Will we lie still and keep our mouths shut while complementarian restrictionists seek to take our freedom? Will we lie still and not speak out when movies such as Courageous promote a Resolution for Men and a Resolution for Women that seeks to take our marriages away from us and give it over to our husbands? Will we lie still and not speak up when women are encouraged to submit to a husband who is to be fully in charge of his family, his marriage, his home?
They want a Resolution Revolution. They want men and women to desire strong men who will control their families. They do not seek men who will lovingly partner with his wife in their marriage and help raise their children together. They want women to sign a Resolution that she will turn her marriage over completely to her husband and that she will teach her daughters this way and that she will “encourage its support by my sons.”
Note that she can’t teach her sons, only her daughters.
When a man signs the Resolution, he signs that he is the only one who can cause his marriage to fail or to survive. How ridiculous is that? Men do not own a marriage and they do not own a woman and the children in a marriage. A man cannot be solely responsible for success or failure of his marriage.
A marriage is just that. It is union of a man and a woman working together for the benefit of their children and for society. It is not his and it is not hers. It is theirs.
The children in a family are not his to control over. The children should be loved and protected by the husband and by the mother who gave birth to them. Do we want to go back to the days when a husband’s word was the law? Are we willing to lie down and let these kind of resolutions go unchallenged?
A woman friend of mine who is an elder in her church that allows women to be pastors and elders and deacons said that she wanted to be sure to see Courageous. Why? Why do you think she wants to see it? Because she believes that marriages are in trouble and that men should be taking responsibility in the home. Well, she is right to a degree, and to a degree, only.
Marriages are in trouble and men do need to be taking responsibility in the home. But not the sole responsibility.
Men who take on sole responsibility over a home tell the females in that family that they are inferior because he is the superior one who makes the decisions now. Those men will tell their daughters who to marry and even choose a mate for her. That is what extreme patriarchal Doug Philips of Vision Forum (which influenced the movie maker Steven Kendrick ) wants men to do. They want female children to live at home until they find a person to marry or until the father finds a person for them to marry. They want a return to full patriarchal families.
God help us! We have left that era, haven’t we? Haven’t we left the era when the fathers sit down at the table and expect everyone to serve him? When he eats first while the women bring food to him?
Women do not need a leader. Children need leaders. Women need husband-helpers as they themselves are fully equal wife-helpers in a marriage. This is not some modern day culture that ‘feminists’ are trying to foster on society, as they tell you in this Resolution. Helpers has its beginning in Genesis and we are reclaiming the rightful meaning of helper. Women do not need a leader in their own marriage. They are a leader!
Will we lie still while this complementarian restrictionists belief take hold once again in families?
Will we lie still while foolish women lose their freedom once again to a husband who calls all the shots because it is his family.
Talk to your pastor. Let him or her know that a marriage is an equal partnership and make your pastor aware of the patriarchy message that Courageous promotes with their Resolutions. If you are not comfortable speaking to your pastor, will you forward this blog to your pastor and others in your church that are promoting male headship through this movie “Courageous?”
If you believe that it takes both men and women in a marriage working in partnership to raise their children, will you join me in speaking up against the Resolution that will bind families to the whim of a husband, and create a desire for power that is not theirs to have?
bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog 
Nothing good can come from absolving one adult from responsibility in a relationship, and placing all the responsibility on the shoulders of another. It’s better, I suppose, than the other model I have seen in some patriarchal teachings, where the man gets all the authority, but all the responsibility is on the woman– so that if anything goes wrong in their marriage, it’s her fault for not lifting up her man enough or being submissive enough. If you’re going to give the man all the authority, then he’d doggone well better take the responsibility that goes with it!
But in reality, it’s a mistake to give the man all the authority in the first place. God said it was not good for the man to be alone. But if the woman is in the same place as the children (only maybe she’s like an older child who takes care of the others), alone is just where the man is. If he finds that in addition to all the authority, he’s also got all the responsibility– that’s a recipe for a heart attack.
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I was reading a book about Armenian Christians in the U.S. in 1918, and the young man said to his fiancee “A wife has to put her husband above everyone else, isn’t that so?” She said “Above God?” He said, “You’re a woman. You answer to me. I handle God.”
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In other words: “I am your God now, woman.”
