The Bible and Female Subordination?

Great Debates
1

I went to church with my grandparents this Sunday (I’m staying with them for the week while AngelMom and AngelDad live it up in St. Martin) It was a Penecostal service, and the sermon was on challenges faced by the family, and the tendency of family members to take each other for granted. The pastor said one of the things that can cause a rift in a family is reversed roles and rebellion. Because Eve gave into temptation and Adam stood by passively, the man should lead the household. He believed that women should obey their husbands and that husbands should be careful not to ask more from their wife then they themselves are willing to give.

I refuse to obey my future husband the way I obey (or try to obey) my parents. :mad:

So, I’d like to know what other Dopers think, both the literalists and the more liberal Christians (I don’t care for the term “cafeteria Christian”) like myself. :slight_smile:

2

Yes! It’s always important to make the one who stood by passively into the leader–by default.

Julie

3

This is one of the main reasons I do NOT DO NOT like the Promise Keepers.

They think the same way.

IDBB

4

We had the most horrendous trainwreck on this topic a while ago.

First, draw a distinction: The O.T. was written in a patriarchal society, and the N.T. is largely by people who were the product of that society. That’s point A, and the result is that Scripture and those who try to live by it tend to take a very masculinist, nearly chauvinist perspective.

To the extent possible, most Christians take this attitude with a large grain of salt. Modern society with men and women as total equals in the workplace and almost every social or civic venue (at least as an ideal; I admit there are some old boys’ networks still extant) doesn’t allow for any presumption that they knew something we don’t. It’s a cultural element that needs to be discounted in reading Scripture for any applicability to today’s world.

Point B is Paul’s system for marriage. It too comes out of that patriarchal culture, but it’s tailored quite a bit differently. He analogizes husband and wife to Christ and church: but not just in a top-down authority mode. Christ loved and cherished humanity (equated to the church, since Paul was writing to early Christians) and gave His life for them. In Paul’s view, the husband is to exercise “headship” to which the wife assents – but he is to cherish her and listen to her wishes. Without both halves, the Pauline marriage is not working right – it becomes a pretext for men dominating their wives (or, of course, for women bending their husbands around their little fingers, an aspect not often commented on).

The other element of this is, it’s a system that works – not the only way to do things. Wise and strong women have guided and cherished kindly but ineffectual men before, in a role reversal, and a couple may be quite strong and loving enough to work an even-steven relationship. As it happens, Barb and I have a Pauline marriage – but not from my being a forceful male demanding it of her. Her style is not to be assertive, to want final decisions made for her – with her feelings and attitudes taken into account, to be sure. She’s the emotional, intuitive half of us; I’m the empathic problem-solver. So the Pauline role setup works for us. And if it ever didn’t, we’d drop it in a moment – by mutual agreement.

It’s also important to recognize that this is not a system for men and women but for husbands and wives. And that’s not a distinction without a difference – it’s people who willingly enter into specific roles vis-à-vis each other, not somthing you’re cast into by virtue of what sex you were born.

But in any marriage, set up on whatever terms, one of the finest ways to lose what was valuable in it is for either partner to take the other for granted. He’s right on that point. As for role reversal being a problem, I’m highly skeptical. It can, to be sure – as when a man feels that deference to his wife is somehow “unmanly.” But I’ve seen couples that work the reverse-Pauline system very effectively, and I’d be inclined to think that he’s another one of those who thinks that his way is the only way.

5

The Bible does say, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord,” but it also instructs, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians 5:22,25). A man who under-stands that Jesus Christ sacrificed His life’s blood for the Church will likewise love his wife sacrificially and passionately. He will honor her, respect her, protect, love, and cherish her as much as he does his own body, as he is instructed to do (Ephesians 5:28). He will never say or do anything to harm or demean her. It is in this atmosphere of love and security that a godly wife willingly submits herself to the protective arms of her husband. She does this not because he is better than she is, but simply because this is God’s order for His creation.

A godless world rejects the God-given formula to make marriage work. It thinks it knows best, and suffers the heartbreaking consequences of destroyed marriages and ruined lives. The Christian ideal of marriage is not one of an authoritarian and chauvinistic male holding his cringing wife in submission like an obedient dog. It’s the very opposite. While most of the great religions treat women as inferior to men, the Bible gives them a place of dignity, honor, and unspeakable worth, expressed so evidently in Proverbs 31.

6

Svt, thank you for your prejudiced, uninformed generalizations about other religions.

7

Part of the problem, Svt, is that the attitude your post is riddled with is extremely patronizing and demeaning. While it’s true that a man is supposed to treat a woman well, it also becomes clear he’s treating her as a valuable possession. That’s clear in the Tenth Commandment, actually.

Pfeh. The best marriage I’ve seen in my life is between two Ethical Humanists. As far as statistics go, atheists and other secular types have low rates of divorce of any denomination in this country.

