After attending a wedding in a Presbyterian church in Ghana, I was struck by the way the submission of Christ was used as a bludgeon for women.
Much of the service focussed on Pauls’ letter to the Ephesians dealing with submission and it revolved entirely around the women’s position to such an extent that one might be forgiven for asking if the pastor had a fear of powerful women!
The implications of female submissiveness was carefully spelt out, including leaving important decisions to the husband. The dangers of self-assertion were highlighted with the warning that marriages are failing because women are refusing to submit.
After a while, I started to wonder if the pastor would have time to clarify the man’s role. Finally, he said it. The husband must love his wife like Christ loved the church. And that was it! Nothing more. No need to spell out what this means in terms of self-sacrifice, submission and self-denial. No need to define in practical terms what being Christ-like actually means for a man in today’s society.
The irony is that in a patriarchal society women are brought up learning what being submissive means. They don’t need it spelt out to them. They live it. On the contrary, it is the men, who muscle their way through situations, who need to be taught the lessons of Christ’s submission.
The bias of the male church leaders suggests they are not really serious about what they’re saying. As men, they enjoy their power and, like an animal protecting its place within the pack, will instinctively fight to keep their position of privilege.
This expression of Christianity, instead of challenging orthodoxy, has become a reactionary tool in maintaining the status quo. Through a particular reading of a text, supposedly authorised by divine authority, it ensures that the mere act of a women questioning this wisdom is, in itself, an act of insolence and disobedience against the divine.
The danger to patriarchy is within the woman. That’s why her subjugation must be complete and complicit.
Critical Point 
First of all I must apologize profusely for the impending vitriol, I was greatly tempted to delete this comment actually because I really do like your blog and your opinions (for the most part). But this was just a bit too patronizing, too much condescension going on, on too many levels cha. I would have deleted it too, only I think you need to hear this and maybe think over things a bit more. Someone had to say it, might as well be me.
As you read below honest reaction try and remember we are here too, we have minds too, we think some! Try walking in our shoes before you take up a spear to skewer and bludgeon on our behalf and even without our permission.
Here was my first and most honest reaction (several times deleted and copied back in) to your (I should add very well-written) post before cooler heads appeared…
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Oh, COME OON!!!
This is hypocrisy at the height of all audacity. First of all allow me to point out the absurdity of your position, here you are, a male trying to,..to (I lose the appropriate words to use here kraa). Are you trying to save us, educate us? What?
You have a bad case of Saviour complex devoid even of the dignity of white/male guilt.
Give us a break!
How is what you are doing any better than what you rail at? Are you not also assuming you know better what is good for a woman than they know for themselves? What gives YOU that right? Why in the h*** should anyone listen to YOU?
Please, please, please stop trying to save us, we did not ask for it. And we certainly do not need it, (even if some of us actually do). Even still we would refuse to be needing it from ‘you’.
As far as I can see, it is a perpetuating cycle, today’s saviours becoming tomorrow’s tyrants. No thank you very much Mr-Well-Intentioned. We’ll take our chances with the devils we know.
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PS. you should publish an email address that commenters can send personal messages to. I’d much rather take this conversation ‘offline’. And…erh…sorry about shooting the messenger and all that…just that you over-stepped somewhat…erh…no hard feelings?
Firstly, I do appreciate your comment and no offence was taken. In fact your comments are mild compared to some I didn’t publish when I wrote that I found Ghanaian functions were boring! I have now added an email address to the blog but actually I have no difficulty in having this discussion openly and prefer it.
My posts are simply thoughts I have at the moment and I just throw them out there. I don’t expect anyone to listen or accept them. I don’t presume I know what’s right for anyone – I’m not a Christian after all! lol
When you ask me to stop trying to save you, I’m presuming you mean you as a woman as opposed to as Christian? The post was not supposed to be an attempt to save women but an attempt to critique a certain expression of Christianity. Selfishly, patriarchy enforces a certain, limited form of masculinity, which I was often at the receiving hand of as a child. My intention was to show how religion, far from standing outside of historical context, is influenced by the culture it exists within. I was genuinely horrified by the comments of the pastor at the wedding I attended and this post was my genuine expression of that.
