting, it is dangerous.

‘Unhappy’ (including unhealthy and abusive) Christian marriages become unthinkable.⁸ As Ahmed (2017, 10) suggests, ‘It is hard labor to recognize sadness and disappointment when you are living a life that is meant to be happy, but is not happy, which is meant to be full but feels empty.’ As a spiritualised happiness-via-marriage script, complementarianism regulates gender and sexuality by rendering divorce, non-married sexuality, and non-heterosexual Christian lives as not only unhappy but also sinful. In the following section, we briefly outline the nature of domestic abuse in the Australian church—because this is distinct from ‘unhappiness’ in marriage—and then explore the similar ways in which women experiencing domestic abuse and queer Christians are harmed by the dominant complementarian script.

4 Suffering (for God) as a Disciplinary Device

Domestic abuse exists where there is a pattern of abusive behaviour through which one person seeks to control or dominate another (United Nations 2022). It is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women (State of Victoria 2016). The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (State of Victoria 2016) reported that faith communities are vital settings for preventing and responding to domestic abuse. Church communities have the potential to be sources of support for women experiencing domestic abuse. However, the National Anglican Family Violence Project indicates that the incidence of domestic abuse may well be higher in the Anglican church than in the general population (Powell and Pepper 2021, 10–11). Domestic abuse in Christian, particularly complementarian, relationships is different to domestic abuse in other settings, because gender inequality—the key driver of gendered violence—is spiritualised.

Gender equality ‘refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men’ (UN Women 2022, 11). Gender inequality ‘arises from prescribed gender roles, whether socially, culturally, or theologically constructed’ (Pidgeon 2021, 552). In complementarianism, women—and queer people—do not have the same opportunities as men. Men are believed to have a God-given right to authority and leadership that women and queer Christians have not. Responsibilities are not equal, with roles assigned according to binary gender (rather than suitability, ability or gifting), and little to no roles or responsibilities for anyone who is outside this gender binary. Although a repeated refrain in complementarian scripts is that women and men are ‘equal but different,’ allocating roles according to gender results in inequality, and, as such, scaffolds gendered violence (Maddox Pigeon 2021; Shorter 2021).

Much like how happiness operates as a disciplinary device regulating gender and sexuality, domestic abuse has also been explained and spiritualised as a form of punishment for women who do not conform to the norm of submission. When a woman discloses abuse to her pastor or priest, often she is told to pray, to stay with and submit to her husband and therefore God’s will for her sexuality (Baird and Gleeson 2017), and ultimately, to suffer for God.

Cassandra, an Anglican woman in her seventies, told Shorter how her husband had limited her involvement in church activities. She reflected, ‘most of my problems have been husband control of wife.’ She says her husband justified his actions as religious conviction; ‘he believed thoroughly in wives doing what their husbands said.’ Cassandra explained that for some time she complied, because she also understood that was what was required of a good Christian wife. After divorcing her husband, she was ostracised by her church community. She recalls: ‘wives thought I’d be after their husbands, and the husbands thought I’d corrupt their little wifeys. So, all of a sudden, instead of being, you know, a fully participating member in a community, I was out.’ When women do not adhere to ascribed and rigidly defined gender roles, we are punished.

In a similar way, when a queer Christian transgresses socially constructed, embodied gender norms, they are read as sinful and disciplined. Steff Fenton⁹ recalls when they were first public about their sexuality and started attending church with their girlfriend (a relationship read, at the time, as ‘lesbian’), the response from the ministry team was to remove Fenton from ministry and exclude them from communion. Fenton’s relationship rendered their faith suspect in the eyes of the church. To Fenton, this emphasis on their sexuality and gender, and the requirement to be celibate, suggested they must do something or, indeed, not do something (not pursue intimate relationships with women, not be nonbinary) in order to be saved, stands in stark contrast to what they understand to be Christianity’s ‘core beliefs about grace and how you are saved.’ When Christian leaders talk to queer Christians about their sexuality, there is often a focus on the need to follow God’s law and conform to heteronormativity or be celibate. Whereas, Fenton says, ‘actually, to be Christian, is to rely purely on the grace of Jesus, knowing that I am imperfect’.

