All Men Know that Women Are More Pious

Published on by D. G. Hart

That’s what makes Tim Challies’ brief for spiritual zeal and all things earnest all the more mystifying:

A number of times I have spoken to a woman and heard her admit that she essentially drafts behind her husband. She takes comfort in her husband’s spiritual strength and discipline but neglects her own. She goes to church when he is around but is quick to bail when he is not. She allows him to carry the load when it comes to teaching and training the children, when it comes to reading and praying with them. She doesn’t only allow him to take the lead (as, indeed, he should) but uses his leadership as a quiet excuse to not put in much effort of her own. She finds that the family is in good shape spiritually but admits that this is far more because she rides in his draft than that she is full-out pursuing the Lord. If he stopped putting in the effort, she would have little strength of her own.

Maybe Challies is simply channeling men’s historic discomfort with women taking the lead, as Jill Lepore reports:

The debate about a female prince advanced all kinds of political ideas, not least the rule of law, the mixed nature of the English constitution, and the sovereignty of the people. It also inaugurated an era of topsy-turvy play in everything from Elizabethan drama and French carnival to German woodcuts, as the brilliant historian Natalie Zemon Davis argued in a 1975 essay called “Women on Top.” Davis wrote that the fascination with female rule came at a time when men were asserting new claims over women’s bodies and their property. In 1651, in “The Leviathan,” Thomas Hobbes wrote about Amazons to support his claim that “whereas some have attributed the dominion to the man only, as being of the more excellent sex; they misreckon in it,” which is why it’s important that laws exist, to grant man that dominion. In 1680, in “Patriarcha,” Sir Robert Filmer located the origins of all political authority in Adam’s rule. Meanwhile, some theorists who imagined a state of nature, a time before the rise of a political order, became convinced that America, before Columbus, had been a “gynæocracy,” as one French writer called it. But the chief consequence of this debate was the Lockean idea that men, born equal, create political society, to which women do not belong; women exist only in the family, where they are ruled by men. Hence, in 1776, Abigail Adams urged her husband, in a letter, to “remember the ladies” in the nation’s “new Code of Laws,” which he most emphatically did not. “Depend upon it,” he wrote back, “we know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.”

Male headship and female piety may explain why human flourishing is as plausible as w-w.

9 thoughts on “All Men Know that Women Are More Pious”

  1. Women are neither more pious nor less pious. They are more followers of the herd; if the herd be more pious, so will they; if the herd be less pious, accordingly they will be as well.

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  2. What a great post that was, wasn’t it, exhorting all, that is everyone, equally, to truly know Jesus more and more, for it is in Him that are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.(Col 2:3). How else can men lead well and women help well without that; as well as all, that is everyone, being able to pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. (Heb 12:14).

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  5. No; I live on Planet Sex-realism, not Planet Female Pedestalization.

    I know, those brainwashed by Victorian values, and chivalry, can’t see things as clearly as those of us free of such illusions. Your problem; not ours.

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  6. More differences between men and women:

    The general sameness of men, in truth, is even more noticeable than the general sameness of women. Give a woman leisure and she usually devolops a certain individuality, but men rarely do so. The tendency of the average man is to move nearer and nearer to an indefinite, indifferent mean. He is a natural joiner. He joins clubs and fraternal orders with thousands of members, and submits readily to their discipline. He belongs to political parties and taken his orders from their bosses. He is obedient, docile, plastic, flabby. The thing he fears most is a reputation of being different.

    Women, it must be plain, are vastly less self-effacing. Compare, for example, a men’s club and a women’s club. For the first to be torn by rows is very rare; for the second to be blessed by peace is even rarer. The Sons of the Revolution fall into one another’s arms and sing “Funiculi-Funicula”; the Daughters of the Revolution battle with hat pins and malicious animal magnetism. There are scores of subjects upon which practically all civilized white men agree; there is no subject upon which all civilized white women agree. The misadventures of the suffrage agitators show the belligerent, anti-social spirit of the fair ones. Not only are there thousands of women who oppose the suffrage for the simple reeason that women whom they dislike are in favor of it, but even among the suffragists themselves there are many rival parties and bitter feuds.

    It is the stock argument of the advocates of the suffrage in Maryland that the women of the State, if enfranchised, would stand together as a solid phalanx, for moral legislation. As a matter of fact, actual experience indicates that they would do nothing of the sort. The six States in which women now vote–Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington and California–are all wet, and every effort to make them dry has been defeated. In Washington and California, of course, the women voters have scarcely had time to murder the Rum Demon, but in Wyoming thee have had 22 years, in Colorado 19 years and in Utah and Idaho 16 years. And yet the Demon flourishes.

    The truth is that women are so distrustful of one another that such a thing as a compact woman’s party in unimaginable. The average man has an abounding faith in his brother; he is always willing to assume that they are decent and on the level. But the average woman has very little faith in her sisters. She is willing to grant, if the evidence is overwhelming, that a given woman is respectable and perhaps even a lady, but she never assumes it. On the contrary, her primary assumption is always the opposite. That is to say, she is intellectually from Missouri. She has to be shown. And usually she retains a certain doubt with her reluctant conviction, so that it is quite easy to set her backsliding.

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  7. Mencken’s observations are somewhat outdated: women have banded very well together indeed to promote feminism and feminist ideals in our society, even those who claim to eschew feminist ideology such as ostensibly traditionalist Christian women. True, they still are mortified when another woman shows up at a party wearing the same dress / top / whatever, while to men, another man wearing the same thing is confirmation that they both have great taste. But regardless, across differences of race, socioeconomic class, religion, singlehood vs. married, partisan divisions, etc., women have worked together as Team Woman to promote Team Woman’s interests. Sisters, under the skin, all… (Of course, the moment one is criticized, or a general observation about female nature is made, any within earshot will scream NAWALT! (Not All Women Are Like That), because they don’t want the truth revealed, that they indeed mostly are all like that.)

    There’s a reason why, despite it being primarily the Left that has promoted abortion, that the Right has been unable to stop it. It’s because women on the Right actually don’t truly oppose abortion. And GOP First Ladies and presidential candidate’s wives bear much blame in this regard – as do their husbands for marrying them and being henpecked.

    https://patriactionary.wordpress.com/2016/01/15/one-reason-ostensibly-pro-life-republican-presidents-havent-been-able-to-do-anything-about-abortion/

    And recall when Trump claimed he had become pro-life and wanted to punish women who obtain abortions with criminal penalties, how the Official Pro-Life Movement took him to task for daring to suggest such a thing. IOW, they don’t really care about ending abortion, or they’d have gotten it stopped already. All they exist for is to neuter actual anti-abortion sentiment, while preserving abortion in practice.

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  8. Will S. says: There’s a reason why, despite it being primarily the Left that has promoted abortion, that the Right has been unable to stop it. It’s because women on the Right actually don’t truly oppose abortion. And GOP First Ladies and presidential candidate’s wives bear much blame in this regard – as do their husbands for marrying them and being henpecked.

    That will be an interesting conversation. Sounds like it pretty much that first one- Gen 3:12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me..”
    Why didn’t you lead efforts to end abortion? I was henpecked.

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