Thread by @NancyRPearcey

The good news about Christian men.

1/"How much do Christians actually live out the model of servant leadership in practice? If you read critics writing about Christian men, you would think they are more likely than other men to commit domestic abuse and violence. For instance:

2/• Conservative Protestant gender ideology “can clearly lead to abuse, both physical and emotional.” (TV news journalist Cokie Roberts)
• “It is no secret that abuse is prevalent in conservative churches that embrace headship theory.” (Adventist Today)

3/• “At its core, complementarian theology is one of inequality and hierarchy. And inequality breeds abuse.” (The Huffington Post)
• The theology of male headship “feeds the rape culture that we see permeating American Christianity today.” (co-founder of #ChurchToo)

4/The trouble with these negative accusations is that they do not take into account the data from the social sciences. In recent decades, psychologists and sociologists have been conducting research on Christian couples.

5/Surprisingly, they have found that evangelical family men who attend church regularly are the most loving husbands and the most engaged fathers. As fathers, evangelical men are the most likely to express affection and praise to their children.

6/They are the most likely to spend time in activities with them, like playing with them, reading to them, and taking them to soccer practice. They also rate highest in practicing discipline, such as supervising homework, enforcing bedtime, and setting limits on screen time.

7/Similarly, the wives of evangelical family men are the most likely to say their husbands express affection and understanding. They rank highest in terms of saying they feel loved and appreciated by their husbands. These couples are less likely to divorce.

8/And they have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any group in the United States. Sociologist Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia, and one of the nation’s top marriage researchers, wrote an article in the New York Times, where he said,

9/“It turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. . . . Fully 73 percent of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages.”

10/ Let me repeat that: “The happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives...who hold conservative gender values” & are married to committed churchgoing husbands.
These findings are surprising even to many Christians."
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