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A church suggested, in their church bulletin, that people would encounter “smiling wives” at their church. What could that possibly mean? Why advertise that in your church bulletin? And if it seems distinctly cringy, why is that? Check this week’s episode to find out!
Church Bulletin photo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1viqyjQLFI24pE6MQAsLkb7DhgObmRkQm/view?ts=66d750f0
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Axis Mundi I am your host, Dan Miller, a professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, delighted as always to be with you, and especially sort of Excited or fired up or something about today's topic, and really it's going to be the first of a few episodes on this.
Special shout out, excuse me, to a listener, and you know who you are if you're listening here, who sent me an image this week.
And I'm going to see if we can include this image with the episode.
But it was an image that apparently came from, like, an insert in a church bulletin.
And the listener said, you know, in the email, that you could do a whole episode decoding this.
He was wrong.
I'm going to need a few episodes to decode this.
When I first looked at it, I was like, oh yeah, I can do an episode on that.
Started thinking about it, kind of drawing up my notes.
I was like, oh, well, yeah, a couple episodes.
And then I kept drawing up my notes.
And you sit down to start recording.
And you're like, you know what?
This is going to be way too long.
So I don't know exactly how long it's going to be.
It's going to take a few episodes.
But that's what we're going to look at.
So it's an image, in case folks don't get to see it.
Of what appears to be a card that would be given out by a church.
For those of a certain age who know what baseball cards are, it's about the size of a baseball card.
Looks to be a little bit bigger than, like, a business card.
And it's the kind of thing that is likely inserted into church bulletins.
If you've ever been to a church, you know that usually there's some sort of greeter that hands you that kind of program or bulletin of, you know, kind of what's going to happen in the service and has some information about the church and so forth.
It looks like the kind of thing that could be inserted in there.
Also the kind of thing that might show up in church promotional materials of different kinds.
Maybe there's like a resource table or section, you know, in the church with a pile of these.
Maybe it's the kind of thing that goes out with, you know, church holiday cards or if churches do mass mailings to the surrounding community it would be included with them and so forth.
Also the kind of information that would show up on, you know, a website or something like that.
And so it simply lists, it has a list of like eight, I guess, features that presumably somebody's going to find within this church.
I take it as a statement of implicitly saying, if you come to our church, here's what you're going to see, as well as really a kind of value statement.
By putting this in this card, it's a statement of values.
There's no church name on the card.
There is a symbol that I'm assuming is the symbol for this particular church.
So I don't know where this church is.
I don't know the name of the church.
That's probably good.
And I, although I'd love to go to the website, but I wouldn't tell you the name of the church, even if I had it.
But here's all it is.
So it's just a card, black background with, I think, gold font.
And it just lists eight things, and here they are.
I'm going to just read the eight things, okay?
In this order it says, Smiling Wives, Obedient Children, Loud Singing, Strong Handshakes, Young Marriages, Good Manners, Biblical Preaching, Reverent Worship.
That's it.
Okay, so this car, that's all it has on it, the symbol of this church underneath, and this list of eight things.
That's it.
That's all.
Holy shit, that's a lot.
I saw this, and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
There is so much going on with this, and the church, and obviously this is the intent, has managed to communicate a lot with just a few lines.
And it's common in a lot of churches to have a kind of a brief series of announcements prior to the worship service.
When I was a pastor, because I was the junior pastor, this was my job like every Sunday was to stand up in front of everybody and, you know, have a little bit of banter with the congregation and do the announcements and so forth.
But that usually concludes with something, including like, you know, welcome to visitors.
If this is your first time here at So and So Generic Church, we want to thank you and just tell you that we're really glad that you're here.
And if you're interested in who we are, you'd like to reach out, want some more information, we'd invite you to take a look in our bulletin that you should have received when you walked in the church this morning.
Just check out the Bulletin and you open it up and here's this card.
Or go take a look at our website.
Lots of information there.
We'd love to hear from you.
And you go to the website and you see this.
Okay?
So that's what we're doing.
We're checking the Bulletin today and for the next few episodes.
We're taking a look at this card and we're going to see what it has to tell us.
Okay?
And before we dive into the first topic, which is where we're going to be today, the first topic is Smiling Wives.
And that's where we're going to live today, is talking about Smiling Wives.
That one's going to take the full episode.
Could take longer than that if we wanted to.
But we're going to give it one episode.
But I also wonder, when I read these, I couldn't help but wonder if there's any significance to the order of these eight features.
I imagine for my time, not just, you know, working in a church but in lots of other kinds of contexts where, you know, you talk about putting your vision out there and how to communicate that and so forth.
