When Faith Becomes a Weapon: Who Decided Women Were Meant to Obey?
When Faith Becomes Control: Questioning Religious Authority Over Women's Autonomy
There are conversations that stay with us long after everyone has stopped speaking.
Not necessarily because someone raised their voice. Not because the conversation became heated. But because somewhere in the exchange, someone revealed a belief so deeply rooted that it made us question how far we have actually come.
I recently experienced one of those conversations.
The discussion turned toward religion, the Bible, and the roles of men and women. And there it was. The assertion that women were created to be subservient to men. That this was God's will. That the natural order of things placed men in authority and women beneath them.
I found myself wondering how, after generations of women fighting for education, independence, representation, property rights, bodily autonomy, and equality, we are still having this conversation.
More importantly, I began asking another question. When did someone's interpretation of divine authority become permission to deny another human being her own?
I Believe in Something Greater Than Ourselves
Let me begin by making something clear. I am not writing this because I oppose spirituality. Quite the opposite.
I believe there is something profoundly sacred about life. I believe in connection, the natural world, compassion, spiritual exploration, and the extraordinary mystery of existence. I respect that people understand the divine through different traditions, religions, philosophies, and personal experiences.
For some, that understanding comes through Christianity. For others, through different religious paths. For others still, through nature, ancestral wisdom, contemplation, or an understanding of universal spiritual energy.
I do not believe we must all understand the divine in exactly the same way to recognize one another's humanity.
But I do believe there is a difference between having faith and using faith to exercise power over another person. Your right to believe does not automatically give you the right to decide how someone else must live.
The Problem With Adam's Rib
One argument that emerged during the conversation was the familiar story of Eve being created from Adam's rib. For centuries, that story has been interpreted by some as evidence that women were created for men and therefore should occupy a subordinate position.
But interpretation is not the same as unquestionable truth.
The Genesis creation narratives have been studied, debated, translated, and understood in different ways throughout religious history. Some readers emphasize hierarchy. Others emphasize companionship, shared humanity, and mutual responsibility. And that distinction matters.
Because when a religious narrative is used to establish who has authority over whom, it stops being merely a theological discussion. It begins shaping real lives.
Who makes decisions? Who controls money? Who determines whether a woman can work, study, lead, or leave a relationship? Who gets to say no? And what happens when she does?
Those are not abstract questions. They are questions of freedom.
What About the Women History Remembers-and Those It Doesn't?
If women were always intended to remain silent and subordinate, why do religious histories contain women who spoke, taught, led, challenged authority, and carried spiritual messages?
Consider Deborah, described in the Hebrew Bible as a prophetess and judge. Consider Mary Magdalene, whose role as a witness to the resurrection is central to the Gospel narratives. Consider Phoebe, recognized in Paul's letter to the Romans for her service and support of the early Christian community. Consider Junia, whose name appears in discussions of early Christian apostleship.
Their stories do not resolve every theological debate about women's roles. But they do challenge the simplistic claim that women never exercised meaningful spiritual authority.
And beyond the biblical canon, early Christian history includes writings and traditions that reflect a wider range of religious voices and debates than many people encounter in ordinary worship. Some texts became canonical. Others did not. Those decisions developed over centuries through processes involving religious communities, theological disagreement, and institutional authority.
I think we should be willing to ask how those processes shaped the stories that generations inherited. Not because every excluded text must be historically reliable. Not because every established tradition is automatically false. But because understanding how religious authority developed is part of understanding how human beings have interpreted the divine.
When Kings and Institutions Shape Sacred Words
The Bible did not arrive in its present English forms untouched by history. Texts were copied, translated, interpreted, organized, and transmitted across languages and centuries.
One of the most influential English translations, the King James Bible, was commissioned under King James I and published in 1611. It was produced by teams of scholars working with earlier translations and biblical source texts. It was also created within a world where church authority and political authority were deeply connected.
That historical context deserves examination. It does not prove that the entire Bible was invented or rewritten to serve one king's personal wishes. But it does remind us that religious texts reach readers through human processes.
Translation involves decisions. Interpretation involves assumptions. Institutions establish traditions. And those traditions can influence how generations understand power, morality, gender, and obedience.
This leads me to a question I believe every thoughtful person should be allowed to ask: Are we hearing the voice of the divine, or are we sometimes hearing centuries of human interpretation presented as divine certainty?
Faith should not be so fragile that it cannot tolerate historical inquiry.
The Women Who Were Called Witches
There is another chapter of history that deserves our attention.
For centuries, women accused of witchcraft faced persecution, imprisonment, torture, and execution. The historical circumstances were complex. Religious fear, superstition, social conflict, economic vulnerability, misogyny, and legal systems all contributed to witch persecutions in different places.
Not every accused woman was a healer. Not every accusation was motivated by property. And men were accused as well. But women made up the majority of those prosecuted across much of early modern Europe. That fact demands reflection.
What made women especially vulnerable to suspicion? How did ideas about femininity, morality, obedience, age, poverty, and spiritual danger influence those accusations? What happened to women who lived outside accepted social expectations? And how often were fear and authority used together to punish people who had little power to defend themselves?
We cannot undo that history. But we can recognize the danger of allowing religious certainty to replace evidence, compassion, and justice.
When a society decides that a woman's independence makes her dangerous, the problem may not be the woman. It may be the society's understanding of power.
The Difference Between Faith and Control
I want to return to the original conversation. Because beneath the biblical arguments and historical disagreements was something much more immediate. The belief that a woman should obey a man because God intended it.
I recognize that religious communities hold different beliefs about marriage, family, and spiritual responsibility. Some couples freely choose traditional roles. Others build marriages around explicitly equal decision-making. People should have room to make those choices according to their values.