Anyone who does not conform to complementarian norms—abused wives, queer people, and single women—are being advised to do specific work in adherence to the complementarian script, in order to resolve their gender and sexual ‘unhappiness’ and align with the ‘happy’ norms of complementarianism. Queer Christians are told to pray, to submit to God’s will for their sexuality, and ultimately, to suffer for God. If they can’t—and pursue a non-heteronormative relationship—they are not welcome to take part in Christian community and ministry. As noted by Jones and colleagues (2018, 16), while ‘many churches have muted their anti-LGBT rhetoric, promoting a “welcoming but not affirming” policy towards LGBT people’, it remains the case that ‘these communities are saturated with an exclusively heterosexual sexual ideology, and offer prayer and counselling to anybody who does not conform to it.’ Those who, despite prayer and ‘counselling,’ do not conform, are removed from the community.

Though the happiness-via-marriage script creates different outcomes in different situations—queer Christians should leave, abused wives should stay—there is also a commonality; to suffer is Godly. As Jill says, ‘the Christian thing to do as a woman is suffer. And not to ever do anything that tries to minimise your suffering.’ Feminist theologian Karen O’Donnell (2022, 82–23) notes, when evangelicalism focuses on Divine Providence, ‘Any suffering endured in this life was part of this providential foreordaining and was to be patiently endured and ultimately rewarded in heaven.’ If a happy marriage cannot be secured in this life, then suffering may signal that reward in the next is secured. It becomes your Christian duty to suffer, to erase your (sexual) will, to do otherwise is to be wilful, and sinful.

The attribution of wilfulness is gendered (Ahmed 2014; 2017). This is apparent within complementarian discourse. While all Christians are called to conform to Christ, it is women who are called to be willing to submit to the will of another, while queer people are called to be willing to eliminate their will, their sexuality, and conform to the norms of heterosexual desire. This is echoed in Jill’s words:

If you go to someone in a church leadership position, in tears and say, ‘I cannot take this [marriage] anymore, it is killing me,’ or ‘I am unsafe,’ they will talk to you about their theology of suffering being something that glorifies God. They will say God is sending you this to teach you to pray more, to submit more, to be more obedient. As it happens, men are not called upon to suffer in any of those ways. But they’re still very ready to tell what is expected of them as a Christian. And when I say men, I just mean straight, white men in positions of power. If you’re a man who is maybe not straight, you are called upon to suffer and you’re told that if this kills you then that’s a way that you glorify God.

Jill’s use of the word ‘suffer’ appeared deliberately chosen to indicate that she refused to see women’s submission as godly. Jill’s speech is a quiet yet wilful act of survival as she refuses to spiritualise the erasing of a person’s will as good or godly. If it is not a theological requirement for a woman to suffer and erase her will, but the requirement of powerful men, she does not need to erase her will, and nor do queer Christians. In the following section, we retrieve alternate biblical scripts which encourage Christians to not erase their will, sexuality or experiences of unhappiness. We counter the happiness-via-marriage script embedded in complementarianism by making room for wilfulness, sexual agency and unhappiness within faithful Christian living.

5 Alternate Christian Scripts

We know that scripture can be both a source of harm and of healing (Pepper and Powell 2021; Rambo 2020). A mode of survival for Christian women experiencing religious coercive control is to have knowledge of (other) biblical interpretations and confidence to read in non-complementarian ways (Paynter 2020; Sharpe 2014). Research indicates the need to ‘encourage engagement with religious texts and teachings to promote gender equality’ (Truong, Sharif, et al. 2020, 3). To counteract dominant complementarian discourse, we engage with Song of Songs, which provides an alternative to complementarian gender roles, and Psalms, which allow for unhappiness. We suggest that Scripture—faithfully and alternatively interpreted—can help people heal from harmful uses of Scripture.

Song of Songs paints a poetic portrait of two young lovers—God’s given example of loving sexual relationship. The irony is not lost on us that in proposing an alternative script to gender roles and hierarchies we are looking to a (in)famous biblical example of heterosexual love(making). Since the 1970s, feminist interpreters have argued that the relationship between the lovers is characterised by equality, with no female subordination (Trible 1978, 161). The Song’s gender equality contributes to domestic abuse primary prevention through emphasising that women are whole embodied humans, rather than a fungible assemblage of body parts for objectification (Sessions 2021, 107–120); and contradicting prevailing beliefs and attitudes about female sexuality, with a woman who enjoys and expresses her sexuality (Sessions 2020, 75–88). The Song’s wilful woman pursuing a relationship in which her sexual agency is celebrated stands in stark contrast to the dominant complementarian script.

