Sanctified Sexism

When asked whether reading a Bible commentary written by a woman would be placing a man under the teaching authority of a woman, the well-known evangelical preacher John Piper responded as follows:

It might be. Uh. He may feel it that way. And if he does, he probably’s not gonna read it. He shouldn’t read it. . . [But] It doesn’t have to be experienced that way I don’t think. And here, here’s my reasoning. 

The point of Paul in I Timothy 2:12 where he says. . . I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men. That’s a key text. I Timothy 2:12. I don’t permit her to teach or have authority. And those two things together, I think, constitute the eldership office. Teaching and authority. . .

What is the dynamic between how men flourish and women flourish as God designed them to flourish when an act of authority is being exerted on a man from a woman.

And so I distinguish between personal, direct exercises of authority that involve manhood and womanhood.

Because it’s personal. She’s right there. She’s woman. I’m man. And I’m being directly, uh, pressed on by this woman in an authoritative way. Should she be doing that? Should I be experiencing that? And my answer’s, No; I think that’s contrary to the way God made us.  So that the, the personal directness of it is removed. And the man doesn’t feel himself, and she wouldn’t feel herself, in any way compromised by his reading that book and learning from that book. Because I’m not having a direct, authoritative confrontation. She’s not lookin’ at me, and, and confronting me, and authoritatively directing me, as woman. There’s this, there’s this interposition of this phenomenon called “book” and “writing” that puts her out of my sight, and, in a sense, takes away the dimension of her female personhood.

Whereas if she were standing right in front of me, and teaching me, as my shepherd, week in and week out, I couldn’t make that separation. She’s woman. And I am man. (Transcript of portion of John Piper podcast provided by Bible Literature Translation.)

Notice that though John Piper uses the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 to support his view that a man can learn from a woman through a book, his actual point is that he would "feel" himself "compromised" if she came into his office and spoke to him in person-- presumably even if she quoted exactly, in person, the same words he just read in the commentary.  The fact is that as far as I can see, the text of 1 Timothy 2:12 really doesn't distinguish between a woman being physically present, or just reading what she wrote in a book.  The traditional reading is more about (as he himself admits above) whether she's an  "elder."  But that really doesn't seem to be what Rev. Piper is talking about.

As long as he doesn't have to notice she's a woman, Piper says, he has no problem receiving teaching from a woman who would be considered enough of an authority on the Bible to have her commentary published.  Apparently it isn't authoritative teaching by a woman that's the problem.  It's authoritative teaching by a woman in front of him, in the same room.  And this is a problem even, it seems, if she holds no "eldership office" anywhere in any church, but is instead a doctor of theology. 

So is this really about Dr. Piper's interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12?  Or is it more about Dr. Piper's feelings about how women should act towards men? 

John Piper considers himself a "complementarian." Theopedia.com gives us this definition of "complementarianism":

Complementarianism is the theological view that although men and women are created equal in their being and personhood, they are created to complement each other via different roles and responsibilities as manifested in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. . .Complementarianism holds that God has created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function with male headship in the home and in the Church.  

Complementarianism, holding that women are equal to men in their ontological being, thus sets itself apart from the more traditional view held both by Christians and the whole of society from the beginning of recorded history until at least the beginning of the 20th century-- the view that women were simply inferior to men.  As the Encyclopedia of Women and Gender, Vol. 1 states: 

"Early philosophical speculation emphasized the inequality of the sexes on all dimensions of social importance. . . [I]n later centuries female inferiority was viewed as a function of divine fiat, physiological instability, or defects in the brain.  Though the rationale for this belief changed over time, its substance remained the same: females in every respect, were viewed as lesser beings."

This belief was certainly not confined to the church, as Charles Darwin and his fellow evolutionists unabashedly declared that women were evolutionarily inferior to men.  But it is this traditional attitude that women are inferior that forms the basis of what is called "sexism," just as the belief that certain races are inferior is the basis of "racism."  

