Southern Baptist Scholar: Rebellious Wives to Blame for Spousal Abuse
EthicsDaily.com reports today on the amazing conclusion reached by Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. Ware says wives that refuse to submit to their husbands create the environment under which husbands abuse their wives:
“And husbands on their parts, because they’re sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged–or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches,” Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.
Ware and other fundamentalists believe that God created men and women differently, with different roles assigned to each gender. When women “rebel” against their God-assigned role, they sin. But of course, there is always hope that women will accept their place in the world:
Ware also touched on a verse from First Timothy saying that women “shall be saved in childbearing,” by noting that the word translated as “saved” always refers to eternal salvation.
“It means that a woman will demonstrate that she is in fact a Christian, that she has submitted to God’s ways by affirming and embracing her God-designed identity as–for the most part, generally this is true–as wife and mother, rather than chafing against it, rather than bucking against it, rather than wanting to be a man, wanting to be in a man’s position, wanting to teach and exercise authority over men,” Ware said. “Rather than wanting that, she accepts and embraces who she is as woman, because she knows God and she knows his ways are right and good, so she is marked as a Christian by her submission to God and in that her acceptance of God’s design for her as a woman.”
Ware’s position is based in part on a hyper-literal reading of Genesis:
Ware offered 10 reasons “for affirming male headship in the created order.” They include that man was created first and that woman was created “out of” Adam in order to be his “helper.” Even though the woman sinned first, Ware said, God came to Adam and held him primarily responsible for failure to exercise his God-given authority.
What would the world look like if Ware and other fundamentalists actually created the society they long for? Margaret Atwood paints a likely picture in The Handmaid’s Tale.
At Mainstream Baptist, in an article about Mike Huckabee, Bruce Prescott writes
Mainstream Baptists believe that husbands and wives relate as equals within the family. When the Bible talks about “submission” within the family it intends a “mutual submission” of give and take in the marital relation. That means that, at times, wives will submit to their husbands and, at other times, husbands will submit to their wives. Submissiveness depends upon the changing needs, circumstances and dynamics within the marriage.
The SBC’s family statement calls for wives to be “graciously submissive” to their husbands. The authors of that statement explicitly denied that the marital relation is one of “mutual submission.” In their view, the immutable dynamic and unchanging circumstance of the family is that the husband is its head “boss” or “ruler”. Submission is one-sided. There is no admonition for husbands to be “submissive” to their wives — graciously or otherwise — in the SBC’s family statement.
” Even though the woman sinned first, Ware said, God came to Adam and held him primarily responsible for failure to exercise his God-given authority.”
I’ll pick up on that point because they are using it to support their “male boss-ship”.
If God turned to Adam (which he did), and Adam is considered the one who brought sin into the world (which he is), don’t they think that God will also turn to all the future Adams and demand an explanation for why their wives flinched, became insubordinate or chose to lose their personhood under dominant male leadership?
Maybe Adam was supposed to protect the garden and he failed. Maybe Adam was supposed to stop Eve. We don’t know. We could build up doctrine on suppositions, as they do.
You can also logically conclude from Genesis 3 that men are naturally inclined to blame God and their wives for their sin.
I just can’t believe they preach that women are responsible for being abused….
Time to study what being a “head” means, I think!
Thanks for the article (got here from complegalitarian.com)
Thanks for talking about this. It’s important to get the word out. Ware and others need to know that they’ve crossed a very big line…
So, I guess that you’re arguing – on some ground – that a literal reading of a text is not it’s best, and that ‘fundamentalism’ is internally flawed because it chooses to take it foundational texts seriously? If so, on what grounds?
also, I might add that I am NOT a fundamentalist (but I respect a great many), and – I might add – at the same time, though what he said may seem controversial out of context, I think it made good sense. He said that both men and women have some degree of fault, though he doesn’t whatsoever seem to let men off of the hook for the lions-share. The above scenario is obviously not ALWAYS true, but I have seen many situations where this is the case.
Reading this article reminds me why it would be beneficial for women to leave the church and learn kick boxing. As long as men in power think as this christian scholar does – this world will continue to be be unsafe for women.
Saintlewis, Who gets to decide if she is being unsubmissive? the abusing husband who is an abuser and does not need a specific trigger. Anything will do.
So, he gets to decide what is sin for his wife? Sounds like he is taking the place of the Holy Spirit for her.
I wonder how this idiot justifies that conservative muslims believe similarly.
saintlewis: Moderate Baptists also take the Bible seriously. I respect your observations, but for my part, I have never met a victim of spousal abuse that I thought should be blamed for that abuse.
