Happy Slaves

"If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more." ~~ Harriet Tubman

Whether a woman has a kind master or a cruel one, complementarianism is the systematic, institutionalized, oppression of women. It is a slaveholding religion in the truest sense of the word, yet complementarian men and women proclaim it as God’s “glorious” design. [1]

Women are told they will be happy when they joyfully submit to their rulers, and, make no mistake about it, complementarian husbands are told to rule. [2] And this despite the fact that the only command found in scripture commanding men to bear rule in their homes comes from a pagan king with wicked and self-seeking counselors. [3] 1 Timothy 3:4-5, cannot be used as a reference for gender-based roles. The verse is speaking to fathers and not husbands. Reciprocally, as we have seen, 1 Timothy 5:14 emphatically instructs wives to rule their households.

According to Bruce Ware, it is sinful for husbands and wives to desire practical equality and with one another. Ware warns husbands that even though they might want practical equality with their wives, not to give in to this temptation.

He instructs Christian husbands to reject their God-given desire to enjoy life with an equal companion. He urges men to rule over and master both the desire and the wife. In his 2008 address at the Denton Bible Church, Ware said to husbands, “Cain is plotting to kill his brother, sin is crouching—its desire is for you.  You must master it……sin’s desire is to make you do what you want to do.  You must rule over it, you must master it…Her desire will be to usurp her husband’s authority…”

Ware advises men to engage in the very behavior God prophesied would come about because of sin.

Complementarians teach women that they will find true happiness only if they joyfully allow their husbands to dominate them. An interesting parallel to this is that slave owners also claimed their people were happiest in slavery. [4] Virtually all slaveholders, and even a few slaves, staunchly defended institutionalized slavery as being ordained of God and the harbinger of true happiness. But did that make slavery right? [5] The arguments heard from slave owners [and from some slaves] bear an eerie similarity to what we hear coming from complementarians today.

Why would men and women defend institutions that rob them of personal freedom?

Some are lulled into complacency through comforts or privileges. [6] And some are just lying. [7] But the truth is, that most slaves were, and are, not really happy living in servitude.

Angelina Grimkè wrote that man was given domination over the animal kingdom, and that is why we have never witnessed insurrection among animals, “but that is not the case,” she wrote, “with humans.” [8] Grimkè claimed that slavery was unnatural and that “The man must be crushed within him” before his back could be fitted to the burden of perpetual slavery.” She said the proof of that was in the many “insurrections that so often disturb the peace and security of slaveholding countries.” [9]

There are many “insurrections,” today, disturbing the complementarian peace.

Bruce Ware complained that he was being forced to take time away from more important work in order to educated listeners at the Denton Bible Church about the proper subjugation of women. We are asked to overlook the fact that the subject was so unimportant to him that he took the time to write an entire book on the subject of the subjugation of women. [10] We are asked to overlook the fact that he is past president of an organization (CBMW) dedicated to only one thing, the subjugation of women. We are asked to overlook the fact that he still serves on the Board of Directors of that same organization. And we are asked to overlook the obvious fact that not a single one of those more important things took precedence over the subjugation of women when it came to the Denton Bible Church address.

We think it is safe to conclude that the most important thing in Bruce Ware’s life is the subjugation of women.

Before it became socially unacceptable, women were deliberately kept ignorant by being denied education beyond what was necessary in order to make them adequate “helpmeets” for men; [11] and in like manner, slaveholders trained slaves in skills that would make them more useful and profitable slaves. But just as slaveholders understood that educated slaves were the unhappiest of all slaves, while ignorant slaves were generally the most docile, [12] men understood that women who received too much education would not be content confined to the spheres of their homes or being denied useful participation within the politics of their culture.

There are women, today, who defend gender-based authority. Some of these women are married to leaders in the complementarian movement. Some are employed by complementarian institutions. Others enjoy privileges bestowed on them by the male governance they defend. Some have been led, either through indoctrination or by growing up in happy homes where the gender-based roles “worked,” to believe that a gender-based authority and submission structure is God ordained and right.

Complementarian women have been taught to disdain “rights,” but they treasure privileges. Despite the fact that only free people have rights, they scoff at the very word and oxymoronically claim that it is their servitude that brings them freedom. [13]

In John 8:32-33, Jesus told a group of men that they would know the truth and the truth would set them free. The men sneered at Jesus and declared that they were already free. But the men who scoffed at Him were not free. They were not citizens of the Roman commonwealth. They had no “rights.” They were merely servants of an empire which extended much latitude and privilege.

These men mistook revocable comforts and privileges for freedom.

The Jews who mocked Jesus were deluded. They were happy . . .  deluded . . . slaves. They reveled in comforts and privileges which were tragically and irrevocably revoked in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, when the Roman army marched on the city, besieged, and destroyed it. The slave auctions that followed were so glutted with Jews that a Jewish slave was not worth a Confederate dollar. It was said that the poorest and most brutish of men could purchase as many as they liked for next to nothing.

Like the deluded and “happy-slave” privileged Jews of Judea, complementarian women are not free. Privilege is not freedom. In most Christian homes and churches, women are merely assistants to (servants of) husbands [14] and/or reigning male authorities, many of whom extend much latitude and privilege, and these revocable comforts and privileges are mistaken for freedom.

Complementarian author, the late Derek Prince spelled out the options for Christian wives in his book, Husbands and Fathers, “If the wife does not submit willingly to her husband’s headship, there is only one way he can take that position—by self-assertive domination. No sensible wife would want that!” [15] Like the Jews who mocked Jesus, touting revocable privileges as rights, women who claim to be content within the complementarian system are happy but. . . deluded . . . slaves.

