The Purpose-Driven Wife - Democratic Underground

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Sun Mar-08-09 12:02 AM
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The Purpose-Driven Wife

i first encounter "teacher and exhorter" Martha Peace at a Sunday-school hall on the campus of the First Baptist Church of Jonesboro, an 8,000-person megachurch in this verdant Atlanta suburb. Spacious enough to host its own congregation, the hall is flanked by embroidered banners bearing shields, birds, and crowns. The evening's emcee, Leanne, a peppy blonde with frosty blue eye shadow, says they represent the virtues of the nearly 120 women who came to see Peace speak as part of the church's "Women of Purpose" series. As daughters of the king of kings, Leanne explains, all Christian women wear crowns. But with that honor comes a mandate to apply their faith at home.

Peace is here to help. Over the past two decades, the 62-year-old Georgia native and former nurse has written five books on biblical womanhood, conservative Christianity's answer to the women's movement. Among them are The Excellent Wife, now a classic in this burgeoning niche, and Damsels in Distress, a set of biblical solutions to female problems ranging from pms to depression to "feminist tendencies." It's common for a young Christian wife to rebel against home life as her primary ministry, Peace writes in Becoming a Titus 2 Woman, which lays out the principles of her ministry model. It's the role of older women to help her understand her priorities.

Those priorities may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband's desires (barring a few "ungodly" or "homosexual" acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the "burden" of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse's decision—a privilege she should not abuse—she must accept his final answer as "God's will for her at that time," Peace advises. The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. "If you disobey your husband," Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, "you are indirectly shaking your fist at God."

The popularity of her audiotapes and books, translated into several languages and used as curriculum by Christian women's groups, has made Peace a celebrity in fundamentalist circles, with appearances at conferences and Bible meetings throughout the world. But she's just one among hundreds of professional Titus 2 mentors, older women who help younger ones—as outlined by Apostle Paul in Titus 2:5—"to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

The mentoring tradition, carried out largely by thousands of lay churchwomen, fell into neglect starting in the 1960s—its leaders blame feminism—but has since enjoyed a strong resurgence in congregations ranging from the millions-strong Southern Baptist Convention to the constellation of independent Reformed evangelical churches. (Saddleback megachurch pastor Rick Warren, Obama's controversial pick for the inaugural invocation, also preaches wifely submission. The church website cites Ephesians: "So you wives must willingly obey your husbands in everything, just as the Church obeys Christ.")

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2009/03/books-purpose-driven-wife