Q: What do Wilcox and Bartkowski mean when they say that there is a “conservative family paradox?” Be clear about how the realities of family life differ from the rhetoric about family life.
Wilcox and Bartkowski submit that Christians claim to support a conservative family (where the husband is the one in authority) when in all actuality both spouses are equal and interact like other “normal” American couples. They act like this is a huge revelation, that Christians are progressive while claiming not to be, but I think that it is all a case of mislabeling. Paul wrote in the Bible that men and women are equal, and Jesus had male and female disciples (there just weren’t any females among the top “twelve” who led the rest of the disciples). The way men and women interact didn’t stay this way, but to say that conservative Christian values are backward or abusive is just wrong, because one of the main leaders in the Christian movement when it was starting supported equality nearly two thousand years ago. It would be more accurate to say that Americans are following traditional Christian values today (which were very much against the societal norm when the New Testament was being written!) than to say they aren’t being conservative now. From a Christian viewpoint, the man does have the final say, but the woman’s opinion matters to him, and (like in our book) their authority is reciprocal and reinforcing each others’, while both individuals’ opinions and decisions are meant to be in submission to the authority of Jesus. To say that headship can be in existence without servant-leadership is ludicrous, because it was Jesus who is the head, He is God, He is King of all, but he submitted Himself to become a man and allowed Himself to be led to His death. To be a good leader one must sacrifice of himself (or herself), there is no more beautiful expression of love than that.
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