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From the article: > Indeed, in many conservative religious denominations, > the same tenets are echoed today. While I'm not going to claim I hold the

From the article: > Indeed, in many conservative religious denominations, > the same tenets are echoed today. While I'm not going to claim I hold the same tenets as a book I've never read, I guess that I'm in one of the "conservative religious denominations" which the author is indicating here. I can certainly see some resemblance between a few of the examples cited from the book and my current (religiously-inspired) views on marriage. However, one thing I'd like to explicitly disclaim is the notion that there is any prescriptive support in the Bible for the victorian-era idea that wives should be Doormat Debbies, as alluded to throughout this article. The most often-cited passage in this regard is Ephesians 5:22-24... Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. If this is all you know of "Christian marriage philosophy", please take the time to inform yourself. I'd suggest you find someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage and ask them how this passage specifically plays out in their married life. (Hint: If the passage is truly being followed, what you will find is anything but a bully of a man and a brow-beaten woman)

plonh 11y ago
Bully and browbeaten seems to be a common complaint in modern Biblical families. Obviously there are millions of Christians who have lives they call Christian that are informed by centuries of culture that postdates the Bible.
- notdonspaulding 11y ago
  > Bully and browbeaten seems to be a common complaint in modern Biblical families I'm certain this passage is taken out of context in support of that philosophy. However, it's an abuse of the text, and not a reasonable conclusion from reading it in its entirety. Are you saying we should judge all philosophies by their abuse? We should ignore climate scientists because of ClimateGate? We should outlaw religions because there are crazy people in the world who claim to be killing in the name of some of them?
throwitback 11y ago
Perhaps a problem is that this passage tends to be the most taught marriage-related passage in the evangelical churches and para-church organizations I've attended? One can make many cases for models of Biblical marriage (David, a "man after God's own heart" was polygamous. This is not spoken against in the Bible, but his adultery with another man's wife was condemned. To me, this is implicit support.) One can also talk about whether Jesus himself would have supported Paul's interpretation and writings about marriage. I tend to find their respective teachings disharmonious. Paul very much believed in the order of things, and in authority. And in this case (as in the case of master/slave relationships!), the man has authority. Both masters and husbands have obligations to use their authority kindly, but Paul did not decry the authority of one individual over another. So yes, in the most common interpretation of evangelical Pauline Christianity (i.e. that practiced in Heartland America), the men are not bullies, but they do possess power and authority over women, and I think this power is the thing liberals and humanists take issue with.
- rat87 11y ago
  The Torah allows polygamy. Ashkenazi Jews(descendant of those living in Germany around 900 or so AD many of whom later move east to Poland, Ukraine, and Russia) banned polygamy around ~1000 AD. I think it mostly died down in Sephardic and Yemeni after most of them moved to the Israel but I'm not sure if it was that common before that time.
  - ars 11y ago
    Even when permitted it was very rare. For one thing only the very wealthy could afford it - each wife was required to have her own house (separate rooms in one house was not enough). For the most part it was practiced mainly by traveling businessmen/salesmen who would have a wife in each city where they worked. (Don't forget how slow and long travel used to be.) The main reason for permitting it is that historically males died more often than females, so there is a small surplus of females, and permitting a small amount of polygamy helps with that. It's no longer relevant these days.
    - 11y ago
imissmyjuno 11y ago
This is potentially a very ignorant question but, how do you choose which passages should not be followed?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It's less about chosing passages, and more about reading them in the context of the whole book they're in. A passage by itself may sound stark, but the wole chapter is in fact toning it down.
- throwitback 11y ago
  Loosely speaking, God/"Moses" put a bunch of rules in play for the early Israelites. Then Jesus came around and said "it's all about love." Then Paul clarified Jesus with more specific directions. So Paul > Jesus > Moses, mostly because of chronology. Let's take gay people as an example. Moses said no, Jesus said it's all about love, and Paul said no to gay people. So even though Jesus is always right, in practice he was usually pretty vague, so Paul ends up with the overrule. *Side note: some people believe that Paul and/or Moses were only referring to gay people in the context of pagan ritual sex, and that Jesus's "love" should take priority. I'd believe Moses was about pagan sex and Paul is non-canon if I were still Christian. This shows that there's plenty of room for interpretation. The previous paragraphs are simply the evangelical mainstream interpretation. Edit: A cynical me would also say that interpretation depends on agenda.
  - Someone 11y ago
    But for Catholics, the pope can override ^W interpret what all those long dead people said, (mostly) because of chronology. For Protestants, Luther came along and more or less said "make up your own mind", so everybody can make their own interpretation. So, yes interpretation at the very least depends on where one wants to put the accents.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      Luther was still mostly about the Catholic church's canon. His opposition was mostly to the business and political practices of the Church. Or, in other words, against the sale of indulgences for absolution of purgatory-condemning sanctions against living and dead parishioners. In the beginnings of the 95 Theses he actually puts a favorable light on the Pope, in my brief re-reading [1]. Luther's protestants still held to the catacism(sp?), sacraments, transmutation of the hosts, etc. As far as I've ever understood it. [1]: http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html
blowski 11y ago
I agree. Every verse in the New Testament has to be viewed through the lens of Mark 12:30-31. > Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.
