Can the “Women Submit” Command Be Redeemed?

When I saw the title of a World Magazine article by Janie B. Cheaney last month—Upside-down Headship—I was immediately curious. World Magazine is a conservative evangelical magazine and has stumbled on issues like abuse in the past—remember Andree Seu Peterson’s column about how sexual abuse prevention measures get in the way of Sunday school teachers being able to love their pupils the way Jesus did?—the publication brands itself as reasonable and open to dialogue. In other words, they tend to avoid the starkness of statements made by Christian pastors like Doug Wilson or Michael Pearl. What were they writing about headship this time, I wondered?

Cheaney starts with this discussion:

I know a woman who married for complex reasons: Her sordid past made her fearful and distrustful—of herself most of all. She met a man who was strong and committed to the faith she had recently discovered. A godsend! Or that’s what she told herself, even when she questioned some of his demands. But perhaps that was her fault; she had tons of sin to purge.

Soon enough, though, she began to wonder if this was what Jesus meant by “abundant life.” None of the churches they visited lived up to her husband’s standards, so they began “meeting” at home, as a congregation of two. He did most of the talking. The hothouse atmosphere produced strange fruit, and she couldn’t help noticing that while he zealously corrected her faults, he seemed blind to his own. As her loneliness intensified, so did her doubts—about him and about her own judgment. He began dictating how to dress and what to read and whom to befriend, backing himself up with Bible verses. They could scarcely have a conversation anymore; even the most trivial subjects led to lectures or arguments. Her heart shriveled, and thoughts of getting away devoured thoughts of pleasing him.

Finally she turned to the elders of her former church. After prayer and further counsel, they advised her to separate. The marriage died, but her faith survived.

This woman is not alone in her experience: I could name several others who followed a similar path, though it may have stretched out over several years. Most of them are no longer married, and in at least one case, the wife packed a suitcase one day and walked out—even leaving her kids behind, with vague promises to claim them later. She should have done what my friend did and turned to the church, but by then she had lost faith in the church, and perhaps even in the Lord.

None of these women were physically abused, but their faith had taken a beating. Their husbands disregarded their testimony, scoffed at their feelings (women are too emotional), told them they didn’t understand headship, tagged them with the worst possible motives, and met any objection with, “Wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”

Oh boy. What a mess to untangle this is!

First of all, the woman Cheaney describes is very lucky that her elders advised her to leave her husband. This is virtually unheard of in conservative evangelical circles. Note that Cheaney later criticizes another woman for simply leaving her husband rather than going to the elders and asking their advice. This is a serious problem.

Cheaney appears to acknowledge that separation may sometimes be necessary—and this is a good thing!—but she makes it clear that it should not be done independently of the church, and like I said, it is extremely rare for elders in conservative evangelical churches to advise a couple to separate. It is much more common for them to advise the wife to obey her husband, to then call the husband in and tell him what his wife told them, and then to accept his word on its veracity. This is a very serious problem.

Cheney may believe that it is acceptable for women to leave their husbands in certain circumstances, but many (if not most) conservative evangelical elders and pastors do not, and in putting the decision to leave in the hands of the church Cheaney is siding with those who routinely send abused women back to their husbands. If she thinks elders can sometimes be bypassed she needs to say that, and she does not.

But second, note this statement:

None of these women were physically abused, but their faith had taken a beating.

The first woman she describes may not have been physically abused, but she was abused. Cheaney not only refuses to use the word abuse to describe what she says happened, she instead discusses it as an assault on the woman’s faith. Because presumedly that is the main crime at play here—that this woman’s mistreatment at their husbands’ hands might cause them to question their belief in God and his promises. Not, you know, that this woman was being abused. I mean, look back up at the first woman’s story. Her husband was dictating what she wore, who she saw, and even what she could say in conversation. That is abuse.

This is perhaps my biggest criticism of conservative evangelicals who put in a little effort and think they’re good on the abuse issue: They typically don’t actually know anything about the dynamics of abuse. Conservative evangelical religious leaders need to do more than acknowledge that abuse is a problem, they also need to actually learn what it is. The evangelical community in which I grew up faced its own sexual abuse scandal several years ago, and the worst part of it was that even afterwards, when I listened to the adults in the community talk about it, it was quickly obvious that they had literally no understanding of how grooming worked or even that it was as thing. 

Evangelicals need to do more than acknowledge or condemn abuse, they need to learn what it is, and Cheaney’s word choice and discussion makes it very clear that she’s not there yet.

While Cheaney is focusing on problems with the application of the “wives submit to your husbands” passage, she isn’t actually questioning the concept itself. This is another serious problem I have with conservative evangelicals. Even when they can acknowledge that the requirement that wives submit to their husbands can be abused, they keep right on preaching it. It’s like they can’t actually get to the point of asking whether perhaps it is a bad concept, period and full stop. Cheaney still believes wives should submit to their husbands. What she seems unable to see is that asking one partner in a marriage to obey the other is automatically going to create problems, and that the only way these problems are mitigated is by de facto disregarding this prescription and making decisions cooperatively anyway—more on this later.

Cheaney goes on as follows:

How do we get from Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church to “God says I’m the boss”? By the same fatal shortcut we take to any other pet doctrine, which is bypassing Christ, or making Him justify the lifestyle or principle we love more than Him. A wife who seeks her identity in a man’s love rather than in Christ is easy to manipulate. But a husband who finds his identity in authoritarian headship has lost sight of the One who led by serving.