Well, let’s ask the Bible. In Corinthians, it says “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” [I Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)]

8

The crucial part of that passage in Ephesians is the part most often left out. The section headings such as those found between vv 21 and 21 are inserted by the translators and do not exist in any way, shape or form in the original text. Understanding this, we can see how important verse 21 becomes - “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”. This is the secret of a strong/good/loving marriage - where each partner is living in submission to the other. IOW both husband and wife need to be living with the concerns and the desires of thier partner as central, rather than thier own. Of course, this is not an easy thing to do, as it requires constant communication of desires, hopes and dreams and very often, marriages slip into one of two extremes:[ol][li]nothing ever gets decided - “I don’t mind, what do you want to do?”[*]one partner makes all the decisions and dominates the marriage[/ol]The Pauline model for marriage is one where the husband has “headship” (as Poly describes) which he exercises to prevent the first extreme, but within the framework of mutual submission which prevents the second exteme. On our marriage, this “headship” role is passed back and forth between pixie and I - at times, each of us have needed a kick up the backside to do that which we know we need to do but cannot summon the energy to begin. But it must be a role that is taken on willingly and this, I believe, is where the problems begin - when husband or wife is forced/feels obliged (by thier partner, society at large, thier religious community, parents, etc) to play out a role in which they are not happy.[/li][QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Marley23 *
**As far as statistics go, atheists and other secular types have [the] low[est] rates of divorce of any denomination in this country. **
[/QUOTE]
Could you back that up with a little cite for me?

I read somewhere a long time ago (so no cite I’m afraid ;))that the marriages that lasted the longest were those where the husband was dominated into submission by the wife, and put up no resistance to anything she wanted - certainly no model for happiness. :slight_smile:

Grim

9

I’m both a feminist and a Christian and attempts to dominate me have an unfortunate history of failure. I’ve read and heard that Christianity is inherently sexist; I disagree.

Here are a few points:
[ul][li]Even in the Old Testament, there are women of great will, intelligence and courage. Two of them, Ruth and Esther, have books named after them. There’s also Rahab who helped Joshua win the battle of Jericho before the ram’s horns came into play. Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, the Old Testament Matriarchs also struck me as very sensible types.[/li]
[li]In the Apocrypha, there’s the Book of Judith, who was not only a general, but who cut off the head of an opposing general. [/li]
[li]Paul. Paul, I admit, comes off as a misogynist, and I must admit, I didn’t like him for a long time because of this. After all, this is the man who wrote "women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. " in 1 Corinthians 14:34. This is also the man who was run out of synagogs by women, something which, strictly in my opinion, may have contributed to the former statement. He also disapproved of marriage, and he did have a rather zealous streak in him as both Jew and Christian. Still, as noted above, even he directed husbands to love and cherish their wives.[/li]
[li]There’s also Phoebe who Paul mentions in Romans 16:1. The original Greek describes her as a “diakonos” and Paul describes her as a “good friend.” How he reconciled this with that verse in 1 Corinthians is something I’d love to know.[/li]
Now to the crux of the matter.

[li]Jesus. Because it is Him upon whom my faith depends, it is His words and actions I ultimately look to. Look at Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters in Luke 10:40-42:[/li]

I’m running out of time, but I’ll also point out that the first person Christ revealed Himself to as Saviour was a woman (the Samaritan woman at the well), as was the first person he revealed Himself to after His resurrection. The men had run off.[/ul]

I have no doubt that men have, throughout history, distorted and drawn the focus of Christianity to some things and away from others. I admit I do the same thing. Maybe if I were by nature more submissive and obedient, I, too would focus on those verses which speak of women’s submission. Since I’m not, I see in Christ’s words and deeds One who treated women as equals even in a time in which they were considered property.

CJ

10

As an atheist with a long marriage (just celebrated our 26th anniversary yesterday) who enjoys bondage and dominance fantasies, I feel fully qualified to comment on this topic.

First of all, I give the Bible a pass for any injunctions it may have about wifely submission. It was written 2,000 years ago by a bunch of butt-ignorant, murdering, slave-holding camel fuckers who thought women were not so valuable as camels but maybe a little better for fucking. (OK, the bit about camel fuckers was a gratuitous insult, nothing else it.)

The Bible reminds me of the joke about the dog that could talk. It had a bad accent of course, and when its owner was reminded of its bad accent, he replied, “The wonder is not that he has a bad accent, but that he can talk at all.” That is, there’s lots of advanced thought (for ancient camel fuckers) on morality in the Bible. But still, some parts of the Bible reveal what a fucked-up crew wrote it, and the way women are treated in the Bible is a great example. The wonder isn’t that women are treated badly in the Bible, but that they are mentioned at all outside numerical tallies with goats, camels, etc.