I've got to think that some thought went into this.
These are not just eight randomly selected things.
There was some process of discerning, you know.
What do we as a church want to communicate about ourselves?
What do we want to say we value?
What do we want to draw people in with?
They come up with these eight things, but the orders is kind of weird to me.
There are elements that could go together.
There are a lot of elements related to the family and gender and things like that that are kind of spread around.
There are some elements about The church worship that are spread around, the thing about biblical preaching—and I've talked about this a lot on this series, and we'll get to it—it's like point number seven, and that's sort of interesting.
I might have expected that to be point number one.
For churches that want to refer to themselves as being quote-unquote biblical, that kind of buries the lead.
I'm curious about that.
But Be that as it may, what we're going to do is we're just going to pick up with reading these in order, and the one it starts with, and I leave it to your interpretation.
They've left it to our interpretation.
Does it start with the first one because it's the most important?
Does it start with the first one because it's the most foundational?
Does it start with the first one because it somehow thinks that that's going to be the hook?
Is it just random?
I kind of doubt that, but it's possible.
But anyway, the first one is, and again, I kid you not, it is Smiling Wives.
Okay?
Smiling Wives.
What does that mean?
If you read that or hear that and you feel a cringe, or a couple weeks ago Brad and I in the Weekly Roundup talked about the difference between weird, creepy, and weird, kind of idiosyncratic, quirky, If this seems weird, this seems something a little bit creepy, a little bit weird, a little bit cringy.
I showed this to my daughter who's 15, does not know much about this kind of thing.
She saw that and she's furrowed her brow.
She's like, that's weird.
And I was like, yeah, that's weird.
If you're sitting there and it's weird, I think it's weird.
I'm going to tell you why I think it's weird, okay?
Or why it strikes us the way that it does if it has those impacts.
Because again, it's just one statement.
Smiling Wives, two words.
Okay?
The first thing that this does, the first thing this communicates, the first effect that this has on us when we read it or hear it, is it situates this congregation within a heteronormative context.
Okay?
By specifying wives, It situates this church within a context that prioritizes marriage, and we have talked a lot about the role of the heteronormative family in a certain kind of American Christianity, and that's going to surprise nobody, but it does this immediately.
And if we know it's a theologically conservative or traditionalist church—again, point number seven is biblical preaching, we'll get to that in more detail, but point number seven is biblical preaching—if we know it's a theologically conservative or traditionalist church, We also, I think, can very safely assume this is a church situated within a context That says that the only valid expression of human sexuality occurs within a lifelong monogamous marriage.
So it is situated within all of this, and I think all of that then situates it within the context of purity culture and everything that comes with it.
Again, I could spiral out onto any of these.
If these were like written notes, like I could hyperlink everything and go into other episodes and other notes.
We talk about purity culture a lot as Straight White American Jesus.
We do it in the Weekly Roundup.
I've done it some in this series.
There are, you know, special episodes and series that we have with Access Monday Media and other formats that talk about this.
This is a context we talk about a lot, but this is situated very strongly within this.
As soon as you situate Marriage, within only a monogamous heterosexual relationship, you're in purity culture.
Or within just a monogamous relationship, and only a lifelong monogamous relationship, I should say, you're within purity culture.
So that's the first thing it tells us.
The second thing I've already sort of hinted at is that it affirms and presupposes straight marriage, right?
When it's presupposing marriage, it's the whole one man, one woman for life kind of model of marriage.
And notice, it doesn't say smiling spouses.
It doesn't say smiling partners.
It says smiling wives.
And I think it's safe to say that within smiling wives, it's not presupposing the happy, smiley lesbian couple.
These are wives.
These are women.
These are women who are married to men.
These are women who are existing in a monogamous marriage relationship.
And by implication, smiling wives, et cetera, they have kept themselves pure and they are living out marriage as God designed it and so forth.
Okay?
And I think it also tells us, and I think that this is really important, I think all that stuff's there, I think all that stuff's right, pretty much on the surface.
But it also tells us more.
It tells us that the men and the women, and again, it's a heteronormative context, it is presupposing a gender binary.
That's not my take, you know, that there are only two genders.
Smiling wives, wives are women, Wives are married to men, and men and women are what they are in terms of gender.
All of that, in my view, is harbored within these two words, smiling wives.
Okay?
But it also tells us that men and women have distinct gender roles and expressions, and presumably distinct needs, which are met at the church.
And the wives will be smiling.
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a prophet.
In the new novel, American Prophet.
