{"id":13696,"date":"2013-03-09T12:10:40","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T16:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=13696"},"modified":"2013-03-10T21:55:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T01:55:48","slug":"mark-driscoll-reinvents-patriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2013\/03\/mark-driscoll-reinvents-patriarchy.html","title":{"rendered":"Mark Driscoll (Re)Invents Patriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You know what is interesting? Essentially every time conservative evangelical leaders wax on about patriarchy, they act like what they\u2019re preaching is new and shiny and totally<\/em> different from that bad woman-hating patriarchy thing we had in the past. As an example of this, I give you Mark Driscoll\u2019s January sermon, \u201cReal Men: Men and Marriage,\u201d which Ahab of the Republic of Gilead has transcribed for us<\/a>. In it, Driscoll preaches the same-old age-old patriarchy but appears to think that what he\u2019s preaching is something new and sweetly beneficial. In fact, he\u2019s very careful to use some form of straw-patriarchy as a backdrop for promoting the nice-patriarchy he\u2019s preaching.<\/p>\n

What this doesn\u2019t mean, Ephesians 5<\/a> and Colossians 3<\/a> and 1 Peter 3<\/a> and 1 Corinthians 11<\/a> \u2026 What it doesn\u2019t mean when it says that the husband is the head of the wife, it doesn\u2019t mean that men are over women.<\/strong> God forbid that would happen. I have two daughters. The scariest thing I can think of is that men in general were in authority over them. This does not mean that men are over women. This means one man, one woman, husband and wife in the covenant of marriage, that the man is the head.<\/strong> He takes responsibility and burden before God to lovingly, humbly lead her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s the thing. Patriarchy has never been about all<\/em> women being somehow in bondage to all<\/em> men\u2014it has always been the individual level Driscoll is talking about. Think of the law of coverture\u2014upon marriage a woman legally ceased to exist, subsumed into her husband. Patriarchy was always about individual women being under individual men. A wealthy noblewoman was not \u201cunder\u201d the footmen who waited on her\u2014she was under her wealthy nobleman husband<\/em>. Under patriarchy, individual women obey and are subject to individual men, obeying and submitting to them in return for protection from other men.<\/p>\n

And on that note, back to Driscoll:<\/p>\n

This is to protect women from other relationships.<\/strong> Let\u2019s say for example there\u2019s a daughter, and she\u2019s got a close relationship with her covenant-head, Christian dad. That headship protects her from other boys who want to come along and be here head, tell her what to do, set an identity for her, abuse her, endanger her. It protects her from other young men who would come to take that place of headship in her life. Similarly with a wife, if the husband loves her like Christ loves the church, and he takes responsibility for her, that protects her from bad men, bosses, men who have ill intent or those who are perverted. It protects her. It puts her in the context where she is lovingly cared for and protected. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, this is classic patriarchy<\/em>. And do you know the problem here? The problem is that when a woman trusts to a given man to protect her from other man, she is only as safe as that man can make her\u2014or as safe as he chooses <\/em>to make her.<\/p>\n

Note for a moment that for Driscoll, this isn\u2019t just about wives. It\u2019s about daughters too. The idea is that every woman has a male authority that she is to submit to, first her father, then her husband. Every woman is under the protection and authority of\u2014i.e., she must submit to and be led by\u2014a man. Driscoll thinks he can make this situation sound appealing by comparing it to an imaginary straw-patriarchy that never existed where all women must submit to all men, but the very real alternative is the world we live in now, a world in which women not only don\u2019t have to submit to all<\/em> men but rather a world where women don\u2019t have to submit to any<\/em> men.<\/p>\n

Driscoll wants to see girls protected from boyfriends who might tell them what to do or abuse them, and wants to see women protected from bosses and men with ill intentions towards them. But what he seems utterly incapable of grasping is that by arguing that the solution is that girls should be protected by their fathers and women should be protected by their husbands he is arguing that women should be protected from men by men.<\/p>\n

And in our day when one in three women is sexually abused, and women are mistreated and maligned and taken advantage of, it\u2019s good to know that God\u2019s intent is that men would be the head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m sorry, what?<\/em> Does Driscoll not see the huge contradiction and irony in what he is saying? If Driscoll is relieved that, in a world where one in three women faces sexual abuse, God intended for men to be \u201cthe head,\u201d who in the in the world does he think is out there sexually abusing and mistreating women? Other women?<\/em> Driscoll\u2019s inability to grasp that sometimes it is fathers and husbands who are the abusers blows my mind. I can only wonder what he would tell women in these situations.<\/p>\n

The picture Driscoll paints here of men in general\u2014from teenage boyfriends to male bosses\u2014is incredibly negative, and yet he somehow exempts himself and whatever future husbands he may find for his daughters from this category and argues that women should protect themselves by placing themselves under male authority and headship. Men are violent and dangerous, he says, so trust your future to them. I\u2019m sorry, what? Driscoll manages this by creating a dichotomy of \u201cnice, protective Christian men\u201d and \u201cdangerous, violent non-Christian men.\u201d Except that in the real world, it doesn\u2019t work like this.<\/p>\n

In the real world, there are good, kind men and there are abusive, violent men, and these two categories transcend religion or the lack thereof. There are abusive Christian fathers, and there are awesome atheist husbands (like mine!). (And also abusive atheist fathers and awesome Christian husbands, just to be perfectly clear here.) Fortunately, unlike Driscoll, my experience tells me that far more men fit in that first category than in the second. It seems I don\u2019t just take a better view of men than Debi Pearl does, but also a better view of men than Mark Driscoll. In the end, Driscoll\u2019s Christian man good\/non-Christian man bad dichotomy, when combined with his call for women to be under the authority of their male heads, creates a situation ripe for abuse.<\/p>\n

And honestly? The fact that Driscoll can\u2019t even see that we might be able to work towards a society where there are fewer abusive boyfriends and sexually harassing bosses, or work to empower women to value and protect themselves and refuse to put up with any such shit from the men in their lives, makes me want to strangle something. Mark Driscoll may think he has has some new improved attractive version of patriarchy to sell to his flock, but the stuff he\u2019s peddling has been around for millenia, and it hasn\u2019t gotten better with age.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that Driscoll can’t even see that we might be able to work towards a society where there are fewer abusive boyfriends and sexually harassing bosses, or work to empower women to value and protect themselves and refuse to put up with any such shit from the men in their lives, makes me want to strangle something. Mark Driscoll may think he has has some new improved attractive version of patriarchy to sell to his flock, but the stuff he’s peddling has been around for millenia, and it hasn’t gotten better with age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,25],"tags":[322,97,106],"class_list":["post-13696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","category-christian-patriarchy","tag-abuse","tag-daughters-2","tag-marriage-2"],"yoast_head":"\nMark Driscoll (Re)Invents Patriarchy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The fact that Driscoll can't even see that we might be able to work towards a society where there are fewer abusive boyfriends and sexually harassing bosses, or work to empower women to value and protect themselves and refuse to put up with any such shit from the men in their lives, makes me want to strangle something. 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