But there is a fundamental difference between a freely chosen relationship structure and a hierarchy imposed through fear, coercion, or threats of spiritual punishment.
A woman choosing a traditional role is exercising autonomy. A woman being told she has no right to choose is being denied it. Those are not the same thing.
And no relationship becomes healthy simply because someone attaches religious language to it.
If a woman cannot disagree without punishment, that is not mutual respect. If she cannot refuse intimacy, her consent is not being honored. If she cannot control her own decisions, her autonomy has been compromised. If she is told that enduring mistreatment is her spiritual duty, we should be asking who benefits from that interpretation.
A sacred promise should never become a justification for captivity.
Why Women Are Expected to Endure
This conversation also brought me back to something I have been writing about recently. The word no.
Women are frequently praised for their capacity to endure. We celebrate their sacrifice. Their patience. Their forgiveness. Their willingness to hold families together. Their ability to keep going through extraordinary difficulty.
And certainly, there is strength in perseverance.
But what happens when a woman decides she has endured enough? When she refuses another unreasonable demand? When she leaves an unhealthy relationship? When she decides her education, career, finances, body, or future belong to her?
Suddenly, the same strength that made her admirable can make her inconvenient. She is called selfish. Disobedient. Ungrateful. Difficult. Sometimes even ungodly.
I find that contradiction deeply troubling.
Why do we praise a woman's strength when it benefits others, yet question that same strength when she uses it to protect herself?
Perhaps we need to reconsider what we have been calling virtue. Patience is not the same as surrender. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. Compassion is not the same as compliance. And love is not the same as obedience.
Human Dignity Is Not a Gendered Privilege
There is something else I want to address. Conversations about discrimination sometimes become competitions over whose suffering matters most. That serves no one.
A man can experience racism, poverty, exclusion, or other forms of discrimination. A woman can experience sexism while also benefiting from privileges in other parts of her life. Both realities can exist. Recognizing one person's oppression does not require dismissing another's.
But experiencing injustice does not grant someone authority to deny equality to others.
We should be able to acknowledge the suffering of men while also questioning systems that have historically granted men greater institutional authority than women. We should be able to discuss race, gender, religion, and social power without turning human dignity into a contest.
Because dignity is not something one group must lose for another to possess. Equality is not the removal of someone's humanity. It is the recognition of everyone else's.
What Would Spirituality Look Like Without Domination?
This may be the question that interests me most.
What if spiritual leadership were measured not by how many people obeyed, but by how many people felt safe enough to speak? What if religious communities made room for questioning? What if women were recognized as thinkers, educators, leaders, healers, and spiritual beings in their own right? What if disagreement were treated as an opportunity for reflection rather than evidence of rebellion? What if compassion mattered more than control? What if the sacred were understood through how we treated the vulnerable rather than through how effectively we defended our authority?
I am not suggesting that every religious tradition must abandon its theology. I am asking whether any theology that shapes people's lives should be examined with honesty, humility, and attention to its human consequences.
If a belief encourages compassion, responsibility, and mutual respect, those qualities deserve recognition. If an interpretation is used to excuse humiliation, coercion, violence, or the denial of another person's autonomy, we should be willing to challenge its application.
Even when that challenge makes people uncomfortable. Especially then.
The Divine Does Not Need Me to Be Small
I have lived long enough to understand that human beings are capable of both extraordinary love and extraordinary cruelty. I have witnessed what happens when power goes unquestioned. I have also witnessed what becomes possible when people are given room to reclaim their voices.
That is one reason human dignity sits at the center of my work as an educator, author, artist, and community builder.
I do not believe that another human being must become smaller for someone else to feel spiritually important. I do not believe compassion requires subordination. I do not believe respect must travel in only one direction. And I do not believe a woman's value should depend upon her willingness to obey.
We can honor spiritual traditions while examining their histories. We can respect religious freedom while defending personal autonomy. We can acknowledge different beliefs without agreeing that those beliefs grant ownership over another human being. We can disagree deeply and still recognize one another's dignity.
Perhaps that is where a more meaningful conversation begins. Not with the demand that everyone believe as we do. But with the recognition that no person should have to surrender their humanity to satisfy someone else's understanding of the divine.
The Question I Am No Longer Willing to Ignore
I normally approach conversations about religion carefully. Faith is deeply personal. It can provide comfort, meaning, community, and hope. For many people, it has been a source of extraordinary strength. I respect that.
But when religion becomes a weapon used to silence, diminish, or control another human being, I believe silence deserves examination, too.
Because the issue is no longer simply what someone believes. It is what they believe they are entitled to do to others because of it. And that distinction matters.
So when someone tells me that women were created to be subservient to men, I have questions. Who decided that? How was that interpretation formed? Whose voices were included? Whose voices were excluded? What historical assumptions shaped it? And why should another human being's freedom depend upon accepting it?
I do not claim to possess every answer about the divine. In fact, I believe a willingness to question is part of what makes spiritual exploration meaningful.
But there is one conviction I carry without hesitation. I was not born to be owned, diminished, silenced, or ruled by another human being. Neither were my daughters, sisters, friends, students, or the women who will come after us. And neither should any man be denied his humanity.
We are not here to compete over who deserves dignity. We are here to recognize that dignity belongs to us all.
Perhaps the most important question is not whether women were created from a rib. Perhaps it is why, after all these centuries, some people are still so determined to convince women that they were created to stand beneath someone else.
My spirituality does not require another person's submission. My humanity does not require anyone's permission. And my right to say no does not disappear because someone else calls their authority sacred.