Here is one of Dictionary.com's definitions of sexism:

"discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women." [Emphasis added]

The online Social Science Dictionary simply says:

Beliefs which hold one sex superior to the other thereby justifying sexual inequalities. [Emphasis added]

A complementarian, therefore, should eschew sexism by principle.  Since complementarianism purports to base itself on Scripture alone for its view of the essential equality but functional differences between men and women, it seems reasonable to expect that those church leaders who publicly define and defend complementarianism in and for the church in general, would reject sexism, insisting that nothing but Scripture should define how men think of and act towards women.

Unfortunately, it's not always that simple.  

Human nature being what it is, most of us hold attitudes and ways of thinking which we have imbibed since we were children: attitudes that come from existing in our bodies in the societies and among the cultural mores in which we live.  Complementarians sometimes say that egalitarians, in rejecting "biblical" male-female roles and "male headship," are capitulating to "modern, feminist culture."  But the roots of sexism in American life lie far deeper and more entrenched than we may realize, and feminism (which has only existed for about 100 years) is really still the new kid on the block.  And complementarianism, of course, is itself informed by feminism when it re-examines the traditional Christian view and disagrees that the Bible supports the notion that women were created inferior.

So when the most public faces of complementarian Christianity in America today speak of men, women and male-female relations, Christians (complementarian and egalitarian alike) should be willing to confront them when the things they say, and the attitudes they reveal, show not so much a complementarian viewpoint as a sort of sanctified sexism-- a reflection of a deeply entrenched societal devaluation of women, a culturally imbibed societal expectation of favoritism towards men as the superior sex.

To do him justice, John Piper says this in the same podcast:

So, I think the point of that text is not to say that you can never learn anything from a woman. That’s just not true. It’s not true biblically, and it’s not true experientially, because the reason for saying that I don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over men here is not because she’s incompetent. It’s not because she can’t have thoughts. In fact, the women in your church, and the woman in, the woman you are married to, have many thoughts that you would do well to know. [laughs] And to know, and learn, and to learn from. And so the issue there is not that she doesn’t have thoughts that you wouldn’t benefit from. Or that she can’t, uh, teach you anything.

The, the issue is one of how does manhood and womanhood work. 

Piper obviously believes that he believes men and women are equal.  He doesn't think he can't learn from a woman, or that women are incompetent to teach men.  But he can't seem to get past his discomfort in having a certain kind of experience of women-- an experience that gives him a feeling of being "directly pressed upon by a woman in an authoritative way."  Remembering that according to the complementarian injunction that a woman is excluded only from being a church elder, and not from being a theologian who comments on the Bible-- this is not about what she's teaching or where she's teaching or how she's teaching.  It's whether he has to directly experience a woman being an authority on a subject in his presence. 

It looks like sexism to me.  Sexism that's sanctified by its ostensible complementarianism, so that it slips under the radar as just part of complementarian doctrine.  But what Piper's words are really communicating, whether he intends it or not, is that he doesn't want women to get uppity in his face.  He doesn't want to feel, in the presence of a woman, that she might have more knowledge than him on a particular Bible text.  It makes him feel uncomfortable about his manhood.  

Is this, at its heart, about what Scripture says?  Or is it about how a man (raised in the 1950s and 60s when men expected to be deferred to by women) feels when a woman is not deferring to him? 

The same sort of thing happens in the most recent Pat Robertson controversy being picked up in the media:  the one where Pat Robinson (who became a married adult during the Father-Knows-Best 1950s) counsels a woman whose husband has been cheating on her that "men will be men":

"Here's the secret," the famous evangelical said. "Stop talking the cheating. He cheated on you, well, he's a man."

The wife needs to focus on the reasons she married her spouse, he continued.

"Does he provide a home for you to live in," Robertson said. 'Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children... Is he handsome?". . .

"Recognize also, like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit," Robertson said. "What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander. . . ."