I never said she should be ‘blamed’… I do believe, however, that in most every case of ANYTHING, that individuals each hold some degree of responsibility for the part their actions played in the things that took place, that’s all. The husband should go the jail, but that doesn’t mean that the woman never acted in a way that was faultless.
saintlewis: To hold someone responsible means to blame them. That’s the definition of blame. You can divide responsibility between husband and wife, as does Ware, but you cannot then claim that you’re not placing a measure of blame on the wife for the fact that her husband beat her. So yes, you are definitely, to some degree, blaming the wife for the abuse she suffered. Good job.
t St.lewis: The only thing I would say she(the vic) did”wrong” perse was not killing his ass the first time he assaulted her. YOu beat the hell out of some stranger on the street and it’s assault and batterym yet you assault a spouse and it’s “God’s will”? I call B.S.
saintlewis: Do you tell the spouse of an alcholic that they have a share in the fact that their spouse choose to get drunk that evening also?
People that abuse and people that drink do so because of their own choices, and their own sin. They do so becaue they are addicts – NOT because of another’s behaviors!
Addicts LOVE those types of comments, and use them quite freely when their families protest their behavior!
saintlewis,
as a 20-year survivor of an abusive Christian marriage, I can tell you first hand that your viewpoint – while having the nice warm-fuzzy of being comfortably middle-of-the-road – is extremely harmful to women who are in abusive marriages. I was told repeatedly that “it takes two to make a marriage and it takes two to break a marriage.” I went to my pastors and to counselors many times and I heard that same grossly unjust statement many times. I spent 7 years trying desperately to fit myself into my husband’s mold, then I spent 13 years on my face before God asking Him to change me. And He did. He changed me, and changed me, and changed me. And the more He changed me, the more unacceptable I became to my Christian husband – whose very favorite accusation was that I was both rebellious and unsubmissive.
There are two fundamental truths involved here. First, there is NEVER any excuse for abuse – nothing anyone can ever do forces another to sin, especially not sin that is rooted in disrespect, control, anger, rage and violence.
Second, there are no perfect humans on this planet. Yet, somehow Christian marriages manage to survive with two imperfect people – and without abuse. I would never say I am perfect. But I will say unequivocally after many years of believing I was to blame for my husband’s behavior, I did nothing to deserve one minute of his abuse. In fact, everyone else I’ve ever known other than my husband and my mother-in-law seem to think I’m a wonderful person – including people who have lived under my roof for extended periods of time and know me at my worst. How can it be that only these two people see me as the original evil who could be the source of all his mis-behavior?
The truth is that it takes two to make a marriage, but one can destroy it single-handedly. When you say that both people share the blame, you heap coals of blame, shame, judgment and condemnation — all undeserved — on the heads of women who are suffering agonies on a daily basis. There is no excuse for this – none at all, but ignorance — hopefully not willful ignorance.
– Danni
Rodney and other indignant scholars:
I’m with saintlewis. Ware is sermonizing from scripture, not socializing from some anti-fundamentalist or feminist list of talking points. He’s not saying there’s an excuse for abuse. He’s merely pointing out the consequential chain reaction non-believers must constantly live with, and which believers must endure in their fleshly natures–all due to the presence of sin ushered into the race in the Garden.
Are you really trying to say that a female victim of spousal abuse should be counted as sinless just because she was abused? Have any of you indignant scholars ever heard of “total depravity?”
Chuck,
Ware is saying that wives must submit to their husbands. If a wife refuses to submit, she sins. The husband can respond to that sin with another sin: beating her. According to Ware, and you I guess, one sins leads to the other. The message is that if an abused wife would shape up, her husband would stop beating her.
The abused wife is an ordinary human being as far the general concept of “sin” is concerned. No one has claimed otherwise. What we’re claiming is that it’s incorrect to say her “sin” (whatever you have mind) is the cause of the abuse she suffers.
Rodney,
It should be clarified that Ware, and Paul in Ephesians 5, is speaking of a Christian marriage. Ware is making the point that Christian men respond in one of three possible ways to wives’ in-submission, or counter-submission efforts: (a) abuse, (b) apathy or complacency, (c) recapture, with God’s help, the Ephesians 5 love-submit relationship.
Non-believers have only (a) and (b) as responses.
Certainly, some submitting women are abused, so it’s not a case that in-submission “is the cause,” but “can be a cause.”
(I think you must be “dunningrb.” I’m “cat’s dad.”)
I enjoy the interchange. Let’s be friends who don’t see things the same always!
Chuck,
You write, “Certainly, some submitting women are abused, so it’s not a case that in-submission ‘is the cause,’ but ‘can be a cause.’”
Let’s try to analyze this as logically as possible, using your assumptions, which I’ll grant for the sake of argument. Start with the set of all marriages in which the wife is not submissive to her husband. There are three subsets, each characterized by the husband’s response. In subset A, the husbands beat their wives. In subset B, the husbands become apathetic. In subset C, a miracle occurs. There are no non-believing husbands in subset C.
I want you to focus on subset A. In those marriages, the “trigger” (borrowing your term from the BDW thread) for the abuse is the wife’s non-submission. Had she submitted (and not pulled the trigger), she wouldn’t have been abused.
