How ‘Biblical Womanhood’ Teaching Creates a Pipeline to Domestic Abuse

Complementarianism sounds so reasonable when explained from church pulpits: wives submit to husbands, husbands love wives, everyone’s happy in their God-designed roles. What could go wrong? (Spoiler alert: literally everything.) Here’s the thing about “biblical womanhood” teachings that dominate evangelical culture—they’re packaged as empowering women through divine design, but they systematically strip away the tools women need to recognize and escape abuse. Researchers have documented how complementarian theology creates what experts call a “perfect storm” for domestic violence. The mechanism is disturbingly elegant: women are taught that questioning their husband’s decisions shows lack of faith, that suffering in marriage is Christ-like, and that divorce except for adultery is sin. Meanwhile, men are told they’re divinely appointed household authorities whose decisions—even bad ones—deserve submission. (Because nothing says “loving leadership” like demanding unquestioning obedience.) Dr. Nancy Nason-Clark, who has spent decades researching religion and domestic abuse, found that evangelical women stay in abusive marriages 2.5 times longer than secular women. Why? Because their churches taught them that leaving would be rebellion against God’s design. Former evangelical Sheila Wray Gregoire, who now advocates for abuse survivors, explains: “We were told that if we just submitted hard enough, our husbands would become loving. The abuse was somehow our fault for not being godly enough.” The “soft” version of this teaching is everywhere—Focus on the Family marriage conferences, women’s Bible studies on Proverbs 31, bestselling books on “biblical manhood and womanhood.” It doesn’t look like abuse advocacy (that’s the point). It looks like marriage enrichment. But listen to what survivors describe: years of financial control justified as “headship,” isolation from family framed as “leaving and cleaving,” and sexual coercion explained as “not defrauding” their husbands. What makes this particularly insidious is how it co-opts women’s own faith against them. These aren’t random victims—they’re often the most devout women in their congregations, trying desperately to live out what they’ve been taught is God’s plan. When the plan includes systematic degradation, the cognitive dissonance is devastating. (“God wants me to be happy, but also to submit to someone making me miserable… so I must be doing submission wrong.”) The research couldn’t be clearer: teaching women that questioning male authority equals questioning God creates the exact conditions abusers exploit. Yet millions of evangelical women continue receiving this “marriage advice” every Sunday, packaged as loving guidance toward biblical femininity. Time to acknowledge what we’re actually creating: a theology that makes women vulnerable and calls it God’s will. Sources: Journal of Religion and Abuse, Nancy Nason-Clark’s research on evangelical domestic violence, and Sheila Wray Gregoire’s survey of evangelical marriage teachings