Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Clergy wife submits a defence

Ed Beavan

THE WIFE of a curate who was criticised in the national media for preaching a sermon encouraging wives to submit to their husbands has spoken out in his support

Jane Oden, wife of the Revd Mark Oden, Assistant Curate of St Nicholas’s, Sevenoaks, said that she agreed with her husband’s teaching from the First Epistle of St Peter on the issue of male headship in marriage. Mrs Oden conceded that the idea of submission seemed outdated to modern society, but she emphasised that the concept needed to be understood within the context of the Bible. “Words like submission and humility have negative connotations in our society, but the Bible prizes them as attributes, and Christ demonstrates how beautiful they are,” she said.
The biblical doctrine of submission was “the opposite of the battle of the sexes. It’s about accepting the obvious fact that men and women are different, but that difference doesn’t mean inequality. It’s about allowing your husband to be a man, and to take up his role of servant leadership, based on the example of Christ.”
Mrs Oden, a mother of three, said that the media had “completely overlooked” her husband’s second sermon based on 1 Peter, where husbands are urged to love their wives sacrificially, putting their wives’ needs before their own, in the same way as Christ loves the Church. The “media storm” had missed an important aspect of the biblical idea of submission: that it was not about coercion by husbands, but freedom of choice for women. “Nowhere in the Bible does it say that husbands must make their wives submit. Sub mission is a response on the part of the wife, whom chooses to submit out of reverence to Christ, who she loves more than her husband.”
Mrs Oden said that there were thousands of churches in the UK and across the world full of “modern women who choose to submit to their husbands. People might not like it, but they’d better believe it.”
In a statement on the St Nicholas’s website, the Rector, the Revd Angus MacLeay, said that Mr Oden’s sermons on 1 Peter recognised “the full equality of men and women whilst also being aware from the scriptures of their differing roles and responsibilities”.

Fjgrogan wrote:I just had a silly thought - as I posted a comment on another thread I noticed that the button I pressed did not say 'Send' but 'Submit' - why is that? What does it have to do with submission; offering a comment for acceptance, in the knowledge that it might theoretically be turned down by the moderators, yes, but is that submitting?

Fjgrogan wrote:Another stray thought - does 'Islam' not mean 'submission'?

NEILL THE NOTORIOUS wrote:When an altercation breaks out on the Rugby Field ---- it is usually called "HANDBAGS"

I rest my case !!!