I don’t believe you are serious when you suggest that I cannot and should not express an opinion on the situation of women because I’m male. Nor do I believe you seriously mean I have to ask Women’s permission before I express such a view? Nor do I expect you to be grateful when I do! But correct me if I’m wrong.
I understand you have disagreements with you perceive as my patronising tone but I’m not clear which views you actually have disagreement with? Is it simply the way I expressed it or do you think the Pastor was correct to let the man off the hook. Is patriarchy the devil you would rather stay with?
Blogs are, to some extent, vanity and we can feel we have very important things to say because we write them. I actually wish more people would challenge my ideas because this is the way I grow. I am happy to accept that some of my statements on this post may be over-stated but that’s the nature of expressing an opinion in a short blog post and why my blog is ‘polemical thoughts’.
PS It’s true I have been gradually purging myself of white, male guilt but clearly I still have to work on my Saviour complex!
“Are you not also assuming you know better what is good for a woman than they know for themselves?” – Wwooohh! Please, get back to your cave!
“please stop trying to save us, we did not ask for it.” – Maybe even too late to save you. How about giving basic human rights a thought?
Tackle the culture aspect of religion: I agree with the thinking that religion happens within the cultural space and those who are oblivious to that are more inclined to transfer the culture of the creators of that religion and imposed it stupidly on themselves. That is some form of Christianity that pertains in Ghana.
I was stupefied when a woman told me that ‘a woman must respect her husband, and a man must love his wife.’ She believed the crap. I barked back saying I am a man and I don’t want to be only respected by my wife/woman/etc., but rather loved wholely. Because therein, respect might flow.
So the wholesale transport of religion and its practices and astronomically sickening, especially for an African like me witnessing a Middle Eastern cultural imposition branded as religion #Judaism #Christianity #Islam
Ok, so I have barely managed to wrangle the entitled, she-devil, feminist aspect of my psyche back into her cave in order to carry on a civil discussion about this.
BTW, thanks for being so diplomatic about that attack, I recognize and appreciate at least that your conscious intention here is not to exploit.
In many ways, you are correct (like I stated in my previous post) when you speak against the unfairness to women living in a patriachal soceity. But then you get very disingenuous and shockingly ignorant (and typically arrogant) about your intentions.
Let me ask you instead, are you trying to save woman or Christian or perhaps them severally or in combination? The answer to this is by and large relevant really because over the years all of these groups have tasted and regretted that specific brand of altruism. Myself being one.
Once eventually finds that it is a short-sighted, shallow and ultimately empty proposition. Freedom for the sake of freedom. What then if all Christians and/or women sudden woke up one morning and decided that you were right. What is your plan? Consider, is your reality better, of any more value(however you define this) than theirs? Why? How?
You are essentially rendering irrelevant the choices that others have made based on the view that your particular line of sight is somehow superior or again better than the way they see their world. I find offensive both your tone and the content of your post because it is so removed from the reality of the group you address and yet feigns some kind of right to have and deliver insights into their lives.
It’s a touch and go, random post on a blog for you as some of your statements indicate. Nobody is expected to listen to you? Yet it appears that you have no issue with randomly poking holes in the paradigm of another’s life. No responsibility for what issues out from an unruly tongue. You propose to slap a band-aid on to a lifetime, a culture, a people and then throw up your hands in innocence? Well then I intend to call you out for willful negligence as much as possible. Show some depth if not some reverence because again nobody has asked or sent you.
Should men seek permission of women to speak all manner to cr** into their lives? Well they haven’t in the past – case in point the mess of a male-centered world we live in. My answer: it would be an awfully nice change and I am very serious. Even pretend that you care to attempt to find out their opinion about their own lives.
Would it impact you in anyway to discover that some Christian women chose freely to live in the soceity that they are in?