In another appearance back in January of this year, Robertson told a woman,

We need to cultivate romance, darling! ... You always have to keep that spark of love alive. It just isn't something to just lie there, 'Well, I'm married to him so he's got to take me slatternly looking.' You've got to fix yourself up, look pretty.

This certainly has a lot in common with traditional social attitudes towards male adultery, as illustrated in a Los Angeles Times article from 1987:

In a Parliamentary debate in 1857, the Lord Chancellor said that "A wife might without any loss of caste condone an act of adultery . . . but a husband could not condone a similar act on the part of the wife . . . as the adultery might be the means of palming spurious offspring on her husband." Englishmen could get a divorce for any evidence of adultery, while Englishwomen had to prove that the adultery was incestuous or otherwise unnatural.

Unflattering as it is towards men to say they shouldn't be required (or expected) to control their sexual urges, this mindset is part of traditional permissiveness towards male sexual behavior, while female behavior has traditionally been tightly controlled.  Though it may seem on its face to treat men as the inferior sex, what this attitude is actually rooted in is a devaluing of the woman to her sexual/reproductive functions as primary to her nature, while men are treated more as whole persons.  Not being expected to control himself is part of historically male autonomy, while being kept under rigid social control is part of historically female subordination.  So also is being told, in essence, to just be grateful for a roof over your head (which frankly, in this era when women usually contribute almost equally to the household rent, mortgage, grocery bills and clothing purchases, simply sounds ludicrous).

But what does this have to do with the Bible?  Where does the Bible say a man shouldn't be expected to control himself, or that it's a wife's job to stay pretty so that her husband won't stray?  On the contrary-- throughout the Book of Proverbs it's the man who is warned to not to be enticed by adulterous women, not the wife told to keep him from getting enticed! In fact, Proverbs tells men to choose to see the woman they married as beautiful, no matter how old the couple has become: 

May your fountain be blessed,
and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.
A loving doe, a graceful deer—
may her breasts satisfy you always,
may you ever be intoxicated with her love.
Why, my son, be intoxicated with another man’s wife?
Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?

Prov. 5:18-20, emphasis added.

There is no onus laid upon women anywhere in the Bible to stay forever youthful in appearance, or to take responsibility for keeping their husbands from adultery.  Women are instead told not to focus on beauty, but on "the hidden person of the heart."  (1 Peter 3:4).  And far from being expected to just be grateful for being provided for by a man, Proverbs 31 shows that Old Testament women (wealthy ones, at least) had their own incomes, businesses and land ownership!

So-- are Robertson's words complementarian (focused on Scripture as teaching male-female equality along with difference in role)?  Or are they just sanctified sexism? 

It looks like the latter to me. 

So here's my respectful request and challenge to complementarians:  Please, no more sanctifying of sexism.  If an attitude that one of your public spokesmen (however well-intentioned) is perpetuating about women has nothing to do with what you believe the Bible teaches, then please, speak up about it!  Egalitarians and complementarians might be able to find some common ground here-- an area where we can work together for the uplifting and honoring of all our sisters in Christ. 

Just because a preacher is well-known doesn't mean he can't make mistakes, or that his mistakes shouldn't be addressed-- or that he shouldn't be encouraged to retract them just as publicly as the mistake itself was public.

Perpetuating the notion that the heart of Christianity is sexist-- devaluing to women and treating them as inferior-- isn't doing any of us any good.  

Are you with me? 

Abraham, Revisionism and "Privilege Distress"

I've been reading an amazing book:  Abraham by Bruce Feiler.  As the book jacket describes it, "Abraham stands as the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims. . . Bruce Feiler set out on a personal quest to better understand our common patriarch."  The book explores how each of these three related world faiths views its father Abraham-- where they are similar, where different, what parts of his life they stress, and why.  Feiler is Jewish, but he treats each of the three faiths with fairness and insight, uncovering commonalities and revealing along the way the shared humanity of three kinds of believers in one God.