Any modern, intelligent Christian must reject the screwed-up stuff and stick with the good stuff about respecting women, etc. You have to pick and choose, given the nature of the document you’re working from. That’s OK. (And that’s why it’s not OK to be a fundamentalist.)

That said, any attempt to force or coerce someone into participating in a marital or sexual relationship that involves a power imbalance against their will is just plain wrong. If you tell your wife she has to submit to you judgment because it says so in the Bible when her every instinct is to not do so, well, you may not EXACTLY be blackmailing her, but you aren’t far from it.

Fortunately, a lot of women enjoy submission.

11

It’s very interesting how (in many ways) Poly and Svt4Him said the same thing - submission (when viewed properly) is not the evil thing it is made out to be, and that it works well for many.

The difference of course being how each of them presented their positions, and the level of humility in one and willful arrogance in the other.

Like I said - interesting.

12

Divorce Cite

Barna, by the way, is a Christian research organization.

13

Evil Captor:

Well, what a nice way to characterize every single Jew in the world.

14

You need to look at these numbers more carefully. I think the comparison to atheists is not valid. It is very likely that atheists are younger, on average, than Christians, possibly a lot younger. Obviously, the younger a person is, the less likely they are to have been divorced at least once in their life.

Also, the study does not make clear whether the “born-again” divorcees were divorced before or after they became born-again. I’ve only been born once myself, but it is my understanding that many people turn to religion (or become “born-again”) in response to a crisis in their lives. Such as a divorce, for example. So the higher figure for born-again people may reflect an increased likelihood of a divorced person becoming born-again, rather than an increased likelihood of someone who is born again becoming divorced.

The ethnic group comparisons are also suspect, as they fail to take into account the fact that some ethnic groups marry at higher rates than others. Obviously, the more common marriage is, the more common divorce will be.

15 
I agree a lot with you Evil Captor... except mostly about Camel Fucking. They were primarily goat fuckers. (Size and Ease of use.) The problem with your conclusion is that if the Bible is sacred... its ALL sacred... so no pick and chose for the "beleivers". Especially if they are the bread winners and feel they should overpower their wives. (Like you said... no no for fundamentalists.)
16

Come on, argue with me on something related to a real objection. I was talking about the Jews who were alive 2000-3000 years ago. And I am completely cool with what I said, as you should be, since it’s true. Those goat-fuckers (good point, Rashak) were a sick bunch, by today’s standards. So was most everybody else floating around in the Middle East at the time.

17

See, you had me up until there. The whole thing sounded great until this point, and frankly, this point seems to come out of the blue with neanderthal sexism. If the equation can’t work the other way around, or if both can’t sacrifice for each other and submit to each other equally, then it’s sexism plain and simple.

Cite? Or is this just your own projection?

The reason for these statistics is that divorce is highly correlated with major life stressors like poverty and lack of education, and since Christianity in the U.S. has it’s largest saturation in rural areas (read: the Southern Bible Belt), it encompasses more of these types of people. Yet another reason why you can’t just compare groups: you have to isolate factors. Maybe fundamentalist marriages are psychologically difficult, maybe not, but the data doesn’t prove it one way or the other.

18

The latter. I looked around a bit in response to your challenge, but was only able to come up with this cite about atheism in Brazil. But I think it is pretty apparent and am not going to bother doing any more searching at this point. Feel free to disagree.

19

Anyone else have a problem with this line? I don’t know if Angel Heart said this, or the pastor she was listening to, but my understanding of the whole Adam/Eve thing was that he did not stand by passively. He refused to take the fruit, knowing it was against what God told him. Only when Eve took it did he do the same, and it was out of necessity. However, my Church, at least, teaches that was Eve did was also very necessary. She understood what she was doing and why she had to. And since she would be booted from Eden, Adam joined her so they would stay together. I think, in the end, both of them came out pretty good.

As for the women submitting to the men in the teachings of the Bible, I’m not sure I have the energy to explain my thoughts. Suffice it to say that it doesn’t give men license to mistreat or dominate their wives (something I’ve seen quite a bit among my, and other, churches). I think, in the end, Christ taught that a marriage is a union of equals, each having different responsibilities with the marriage and the family. Today, some of those responsibilities are seen as demeaning, which is too bad. Somewhere along the line, it became gauche that a woman was the one responsibile for raising the children. Too bad. I think it’s basically because of the greed and pride in our society.

But basically, when done right, a marriage should be a great, equal union, with both partners being equal and happy. Sadly, that just isn’t the case these days as often as it should be.

20

No one expects you to obey your husband like you do your parents just like no one would expect you to love your husband like you love your parents.

The trouble with discussions like this is that there is always a group of people who respects the bible for what it is: a collection of stories and adages that, when taken together, form a wonderful example of how one can live one’s life. Then there is another group of people who have decided that everything in the bible is counter to how they think things should be done, and they will stop at nothing to keep trying to prove their point by taking every seemingly offensive sentence and bashing it to death.