Getting married in a church?

....was reading the bible last night. I have a bone to pick with 1 Peter 3:1-7, especially the 'weaker partner' bit and also Colossians 3:18-19. Why must I submit to my husband, but he only love me? I know I'm harping on, but for me, this really affects whether I want to be married in the Christian church or not.

Are you getting married sometime soon? ;-)

I want to start by asking some questions a little further back than the texts you raise, because that may give us some context and perspective on the issue. The questions are something like this: do you think of yourself as a follower of Jesus ? And, do you think that the Bible speaks with his authority? (you don't have to answer out loud btw) Because if you say yes to these questions then that changes everything about the way you approach the texts. And if you don't, then please don't have a church wedding in any case!

I say this because actually, the 'church wedding' question seems to represent something more significant (I could be wrong). You seem to be saying that, at least perhaps, the meaning and importance of these texts and others like them are for you determinative of whether you will continue to identify as a Christian or not at all. Is this fair?

From my point of view, if the Bible is the voice of Jesus and I am his follower, then though I expect to find some difficult, strange and counter-intuitive things in it - and I certainly do - I generally assume that the problem is with me, in my understanding or in my heart, rather than the text. I come to the text as one who knows as a first order reality the vastness of the love God has for me in Jesus, and the mercy he has shown me, a sinner and his enemy. This doesn't mean that I am not wrestling with these and other texts and trying desperately to figure out how they are God's word for me today. But it means I tend to assume that the Bible makes sense of the world and how to live in it.

This might make us two very different readers, then, though we both struggle with the text. From your point of view you are perhaps wondering if this really is for you, whether this really fits with your experience - in particular as a woman. If that is the case, then it is a pity to start here with these texts and this issue and not with the gospel itself. Decide whether that is for you, and the rest is just footnotes by comparison. You may decide that it isn’t for you: and that’s fine, but it will make for two very different perspectives on texts like these I think.

Sorry - that's a long preamble, which I hope makes some kind of sense. Let me start with 1 Peter 3. Along with Col 3 and Ephesians 5 it represents the NT's teaching on marriage: not a lot you would have to say. However, marriage itself is used as a great image of Jesus the groom and the church his bride - with one dying for the other and so on. So marriage in Christian terms is more than just a living arrangement - it is a living illustration of the gospel itself.

In 1 Peter 3 we need to take note of the whole letter and its themes. Peter is speaking to people in places where their weakness is apparent and frustrating: so, to slaves, to persecuted citizens, to wives and so on. He uses Jesus himself as his model of enduring injustice and suffering. He doesn't say 'oh, they don't have any authority at all'; rather he says 'win them over by doing good rather than being rebellious'. In particular, he is addressing the Christian wife of a non-Christian husband: her temptation might be to undermine the marriage because she has found a new Christian family. But her strategy is to be somewhat different. There is no revolution against authorities, whether masters, emperors or husbands.

BUT: there is also the verse about the weaker partner and so on. I don't think anything is being said here that isn't just a fact of life: Peter isn't saying something moral, or that women OUGHT to be the weaker partner. It is just generally true that women are more vulnerable than men, physically, and also because of child-bearing. But something crucial happens in this verse too, something that led to a true revolution: and that is, that the husbands were to honour the wives (as they were to honour the emperor interestingly) and to treat them as 'fellow-inheritors of the gracious gift of life'. In other words, here were the seeds of a transformation of the whole nature of marriage into a genuine partnership of the two in which men and women in their full complementarity (not their mere colourless interchangeability) were to serve one another.

Christian marriage is never about one partner forcing the other to submit - though in this as in many other things Christians have of course failed to live up to their own scriptures at times. Husbands are never told ‘make sure your wife submits to you’. Rather, they are told things like ‘lay down your life for her’, or ‘honour her’. I think that enormous cultural variation in practice is allowed within what the Bible says on this: but Christian marriages will always tend to the more ‘democratic’ and collaborative. Peter never condemns slavery: he doesn’t need to, because if you understand the Christian gospel slavery just melts away. Likewise, he doesn’t advocate a feminist revolution: he doesn’t need to, because where the Christian gospel is truly understood women are treated as the co-heirs of the gift of life, even though there be a physical disparity between the two. Peter’s teaching is utterly counter to his own culture on this.

As a footnote, it is not an accident that it was bible-believing Christians who fought to end slavery in the nineteenth century and who also formed the heart of the first feminist movements...