The biggest eyeopener in this book, for me, was a trend Feiler uncovered in each of the three faiths: Abraham lived prior to Judaism, Christianity or Islam, but each group, at certain points in history, has done what it could to claim him for its own, to the exclusion of the other two.  Jewish interpreters  painted him as knowing and observing Torah long before it was even written.  Muslim interpreters claimed that Ishmael was actually the favored son and Isaac a mere interloper.  Christian interpreters claimed that Abraham knew by special revelation the gospel of Christ.  As Feiler puts it:

Abraham has been transformed so wildly by his own self-proclaimed descendants that he bears little resemblance to the portrait now left to fade in the Bible.  The biblical story itself. . . manages to convey a more general message of God's grace than. . . the portraits Abraham's supposed spiritual inheritors were busily creating. p. 154-155.

Revisionism. We humans are prone to it.  We look at history, a piece of writing or a set of facts, and we ignore what we don't want to see and overemphasize what we do want to see, in order to make our viewpoint stronger and opposing ones weaker.  Bruce Feiler interviewed Rev. Petra Heldt, head of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Jerusalem, and came to this understanding:

"If you look at history," she told me, "each religion, at different times, for different reasons, tried to establish itself as the dominant religion.  Claiming Abraham for yourself is just one way to establish your authority." This power grab usually occurs at historical turning points, she noted.  For Jews it was after the Second Temple was destroyed and they had to buttress their sagging identity.  For Christians it was after the fall of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, when they lost their political protection.  "It's a psychological need triggered by political circumstances.  You use your culture to establish your triumphalism because your political power may be waning.  You want to show that you've always been there.  Abraham is a great way to prove that." p. 156.

This idea rang a bell.  I immediately thought of a similar pattern that's occurring here in the United States today:  the insistence by the Christian Right that America was founded as a Christian nation. The Shades of Grace website has good examples of this argument, providing selected quotes from the Founding Fathers intended to prove that the United States has belonged to Christians and Christianity from its inception.  But a quote such as this one from John Adams:

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

-- should be balanced by what he wrote in the Treaty of Tripoli when he was President:

As the government of the United States of America is not on any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of of Musselmen (Muslims), - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

(quoted on Democratic Underground.com)

It seems to me, when these two quotes are taken together (along with many others), that many of the Founding Fathers believed Christian principles lay behind the founding of the United States, but they did not consider the Christian religion to be America's national religion.  In fact, there has always been a tension in my country of birth between its ideal of providing a haven to people of all faiths, and its historical tendency to privilege Christianity (this due largely, I think, to the dominance of European whites in its leadership from its inception).  As David Lose put it in The Huffington Post:

[T]he United States has always been home to a multitude of faith traditions and, indeed, was imagined from the beginning to be a religious haven. . . [But] those who support the notion of a "Christian America" can convincingly argue that the de facto stance of this country has been to privilege the belief of, if not simply Christianity, at least what's often called "the Judeo-Christian tradition" because of its central place in this nation's evolution.

In fact, the more pluralistic the United States now becomes, and the more it gives a voice and a place to religious and non-religious minorities, the louder the voices seem to grow that want to make it clear that Christianity is the dominant religion in America-- the one that has "always been there," just as Feiler's book describes in the Middle East's struggles over ownership of Abraham.  "This is a Christian nation" is a way of saying, "We Christians are America; it has always belonged to us, and we can take it back."

What is the proper response to this?  Do we mock and ridicule those who want to shore up their power and influence in this way?  Does an us-against-them mentality (even in response to that mentality in others) do any good? Is just saying "they're wrong"-- even if they factually are-- helping the situation?  Bruce Feiler, exploring the roots of Abraham in the turbulent Middle East, sees another way.