I was the one who dreamed about the natural disaster just before it happened.
Oh, and the pandemic.
And that crazy election.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not bragging.
It's not like I asked for the job.
Actually, no one would ask for this job.
At least half the people will hate whatever I say and almost everyone thinks I'm a little crazy.
Getting a date is next to impossible.
I've got a radio host who is making up conspiracies about me, a dude actually shooting at me, and an unhinged president threatening me.
But the job isn't all that bad.
I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
That brings me to the second main thing.
The first thing is this context of heteronormativity and heteronormative marriage and so forth.
That brings me to the second main thing.
The first thing is this context of heteronormativity and heteronormative marriage and so forth.
The second broad feature is patriarch.
And I think that if this line rubs you the wrong way, those are probably the two big things that you're picking up on, even if you couldn't articulate it, is the heteronormativity of it and the patriarchy of it.
And of course, patriarchy is typically heteronormative as well.
And this is the question, why smiling wives?
You're going to have two words, blank wives, some description of wives, why smiling?
And when I hear this, enter with me, close your eyes, don't do that if you're like driving or something, but if you're somewhere you can close your eyes, close your eyes and imagine this, let this phrase sit with you, smiling wives, and what do you see?
I cannot help—and this is from my years in the church, and maybe I predispose this, but this is a thing written as part of a church for church members, for people who are prospective church members.
Church is the context.
I cannot help but have the image of a married couple standing around Maybe talking with others after the service or maybe before the service starts.
Maybe if it's before the service starts, they're sipping on their coffees, whatever, and the wife is on her husband's arm, smiling.
And in my imagination, she's just smiling.
She's not talking.
She's not contributing.
She's just smiling.
And what I hear or what I feel when I read this image Is this woman standing or maybe she's sitting in the pew and she's smiling, but just this image of smiling.
And it's this image where she is there to accompany her husband.
She is there to play her role and to be content in playing that role.
It feels like a passive description to me.
That's why I say just smiling.
As if she's just there as a kind of companion, as she is just there as a kind of accessory.
And I think that within this broad, heteronormative, marriage-focused context, this also implies that a wife's source of satisfaction and happiness should be her domestic relationships.
It should be her husband.
It should be her kids.
The next point is obedient children.
We're going to get to that next week, okay?
She's just smiling.
And for me, as I sit with this and I try to think, is it that I feel when I see this?
Or what am I imagining?
For me, it is all about visibility and appearance.
Notice it doesn't say happy wives.
It doesn't say valued wives.
It doesn't say fulfilled wives.
It doesn't say, I don't know, contributing wives.
No, there's nothing here about what wives feel or do beyond smiling.
Now, we can extrapolate, and I am, and I'm saying that I think that the idea is that being there with her husband, with her family, being there in church is what brings her joy and pleasure and so forth, but she's just there, she's just smiling.
For me, this description basically renders her a kind of passive accompaniment of her And I think that this communicates some really well-worn Christian and cultural stereotypes about women.
First, I find an allusion to Paul's injunction in 1 Corinthians 14.
So, in the New Testament, there's a letter to the church at Corinth, and we call it 1 Corinthians.
It's the first letter that we have that Paul wrote to a church in Corinth.
It's actually at least the second letter that he wrote to Corinth, but we don't have the first one.
So we call this 1 Corinthians.
And in chapter 14, he says that women should be silent and subordinate in churches.
Now, there's more to that context and centuries of debate about what exactly that means and whether Paul means that literally and so forth.
I think most people, most interpreters would say that Paul is not literally saying women shouldn't ever make like a noise in church.
Usually has to do with teaching, has to do with holding authority over men and so forth.
The issue really is submission.
Submission is the key.
Again, this is a church that says it's focused on what?
On biblical preaching.
Point number seven, okay?
What I hear here, hear here, what I hear when I am presented with this two-word phrase, a smiling wife is a submissive wife.
She's a wife who stands by her husband.
She is there.
She smiles.
And she accepts that role.
She accepts her submission.
This is, within a certain kind of Christian context, the idealized vision of what a woman ought to be.
Submissive to her husband, serving her husband, happy in that role, knowing that that is her true role of submission.
Happy in those domestic relationships, smiling about those.
If you just think of Harrison Butker talking about the woman's highest calling, we can think of J.D.
Vance and all the others and the emphasis on having children and being a mother and so forth.
I think all of that is wrapped up in this.
Okay?
And then another point about this is, I hear an allusion to a broader misogynistic trope about women.
And this is not specifically Christian.
This is not limited to churches.
This is something that goes on in the world.
