Wife Beating and Bible Bashing

Thus far I have resisted the temptation to blog too much about Stephen Green, head fruitcake at the UK's very own fundamentalist conservative Christian pressure group. I always felt that mocking the poor fool would feel too much like just picking on a mentally retarded child. But after yesteray's sad but entirely unsurprising allegations in the Daily Mail, I thought I'd look into the case a bit more.

Reports that Stephen "planned to make a piece of wood into a sort of witches broom" for the specific purpose of beating his wife, and that he had "hit her until she bled" don't sound overly positive for Stephen. But lets ignore the rhetoric and spin of the Daily Mail and take a look at it from his side, and more importantly let's take some advice from the good book.

Lets start with Ephesians 5:22-24 (from the King James Version)

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything."

This biblical wisdom unequivocally tells us that Mrs Green should really be submitting herself to her husband's God given authority rather than making all this fuss about it all. In fact, it really was rather naughty of her to speak to the media in the first place, after all it does say in 1 Timothy 2: 11-12 (NIV)

"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet."

So lets not be too harsh on Stephen, he's just diligently and literally following the teachings in his preferred instruction manual, and who knows, perhaps Christian Voice could even get a sponsorship deal from Stella Artois following all of this unnecessary furore.





POSTSCRIPT:
Bugger, It seems as though my attempted parody is completeley redundant with this advice from a "genuine" Christian website:

“…sometimes in marriage the grave and solemn responsibility to politely tell the wife to be quiet and stay in her place falls upon every husband.

Being fickle and temperamental, women do not always respond to gentle words so at times a swift, backhanded slap across the face must be applied to them. This usually gets their attention and sets order straight.”