I Now Pronounce You Lord and Follower

While attending a recent wedding, the minister had some “advice” for the newlyweds (particularly the wife) which came as a bit of a surprise to me. He said that by getting married she consequently accepted, “her duty to submit”. He went on to say that she must only focus on her husbands positive qualities and never his negative ones. His advice to the husband was to be a strong leader and love his wife. To emphasize these points he used this passage from the bible.

All of this was a shock to me, but what was the most jarring was the idea that women should submit to their husbands as they “do to the Lord”. This seems to imply that women should treat their husbands as if they were their God. I think it can be assumed that most Christian people believe that their God is right in everything that she/he does. This would mean that the husband would be justified in everything that he did, no matter what it was.




I feel as though this man’s purpose in telling this couple what it meant to be married was to establish gender roles. Not only that, but to actually argue that these gender roles are “God’s will”. My initial reaction to all this was disbelief, coupled with disapproval. But then, I looked at the couple actually getting married.

Both husband and wife had smiles across their blushing faces as they stood together. They seemed completely happy and content with the ceremony and obviously cared about each other deeply. So although to me it seemed that this woman’s natural born rights as an equal human being were being infringed upon, and that she was being told that her duty in life was submission and servitude, maybe the couple getting married doesn’t see it as harshly as that. Maybe, the couple getting married actually finds comfort in these gender roles. Who am I to judge how people wish to live their lives? Maybe, it comforts the woman to know that her husband will be “the man of the house” and will be able to guide them through life.

As someone who cares both about religion and human rights issues deeply, this question, of whether or not it is ok for religions to establish gender roles and cause inequality, is one that has caused me a great deal of thought. Can we even say that people’s rights are being restricted if they themselves are voluntarily restricting them? Do non-members of a religion really have the right to judge what members of a religion consider to be their morals?