- eru 11y ago
  There's more than one passage proclaiming itself to be the most important. Compare eg Matthew 12:31-32: > Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. > Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.
__alta__ 11y ago
> If this is all you know of "Christian marriage philosophy", please take the time to inform yourself. I'd suggest you find someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage and ask them how this passage specifically plays out in their married life. (Hint: If the passage is truly being followed, what you will find is anything but a bully of a man and a brow-beaten woman) I'll admit that passage is often what I think of when I think of Christian marriage philosophy from the Bible – and am willing to correct that notion. What, in your mind, should be the outcome of someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage w.r.t. this passage? Your hint didn't really lay out an answer; only a non-answer. I interpret the church to mean members of Christianity. In that lens, it doesn't seem like the relationship between a woman submitting to her husband ought to be like how a Christian submits to Christ. Does it?
- notdonspaulding 11y ago
  I quoted that passage out of context intentionally, because I think it represents what most people think of Paul's marriage views, accurately or not. The whole chapter provides a great deal more context to Paul's thoughts on the subject: https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.5.esv https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.5.esv > What, in your mind, should be the outcome of someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage w.r.t. this passage? I know about 300-500 Christian families from my town. When the vast majority of them read that section of Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus (Paul mainly wrote letters, and they weren't divided up into chapters/verses for reference until much later) the key takeaway for them is "I, as a Christian, am commanded to give up my rights for the sake of my spouse and our marriage." In doing this, I think most people assume that Christians simply pretend they don't want what they really want, and pretend they do want what they really don't want. That's not it at all, and that's merely a recipe for a hollow, hypocritical relationship. There are certainly differences amongst Christians, and I don't intend to paper over them. I'm just saying, if you have a Christian friend, ask them what these kinds of passages mean to them, rather than assume they are brow-beating their spouse based on two sentences taken out of the context of an entire letter Paul wrote.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
shoo 11y ago
There was a great comment on metafilter by `a fiendish thingy` a few months back about one interpretation of this idea of headship: I have two friends (who are married) who believe in biblical standards of the husband being the head of the household. HOWEVER. They are also outspoken feminists (both of them), and their belief in marital headship is based on their belief that a man’s job as the head of household who has been gifted with an outsize amount of cultural privilege is to actively fight patriarchy and bolster his wife’s human dignity in a culture attempting to diminish her personhood. (Like, head of household is a metaphor for Jesus being the head of the church, and Jesus died for the church, so they believe the head of the household should be constantly throwing himself on the sword of patriarchy to elevate his wife to her rightful place of equality, instead of expecting her to constantly be the person dealing with toxic misogyny all by herself. So headship in their marriage is not “I am in charge, fetch me my slippers,” but “As the privileged partner, I am charged with a special responsibility of helping us realize equality within our marriage and our world”.) http://ask.metafilter.com/283189/Emotional-Labor-Checklist-Self-Assessment#4103322 http://ask.metafilter.com/283189/Emotional-Labor-Checklist-S...
- eric_h 11y ago
  Thanks, that's quite insightful. It is, I believe, an excellent example of being able to take nearly any biblical, (or talmudic, or quranic(sp?)) passage and bend it to any particular moral framework (in this case feminism).
kenbellows 11y ago
I don't know, man. Consider 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
- marrs 11y ago
  Examining religious scripture in isolation like this is a pointless exercise. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to eat at a banquet by tasting a single ingredient you pinched from the kitchen. You taste salt and you think the meal was salty, you taste sugar and you think it was sweet. In reality it contained elements of both, but tasted nothing like either.
- jorangreef 11y ago
  The 2 verses you quoted have a specific context in chapter 14 and in the rest of the letter to the Corinthians, within which they must be understood (not speaking/reading/praying in general). If anything, the Bible has always been counter-cultural in promoting the equality of men and women, and the countless greetings and references to prominent women in the early church in the various letters reflects the critical contribution they made.
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    I've read it in context, thoroughly, and it doesn't help. And really, in what context could this become okay? As for the claim that the Bible has "always been counter-cultural in promoting the equality of men and women", that is a very limited viewpoint on history; it has been used toward both oppressive and egalitarian ends since it was written. And if you mean that the early Christian writers like Paul were especially egalitarian for their time, this too is controversial at best in scholarly circles. The mere mention (even praise) of certain women does not demonstrate a culture of gender equality; Roman society at large is also known to have venerated certain female figures in the same way, so this was hardly a counter-cultural practice.
cableshaft 11y ago
I've sat through two weddings where the pastor chose to share that passage. One time it was without commentary, and the whole ceremony came across poorly to me (he even solicited conversions to his church at the end, as if it were a public Sunday service). The other was a younger guy who didn't say the whole thing and tried to explain it away the best he could as more or less being about "supporting each other". I liked that wedding a lot better in general, but I still think that's a terrible passage to recite during a wedding. So if pastors think that is the most important bit to share when performing actual marriages in public, you shouldn't be surprised that this is what people are most familiar with.

