What Bill Maher gets wrong

Last night on his show’s “new rules” segment, Bill Maher started off making a good point about how inaccurate it is for conservatives to cry sexism when anyone criticizes Sarah Palin or Rep. Michelle Bachmann. (Long story short: criticizing someone who happens to be female isn’t automatically sexist.) But then he does what he always seems to do whenever he has the chance: start bashing religion, Christianity in particular.




It’s tacky to point out someone else’s argumentative fallacy by using an argumentative fallacy of your own. And “I’m not sexist, Jesus is sexist” is a pretty dumb argument.

Since Bill brought it up, Ephesians 5:22 is frequently under-quoted, quoted out of context and then misinterpreted. Let’s first read the complete sentence, and then the several following.

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[b] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Husbands have some obligations here, too.

When a Christian fundamentalist starts quoting all the Bible verses that appear to condemn homosexuality, what is the very first thing most progressives say in response? It’s some variation of “Well, the Bible also says not to eat shellfish and that you should kill your children if they disobey you, but we don’t follow those things!” But when it comes to Ephesians 5:22, no one gets any slack. It’s carved in stone, and according to that great theologian Bill Maher, we Christians have to agree.

But here’s what really frustrates me when people who don’t like Christianity (for whatever reason) throw this passage in our faces. The Bible is full of passages that liberal or humanist Christians – myself included – de-emphasize by pointing out the patriarchalism of the time and place when the passage was written, or the changes made to the text at different points in history. A lot of us have issues with Paul’s letters. We argue that the published text is less important than a general orientation toward Christ-like living, treating others as we would want to be treated.

In any conversation among Christians, you’ll find earnest debate over what we’re supposed to be doing. None of us needs a comedian with an ax against religion to grind using our 2,000-year-long struggle to absolve himself of his own flaws.