I needed to believe that loving God, that being prepared to sacrifice for that belief, and that [also] believing in peace had not somehow become incomprehensible. . . We can, like Abraham, leave behind our native places-- our comfortable, even doctrinaire traditions-- and set out for an unknown location, whose dimensions may be known only to God but whose mandate is to be a place where God's blessing is promised to all. p. 215-216.  Emphasis added.

I was very interested to read this article on the "Weekly Sift" blog called The Distress of the Privileged.  It largely echoes the historical principle Rev. Heldt found in the conflict over Abraham: when a group's political power is waning-- even if as a result of a call to fairness in sharing power with other groups-- the group experiences that as a painful loss which it must try to remedy.  Ignoring the pain of others-- even of the privileged-- is unfair in itself, and counterproductive:

As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

If you are one of the newly-visible others, this all sounds whiny compared to the problems you face every day. It’s tempting to blast through such privileged resistance with anger and insult.

Tempting, but also, I think, a mistake. The privileged are still privileged enough to foment a counter-revolution, if their frustrated sense of entitlement hardens...

Confronting this distress is tricky, because neither acceptance nor rejection is quite right. The distress is usually very real, so rejecting it outright just marks you as closed-minded and unsympathetic. It never works to ask others for empathy without offering it back to them.

Doug Muder, the blog author, offers a different alternative to the scorn and contempt which is the most common response to the Christian Right by those it is challenging.  He says:

Ultimately, the privileged need to be won over. Their sense of justice needs to be engaged rather than beaten down. The ones who still want to be good people need to be offered hope that such an outcome is possible in this new world.

I used to be part of the Christian Right.  Many of my friends and fellow-church members still are.  And they are good people who believe in love-your-neighbor, and who do have valid things to say to and about the American political process. I don't think the answer is to shame them or treat them as the enemy, which they certainly are not.  These are people who help me when I'm in distress, who hug me when we meet, who laugh and cry and pray with me.  The answer is to do unto them as I would want done unto me-- to listen, to hear their real distress, and then to appeal to their sense of justice and their principles of Christian love.  It is possible, as Muder points out, for a privileged person like me to do this (I know, because I've been trying to do it):

[S]he could learn to be a good guy by the lights of this new society. It would be hard. [S]he’d have to give up some of [her] privileges. [S]he’d have to examine [her] habits to see which ones embody assumptions of supremacy. [S]he’d have to learn how to see the world through the eyes of others, rather than just assume that they will play their designated social roles.

Bruce Feiler ends his study of Abraham this way:

At the start of the twenty-first century, the idea that one religion was going to extinguish the others was deader than it had been in two thousand years-- and possibly ever. . . A new type of religious interaction was needed, involving not just swords, plowshares and the idea of triumph but conversation, interaction, and the idea of pluralism. . . Fourteen hundred years after the rise of Muhammad, two thousand years after the ascent of Christianity, twenty-five hundred years after the original of Judaism, and four thousand years after the birth of Abraham, the three monotheistic religions were inching towards a posture of open-- and equal-- deliberation.  This state of affairs set up a new question for the faiths to ponder: Can the children of Abraham actually coexist? p. 196, emphasis in original.

Feiler goes on to paint the last picture in the Bible from Abraham's life:

Finally, in Genesis 25, verse 7, Abraham dies . . . At Abraham's burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier.  The text reports their union without comment.  "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah. . . in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites."  

But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished.  Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims.  They are brothers.  

The fact is that we're all human, and all prone to the weaknesses of humanity.  If some of us revise history in an attempt to strengthen our challenged assumption that our rightful place is in the center of power, this isn't anything that the rest of us aren't capable of doing, or have never done.  Jesus talked about forgiveness, about not judging one another. He talked about doing to others what we would want done to ourselves.  He talked about giving being greater than receiving.  

He talked about seeing one another as brothers and sisters, and that what we do to "the least of these" is what we do to Him. 

I think in the long run, these things will be the answer. 