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The more I study the more I struggle to see any concept of male authority in the New Testament. If a husband does have ‘headship’, I’m convinced it’s meant to be a loving, serving one only. That’s far more fitting with the overall message of both Paul AND Jesus. Hubby’s supposed to be a caretaker, not a director. ‘Leadership’ and ‘giving oneself up’ are opposites. Yes, being a caretaker and loving husband would require submission on the wife’s part, because he’s taking initiative, but it’s all for her good anyway. ‘Roles’ don’t have anything to do with it either, that’s another completely made-up concept. It’s all about how to love each other, nothing more.
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Plus you’ll find a lot of marriage advice says that when a husband is loving the wife will naturally respond out of reciprocating love. In other words, HE has to treat her right before SHE will willingly submit. Not the other way around, like so many comp pastors say.
I wonder what difference it would have made had Paul switched the verses around and put the loving husband ones first, before the wife submission ones.
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Actually, Ancient Near East cultures used a different structure in the way they set up paragraphs. The most important point was not at the beginning or the end, but right in the middle. See this post of mine for more information:
http://krwordgazer.blogspot.com/2011/10/is-marriage-really-ilustration-of.html
But the reason Paul put the instructions to wives first and the instructions to wives second, was not because the instructions to wives were higher priority. Quite the opposite, in fact. Due to the unequal power structure of marriage at that time, only husbands had the ability to take their marriages in the direction the Spirit was leading Christian marriage. So what was said to the husbands was more important– so Paul put it closer to the center of the passage.
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Shirley, I was hoping to respond to your recent comment describing your marriage of nearly 50 years, but I see you have deleted it for some reason.
I wanted to tell you that my husband and I will be married 50 years ourselves in 2012. From what I remember about your deleted comment, our marriage has operated similar to yours all these many years. It has been a good, solid marriage and a happy one for us.
My husband has been the official breadwinner all these years. However I have helped him in one form or another for the past 35 years in his business. I have been the chief cook and bottle washer at home all these years. However, my husband has pitched in when I needed his help. We see ourselves as life partners. It is our marriage, our children, our home and so on as you yourself said about you and your husband. We see ourselves as equals. We do not think in terms of a headship with my husband being that head. Our motto is “two heads are better than one.” In reality, with all the problems and issues that arise while two married people are building a life together and raising a family together, it takes both of them pooling their mental resources in order to arrive at good solutions. Whenever my husband and I have had a major decision to make, we have sat down together and talked it over till we arrived at a conclusion that was agreeable to both of us. Almost all successful marriages that I have been exposed to in my life time, and I have been exposed to many, have operated like ours. The husband and wife have been equals.
I want you to know that my husband and I attend a Methodist church where both the senior and junior pastors are women. I see this as good. I believe it is according to God’s will. I also want you to know that with all this talk about the return of male headship and submissive wives, I have vowed that if ever I attend a different church service for some reason and this is preached, I will stand up and walk out in protest.
Shirley, you have a fire in your belly that I admire. You keep that fire burning bright.
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Welcome! We are so glad that you commented. Thank you for joining in the discussion. Yes, I wrote about my marriage, and felt that it perhaps was too much information, so I took it down. As you know, 50 years is a long time and much happens in those 50 years. Hopefully there is growth together as it has been in your marriage. Thank you so much for writing about your own experience as the words you say are very important as many people never hear about marriages that last this long. After reading what you said, I realized that perhaps the younger ones who are reading this blog need to know how a 50 year marriage works. I apologize for forgetting that I have many readers who can identify with that many years. I also want to thank you for your words of encouragement.
This is the comment you were referring to:
As Don and I will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary in the near future, I have had some experience in this area of marriages. So here is my wisdom to those of you who have not been married so long.
A marriage grows and develops, just as the people in a marriage do. When you are barely 18 years old and your husband is just a few years older, neither one of you have any idea what you will be facing as you begin this journey. My parents were married 54 years before my father died, and my husband’s parents were married 48 years before his father died. So we both had stable marriages as our example. But we both had siblings who have been divorced so we knew that it could happen even with parents who remained together.
Sometimes I am the leader because I have certain skills that my husband does not have. He has skills that I don’t have. I can’t read a map and have no idea where I am most of the time, and he always knows where we are. Since he is a man, he always made more money than I ever did even though I have worked for 35 years. He makes a better cup of coffee than I do. So while we did not know it, we were working toward equality.
