Damned Christians

[Angrboda]

My Husband Said God Wanted Him To Spank Me

The conflation of porn with theology confused me, but I knew that whatever I was about to find out, our God said it should be so. Chillingly, I was yet to learn that the most important question anyone can ask when a Christian pastor teaches that women should submit to their husbands is, “What happens if she disagrees or refuses to obey?”

Doug Wilson is a Christian patriarch who teaches, among other puritanical and high-control doctrines regarding family government, that women are to submit to their husbands and shouldn’t be allowed to vote. My family was part of Wilson’s congregation, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), until 2007, when I narrowly escaped what I now call church-sanctioned domestic abuse.

My husband believed Wilson’s teaching held the key to the Christian Golden Age, a shining millennium where Christian ethics and white men rule without resistance or room for anyone else. It goes by several names. Dominion theology. Federalism. Calvinism. New Calvinism. Fundamentalism.

If this sounds familiar to you, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is part of the same denomination and supports a new Christian Crusade, or Holy War. These ideologies are rising in the podcast “manosphere” and the popular trad-wife movement, which offer a refuge of control for men who feel sidelined by feminism.

In Wilson’s world, motherhood, or “being the CEO in charge of little souls,” is a special calling that women accept through self-subjugation to men. We submit, and this makes us better than feminist, man-hating women who have babies, rights and careers. Women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, instead, the husband’s vote should be for the entire “household.”

Mostly everyone we knew in our Reformed Presbyterian and Baptist circles owned his crudely self-published books. Both Wilson and Pearl, bearded like sinister Santas, were hell-bent on patriarchal dominance, but presented the power dynamic as Biblical and rational, like good-natured grandpas. Cheap publishing and an appearance of poverty were part of the schtick. Buying them felt like we’d discovered a secret.

I was about to learn another lesson in how pastoral teaching passes like a baton from one man to another. And how men in forums and at retreats swapped ideas like women swapped recipes. “How do you get your wife to obey?” has an answer in Christian Patriarchy.

Wilson said federal headship meant men were responsible for everything in their homes. This included the wife’s spending habits, entertainment, weight, rebellion, housekeeping, and responsiveness to sex.

As a good Baptist girl, I expected to be a servant-hearted wife. I soon learned there’s no endpoint to dominion and submission. And 20 years later, my body still braces when I hear Wilson’s name.

Over the past 20 years, Calvinism has infiltrated the Southern Baptist Convention and its seminaries, permeating mainline denominations. Wilson has enjoyed cross-denominational platforms with John Piper, Mark Driscoll, The Gospel Coalition and Ligonier Ministries, among others, which have helped normalize his extreme views by providing access to more mainstream congregations.

Today, Wilson has authored over a hundred books and championed a hundred churches. He wields his influence on YouTube, discussing everything from vaccine mandates to doomsday prepping, which, for Wilson, aren’t unrelated.

In my view, Calvinism and Federalism are far beyond “cult” status. Their thirst for dominion is unquenched. Christian Patriarchy wants to govern the country, and the world, the way they govern their homes, which is why these once-private abuses and practices matter to mainstream America. Lordship begins in the home. It won’t stay there.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/christian...f6c72b/amp

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