Sunday, February 07, 2016

Why I hate pastors' wives

Back when I was a church administrator, every Christmas we (the church) would receive a card from a larger church signed, 'from the pastors and their wives.'

Quite apart from the implied sex discrimination it's offensive and I think it's a peculiarly religious thing. You don't get cards from the doctor and his wife or the accountant and his wife. You'd like to hope their wives wouldn't stand for it. I mean, what woman wants to be or is happy to be an appendage?

I assume it's to do with man and woman in marriage becoming one in the eyes of God. But if that is the case then surely the woman must have the same authority and power as the man. Which, of course, she doesn't. She is just the wife. Useful no doubt for making tea.

3 comments:

Leslie: said...

I see your point here. Perhaps they could sign the card as "Pastor so-and-so and "wife's name" "last name". I know there are often several pastors in any church so just "semi-colon" could separate the names.

My worst memory of my old church was when my first husband died, after the initial business stuff was taken care of, not one of the several pastors called to see how I was doing or offered to do anything for me (no sons or sons-in-law at the time as the girls were so young). Many months later (about 5 months), the senior pastor asked a friend of mine how I was. She told him how disappointed I was that none of the staff had taken a minute out of their day to call and inquire for themselves. So a few days later, guess who phoned? The senior pastor's wife...what? I'm not good enough for one of the male pastors to call? Or would it have been considered inappropriate because I was now a single woman? That really hurt me at the time. I don't go to that church anymore but that pastor has moved on anyway.

Don't mind me - I just remembered that as I was writing!

Liz Hinds said...

They could at least have come together! Good pastoral care is lacking for many I'm afraid.

Ole Phat Stu said...

You are assuming the pastors' wives (see what I did with the ambiguous apostrophe there?) are female. Kinda restrictive dogma ;-)