We were in church every Sunday and never heard anything about submission until sometime in the 1970s. We certainly never heard that a wife was to submit to her husband because that represented the relationship between a church and Christ.
By the 1970s I had grown up and realized that sometimes husbands were wiser, and sometimes wives were wiser.
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Appalling. Tweeted this. Thanks so much for keeping up informed, Shirley.
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Meant thanks for keeping “us” informed.
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They were going to show the movie to our kids at church and I pointed out my concerns and they did not show it.
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Nice going brother. That is a better definition of courageous if you ask me–speaking up for freedom and equality in church!
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Don, WOW! good for you!!! wish more Christians are that careful and caring!
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In relation to the message of movies like “Courageous,” I spend time in my counselling practice helping men who have burned out trying to be the Lord and Saviour of everyone in their home and family. I also spend time with women who feel that they are not free to partner with their husbands as adult care-givers. They feel that their gifts and potential are stifled. The notion that “men exclusively must lead” places unfair burdens on men, while simultaneously infantilizing women. In the end, everyone suffers. Apparently, this role imbalance is rooted in “God’s Word.” If only Christians knew how much the Bible has been altered through gender-biased translation in ancient Rome and medieval Europe. The Bible I read in Greek is very unlike some Bibles I read in English, particularly concerning the role of women.
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St Paul wrote a lot of interesting and wise things, but he was neither God nor Jesus. He spoke, in part, with their authority. My local elected Mayor speaks with the authority of the electors; that doesn’t mean he’s always right.
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Angy, the Scriptures are correct, but translations can be invariably gender biased and men’s interpretations are often wrong, biased, and out of context, to name a few pitfalls. It is not Scriptures, it is interpretation of Scriptures.
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Very true Mabel. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church of Rome introducing Phoebe as a “diakonos.” Regarding men, this word is most often translated “minister” or “deacon.” Yet in the King James Bible, it is translated “servant” or “succourer” with regard to Phoebe, a woman. Paul also referred to Phoebe as a “prostatis.” When this word is used of men, it is translated “ruler” or “leader.” In the King James when this word is used of Phoebe, a woman, it is again translated “servant.” Many of the Bible’s we read today bear the marks of gender-biased translation. One of the earliest “authoritative” Bible translations was done, largely, by St. Jerome. He believed that women were “the root of all evil.” He also believed, literally, that women are saved from sin by bearing children. His biases still confound many readers of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. Unfortunately, many Christians today believe that their English translation of choice is an inerrant translation of the Bible’s earliest Greek manuscripts. Sadly, human error and prejudice have tainted the translation process. Translation impacts interpretation and vice versa. We need to revere God and his word, without blinding ourselves to the faults of the “early church fathers,” all of whom were merely human.
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Bob,
Your scholarship and your words are like a breath of fresh air. We need to hear the truth in the details. People: get a good Hebrew/Greek interlinear…and attend, also, to those who know their way around it.
I grew up Roman Catholic (12 years of Catholic school and so on) and in that system there are so many mechanisms for subduing the masses, i.e., both women and men who are not part of the elite, the interpretations of St. Jerome being just one of the mechanisms. My loved ones still in the system regard the priests, bishops, and so on, as spiritually superior. They (as was I) are trained from infancy to revere Catholic men of the cloth almost as, I don’t know, demi-gods. The words of the priests are sacrosanct. There are many levels and kinds of conditioning that go into this ultimate belief. The people are then easily swayed by the words and teachings of those men which is why they have/will follow the whims and fancies of Catholic doctrine without question, as it has morphed over the centuries.
And yet so many of us have come out! More every day. But there is a grieving process involved. To those just now leaving the Roman Catholic religious system: stay the course. Stay in the Word of God. I highly recommend immersing yourself in Galatians and Hebrews (especially chapters 9 through 11). Those two epistles in particular answered many of my questions in the early years, and they comforted me.
I often think of the words of the Jesuits, to whit, “give us a child until he is seven and we have him for life,” and how this might be powerfully true; however, it is empty air when coming up against the power of God in a person’s life. The Jesuits forgot all about the power of God, if they ever knew it.
Blessings,
Phyllis
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