Afternote: Your thoughts might seem simple to you when you think them but in putting them out there others who receive them do not necessarily have to agree to that ascertion (but I think you understand this)
Let me put this within a context. My family situation changed to where my mother worked and my father stayed home. When mum returned from work my father, dead on 6pm, would ask where his dinner was. My mother was now fulfilling two roles and my father none. My mother, as a Christian, believed she, as a woman, had to sacrifice herself as Christ did. I don’t believe she was happy but she did it because she felt her wedding vows before God, were more important than anything else. When my father died her life took off.
I obviously do not agree with her suffering or the way her religion justified it even if it enabled her to manage it. Relatively recently, I’ve been able to see things from my father’s position and the way his concept of masculinity restricted his life.
For a pastor to ignore the fact that family life has now radically changed and to continue to advocate the same prescriptions is irresponsible.
My post was an attack on those pastors and their theology that refuse to deal with these realities and that expect the woman to make sacrifices but not the men. I located the problem within patriarchy showing that Christianity is far from neutral or outside of culture.
I do know women who don’t have a problem with patriarchy or the submission of women within marriage when things are working as they should. The problem is that, nowadays, men are not always fulfilling their roles.
I do have a sort of plan which I believe will be better for us all. It’s to open up the options for Christianity in Ghana so that we can also choose a more liberal and progressive option.
I can sympathize with the pain you experienced watching what you perceived as your mother’s suffering. I, myself watched my mother have an unhappy life. However “Christianity” is not the culprit you propose it to be. I would also ask you if you ever sought to see your mother’s life choices from her perspective. What you are saying is that Christianity is just another chauvinistic religion that seeks to tie women like your mother into bondage. From what you have said, you have done your mother an injustice. Disregarded her sacrifices, made little of her strong choices to stay with your father and honor him while doing so. Implied that she was just brainwashed and deluded.
I would suggest that you take a closer look, not just at her, but at her faith. True Christianity is not the shallow thing you’ve attributed to your mother. For a God centered marriage to work as it should it does require that both parties commit to the work in order to receive the most joy. Unfortunately for your family, your father did not love your mother as Christ loves the Church. The reality is that even though the Church is not worthy in and of herself, Christ chooses her, values her so much that He lays down everything He has, including His life, in order to have her. He works for her, fights for her, cherishes and tenderly washes her clean of the sh*t the world heaps on her head, makes grand promises and makes good on those promises. And in return she gives Him the little everything she has, and He even makes the little into a lot.
I propose that even though you could not See your mother, Jesus Christ truly Saw her as the ravishing beauty that he would give everything for in the blink of an eye. And that if in her heart, she submitted all that she had, He was rewarding her with a Love, and a Romance, and Riches that you’ve never experienced. What you speak about is a lot deeper than you know, and that I can explain in such a short time. Even then, it is something you have to experience for yourself.
Certainly, there are many many men who do not do justice or just flat out abuse the role that God gave them, from pastors to ditch diggers, but please never assume that the women who choose to submit to them out of submission to Christ are just blinded by religion. Certainly there are women like that, but true submission to Christ and to husband brings rewards that you are not familiar with, and some of those rewards are even passed onto you. The man is the Head of the household, but the woman is the Heart. If the Heart never sought and found Love with Christ, the One that loves her truly, then her heart would be bitter and produce bitterness. But if the Heart did seek and find that Love, the result would be peace and blessing to all in her family. Bless and honor your mother, for if she had the latter, then she is truly blessed.
I can understand now how someone will question your intentions because this is one post that seeks to ‘benefit’ Christians but ironically I think only an ‘outsider’ can see the seeming injustice meted out to Christian women (whose roles have evolved from homemakers to a dual-role of homemaker and breadwinner). Why can’t pastors use their exalted position of divine authority and wisdom to interprete the said scriptures in a modern context. If this wedding day admonishing imposses additional responsibilities on men, a lot of homes will be shaken at the foundation and who knows what the consequences will be for everyone involved and that is what I think Anon fears. I think this is not going to happen anytime soon, because your pastor and mine and most are in a situation of conflict of interest. They also have to tow the line if they preach this modern family concept. In this modern era, if it is okay to say that wives should take full time jobs then husbands have to cook supper, baby sit more hours…! Now who is being disingenious? The pastor who can bring fairness to homes by changing this wedding day admonishing or the writer of this post?