plonh 11y ago

Bully and browbeaten seems to be a common complaint in modern Biblical families. Obviously there are millions of Christians who have lives they call Christian that are informed by centuries of culture that postdates the Bible.

notdonspaulding 11y ago
> Bully and browbeaten seems to be a common complaint in modern Biblical families I'm certain this passage is taken out of context in support of that philosophy. However, it's an abuse of the text, and not a reasonable conclusion from reading it in its entirety. Are you saying we should judge all philosophies by their abuse? We should ignore climate scientists because of ClimateGate? We should outlaw religions because there are crazy people in the world who claim to be killing in the name of some of them?

throwitback 11y ago

Perhaps a problem is that this passage tends to be the most taught marriage-related passage in the evangelical churches and para-church organizations I've attended? One can make many cases for models of Biblical marriage (David, a "man after God's own heart" was polygamous. This is not spoken against in the Bible, but his adultery with another man's wife was condemned. To me, this is implicit support.) One can also talk about whether Jesus himself would have supported Paul's interpretation and writings about marriage. I tend to find their respective teachings disharmonious. Paul very much believed in the order of things, and in authority. And in this case (as in the case of master/slave relationships!), the man has authority. Both masters and husbands have obligations to use their authority kindly, but Paul did not decry the authority of one individual over another. So yes, in the most common interpretation of evangelical Pauline Christianity (i.e. that practiced in Heartland America), the men are not bullies, but they do possess power and authority over women, and I think this power is the thing liberals and humanists take issue with.

rat87 11y ago
The Torah allows polygamy. Ashkenazi Jews(descendant of those living in Germany around 900 or so AD many of whom later move east to Poland, Ukraine, and Russia) banned polygamy around ~1000 AD. I think it mostly died down in Sephardic and Yemeni after most of them moved to the Israel but I'm not sure if it was that common before that time.
- ars 11y ago
  Even when permitted it was very rare. For one thing only the very wealthy could afford it - each wife was required to have her own house (separate rooms in one house was not enough). For the most part it was practiced mainly by traveling businessmen/salesmen who would have a wife in each city where they worked. (Don't forget how slow and long travel used to be.) The main reason for permitting it is that historically males died more often than females, so there is a small surplus of females, and permitting a small amount of polygamy helps with that. It's no longer relevant these days.
  - 11y ago

imissmyjuno 11y ago

This is potentially a very ignorant question but, how do you choose which passages should not be followed?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
It's less about chosing passages, and more about reading them in the context of the whole book they're in. A passage by itself may sound stark, but the wole chapter is in fact toning it down.
throwitback 11y ago
Loosely speaking, God/"Moses" put a bunch of rules in play for the early Israelites. Then Jesus came around and said "it's all about love." Then Paul clarified Jesus with more specific directions. So Paul > Jesus > Moses, mostly because of chronology. Let's take gay people as an example. Moses said no, Jesus said it's all about love, and Paul said no to gay people. So even though Jesus is always right, in practice he was usually pretty vague, so Paul ends up with the overrule. *Side note: some people believe that Paul and/or Moses were only referring to gay people in the context of pagan ritual sex, and that Jesus's "love" should take priority. I'd believe Moses was about pagan sex and Paul is non-canon if I were still Christian. This shows that there's plenty of room for interpretation. The previous paragraphs are simply the evangelical mainstream interpretation. Edit: A cynical me would also say that interpretation depends on agenda.
- Someone 11y ago
  But for Catholics, the pope can override ^W interpret what all those long dead people said, (mostly) because of chronology. For Protestants, Luther came along and more or less said "make up your own mind", so everybody can make their own interpretation. So, yes interpretation at the very least depends on where one wants to put the accents.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    Luther was still mostly about the Catholic church's canon. His opposition was mostly to the business and political practices of the Church. Or, in other words, against the sale of indulgences for absolution of purgatory-condemning sanctions against living and dead parishioners. In the beginnings of the 95 Theses he actually puts a favorable light on the Pope, in my brief re-reading [1]. Luther's protestants still held to the catacism(sp?), sacraments, transmutation of the hosts, etc. As far as I've ever understood it. [1]: http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html

blowski 11y ago

I agree. Every verse in the New Testament has to be viewed through the lens of Mark 12:30-31. > Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.

eru 11y ago
There's more than one passage proclaiming itself to be the most important. Compare eg Matthew 12:31-32: > Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. > Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

__alta__ 11y ago

> If this is all you know of "Christian marriage philosophy", please take the time to inform yourself. I'd suggest you find someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage and ask them how this passage specifically plays out in their married life. (Hint: If the passage is truly being followed, what you will find is anything but a bully of a man and a brow-beaten woman) I'll admit that passage is often what I think of when I think of Christian marriage philosophy from the Bible – and am willing to correct that notion. What, in your mind, should be the outcome of someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage w.r.t. this passage? Your hint didn't really lay out an answer; only a non-answer. I interpret the church to mean members of Christianity. In that lens, it doesn't seem like the relationship between a woman submitting to her husband ought to be like how a Christian submits to Christ. Does it?