This is something that probably every one of us, if you're listening to this, you have heard this.
If you are a female identified, you will certainly have heard this.
You will have encountered this.
But I cannot help but hear the times when someone, typically male,
says to a woman that she should smile more or says about a woman she should smile more or says something even more cringy like you're really pretty when you smile you should do it more often or something like that okay and i know i know a lot of you are going nuts right now because you've heard this you've experienced it you've felt it it makes the blood boil i can't help but hear that when i when i when i encounter this smiling wives
You don't need me.
None of you need me to tell you about this example because this is still a common trope in our culture.
And what I think underlies it, because, I mean, rarely will somebody tell a male-identified person, you know what, you just need to smile more.
You just need to be happier.
Man, you're really handsome when you smile.
Rarely does that happen.
And the reason is that women should be positive.
They should be content.
They should be smiley.
And women who aren't are bitchy or demanding or worse.
I had a teacher once who used to say, this is awful, say, no one likes a woman who's a grouch.
It's that misogynistic, patriarchal, cultural norm that I also hear in these two words, smiling wise.
Come to our church.
You're going to get smiling wives, okay?
You're going to get smiling wives who are—first of all, let me back up, sum all this up, tie this together.
You're going to come into a church that values and affirms quote-unquote traditional marriage.
And you're going to come to a place where the women in those marriages, they know their role.
They are happy and fulfilled.
They are fulfilled being the wife of a loving husband.
They are fulfilled raising their kids and in those domestic relationships.
They know that their calling is to be wives and mothers, and they know what that is.
And they will stand by and they will smile because they know how to submit, and they know how to find joy in submission.
And you're going to like them because they smile.
They're friendly.
They're happy.
They're positive.
This is everything that this church values.
This is what it tells us about so much of who they are, who they're drawing, who they want to be a part of their community.
Now, is it possible I'm reading too much into this?
I get emails from other people like, I really like what you say, it's like really interesting, but it's too much, or you're reading too much into it.
Yeah, maybe, maybe I am.
Though, first of all, that's a risk you take.
If you're an organization, you decide to put a card out with like eight little statements, so you're leaving yourself open to whatever interpretation people give that.
But number two, as we get to the other points, I think we're going to see that they kind of hang together.
The next one is obedient children, and I'm going to tease into that next episode.
I think that that's going to feed into this interpretation of what smiling wives might mean.
Okay?
But I think it's also coming from my experience in these churches.
It's coming from the way that I watch political and religious discourse, and that I watch religious and political actors.
And if you spend your time immersed in that, And you hear this language of smiling wives, which I think is both a descriptive statement.
Here's what you'll find here.
But I think it's also a normative statement.
This is what women ought to be.
They ought to aspire to be smiling wives.
When you've dug into that as much as I have, I think the meaning becomes pretty self-evident.
Okay?
I also think That this is the way we should read this, because the way that these little cards work is by what they don't have to say.
This card works because it resonates with particular people.
They chose this card because, for their church members, this resonates with them.
It does not resonate despite its affirmation of heteronormativity and misogyny and patriarchy.
It resonates because of those things.
And when they put this into a mailer somewhere or they send it out to people or a visitor comes in, I, folks, am not their target audience.
Most of you, if you are listening to this series, if this is something you're into, you are not their target audience.
But there are a lot of people in America, we talk about this all the time, who they're going to read that, they're going to feel everything.
All those same implicit meanings are going to stand out for them.
They may not be able to put them into words, they might not be able to articulate them, but they're there.
But for them, they're overwhelmingly positive.
It's positive emotions.
It's a draw.
It says, that's the kind of place I want to be.
And it brings them in.
So I think that the fact that it has that effect is the telling point that I think I'm reading this right.
Love to hear from you, as always.
Daniel Miller Swedge, DanielMillerSWAJ at Gmail.com.
Value your feedback.
Value the ideas.
Thank you so much for sending me this image.
We're going to live with it for a while.
Other ideas, always.
Feedback on episodes, always welcome.
As I always say, it takes me a long time to respond, and I'm sorry for that.
But I value the input so much.
Please keep it coming.
Let me know what you think about this and this whole idea of smiling wives.
I also want to thank you for your support.
Those of you who subscribe and help us to do what we do, thank you so much.
Those of you who are thinking about subscribing but you haven't done that yet, if that's something you're able to do, if it's something you find value, you find value in what we do, want to keep it going, please subscribe so we can keep doing this, especially as we come into this election season of so many things to talk about.
And again, for those of you that I know just that's not an option for whatever reason, thank you for listening.
