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Should a wife "submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband"? Not according to 69 percent of respondents to a 1998 Gallup Poll. But the evangelical jury is still out on the matter.

Should gender or gifts primarily determine the roles performed by husbands and wives? Have we too readily accepted the tenets of feminism? Have we allowed the patriarchal tradition to limit women?

Two groups have taken opposing stands in this impassioned debate on two fronts: the home and the church. This article focuses on the debate about the home—and on the marriages that live out the two models.

Before the 1980s, evangelicals' understanding of gender roles was largely implicit; few theologized about it. Most evangelicals practiced male leadership in the home and in the church, but they tended not to explain it in a way that would get the attention of the secular press.

Since the late '80s, though, two Bible-believing movements—the egalitarian Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) and the complementarian Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW)—have given us a language for the gender debate.

Complementarians talk about headship of husbands as well as submission of wives. Egalitarians speak of biblical equality and mutual submission of the spouses.

CBE was formed in 1987 by members of the Minnesota chapter of the Evangelical Women's Caucus International who withdrew from the caucus after it officially recognized a lesbian minority. CBMW was born later that same year. "Our cause exists because an alternate vision has arisen," president Bruce Ware said at a CBMW marriage conference last year. Both groups say theirs is the biblical view. How do adherents of those views live them out?

If a wife gives up or suspends her career to raise the children, and yields to her husband even when she disagrees with him—while the husband functions as the spiritual leader of the home—then the couple very likely subscribes to the complementarian philosophy.

A case in point is an episode from the life of Don Balasa, a Chicago lawyer and CBMW's legal counsel, and his wife, Kate Balasa, who homeschools their daughter. The Balasas were visiting Buffalo, New York, when the terrorist attacks suspended air travel. They had airplane tickets for September 13 but weren't sure they would be able to fly home that day.

"An area that Don usually defers to me is travel," Kate told me. "So he asked me, 'What are our options?' After giving him all the scenarios, I told him I'd prefer to wait at the hotel and fly home." But Don thought it would be safer and a better use of time to drive home to Chicago immediately.

"I told Don, 'I'm deciding to submit to you here, but I really disagree with your decision.' He just very lovingly, very kindly said, 'I think this is the direction we need to go,' " she says. They ended up renting a car and, "as it turned out, we would have been stuck there for several more days."

Does she feel resentment when Don goes against her wishes?

"No bitterness has built up," she says. "I trust God that he has put Don in a place of headship in our home, and Don's leadership is loving." She adds that many times Don is clearly opposed to something she wants to do—like a recent home renovation—yet he gives her a go-ahead.

Wayne Grudem, a CBMW council member who coedited the complementarian magnum opus, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Crossway, 1991), made a big sacrifice for his wife, Margaret.

For several years, she has lived with constant pain due to fibromyalgia. The soreness eased whenever the two visited hot and arid Arizona, and they entertained the idea of moving there. The move could have hindered Wayne's career. A scholar at the well-known Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, Wayne found one school he could work at in Arizona: the little-known Phoenix Seminary.

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March 11 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3