Thanks for the context. Somehow it lends your post a bit more credibility to know that you grew up in a Christian home. I wonder however if you ever had a conversation with you Mother about how what she belived influenced her actions.
Holla- you hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head.
To sum up my position, if it helps any, two wrongs will not make a right in this scenario. If because men chose to neglect their duties, women also decide to engage in a perpetuating game of one-upmanship where would we all be left?
Needless to say, the above would completely misses the point of Christianity.
I would not mind hearing about ‘the plan’ although the words ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ do sort of inspire a maniacal urge for me to run for the hills. Bear in mind that in the long run however, Christianity is a call to faith.
Thanks for your reply.
I did indeed discuss things with my mum and some of her rationales I noted in my last reply to you.
I absolutely agree that the genders trying to get one over on the other won’t help. But, practically, when one side refuses to fulfil their role, the other side has to take that on if they wish to maintain the relationship. It is that realism that I wish some (not all) pastors could reflect in their words. It’s good to know what the ideal is but we have to also reflect reality.
Christianity is (or has become) a lot more than a call to faith. If it were just that I wouldn’t have anything to write about!
Thank you for this article and all your further explanations. I entirely share your thoughts and feelings about the situations you describe. I feel very strongly about the issue of religiosity and the way people accept the unacceptable or believe the unbelievable because of the way we have been brought up, it is a sad story. Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your article.
Thanks very much for your comment. I also share your concerns.
Things are taught in a one sided manner right here in the good ole USA. Don’t have to go to a third world country to see and hear it. I have been a Christian for decades and have suffered through countless one sided sermons. Sermons that harp at the wife non stop about submitting and obeying in everything. If there are problems in the marriage you are not submitting and obeying enough or properly. if the wife would just submit and obey sinlessly to a sinful husband everything would work out just fine. Then they will throw in almost as an afterthought husbands should love their wives like Christ did the church. That’s it, just love without explaining that real love (as described in the bible) wouldn’t look like this. They use Ephesians chapter 5:22-24 to bludgeon wives with. Interesting to note that verses 25-32 are directed at the husband.
A typical marriage sermons will be 85-90% directed at the wife and what she should do and how she should obey and submit. Most leave out Ephesians 5:21 (submit to one another out of reverence for Christ) they claim that it does not apply to husbands. Interesting, I don’t see an exception listed. Then they blame feminism for all that ails christian marriages. Couldn’t possibly be chauvinism and abuse could it? While I am opposed to many current day feminist ideals and values, feminism in its early days was a response, a coping mechanism, against chauvinism. However, it is easier for preachers and church leaders (all male where I attend) to blame all that ails marriages on women and feminism. To do otherwise would go against the long held views of male superiority and privilege.
If you wonder why women stay and listen to this without speaking up let me attempt to explain. They have heard it their whole life (as have I) and to counter it or object to it would make you immediately be perceived as sinful and disobedient by all those you are close to. Many of your family members, close friends, maybe even your spouse, etc. would be alienated from you. Most of your ties are with this group and many have been a part of your entire life. To dissent would result in being ostracized. You would lose many of your friends as you would be deemed walking disobediently and would be marked as walking disorderly. Imagine, trying to walk away if your whole life was wrapped around people who either believed this or who had been taught this their whole life. If would be a frightening experience to go it alone and lose all support.
Let me close by saying if marriage were truly taught as God intended it could be a beautiful thing. A husband and wife both submitting and putting aside their own selfish desires for the good of the other. Unfortunately, many if not most christian evangelist and leaders teach that only the wife is to put aside her desire for individual person hood. She must obey her husband irregardless of whether he is good or bad. Whether he is selfish or selfless what he wants and says trumps all. The wife must however always selflessly and sinlessly submit to a sinful man.