JOHN WRITES:

Thank you for your wonderful website. Usually I agree with mostly everything you write, but I have to take exception to this statement: 

“It is wrong to say that all egalitarian marriages are bad, just as it is inaccurate to say that all traditional marriages are good.”

All egalitarian marriages violate the teaching of the Bible, therefore they are “bad” by definition. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament spell out in detail what a marriage should be like, and egalitarian marriage violates that standard. An individual instance of an egalitarian marriage might look happy on the outside, but there will be more going on under the surface. Just as every adulterous relationship is wrong, no matter how happy the couple might appear, so every egalitarian marriage violates God’s plan for the human family. The Bible tells every single wife to be obedient and submissive to her husband, it doesn’t make exceptions for those who are happy in an egalitarian relationship. 

In most egalitarian marriages that appear happy what you will find is that the wife is naturally feminine and submissive on an instinctual level even if she says intellectually that she is a believer in feminism. What she is doing is living off the capital built up by thousands of years of women who knew what was right and did it and raised their daughters in the same way. That patrimony has not been quite entirely dissipated yet, but this woman will not be able to hand on that inheritance to her own daughters if she raises them in an egalitarian environment. 

We need to remind ourselves, moreover, that there is a supernatural purpose to the marriage relationship as God established it. The obedience and submission of a wife towards her husband was not established by God for purely pragmatic reasons. The virtue of obedience provides an essential foundation of the spiritual life, and so an egalitarian marriage, no matter how “happy” it looks on a natural level, destroys the potential for souls to grow in the way that God intended. Any woman who violates God’s commands in her most basic, innate and fundamental duty destroys her own soul, prevents her children from acquiring the beginnings of a life of grace, and most likely will drag her husband down to perdition as well. 

While you are correct that “it is inaccurate to say that all traditional marriages are good,” all traditional marriages — even “bad” ones — maintain the essential structure that is necessary for souls to grow towards God in grace. A wife who suffers from the imperfections of her husband but who continues to obey God’s commands for her to be obedient and submissive has in many ways the best of all situations for attaining eternal life. It is precisely this outcome that the devil hope to prevent through the demonic agency of feminism. 

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing and for this excellent statement. You have provided an important correction and addition to what has been said here in recent days about traditional marriages, which has focused heavily on its practical and emotional rewards. This is incomplete. Marriage is a spiritual institution.

I absolutely agree with you. By “bad,” I meant unhappy, that some egalitarian marriages appear happy. But you are absolutely correct that even where there is the appearance of happiness there is not proper functioning. Destruction of some kind and unhappiness are destined to come, either in the near or distant future. 

In most egalitarian marriages that appear happy what you will find is that the wife is naturally feminine and submissive on an instinctual level even if she says intellectually that she is a believer in feminism. What she is doing is living off the capital built up by thousands of years of women who knew what was right and did it and raised their daughters in the same way. That patrimony has not been quite entirely dissipated yet, but this woman will not be able to hand on that inheritance to her own daughters if she raises them in an egalitarian environment. 

This is an excellent observation. You have said this very well. If rejection of the egalitarian marriage is not explicit its standards are essentially passed on. As you say, many women tacitly reject feminism but outwardly accept it. It’s a religion of convenience, kept on hand to leave one’s options open or to avoid offending others. What this outward and superficial adherence means, however, is that their daughters fully imbibe it. This leads to shock as one generation that appears to live an orderly life sees its children and then grandchildren engulfed in family breakdown. The problem was not the outward example of the older generation but its failure to explicitly reject in words and action what the general culture was promoting. 

I think the subtle undermining of traditional marriage was surprisingly common before the full-blown divorce and egalitarian marriage revolution of the 60’s and 70’s. In that case, I think both men and women were inwardly pulling away. Many women in the so-called Greatest Generation were rebelling against their roles and sowing the seeds of insurrection while at the same time leading a traditional life. 

The obedience and submission of a wife towards her husband was not established by God for purely pragmatic reasons. 

Another essential point. It’s not just that there is less time for faith and its observances in the egalitarian marriage, for the conveying of the quiet and hidden truths in a non-institutional setting of intimacy and love. There is not the ability to move, to gravitate toward God. It’s like a ship in contrary winds, stuck in one position. This is because masculine and feminine are God-given and absolute. Each works to convey some aspect of ultimate truth, to push the ship forward. Male authority and objectivity, feminine intuition and tenderness, these are the currents that help propel us toward eternal good, toward rewards beyond this life. 

        — Comments —

Rita writes:

I think the most beautiful reason to follow the Biblical mandate for a marriage is that it symbolizes God’s kingdom. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, a wife’s submission to her husband symbolizes Christ’s headship over the church and in the next verses men are told to love their wives even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it. So by fulfilling these God given roles, we can be an example to ourselves, our children and the rest of the world of God’s sacrificial love and leadership. There can be none of that in a truly egalitarian marriage.

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