The Song provides an alternate gender-and-sexual script with its ‘gender-blurring imagery’ (Moore 2001, 41), especially in the poem at Song 5:9–16, which gives us biblical representations of gender that resist ‘binary absolutes’ (Spencer 2016, 139). The Song ‘masculinizes’ the female body (for example Song 4:4), ‘feminizes’ the male body (for example Song 5:9–16), and often uses similar or the same imagery and metaphors for male and female bodies. The lovers both have ‘flowing hair, dove-like eyes, wet and fragrant lips, along with a familiar descriptive repertoire of water springs, milk, lilies, Lebanon cedars, and various jewels and spices’ (ibid). The Song invites us to consider cultural gender, biological sex, and where they intersect in human sexuality in ‘a kind of epistemic ménage à trois’ (Moore 2001, 13), giving Christians an alternative to gender roles, stereotypes, binaries, and hierarchies.

This is an alternative to scriptural passages—ostensibly about marriage and family life, such as 1 Corinthians 7:1–16 and the ‘household codes’ (Col 3:18—4:1; Eph 5:21—6:9; Titus 2:1–10; and 1 Peter 2:18—3:7)—which have been (mis)used to harm women and queer people. Alana, a Sydney Anglican woman who—with her husband—led marriage preparation courses, acknowledged in an interview with Shorter that in some marriage preparation settings, ‘there are verses that people would use, and I don’t think are always helpful to use in marriage prep, like the Ephesians 5 one for instance.’ For Alana, this is because:

Many women have experiences of sexual assault, sexual abuse, shame surrounding sex before marriage, or even just fooling around before marriage, and a lot of people carry a lot of shame in that and take that into their marriages.

However, in response to Alana’s refreshing comment that she doesn’t want couples to have bad sex, ‘I want them to have great sex, so I talk a lot about that,’ when asked ‘are you trying to find … biblical resources that you can draw on in that as well?’ she explained:

I mean, you could read out Song of Songs if you wanted to talk about passionate sex with people, but, I don’t do that. I don’t come at it with like, this is the verse that says that this should happen, but the way that we communicate with people is definitely informed by the Gospel and so, yeah, I don’t come at marriage prep with a specific verse in mind.

In offering the Song as an alternate script to the dominant complementarian discourse, Christians—especially those who are in the position to counsel others about marriage—could understand that the Song in not prescriptive but descriptive. It is not an instruction manual. Rather, the Song is the scriptural example of how God intended love to be. It is precisely the text to have ‘in mind’ and draw on as a resource to help us to understand healthy, un-stereotyped, respectful expressions of love, sexuality and relationship.

Similarly, Psalms—specifically lament psalms—are exactly the resource for underscoring unhappy biblical scripts, thus validating unhappiness, anger and grief as legitimate emotions. The Psalter is ‘the most reliable theological, pastoral, and liturgical resource given us in the biblical tradition’ (Brueggemann 1984, 15). Psalms run the gamut of human emotion and experience, including dark descriptions of physical, social and spiritual suffering; ‘With provocative questions and complaints, they voice the despair of those who lament, and with assertiveness, the anger and frustration of the oppressed’ (Cohen and Sessions 2019, 103). Yet, in much the same way as the church has hidden Song of Songs behind a curtain, psalms of lament are often placed in the proverbial too-hard basket (Brueggemann, 1984, 52; McCann 1993, 85). Psalms of lament, complaint, petition, and imprecation make up the majority of the Psalter. The inclusion of so many Psalms of distress, deprivation, and cries from the depths surely communicates something of the human condition.

Shorter’s interviewees named Psalms as a resource to draw on, in response to grief, anxiety and trauma. The Psalter makes space for unhappiness to be part of faithful Christian living. Jill shared that when she had witnessed and experienced trauma, the Psalms ‘were the only thing I could deal with because there was a lot of anger in them, and a lot of grief, and a lot of just “this is horrible God”.’ For Catherine, a student experiencing the difficulties of being a female ministry candidate, the Psalms are her ‘place of rest and refuge with God.’ And for Susan, while ‘the Bible has always been somewhere you go to be reminded of how sinful and terrible you are and what you’re getting wrong’, the psalms offer comfort. Susan is now ‘able to read some of the psalms and other places where people are like, “God, what the hell?” and feel like, oh, ok, it’s not just me, and also, that it’s ok to be like that.’ What might it look like to see in the Psalms unhappy biblical scripts with which women and queer people can identify?