It’s a very short cause-and-effect chain: (1) She rebels. (2) He punches her. Take away the “trigger” and the gun never goes off–she doesn’t get punched.
We are criticizing Ware for precisely that assertion: that the collection of abused wives shoulder some of the blame for their own abuse, since had they not rebelled, they would not have created the situation in which they were abused. We’re not claiming that he’s claiming that non-submission always leads to abuse. We’re claiming that he’s claiming that in the subset of marriages where abuse occurs, the “trigger” (your term) was the non-submission. I and others find that assertion to be morally reprehensible.
Sin is morally reprehensible, isn’t it?
What sin? Not “submitting?” I’ve had enough of your fundamentalist nonsense. Take it someplace else.
Are you kidding me? Is it okay for these men to pour acid on their wives or kill them?
You actually make me sick to my stomach.
oh my goodness i was deeply surprised by the views expressed here and eternally grateful for some. i was searchin the internet this morning to find out if what my husband is saying about me is true he says that i have a delusional spirit and that is why i see things wrong with him and that is why i am unhappy because he is perfect and has not fault. he says that his only fault is not reading his bible enough which is my fault because i don’t allow him too. he also says that i have a spirit of rebellion and that is why our marriage is not working.
i am 25 yrs have 2kids and have been married for the past 5 yrs and 4 and a half of those yrs was filled with emotional and some physical abuse. i am presently on anti-depressants and am now seeking for my husband and i to seperate because i believe iw ould die emotionally first and mentally if i stay with him. he always says that it is the things i do tht causes him to react the way he does. i believe that no matter what a woman does a man has no right to lay a finger on her for he is a coward when he does. i am disliked by his family alone.
It’s your husband who sounds delusional. I hope you get out this situation soon.
Wow, I know Don’s entry was back in Feb, it is now April. I feel for you. Your husband sounds VERY immature and self centered and is certainly not behaving in a Christian like manner.
It is VERY easy to fall into the trap of thinking the fault is all yours, especially if you are in a church that believes the woman should submit to her abusive husband. There are churches that actually will take his side and blame YOU for his sinful actions.
You may have to leave your dysfunctional church as well as your abusive husband for your own mental and phsycial health.
I am beginning to realize the MANY men are very immature and self centered no matter what age they are.
My husband is 53 years old and after becoming involved in a purpose driven cult, after having been flattered and pandered to by this “church”, he developed a self righteous attitude and start belittling me….when he never had a pattern of doing this. Despite the fact that he is no longer going to this group of hypocrites he blames me for his insecurities.
I am beginning to think that most men never grow up.
They blame their wives for thier insecurities and sad to say a lot of “churches” only reinforce this crap.
I am quite familiar with the BS games church people play. Games they play out of their own sinful self rigthtousness.
So, not only are a lot of wives being abused by their husbands emtionally, their churches also get in on the act.
It is enough to make you stop going to church, its so pathetic.
WE CAN SIT HERE ALL DAY AND DEBATE, BUT SINCE WOMEN HAVE HAD THEIR FREEDOM, THE COUNTRY HAS GONE STRAIGHT DOWN HILL, PERIOD….SO IF SOMETHING DOESN’T WORK, DON’T DO IT. MY WIFE REBELLS AGAINST ME CONSTANTLY, WHICH CAUSED US TO FIGHT CONSTANTLY, AND WHENEVER I LET HER TAKE THE REIGNS, IT ENDED UP IN DISASTER, PERIOD, AND THEN I WOULD HAVE TO TAKE OVER AND FIX THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY HER DECISION MAKING, BUT THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. NOW WE’RE SPLIT UP, AND SHE HAS TO WORK TWO JOBS, AND RAISE HER KIDS ON HER OWN. WE’VE BECOME ANOTHER STATISTIC, BECAUSE SHE WAS TOO PROUD TO JUST SUBMITT.
Ok STU, although you appear to have all the answers to the world in the palm of your hand. I completely disagree with you. I am as submissive as they come when it comes to a women. When I am with a man, I cook, clean, make his plates, wash his clothes, and do whatever else he may want, need, or desire. However being the perfect mate is not always enough. Abuse is never okay, and it is not okay to say that women are to blame for all the wrongs in the world. I am a single mother of two boys, and they would never raise their hand to a woman. They have been raised in a religious home and they KNOW the value of finding that one person to be your mate for life. Although divorced, it had nothing to do with me being submissive, but everything to do with him being mentally abusive and not being all that he can be. He did not provide for the family, instead I worked two jobs, and paid the bills, and cleaned the house, and raised the kids. So maybe you should think of all the women walking around with a black eye, broken arm, or even worse a broken spirit before you get on yoru soap box and start preaching about how women have made the world go down hill. There is enough blame for everyone to share!!!!!!!!!!!!!