This pastor's wedding night "joke" epitomizes Christian sexism
Pastor Josh Howerton's advice to new brides was to "do what he tells you to do" in the bedroom
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An evangelical pastor is getting some well-deserved criticism after telling a hypothetical new bride to “do what he tells you to do” on your wedding night.
Pastor Josh Howerton, who leads Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in Rockwall, Texas, delivered the message on February 24. About two minutes into his sermon, he was talking about how the church had just sponsored a “Marriage Night” event. People who couldn’t go were asking him what was discussed there, so he gave them a glimpse of what they missed by offering a “gold nugget of advice” to everyone in the congregation who is on the path toward marriage.
Here’s the entire segment in context:
First, he spoke to the men and told them their future wives have been dreaming about their wedding day their entire lives…
Guys, when it comes to her wedding day she has been planning this day her entire life… So here's what you need to do... When it comes to that day, just stand where she tells you to stand, wear what she tells you to wear, and do what she tells you to do. You'll make her the happiest woman in the world. Okay?
Easy enough. There were “amens” all around. Then came the punchline, the advice for women (prefaced with “Let's see if you ‘amen’ this…”):
… Ladies, when it comes to his wedding night, he has been planning this day his whole life. So just stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do, and you're going to make him the happiest man in the world.
That’s what’s known in evangelical circles as “humor” and what’s known outside evangelical circles as a reason people no longer go to church.
Obviously, that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure Howerton would condemn sexual abuse without hesitation. But the crux of the joke says so much about Purity Culture and faith-based double standards and what white evangelical men think about women. So let’s talk about that.
The “joke” only makes sense if a few things are assumed:
The husband-to-be has no say in the wedding—nor does he want any. It’s “her wedding day.”
Both people getting married are virgins.
The bride-to-be has no ambition in life other than getting married. It’s all she’s ever dreamed about!
The woman must do whatever her husband wants in the bedroom and her own pleasure is, at best, an afterthought. After all, it’s “his wedding night.”
All of those are disturbing for different reasons. It puts all the stress of wedding planning on the woman. It suggests that the guy cares more about sex than the wedding itself. (Obligatory sex, no less!) It implies that the couple must have sex after the wedding (which is already stressful and exhausting). There’s also no room in this joke for couples who aren’t straight.
But it’s that last one that’s most damning because that mindset, as many ex-Christians will tell you, has perpetuated spousal abuse within evangelical circles. As abusive preacher Mark Driscoll once said, women were created to be penis homes.
It’s the same idea that led disgraced former Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson to once tell women who were physically and sexually abused that they should simply pray and stay and “be submissive in every way that you can.” Divorce, he said, was almost never an option. Patterson even said in that same speech that there was a bright side to marital abuse:
He goes on to tell the story of a woman who came to him about abuse, and how he counseled her to pray at night beside her bed, quietly, for God to intervene. The woman, he said, came to him later with two black eyes. “She said: ‘I hope you’re happy.’ And I said ‘Yes … I’m very happy,’ ” because it turned out her husband had heard her quiet prayers and come for the first time to church the next day, he said.
Howerton didn’t go that far. But telling a woman to stand where her husband tells her to stand, wear what he tells her to wear, and do what he tells her to do implies that anything a husband says must be followed.
The bride in that “joke” isn’t allowed to say no.
She’s not permitted to chime in with what she wants in the bedroom.
Her orgasms are irrelevant.
It’s also implied that she knows nothing about sex while her virgin husband seems to know exactly what he wants.
The sermon was titled “Am I going to Heaven or Hell?” Howerton inadvertently told the audience exactly where he deserved to go.
That clip went viral after Christian writer Sheila Wray Gregoire posted the second half of it last week. (She was familiar with Howerton already because of his alleged plagiarism.) In a thread, she explained, “Marital rape is not funny. Normalizing sexual coercion is not funny. Not caring at all about female pleasure is not funny.”
Gregoire got a lot of criticism for only posting the punchline but not the setup, including from Josh Howerton himself:
… The person who originally posted this took an old preacher joke about marriage, edited out the comment immediately before aimed at men, and then very conveniently ended the clip before it's made clear it's part of a joke.
They then deceitfully presented it as my “advice to women” where if all you saw was the quote or the clip they selectively edited, you don’t know it was half of a joke, not “advice.”
Gregoire later posted the full clip, but obviously, the full context doesn’t make this situation any better. We already knew it was meant to be a joke. The problem is that the joke isn’t funny and it has a really despicable underlying message.
Instead of talking about Heaven and Hell, Howerton’s congregation would be far better served if he spoke about why so many white evangelical women feel trapped in a misogynistic church culture that teaches them to be submissive while always putting their husband’s needs above their own. But pastors like him don’t have the courage to do that.
Or maybe they just don’t have the capacity to understand why their comments are so off-putting, which is why they keep repeating these mistakes.
April Ajoy, a progressive Christian who has criticized church culture, told Baptist News Global why she found his “joke” so disturbing:
“That rhetoric leads women to view sex in marriage as a duty, not something to enjoy. While his words were more overt, it’s not niche.”
Ajoy remembers: “I was taught that it’s the wife’s job to please her husband even when she’s not in the mood. I remember being a young girl at women’s church events where the leaders would talk about the importance of wives putting out and how sex is something men need and if that need wasn’t met, husbands could look elsewhere. I was never once taught about female pleasure. It took me years into my own marriage and lots of therapy before I stopped objectifying myself and could actually enjoy intimacy in marriage.”
She gets right to the heart of it.
The problem isn’t that Howerton told a bad joke. It’s that Howerton created an environment in which statements like that get laughs.
It’s easy to connect the dots between a congregation that finds gender-role humor hilarious and a congregation that looks the other way when it comes to sexual abuse.
The question now is whether Howerton cares enough about the women in his community to stand with them or whether he’ll keep doubling down on Christian sexism. So far, all he’s done is make things worse. As one former church member put it online, “I am thanking God for prompting us to leave prior to this sermon so my two teenage daughters were not exposed to this spiritual abuse.”
So much unnecessary sadness is being spread in this foolish, shallow attitude. Mr. Howerton is stuck in adolescence and possibly will never know what it is like to be an adult, and he wants other perpetual adolescents to keep him company. That's not being "young at heart," it's just being immature.
53 years ago I met a PERSON. She had a beautiful face, a cute figure, and a remarkable mind. I acknowledge that as a 20-year-old, her face and figure were the first things I noticed, but after only a couple of minutes of talking with her, the PERSON was irresistibly attractive. She was smart, caring, honest, fair-minded, and independent. Shortly into our first conversation, she said something about never wanting to be dependent on a man. I was hooked. I didn't want a docile, servile, living sex toy, that was stuff of my 13-year-old puberty. I wanted an equal PARTNER. I was very lucky in two ways: I met her when I did, and I had not been indoctrinated into Christianity's retrogressive sexism.
We've been inseparable since that first meeting, always mutually respectful partners helping each other through each stage of life. Now in the last stages, as Alzheimer's disease is slowly stealing my partner's personhood, I must endure the grief and be steadfast in my respect, love, and caring for her as she is, ...as she is, ...as she is, one fleeting moment at a time.
Even with all that, I wouldn't trade her for anyone else.
'It’s also implied that she knows nothing about sex while her virgin husband seems to know exactly what he wants."
One can wonder where does this knowledge come from. I thought good christian men and boys were supposed to use apps to keep each other in check.