Jee Hae Lee
This article examines gender discourse within the Lausanne Movement (LM) across its four Core Documents and selected Occasional Papers from 1974 to 2024. Despite the LM’s significance for global evangelical cooperation in world mission and evangelization, its treatment of gender has received remarkably little critical scholarly attention. Through systematic textual analysis, this article traces a complex and non-linear trajectory: from the strategic silence of the Lausanne Covenant (1974), through the measurable yet modest progress of the Manila Manifesto (1989), to the explicit advocacy for gender justice of the Cape Town Commitment (2010-2011), and recently to the troubling reversal of the Seoul Statement (2024). The analysis demonstrates that the LM has consistently prioritized institutional unity over gender justice, deploying strategy to accommodate both egalitarian and complementarian positions within its theologically diverse coalition. Complementarianism, grounded in the creation order, operates as a theological ceiling: it concedes the dignity of women while foreclosing their full ministerial participation. In addition, the Seoul Statement (2024) deploys gender discourse solely as a contested area against perceived external threats. By prioritizing institutional unity over gender justice and by recently framing gender as a contested area for defending traditional binary concepts, the Lausanne Movement risks weakening the full mobilization of God’s called and gifted women, thereby compromising its own stated commitment to empowering “the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”