Should Men Be the Head of Every Household?

Mark Driscoll, the main subject of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast and all around awful human being, continues to be a troll for God online:

Screenshot of a post on Threads reading "Men, if you're not the head of your household, Satan is.

Scott Baker, a self-professed theologian and professor, posted the following response in this thread, which I'll quote below:

Hey, friends! Theologian here. Mark is wrong. About nearly everything, yes, but specifically here. There’s no such thing as “head of household” in a Christian marriage. That’s Rome, not Jesus. We can talk a little about it!
The Bible is rife with patriarchy, but that patriarchy is neither commanded nor taught. It was simply the way of the world. In much the same way as the Bible deals with slavery, it does not call for an end to the institution within its pages, but it provides the theological guidance and imperatives that will lead to its abolition. The desire to preserve it - like Mark has - is evil akin to wanting to reinstate slavery.
Now this slip that the patriarchalists like to do, using the phrase “head of household,” is both deliberate and sinister. The phrase “head of household” does not appear in the Bible. Period. Don’t tell me it does, I can read in multiple languages. In Ephesians 5, Paul writes that the husband is the head of the wife, but Paul uses the term “head” to mean source, the way we still use it in “headwater.”
One way to prove that is to point out every use of the word by Paul being used in that metaphorical sense except when he’s talking abut physiology. Another is to simply point out that the head (or brain) being responsible for cognitive and executive function was not widely-known in the 1st century. Making a whole metaphor based on information Paul is unlikely to have had - let alone his audience - is nonsensical, and wholly unnecessary unless you’re using it as a proof text.
Believing that Paul’s use of the word “head” = “patriarchy” is unnecessary and far more complicated than acknowledging the simple fact that the word does not denote authority or leadership. Back to “head of household.”It’s not in the Bible, and the nearest cognate to it is saying something completely different. They know. They know that “head of household” is a more familiar term, so they elude it with “head” from Ephesians, and, voila, they claim the Bible teaches patriarchy.
You know who does use the phrase “head of household?” Like… a lot? Rome. It’s all over their laws. It means not just authority, but *absolute* authority. I am hard-pressed to cite a better example of Scripture being used to say the same exact opposite of what it actually says.
So, no, Mark. The Bible does not teach men to be the “head of household.”I’m not even going to bother with the dumb bit about Satan. That’s just Dork being a mark… or… whatever. There is a still more excellent way.

Note: I added the link above to the Wikipedia page on Rome and family structures.

Gotcha suckers! 🎯

My point in linking to this thread is not because I believe Scott Baker to be 100% accurate or the final argument against men as the head of a household. Or as a big gotcha to "fight the patriarchy" in a progressive way. But to show how a phrase that you might have heard over and over like "men should be the head of the household" might not be as Bible based as some folks claim it is.

It might be something that's done in your faith tradition, or culture, or your specific family. But since there are also a lot of theologians who say it's not necessarily biblical, I think it's worth unpacking what the actual origins of that idea are.

See also Sheila Way Gregoire's post "In the Case of Ties, He Wins" for a deeper look at the impact the phrase can have on marriages:

...after four different surveys, of just about 40,000 primarily evangelical respondents, looking into their marital and sexual quality, I can tell you very strongly that these different expectations have real-world consequences.

It's a slippery slope from this to... 😱

Slippery slope arguments are often, but not always, a slippery slope towards a fallacy.

Digging into an idea such as "men as head of household" shouldn't shake your faith in God or Jesus, but it should cause you to question what people are teaching if they throw around phrases like "men should be the head of the household" as if it were words spoken directly by Jesus. I'd suggest that it's worth investigating whether things like that are actually in the Bible, or if it's just something that's been repeated at you enough that you assume it's 100% true.

You can even continue to believe that men must be the head of every household if you and your household are ok with that. But don't say "...because it's biblical..." as justification for it.

Predictably, Driscoll's post has stirred up a lot of conversation. But more importantly, a lot of good jokes poking fun at the idea: