Hierarchy, Oppression, Inequality, oh my!
A series on one of the biblical passages used to oppress and subjugate women
Because I have grown up in evangelicalism, a lot of my criticism of patriarchy will be from that point of view. However, patriarchy is in all religious circles. Mainline protestant traditions still have women fighting for the right to be seen as equal to male priests and pastors in the mainline traditions. A lot more than I expected when I met people at Vanderbilt Divinity School (VDS), which is ecumenical and interdenominational. I will be talking a lot about patriarchy but know that oppression takes on many faces in religious circles, and when I’m talking about the harm patriarchy does to women, I am also talking about the harm to the LGBTOI+ community in the name of religion. They are also fighting for inclusion and equality. You can see this in the recent battle within the United Methodist tradition over LGBQI+ inclusion and the eventual split in that denomination.
I want to do an introduction to a series on Ephesians 5:22-31, otherwise known as the household codes. I chose this passage because it is commonly used in conservative religious circles to propagate a hierarchy of men over women. It is one of the significant passages that evangelicals read literally and use this passage to define “headship,” which falsely puts women under the subjugation of men. Therefore, since it is defined in scripture, as their argument goes, women must follow the hierarchal order as it is biblical. All this does is serve men and preserve a patriarchal order. I believe it also feeds a power hierarchy that leaves women and children vulnerable to abuse.
I will look at the origination of the household codes (it wasn’t Paul) and examine why the Ephesian writer would want to emphasize the order of a household to the church at Ephesus. Then, I will look at why scholars repeatedly call this text “difficult” in the research I studied. This is where most of the controversy of the passage lies, and how it relates to a woman’s role in marriage comes from. I will examine the importance of looking at the cultural influences of the Greco-Roman period, including the treatment of women, to examine the relevance of this ancient text to today’s culture. I will include conservative, scholarly, and feminist perspectives in this passage.
The belief regarding wifely submission is written clearly in the SBC’s Baptist Faith and Message, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”[1] The Baptist Faith and Message goes on to say that the wife is equal to her husband; however, she has the God-given responsibility to “respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.”[2] However, each church in the SBC is autonomous, and while most conform to the beliefs held in the convention, a few rogue churches ordain women to preach and affirm LGBQTI+ folks in their congregations. In the last two years, because of amendments to the Baptist Faith and Message, that autonomy has been erased, as most of those churches with women as pastors have been expelled from the SBC altogether.[3] It is like the SBC is digging in to preserve the hierarchal order of relationships, which I feel directly contributes to the abuse of men and women in the SBC, which has an ongoing resistance to adequately dealing with men in ministry who have harmed women and children. That is an entirely different post to write about, but in case you are curious about the SBC sex abuse coverup and an ongoing lawsuit, just click here.
Many women who have escaped fundamentalist viewpoints on gender read Ephesians 5:21-33, commonly called the “household codes,” and blast Paul as misogynistic, sexist, and the perpetrator of patriarchy. However, do a deep dive into the household codes the Ephesians presented, and you will find that the writer was preaching mutuality and inclusion instead of patriarchy. We are just now scratching the surface of the potential harm done through this patriarchal system of women submitting to men. With the #churchtoo movement in recent years and the above-mentioned SBC sex abuse cover-up, the topic of the harm patriarchy does to women needs to be discussed. When we choose to continue to read this passage as a blueprint for patriarchal marriage, it can harm women.[4]
A word about the conservative resources I quote in this series. I chose Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by John Piper and Wayne Grudem as a primary source. I chose this work because it was a comprehensive composition of the conservative evangelical belief system. The book includes chapters written by many authors, with Piper and Grudem both book-ending the chapters with their viewpoints. Many refer to Piper and Grudem when looking at conservative evangelical resources on complementarianism. Grudem co-founded the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an evangelical Christian organization promoting a complementarian view of gender issues.[5] While they both have PhDs in Theology neither are Biblical scholars. They are considered popular theologians, and their books include theological works that prooftexts the Bible to defend their pre-determined position.
A word about the writer of Ephesians. Most biblical scholars now believe that Ephesians is a book that sounds like it was written by Paul but wasn’t, often referred to as a pseudepigraphic book. That is another blog post for another time, but for the purpose of this blog, we will name pseudo-Paul (or someone close to Paul) as the author of Ephesians.
Next post, we dig into Ephesians and all the controversy in the “household codes” passage.
[1] “Baptist Faith & Message 2000 - The Baptist Faith and Message,” https://bfm.sbc.net/, accessed August 11, 2024, https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/.
[2] “Baptist Faith & Message 2000 - The Baptist Faith and Message.”
[3] Susan M. Shaw, “Purity Culture and the Subjugation of Women: Southern Baptist Beliefs on Sex and Gender Provide Context to Spa Suspect’s ‘Motive,’” The Conversation, March 23, 2021, http://theconversation.com/purity-culture-and-the-subjugation-of-women-southern-baptist-beliefs-on-sex-and-gender-provide-context-to-spa-suspects-motive-157496.
[4] Carol J. Schlueter, “Revitalizing Interpretations of Ephesians 522,” Pastoral Psychology 45, no. 4 (1997): 317-, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02282659.
[5] “Wayne Grudem,” n.d., https://www.theopedia.com/wayne-grudem.