Tag Archives: patriarchy

A Husband-Focused View of Biblical Marriage

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My husband spends a lot of time on social media engaging with others to explain the problems with complementary/patriarchal theology. He asked if he could write a post for my blog and organize all his conversations in one place. I’m so happy to share his thoughts with you!

My previous article, Love & Submit ≠ Husbands Lead, Wives Submit, looked at the corruptive nature of complementarian theology in marriage. Despite the many bad fruits of this theology, many complementarians still insist Biblical marriage is hierarchal, with the husband leading his wife from a prominent place of authority over her.

If the husband’s leadership and authority over his wife is crucial to marriage, surely Scripture would have plenty of instructions for husbands about leading, right? Let’s do a husband-focused study of Scripture, and see what we find…

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Submission Saved My Marriage! The Tragic Irony of Christian Complementarianism

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Many conservative evangelical women have led their marriage to a healthier place by following Jesus and learning to love well. The classic conservative marriage testimony that I have repeatedly heard from women often goes like this: “Our marriage was a mess. I (wife) started lovingly submitting to my husband, then he started leading our family in love, and now we have a much happier, healthier marriage.” Let the reader understand the irony of this statement. The wife initiated submission in her marriage, but the husband is praised for his leadership. The greatest racket of conservative white evangelism is that the husband is praised for being a “leader” when he responds with love to his wife’s submission.

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Patriarchy: Porn & Purity Culture (and a book plug)

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This past month, I’ve been part of a pre-launch group for She Deserves Better. The group dialogue has led me to reflect on my own complex history with purity culture.

I have a complex relationship with purity culture. (Purity culture is a catch-all phrase to describe the popular teachings surrounding dating/sex/marriage in modern white evangelicism). In my teens, I benefited from popular Christian dating books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Passion & Purity. I know and understand these books are harmful and have hurt so many people, so please bear with me.

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Life under Patriarchy: Death by a Thousand Cuts

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Examining the wounds of my past is part of my journey towards healing. Wound-care is often messy and uncomfortable.

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Language: Labels & Longing

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Musings on why I do not love the label egalitarian.

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Different AND Equal: One Woman’s Journey from Complementarian to Egalitarian

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Why did I avoid wrestling with egalitarian theology for so long? A weird stew of several factors: desire to be objective, rejection of secular white feminism, result of my circumstances, propensity towards self-flagellation, and fear of becoming a feminazi.

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Rule & Desire Revisited

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This article is a follow-up to an earlier post, Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man.

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Finding My Voice (in the wilderness) – Part 2

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Sometimes I think I’m done writing for awhile, and then I stumble across something that reminds me of all the pain still trapped inside. This week I stumbled upon an article on social media entitled A Southern Baptist Pastor’s Plea: Please Listen, and I started bleeding again. Watching a complementarian man receive praise for “listening” all week on social media has been painful, and at first, I chose to stay silent. I knew to speak would open the floodgates and unleash the hurt still buried deep in my soul. Then Aimee Byrd wrote her response, Why Complementarians Can’t Listen. I found the cries of my heart echoed in her words and those cries are no longer able to be stifled.

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The Apostle Paul Led Me Out of Patriarchy

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Three influential factors that led me out of complementary/patriarchal theology: the racism inherent in allowing white women to teach BIPOC men overseas but not white men in our own churches, the wake of devastation left in my own church from the vacuum of female leadership, and…the teachings of Paul.

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Love & Submit ≠ Husbands Lead, Wives Submit

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Jesus teaches the foundation of Christianity is for all believers to “Love God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Later, Paul expounds that love includes mutual submission: “Submit to one another” (Ephesians 5:21) before he breaks it down into wives submit, husbands love—NOT wives submit, husbands lead. Nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly state, “Husbands lead, wives submit.” When the church twists the Christian message of mutual love and submission into “lead and submit,” LOVE is lost.

In a recent social media post, my husband captured the corruptive nature of complementarian theology (male leadership/female submission) in marriage no matter how well-intentioned the couple. Thought I’d share.

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Finding My Voice (in the wilderness) – Part 1

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Living in “complementarian” spaces was death by a thousand cuts. It can be hard to articulate, because each cut on its own sounds petty. Also, some of my pain is intertwined with other women’s stories, and it can be difficult to know how to talk about my own role without oversharing the details of their stories. This is my first attempt to put down in words the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain of living in patriarchal spaces most of my life. I think this old outline I recently rediscovered is a good place to start, because it shows my head space when I still considered myself comp.

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Sex Idol: Where Evangelicals Worship & Women are Sacrificed

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In white evangelicism, the fanaticism, money, & extrabiblical rules that revolve around sex scream idol worship and the humanity of women is sacrificed on its altar. The evangelical message that married sex will fulfill you is really no different than the larger culture’s general message that sex with whomever, whenever will fulfill you.

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Age of Patriarchy: Desire of Woman & Rule of Man

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When Adam and Eve chose the rule of humankind over the rule of God, they tragically ushered in the Age of Patriarchy. The word “desire” is used only 3x in OT – Genesis 3:16, 4:7, & Song of Songs 7:10. The realization that the man has desire for the women in the Song unlocked the mystery of the Genesis curse for me.

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