Male Headship: a Comparison with Christian Teachings of Long Ago

Over the last three years or so, I have read a number of essays online in support of male headship in the church and home, and interacted with many supporters of male headship in comments on forums and blogs.  The comments made to me and others by supporters of male headship as God's divine plan and design, usually fall into a few general categories.  These are as follows:

That the Church has traditionally, for 2000 years prior to the the current age, supported male headship.

That there is nothing wrong with male headship itself, and that protests against it are really about the abuse of male headship by some men, and not male headship itself.

That those who oppose male headship are capitulating to our modern, godless culture.

That women are designed by God to be under male headship and are happiest when they embrace that design.

That the early chapters of the Book of Genesis establish God's principle of male headship. 

That the entire Bible clearly and plainly supports male headship, and those who resist it are going against the Word of God. 

I have by and large addressed the actual substance of most of these arguments in many of my blog posts here.  Today I'd like to look at them in another way.

I want to make it clear from the start that I am not judging the motives of any of my complementarian brothers and sisters, except insofar as I am commenting on common motives of the human race in general, in its fallen condition which I and my fellow egalitarians also share.  I am not comparing the morals of complementarianism or of complementarians, to the morals of any other group.  I am not calling anyone a racist.  I am not questioning the sincerity of anyone's Christianity or the way they follow Christ.  

But I want to look at the arguments above, by comparing them to the arguments of another group from 150 years ago in the United States.  I want to point out that the makers of those 150-year-old arguments were, according to every criteria an evangelical Christian would use  today, devoted and upstanding followers of Christ.  Many of the people who sincerely made these arguments will, I have no doubt, meet us one day in the new heavens and new earth, as our brothers and sisters, lovers of Christ and dearly loved by Him.  But they were mistaken-- and I believe every reader of mine, egalitarian or complementarian, Christian or non-Christian, will agree that they were mistaken.

I refer to the arguments in the book (available at Google Books online) called A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical and Historical View of Slavery, by John Henry Hopkins, D.D., L.L.D., New York: WI Pooley & Co. (1864).


Before beginning, however, I would like to state why I am making this comparison by quoting egalitarian Christian leader Kevin Giles, who attended a complementarian Christian conference in Melbourne, Australia in October 2010.  His thoughts are recorded on Google Docs in this reply entitled "Kevin Giles replies to the Melbourne Hierarchical-Complementarians," and he states on pages 32-33 this profound thought regarding human sinfulness and weakness as it has played out historically for thousands of years (human weakness in which I share just like everyone else):

"Once [human] power over others is attained, it is only relinquished when it becomes impossible to maintain.  The more pressure applied to share power, the more reasons are thought up to justify the power held, and the more hostility to opponents is shown. . .  [I]n the southern states of America in the 19th century evangelicals led the opposition to the emancipation of the slaves, insisting the Bible sanctioned and endorsed slavery. . . They found much in scripture to support their ideas.  Nearly all the evangelical clergy in the Old South were convinced that slavery was taught in the Bible, and many in the northern states as well.  It took a civil war and the loss of over a million lives before these Christian men were forced to give up their power over their black slaves, and it took nearly 150 years before the Southern Baptists openly admitted they had been wrong to appeal to the Bible to justify slavery.  Men resist at all costs giving up power over others.  Another example is Apartheid.  In South Africa the Apartheid ideology was devised and institutionalized by Reformed Christians.  They wrote extensively, arguing that the Bible taught the separation of the races and that some should rule over others.  Appeal was made to a supposed 'order of creation' that set white men over black and coloured people.  These white Reformed Christians only relinquished power when the economic and political pressures became impossible to withstand.  Now in South Africa is is hard to find a Reformed pastor or theologian who is not ashamed that such repeated and insistent appeal to the Bible was made to justify what is unjustifiable.  It is undeniable that as a general principal, men resist at all cost giving up power over others.  And if they are Christians, try to find justification for their power by appeal to the Bible."  [Emphasis added.]


