White evangelical men weaponize the gospel against women because they don’t respect women

“Do men desperately need respect, while women desperately need love?”

This was the question posed by Sheila Gregoire on a recent episode of the “Bare Marriage” podcast. “That is the thesis of a lot of bestselling books in evangelicalism like Love and Respect; For Women Only; His Needs, Her Needs; Marriage on the Rock … Power of a Praying Wife — basically all the bestsellers say that respect is this God-given need of a man.”

It’s a relevant topic to consider, given the prevalence of this mindset among evangelicals. But it’s also a timely one given how many of our current controversies boil down to men demanding respect from women while at the same time disrespecting women.

White evangelical Protestants voted 85% in November for a president who bragged about grabbing women by the genitals and was found liable for sexual abuse, and for a vice president who complained about “childless cat ladies.” In other words, they overwhelmingly and enthusiastically voted for two men who disrespect women.

It’s no wonder, then, that while surveying more than 2,800 women who had worked or volunteered in Protestant churches for his book Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Community, Andrew Bauman found that 82% of respondents “agreed that sexism plays a role in the church.”

At Trump and Vance’s inauguration, nobody lifted an eyebrow when Franklin Graham prayed while mentioning the dark times of the previous four years in front of President Joe Biden. But when Bishop Mariann Budde asked for mercy for the vulnerable at the Washington National Cathedral, all hell broke loose.

And while much of the criticism of Budde has been about politics, there is definitely a misogynistic undertone. Denny Burk, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, called Budde an “apostate priestess,” while Joe Rigney, a professor at Doug Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College, said, “Women’s ordination is a cancer that unleashes untethered empathy in the church (and spills over into society).” In a separate piece one year ago, Rigney wrote, “The empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office.”

Whether we’re talking about sexual abuse, women’s roles in society, or political dialogue, the gendered dichotomy and weaponization of respect and love continues to permeate our conversations.

“The sickness that is spilling over isn’t empathy, but a lack of respect for women.”

You would think respecting one another would be simply a human ideal, beyond the reach of ideology and regardless of gender. In her newsletter this week, Kristin Du Mez said: “These core values — respecting others’ dignity, telling the truth and acting with humility — are neither inherently conservative nor liberal. Yet today, some of the loudest Christian voices are advancing a religious and political agenda that undermines each of these, one that distorts core Christian teachings beyond recognition and weaponizes the faith.”

In a sense, Rigney is correct in saying what’s happening in the church is spilling over into society. Unfortunately, the sickness that is spilling over isn’t empathy, but a lack of respect for women.

Of course, we can and should examine how evangelical theologies of authority and submission sacralize the weaponization of the gospel against women. But at some point, all the links between theology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and ideologies boil down to one simple fact: Conservative white evangelical men weaponize the gospel against women because they don’t respect women.

A weaponized faith

Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense came down to a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance due to credible accusations of Hegseth being drunk on the job and sexually assaulting women. But one of Hegseth’s defenses is that he has supposedly turned to Christianity and has become a different man.

As Charlie Kirk celebrated, “Hegseth’s first words as Secretary of Defense: ‘All praise and glory to God. His will be done.’”

Unfortunately, the version of Christianity Hegseth joined is run by Doug Wilson, who tells women to call their husbands “lord” and says sex is not “an egalitarian pleasuring party” and that during sex, “true authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”

According to the Idaho Capital-Sun: “Wilson and his allies have a rigid patriarchal belief system and don’t believe in the separation of church and state. They support taking away the right to vote from most women, barring non-Christians from holding office and criminalizing the LGBTQ community.”

And lest we think Hegseth may be an ignorant bystander who is unaware of what his church teaches, his former sister-in-law said under oath this past week that Hegseth believed “women should not vote or work and that Christians needed to have more children so they could overtake the Muslim population.”

This is why Kristin Du Mez recently wrote: “If I had to choose a poster boy for Jesus and John Wayne Christianity, it would be hard to find a better candidate than Pete Hegseth. Almost chapter by chapter, he exemplifies the themes of the book.”

‘Would you rather?’

While complementarianism, the belief that men and women should relate to one another through relationships of male authority and female submission, has been around for a long time, the current scripts about men wanting respect and women wanting love go back to a discussion in 2004.

During their conversation on the “Bare Marriage” podcast, Rebecca Lindenbach explained how the controversy started when Shaunti Feldhahn asked men while researching for her book For Women Only, “Would you rather feel alone and unloved or inadequate and disrespected?”

“About three quarters of them said they preferred to be alone and unloved,” Lindenbach noted. “So from this, Shaunti concluded that men need respect while women need love.”

Then she said Emerson Eggerichs doubled down on the dichotomy in his book Love and Respect, which led to the assumption that men are primarily concerned about respect spreading throughout white evangelical churches.

According to Gregoire, “Emerson Eggerichs based his book Love and Respect on Shaunti’s survey question. And you’ll find they both were published in 2004. So both books came out at the same time. And they were in communication with each other before they were published because Eggerichs relies on Shaunti’s survey data.”

Eggerichs’ Love and Respect went on to sell more than 2 million copies, while Feldhahn’s For Women Only and For Men Only also sold more than 2 million copies. Thus both authors shaped the conversation about respect and gender that permeated the bestselling books about white evangelical gender goals over the next two decades.

A dichotomy and hierarchy of respect and love

The subtitle of Eggerichs’ book is, “The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs.”

Notice the difference in the verbs. Women “desire” love, while men “desperately need” respect. It’s the difference between wants and needs, and desperate needs at that.