notdonspaulding 11y ago
I quoted that passage out of context intentionally, because I think it represents what most people think of Paul's marriage views, accurately or not. The whole chapter provides a great deal more context to Paul's thoughts on the subject: https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.5.esv https://www.bible.com/bible/59/eph.5.esv > What, in your mind, should be the outcome of someone who claims to follow the Bible in their marriage w.r.t. this passage? I know about 300-500 Christian families from my town. When the vast majority of them read that section of Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus (Paul mainly wrote letters, and they weren't divided up into chapters/verses for reference until much later) the key takeaway for them is "I, as a Christian, am commanded to give up my rights for the sake of my spouse and our marriage." In doing this, I think most people assume that Christians simply pretend they don't want what they really want, and pretend they do want what they really don't want. That's not it at all, and that's merely a recipe for a hollow, hypocritical relationship. There are certainly differences amongst Christians, and I don't intend to paper over them. I'm just saying, if you have a Christian friend, ask them what these kinds of passages mean to them, rather than assume they are brow-beating their spouse based on two sentences taken out of the context of an entire letter Paul wrote.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

shoo 11y ago

There was a great comment on metafilter by `a fiendish thingy` a few months back about one interpretation of this idea of headship: I have two friends (who are married) who believe in biblical standards of the husband being the head of the household. HOWEVER. They are also outspoken feminists (both of them), and their belief in marital headship is based on their belief that a man’s job as the head of household who has been gifted with an outsize amount of cultural privilege is to actively fight patriarchy and bolster his wife’s human dignity in a culture attempting to diminish her personhood. (Like, head of household is a metaphor for Jesus being the head of the church, and Jesus died for the church, so they believe the head of the household should be constantly throwing himself on the sword of patriarchy to elevate his wife to her rightful place of equality, instead of expecting her to constantly be the person dealing with toxic misogyny all by herself. So headship in their marriage is not “I am in charge, fetch me my slippers,” but “As the privileged partner, I am charged with a special responsibility of helping us realize equality within our marriage and our world”.) http://ask.metafilter.com/283189/Emotional-Labor-Checklist-Self-Assessment#4103322 http://ask.metafilter.com/283189/Emotional-Labor-Checklist-S...

eric_h 11y ago
Thanks, that's quite insightful. It is, I believe, an excellent example of being able to take nearly any biblical, (or talmudic, or quranic(sp?)) passage and bend it to any particular moral framework (in this case feminism).

kenbellows 11y ago

I don't know, man. Consider 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

marrs 11y ago
Examining religious scripture in isolation like this is a pointless exercise. It's like trying to imagine what it's like to eat at a banquet by tasting a single ingredient you pinched from the kitchen. You taste salt and you think the meal was salty, you taste sugar and you think it was sweet. In reality it contained elements of both, but tasted nothing like either.
jorangreef 11y ago
The 2 verses you quoted have a specific context in chapter 14 and in the rest of the letter to the Corinthians, within which they must be understood (not speaking/reading/praying in general). If anything, the Bible has always been counter-cultural in promoting the equality of men and women, and the countless greetings and references to prominent women in the early church in the various letters reflects the critical contribution they made.
- kenbellows 11y ago
  I've read it in context, thoroughly, and it doesn't help. And really, in what context could this become okay? As for the claim that the Bible has "always been counter-cultural in promoting the equality of men and women", that is a very limited viewpoint on history; it has been used toward both oppressive and egalitarian ends since it was written. And if you mean that the early Christian writers like Paul were especially egalitarian for their time, this too is controversial at best in scholarly circles. The mere mention (even praise) of certain women does not demonstrate a culture of gender equality; Roman society at large is also known to have venerated certain female figures in the same way, so this was hardly a counter-cultural practice.

cableshaft 11y ago

I've sat through two weddings where the pastor chose to share that passage. One time it was without commentary, and the whole ceremony came across poorly to me (he even solicited conversions to his church at the end, as if it were a public Sunday service). The other was a younger guy who didn't say the whole thing and tried to explain it away the best he could as more or less being about "supporting each other". I liked that wedding a lot better in general, but I still think that's a terrible passage to recite during a wedding. So if pastors think that is the most important bit to share when performing actual marriages in public, you shouldn't be surprised that this is what people are most familiar with.