Dear My Twin

 Dear My Twin,  On re-reading what I wrote yesterday (I ran out of time), I realized that I hadn't gotten to the second harmful teaching Evangelical christianity pushes on marriages. By harmful, I don't mean, "Ouch, I got a boo-boo," I mean, completely destructive. This teaching is being referred to as the "obligation sex message."  It's a grotesque twisting of 1 Corinthians 7:4-5, "The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." In this teaching, the wife becomes totally ignored as a mutual partner, and completely subjugated into a sex object for "his release" (to quote "Love & Respect," a best selli...

 Dear My Twin,    After the the weird evangelical dichotomy of a "loving" God who does terribly abusive things, the horrible, abusive misogyny is what drove me to question things.  The misogyny in the church is ... it's overwhelming. At the extreme ends, women are not only barred from any  type of leadership position, their married lives make them less than human, simultaneously removing all power from them by order of "submission," diminishing the Imagi Deo in them by defining them as "help meet" alone, removing them as co-heirs, inheritors, children of God, humans made in the image of God, and while they are powerless in marriage to even speak up (as that would be disrespecting their husband's position as the mini-Christ in the home), they are simultaneously blamed for everything that goes wrong in the marriage, even in extreme abuse, sexual, physical and marital affairs. She either wasn't being submissive enough, or not giving enough sex.  W...