Book-Banning Husbands and Dismissing Women Critics

Oh, these women with their opinions and their books

There’s a video clip making the rounds. In a sermon, Pastor Joel Webbon calls upon men to be “very vigilant in your wives and what they are reading and what they are listening to.” He argues that one of the most common ways “good women” get derailed is through women’s Bible studies — a woman teaching other women without a man there to guide her.

Webbon describes having been in the position of finding his wife reading and not knowing whether “this is a bad book.” Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to read it to find out for himself, so he had to tell his wife, “You’re not going to read it.” She’d need to wait until they could read the book together. He gave the example of finding his wife reading a book about paedobaptism (baptism in infancy), and having to tell her to stop. “No. We’re not doing that yet. We will become paedobaptists when I’m ready. But my wife’s not going to be a paedobaptist for three years before I am, and I don’t have time to read it right now.” He knows what he believes now, and, as he says he told his wife, “You’re not going to outpace me.”

Underlying this very frank depiction of a man desperate to stay ahead of his wife’s intellectual evolution is the theological position that men are supposed to be…