As a white person, I belong to a race that has, male and female alike, historically resisted at all costs giving up power over others.   Recognizing me as a fellow-traveler in human frailty, my readers will, I hope-- in a spirit of intellectual detachment-- simply read the general arguments listed below, followed by quotes from Rev. Hopkins' book in a similar vein, and see the similarities.  (All emphasized words in the quotes below were emphasized in the original.)

The Church has traditionally, for 2000 years prior to the the current age, supported male headship.

"But the Word of God has not changed; the doctrine of the Apostles has not changed. . . I do not respect your departure from the old and well-settled rule of the Church. . . . I know that the doctrine of that Church was clear and unanimous on the lawfulness of slavery for eighteen centuries together . . ." p. 47.

 There is nothing wrong with male headship itself, and protests against it are really about the abuse of male headship by some men, and not male headship itself. 

"[My] whole object . . . was to prove, from the Bible, that in the relation of master and slave there was necessarily no sin whatever.  The sin, if any, lay in the treatment of the slave, and not in the relation itself.  Of course, it was liable to abuse, as all human relations must be. But . . . thousands of our Christian brethren who held slaves were treating them with kindness and justice, according to the Apostle's rule. . .  I held it to be a cruel and absurd charge to accuse them as sinners against the Divine law, when they were only doing what the Word of God allowed, under the Constitution and established code of their country."  p. 45.

Those who oppose male headship are capitulating to our modern, godless culture. 

"Who are we, that in our modern wisdom presume to set aside the Word of God . . . and invent for ourselves a 'higher law' than those holy Scriptures which are given to us as 'a light to our feet and a lamp to our paths,' in the darkness of a sinful and polluted world?" p. 16.

"In religious truth or reverence for the Bible, the age in which we live is prolific in daring and impious innovation. . . We have heard the increasing clamor against the Bible, sometimes from the devotees of geological speculation, sometimes from the bold deniers of miracle and prophecy, and, not least upon the list, from the loud-tongued apostles of anti-slavery." p.48.

Women are designed by God to be under male headship and are happiest when they embrace that design.

"The eldest son of a royal family is in due time king, and his brothers forthwith become his subjects.  Why should not the same principle obtain in the races of mankind, if the Almighty has so willed it?  The Anglo-Saxon race is king; why should not the African race be subject, and subject in the way for which it is best adapted, and in which it may be more safe, more useful and more happy than in any other which has yet been opened to it, in the annals of the world?" p. 32.

The early chapters of the Book of Genesis establish God's principle of male headship. 

"The first appearance of slavery in the Bible is the wonderful prediction of the patriarch Noah: 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren' . . . the fulfillment was reserved for his posterity, after they had lost the knowledge of God and become utterly polluted by the abominations of heathen idolatry.  The Almighty, foreseeing this total degradation of the race, ordered them to servitude or slavery under the descendants of Shem and Japeth, doubtless because He judged it to be their fittest condition.  And all history proves how accurately the prediction has been accomplished, even to the present day."  p. 7.

The entire Bible clearly and plainly supports male headship, and those who resist it are going against the Word of God. 

"[We must refer] the question to the only infallible criterion -- the Word of God. . . . I proceed, accordingly, to the evidence of the sacred Scriptures, which, long ago, produced complete conviction in my own mind, and must, as I regard it, be equally conclusive to every candid and sincere inquirer." p. 7.

"[We condemn] the loud and bitter denunciations of our anti-slavery preachers and politicians, calling themselves Christians. . . For they. . . set themselves against the Word of God in this matter. . . . " p. 16.


Having finished this, I'm very much afraid that I cannot help but have given offense-- and I sincerely apologize.  But I believe this comparison is one that I, in all honestly and in my best integrity, have to make.  If anyone thinks I am pointing fingers, my last blog post "My Wish-I-Hadn'ts" will show you that my other three fingers are to the best of my ability, pointing back straight at me.

I know that our Lord Jesus has mercy on us all.