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[1] “Proclaiming God’s Glorious Design for Men and Women” https://web.archive.org/web/20120128171603/http://www.cbmw.org/Resources/Articles/Summaries-of-the-Egalitarian-and-Complementarian-Positions

“Discipline doesn’t stifle; it gives power…Why shouldn’t it be so when we consider the glorious hierarchal order too?” Elizabeth Elliott, Let Me be a Woman: Notes to My Daughter on the Meaning of Womanhood, Living Books, Wheaton, Ill, 1982

[2] “God says we are to rule our families...” Charles Stanley, A Man’s Touch, Victor Books, Wheaton, ILL, 1988

“If a man does not know how to rule in his own house…how will he take care of the church of God?” Derek Prince, Husbands & Fathers, Chosen Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000

[3] Esther 1:21-22, “And the saying pleased the king and the princes and the king did according to the word of Memucan For he sent letters into all the king's provinces into every province according to the writing thereof and to every people after their language that every man should bear rule in his own house.”

[4] “That the treatment of slaves in this state is humane, and even indulgent, may be inferred from the fact of their rapid increase and great longevity. I believe that, constituted as they are, morally and physically, they are as happy as any peasantry in the world.” Excerpt of letter from slave owner to Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting The Original Facts And Documents Upon Which The Story Is Founded Together with Corroborative Statements to the Truth of The Work, 1853.

[5] “Lawdy! I sho' was happy when I was a slave..." Gabe Emanuel, extracted from Mississippi Slave Narratives, 1941

“Jus' 'fore de war come on, my marster called me to' im an' tol' me he was a-goin' to take me to North Carolina to his brother for safe keepin'. Right den I knowed somethin' was wrong. I was a-wishin' from de bottom o' my heart dat de Yankees 'ud stay out o' us business an' not git us all 'sturbed in de min'.” Prince Johnson, extracted from Mississippi Slave Narratives, 1941

[6] "Us was all sorry when Old Marster died, I cried 'cause I said, 'Now us won' git no more candy.' He used to bring us candy whan he went to town. Us'd be lookin' for 'im when he come home…. us'd come a-runnin' an' he'd han' it to us out-a his saddle bags. It was mos'ly good stick candy.” Jane Sutton,  extracted from Mississippi Slave Narratives, 1941

[7] "Lawsy! I's recallin' de time when de big old houn' dog what fin' de run-away N* done die wid fits. Dat man Duncan, he say us gwina hol' fun'al rites over dat dog. He say us N* might better be's pow'ful sad when us come to dat fun'al. An' dem N* was sad over de death o' dat poor old dog what had chased 'em all over de country. Dey all stan' 'roun' a-weepin' an' a-mournin'. Ever' now an' den dey'd put water on dey eyes an' play lak dey was a-weepin' bitter, bitter tears. 'Poor old dog, she done died down dead an' can't kotch us no more. Poor old dog. Amen! De Lawd have mercy!” extracted from Mississippi Slave Narratives, 1941

[8] “Who ever heard of a rebellion of the beasts of the field; and why not? Simply because they were all placed under the feet of man…Slavery always has and always will produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things…”Angelina Emily Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836

[9] ibid

[10] Ware’s book, Father Son and Holy Spirit, deals entirely with the subject of the subjugation women.

[11] “Man desires an educated woman. Intellectually and spiritually she must be able to meet his wants, and render help, or she is a failure...If woman would be man's equal, she must challenge the equality by proving herself mistress of those arts that minister the highest comfort to his physical nature, as well as to his affections, that further his interests as well as his happiness… Her education must fit her for a home and for home work." Justin D. Fulton, The True Woman, 1869

[12] “Except as a preparatory step to emancipation, I consider it exceedingly impolitic, even as regards the slaves themselves, to permit them to read and write: ‘Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.’ And it is certainly impolitic as regards their masters, on the principle that ‘knowledge is power.’” (excerpt of letter from slave owner) Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting The Original Facts And Documents Upon Which The Story Is Founded Together with Corroborative Statements to the Truth of The Work, 1853.

“…at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read… if you teach that n* (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would for ever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy…The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers… that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. " Fredrick Douglass, A Narrative on the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 1845

[13] “It is the woman’s delighted yielding to the man’s lead that gives freedom. It is the man’s willingness to take the lead that gives her freedom. Acceptance of their respective positions frees them both and whirls them into joy.” Elizabeth Elliott, Let Me be a Woman: Notes to My Daughter on the Meaning of Womanhood, Living Books, Wheaton, Ill, 1982

[14] The husband may need to delegate many practical daily tasks to his wife…A father has a right…to determine some of the basic rules of the household: What time they will eat….” Derek Prince, Husbands & Fathers, Chosen Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000

[15] ibid

This article is an excerpt from the book, Woman this is WAR! Gender, Slavery, and the Evangelical Caste System, by Jocelyn Andersen.

Eclectic, edgy, and enlivening, Jocelyn Andersen is the author of several non-fiction books and is currently working on her first novel. She writes and speaks about a variety of topics with an emphasis on the subject of God and Women. Her work in that respect has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television.

When Jocelyn speaks at your church or event, toss political correctness and stuffy tradition out the window, and prepare be challenged and motivated. Whether she is speaking to writers, teaching a Bible study, talking about the gender-based Christian caste system, or Christian response to domestic violence, her talks and interviews are always compelling, informative, empowering, and inspiring.