It’s also notable how women supposedly want love, given how often conservative men dismiss love. Whenever a progressive Christian says, “God is love,” conservative evangelicals counter with, “But God is just!” Whenever someone says, “All you need is love,” conservative evangelicals say, “All you need is God!” Whenever LGBTQ people say, “Love is love,” conservative evangelicals respond with dismissal and distractions about pedophiles, a group they’re ironically famous for protecting.

Of course, mentioning “love” isn’t a trump card that automatically wins any discussion. There are plenty of examples of people labeling their actions as “love” that are actually quite harmful to their neighbors, especially when “love” is defined in terms of hierarchy. But whether one agrees with every insertion of the word “love” in every conversation isn’t the point. The issue here is that conservative evangelicals get triggered by the word “love.” Then they react by placing it further down a hierarchy of priorities. But for women, who they also believe are two rungs down on the hierarchy below alpha and beta males, love is supposedly the apex of their desires.

“The lack of respect they have for women betrays the lack of love they have for women.”

And lest evangelical men think they’re being Christlike and loving women, the lack of respect they have for women betrays the lack of love they have for women. You simply cannot love women if you don’t respect them.

How this works

One example Gregoire discusses with her husband, Keith, during their podcast episode is from Steve Gaines of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, also a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Your husband needs to know that he is your hero,” Gaines suggests, making him sound like the forerunner to today’s Josh Howerton.

And how are women to do this?

Gaines instructs: “Allow him to be the leader. You say, ‘In what?’ Well, just let him be the leader. Don’t tell him every move to make. Allow him to lead. And never undermine his authority with the children.”

Then he adds: “Stop correcting the way he does things. Don’t tell him how to dress.” This is especially ironic, given how white evangelical men tell women how to dress all the time. If not telling someone what to wear is a sign of respect, isn’t the fact that they always tell women what to wear a sign they don’t respect women?

“Don’t tell him how to drive,” he continues. “Don’t tell him how to eat or to drink or to comb his hair or to stand or to sit or to talk or to walk or to react or to think. Don’t tell him how to be a man because you’re not one. Allow him to be the leader.”

So women aren’t supposed to tell their husbands how to be a man because they’re not a man, and yet Gaines can tell women how to be women despite not being a woman.

“Let him choose the restaurant, even if it’s Five Guys,” he keeps pushing. “Don’t make it always be a salad or quiche.” This is reminiscent of my time in these conservative churches where the men made fun of other men who liked what they considered to be “women’s drinks.”

With the entire congregation rolling in laughter over salad and quiche, he adds, “There’s a manly meal for you.”

Then after mentioning the stress a man may feel regarding work or finances, he very sternly raises his voice and declares, “Your husband will never rise to a higher level than your level of respect for him.”

In other words, if your husband is struggling with his career, it’s probably your fault for not respecting him enough.

We’re actually quite similar

With these assumptions continuing to this day, the hosts of “Bare Marriage” decided to do their own survey to figure out what’s going on. So they decoupled Shaunti Feldhahn’s original false dichotomy of having to choose between feeling alone and unloved or inadequate and disrespected. And instead, they asked men and women to rank their priorities.

The order of concern for women was feeling unloved, disrespected, inadequate and alone.

The order of concern for men was feeling unloved, inadequate, disrespected and alone.

“So we’re actually quite similar, Gregoire concluded. “And yet what has happened in the Christian world is this idea that respect is this special thing that only men need.”

A path forward for Christian communities

While it’s helpful to know based on research that the bestselling books in conservative evangelicalism about how men and women relate have been operating under completely false assumptions about men having an innate and unique need for respect, minds have been programmed for decades to assume this is true. And it’s coinciding with 82% of women employed or volunteering in churches believing there’s a problem of sexism in the church, and 85% of white evangelicals voting for violent, sexist men outside the church.

What has been happening in the church is now affecting our nation.

So there needs to be some serious conversations about what’s going on within the church walls. Sheila and Keith Gregoire plan to have some of these conversations and present possibilities for healthier relationships in their upcoming book The Marriage You Want: Moving beyond Stereotypes for a Relationship Built on Scripture, New Data, and Emotional Health.

Andrew Bauman is planning an event to address sexism and abuse in Christian community. It’s going to be hosted at First United Methodist Church in Brevard, N.C., March 7-8. Speakers will include Andrew Bauman, Sarah McDugal, Jay Stringer, Christy Bauman, Camden Morgante, Pamela Holder and me.

These conversations come in the wake of the Faith and Democracy tour with Diana Butler Bass, Jemar Tisby, Robert P. Jones and Kristin Du Mez, as well as the Election Postmortem at Notre Dame.

Each of these events feature a variety of themes and perspectives. And there are likely many who have been so hurt by the institutional church that they may not be interested in hearing from those still within its walls. But all these conversations, both within and outside the church, are needed right now.

At the 2024 Election Postmortem at Notre Dame, David Campbell said, “The key to success, the one who figures it out, will be whoever can … somehow figure out how to get the secularists and those other religious folks to work together. If they can do that, then I suspect you will see dramatic change in American politics.”

And perhaps no one said it better than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow this past week: “When we think about the constraints on the powerful in this country, when we think about things that might stop people from doing bad things, that might persuade people to turn back, change their minds, when we think about what’s available to us as a country, things that might instill some bravery in those who are weak or wavering or afraid, when we think about things in our country that can move public opinion and move public attention, don’t sleep on religion as one of those things in this country.”

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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