In certain circles, “wives, submit” receives far more exegesis than “husbands, love.” After all, submission is quickly elaborated in Ephesians 5:22-24, while the kind of love husbands are supposed to cultivate (verses 25-33) takes longer to explain and is much harder to practice. Some men appear to think their wives must submit to them before they can show Christlike love. Is that leadership? Did Jesus ask the same of His bride before loving her?

Okay, more to unpack.

To start with, it’s important to understand that the “wives submit to your husband” command in the New Testament is twinned with a second command—“husbands, love your wives.” Cheaney is absolutely correct that most conservative evangelical churches spend more time telling wives to obey their husbands than they do telling husbands to love their wives. But if I’m reading her statement that “the kind of love husbands are supposed to cultivate . . . is much harder to practice” correctly, she appears to believe that it is easier for women to submit to their husbands than it is for husbands to love their wives, and I’m going to have to disagree with that.

But let’s talk about what Cheaney is actually looking for here. She’s low on detail, but what she does give us is familiar. There are many evangelicals who attempt to explain or justify the command that women submit to their husbands by arguing that if husbands love their wives as they are commanded, the relationship will play out like this in practice: A husband who loves his wife will seek her advice, listen to her input, and make cooperative decisions together with her  The husband gets to make the final decision if the couple cannot come to agreement on an issue, but even this decision should be informed by his wife’s concerns and needs.

Let me put it like this—the more these evangelicals talk about what it looks like for a husband to love his wife, the more it looks like what they’re actually saying is that if a husband loves his wife he will approach the marriage as though it were egalitarian. And every time these evangelicals point to an example of a healthy complementation marriage, what they’re actually pointing to is in practice a healthy egalitarian marriage. If the only way to get a healthy marriage out of these prescriptions is to interpret the command that husbands love their wives so that it de facto wipes out the command that women submit to their husbands, it might be time to admit that it is a crappy command anyway.

But even if a de facto egalitarian marriage is what Cheaney is envisioning as her ideal complementation marriage, there’s still a problem here—and the same is true for other evangelicals in this boat. Let’s unpack this specific line to explain:

Some men appear to think their wives must submit to them before they can show Christlike love.

When I first read this line I got excited because I thought Cheaney was suggesting that women shouldn’t have to submit to their husbands unless their husbands are showing them love. Now yes, this would still be problematic, but it would be akin to an escape clause—if your husband is mistreating you, you do not have to submit to him. But then I reread the line and realized that it is actually saying the opposite.

If a woman doesn’t have to submit first for a man to be bound by the requirement that he show his wife love, then a husband does not have to show love first for a wife to be bound by the requirement that she obey her husband. Can you see the problem here? Even if a de facto egalitarian marriage is the ideal, women with husbands unwilling to get on board are still bound to submit to them. And that’s a problem. This is probably why Cheaney earlier said that a woman in a bad or abusive marriage should go to her elders for advice rather than independently leaving her husband.

Anyway, we’re nearing the end here but still have two paragraphs to go:

Gender complementarianism (the teaching that men and women are equal in worth but assume different roles in the church and in marriage) is clear in Scripture, but also clearly misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that a trembling, apologetic nature complements an unshakable, unbending nature, any more than soft flesh complements hard fist. The internet is littered with websites for runaway wives to tell their stories and lash out, sometimes at God Himself. But for each runaway there are many fearful women who remain, while wondering why they can’t find joy in a “biblical” marriage relationship.

Cheaney’s earlier purported sympathy for women in bad or abusive marriages is evaporating quickly—or so her rhetoric about “runaway wives” who turn to the internet to “tell their stories and lash out” would suggest.

Marriage is intended to build two people up, not to puff up one partner at the expense of the other. Jesus will not be used to justify tyranny. Husbands, if a worldly view of leadership has made you confuse authority with authoritarianism, it’s time truly to take the lead—in repentance.

One of the biggest problems with the evangelical model of repentance for abusive husbands is that they put those men right back into positions of authority over their wives. One thing you should never never never do with an abuser is put them right back in the position of authority they used to abuse in the first place. But then, Cheaney appears to have a shaky understanding of abuse, so she’s probably viewing men who use their position to bully their wives as simply people who made mistakes, and not as abusers. But there’s literally no evangelical model for removing an abusive (or dictatorial, or what have you) husband’s authority within marriage.

Besides, if marriage is intended to build two people up, why not simply ask both partners to love each other with Christlike love and leave it at that? Why the imbalance in commands? Why ask one party to obey and the other to love? That model does not build people up! Building each other up has to mean two-way accountability in addition to two-way love and two-way support, and I’m not seeing how you get two-way accountability out of a submit/love model. After all, how is the wife to hold her husband accountable if she is bound to obey him?

In the end, what does Cheaney offer women? She says that it may be appropriate for women to leave bad or abusive marriages if they first consult with their elders and get permission to do so. While the first part of this is good, the second all but obliterates its impact. She says that men should reject authoritarianism and focus on loving their wives, but she still maintains that wives are to submit to their husbands and even suggests that women shouldn’t make their submission conditional on their husbands showing them love, which doesn’t do anything to help women with dictatorial or authoritarian husbands.

If I said we could fix the problems with slavery by calling on slaveowners to treat their slaves with kindness rather than by doing away with slavery, I would be laughed off the stage (today, at least). And yet, Cheaney thinks we can fix the problems with male headship/female submission by calling on men to treat their wives with love rather than by doing away with the requirement that women submit. While there are obviously no small amount of differences between these two situations, any system based in naked authority paired with mandated obedience creates conditions ripe for abuse, period and full stop.