It might be surprising to know there are female voices in the Psalter (for example Ps 45, 68, 123, 131, 139 and others). We briefly highlight two unexpected places where women and queer Christians can reclaim biblical unhappiness: Psalms 113 and 61. Consider Psalm 113, a Psalm of praise in which God gives barren women children, in the light of Hannah’s Song (1 Samuel 2:1–10) and Hannah’s ‘abusive domestic situation’ (Paynter 2020, 8). The psalms enable reflection on ‘unhappiness’, such that experiences of infertility, miscarriage, and the desire to have—or not have—children, regardless of gender or sexuality, should not be taboo. Like O’Donnell (2022, 139–140), we long to hear stories like these for ourselves ‘and not shaped by biblical narrators who care only that they [women] produced male children who play important roles in the Hebrew nation’ and, likewise, not shaped through interpretation which sees women redeemed through a fruitful womb.

An alternate script for survivors of abuse and assault can be found in an interpretation of Psalm 61 which empathises with how Tamar—a rape survivor—must have felt hearing Psalm 61—a Psalm written by her father, King David—performed in the temple. Tamar did not experience such safety, shelter, or protection (Ps 61:2–4), nor were her cries for help heard (v. 1), arguably by David or God. Victim-survivors have both biblical figures with whom they can identify and language to bring their righteous anger and grief to God.

Though complementarian discourse has caused women and queer Christians suffering and to internalise their pain and anger, the Psalter proves that this pain and anger is not unthinkable, unspeakable, or ‘unchristian’. Unhappiness in not sinful. Each of the Psalms are ‘faithful speech addressed to God’ (Brueggemann 1984, 15). Calvin (1557)—an unlikely source in this context—found ‘the whole faith of the whole person articulated’—every joy and every cost—in the Psalms (Brueggemann 1984, 16). McCann (1993, 86) summarises, in sociological terms, that lament psalms speak to issues of injustice and avoid ‘a passivity that simply accepts or reinforces the status quo.’ In theological terms, lament psalms evidence that God is not ‘guarantor of the status quo,’ rather, God invites us to express our valid human emotions because God transforms hearts, minds, situations and, yes, churches. To fully flourish in our faith and in our humanity, we must be able to express the full range of our emotions and the—sometimes violent, sometimes painful—reality of our lived experience in fullness before God.

6 Conclusion

We have explored complementarianism as a specific ecclesial discourse which regulates gender and sexuality by spiritualising the happiness-via-marriage script. We demonstrated that the use of Scripture to promote gender-complementary models of marriage as necessary for both human flourishing and lived Christianity, maintains the dominance of this heteronormative script within evangelical communities. In doing so, we have named complementarianism as a regulatory discourse which employs happiness as an orientation or disciplinary device. It is important to consider complementarianism in this way, because when the happiness-via-marriage script is spiritualised, there is potential for Christians to believe that unhappy, unhealthy, and abusive heterosexual relationships are unthinkable and unspeakable (indeed, unbelievable and unreportable), while happiness and faithful Christian living outside of heteronormative marriage is deemed impossible. We do not ask Christians to set aside their Bibles or their sexuality in order to pursue faithful Christian lives. Instead, we have advocated for the circulation of alternative Christian scripts, allowing unhappiness to be a valid mode of Christian experience, and a powerful critique of ecclesial discourses centring heteronormativity as the only path to happiness and flourishing. This also points towards possibilities for future research, further considering the uses of emotion, particularly a reclaiming of supposedly negative emotions, in maintaining, resisting and changing gendered and sexual norms within Christian settings, and when responding to spiritual harms.

The Bible does not belong only to powerful men. We may hear their interpretations, but we may also hear interpretations which contradict, subvert, and humble them. It is our hope and prayer that if alternative scripts are more commonly told, they may give Christian people permission and freedom to live God-honouring lives—in happiness and unhappiness—across an array of non-hierarchical, ethical sexual intimacies and celibacies.