Janice

This 1985 paper by Harold Bussell (which I found through the link at Cindy’s post on evangelical Christians’ vulnerability to cults states,

A close examination of every major cult today, with the exception of Eastern cults, reveals that they all began in an evangelical church or with a leader from an evangelical background. …
Their foundation always began with an identity by opposition. …
Evangelicals also tend to couple their definitions of spirituality with leanings toward legalism. … We often forget that perfect communities come about at the expense of human freedom. …
We have failed to distinguish between biblical absolutes and cultural issues. Morally, the Bible is always absolute; culturally, it is relativistic. Fornication was wrong in Jerusalem and in Corinth; however, whether one could eat pork depended on in which city he lived. This gives a sense of security on the surface but not a security rooted in God’s word and grace. Cults are usually legalistic and hold high standards against the use of tobacco and alcohol and against other worldly habits. …
We seek out those who will reinforce our own likes and dislikes. The result is a blindness to the richness of diversity God offers to us within the body of Christ and a blindness to our own tendencies mentally to write off the other members of the body of Christ. We subtly remove … our responsibility to “love one another (John 13:35). Each cult offers both uniformity and identity by opposition

I’m Australian.  When I was a kid we used to say that whatever the Yanks are doing we’ll be doing in 20 years’ time.  I think we’ve caught up more than I’d like.
Until March this year I thought the only churchly male vs. female issue here was whether women should be ordained but at a meeting planning activities with a group of theology students who were going to visit one of the men present said he was feeling hesitant about allowing female students to speak at the local university.  When I asked why he cited 1 Timothy 2:12 which surprised and disturbed me.  If he’d said he was hesitant about the women speaking at a church service I might have let it slide but to get twitchy about women speaking during an outreach at a secular university struck me as decidedly peculiar.
Since then I’ve googled far and wide, discovered the complementarian/egalitarian divide and learned that in the USA this verse has been used to justify the dismissal of at least two women from church run organisations.  In one case it appears possible that the verse was used as a strategem to get rid of a woman who had a history of causing problems.  In the other case it appears that the verse was used  truly ideologically, i.e., the authorities at that institution really believe that no woman, no matter how well qualified in her subject, should teach any man.  My understanding is that because both women were working for church run organisations they have no recourse under US law.
What I see is a new kind of opposition identity being formed.  Its roots are in (sexual) politics.  It reminds me of the fascination with end times stuff that was going on 20 odd years ago, before the USSR fell apart, when people were planning to go bush and grow their own food so they could survive the Tribulation without using a Bankcard.  The ones I knew were so obsessed that they seemed to have no energy left for growing in Christ and helping to fulfil the Great Commission.
So now lots of people are thinking everything will be all right if we can just get women to believe (or at least act as though they believe) that helping (ezer) their husband means doing, in all circumstances, whatever their husband wants them to do.  What complete rot!  What better recipe could you have for producing a bunch of self-absorbed, self-delighting, authoritarian bullies hardly distinguishable from Wahabi Muslims?  That they’re also saying that people who think differently are heretics is just another sign that sections of the complementarian crowd are on the road to being just another weirdo cult.