Pastor Stewart-Allen Clark, of Malden, Missouri, is under fire for a sermon he preached about men, women, and marriage. The point of the sermon was that men have a “need” for an attractive wife, and for sexual intimacy in their marriage.
"Ladies, it's the way God made us. It's the way we are. Men are going to look," he said. "He made us to look. You want them to be looking at you. Don't let yourself go."
He stated that men are programmed by God to be attracted to beautiful women; by their nature “men will look,” and wives should want their husbands looking at them, not elsewhere. Pastor Clark gave very specific advice to his female parishioners, advice that included: 1) maintain height-weight proportionality and lose weight if need be, 2) wear makeup, 3) style your hair attractively, according to what your husband likes, 4) dress attractively, not slovenly or too casual. He expounded at length on all of these elements of advice.
As you might expect in this day and age, there has been tremendous reaction against Pastor Clark, and his outrageously “sexist” sermon. He is reportedly on leave and is undergoing counseling. His denomination, the “General Baptists” have issued a statement dissociating the denomination from Clark’s sermon:
The controversy is all over the Internet, including London’s Fleet Street.
Although the church has taken down its Face Book page and all other social media, a 22 minute clip is posted here. I watched the whole 22 minutes.
Preliminarily, I’ll note that pastor Clark is not my kind of pastor. He’s not wearing a suit and tie, but rather an open collar black button up shirt over a white T-shirt. He’s sporting a substantial gut, and needs to take his own advice about losing weight. He’s pacing back and forth in front of a rock-style concert stage with an electronic keyboard, an amplifier, and an assortment of guitars, so I know I would absolutely hate the music in his church.
Like so many pastors these days, he seems to believe he’s being paid by the joke. Here’s one of his jokes that’s gotten a lot of attention (of the wrong kind):
“Now look, I'm not saying every woman can be the epic, epic trophy wife of all time like Melania Trump. I'm not saying that at all. Most women can't be trophy wives, but you know, maybe you're a participation trophy.”
Buh-dump-bump.
Again, he’s not my kind of pastor; too many jokes, much too casual and “low church.” Like so many pastors today, he lacks a proper sense of the sacredness of the pulpit (which is bound to happen when a church sanctuary looks like a theater stage).
Substantively, pastor Clark repeats far too often the idea that “men are going to look.” Yes, men are programmed to “look.” We were created to be attracted to female beauty, but not every inarguably innate masculine trait is baptized and guiltless in every permutation and situation. Jesus said “whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her commits adultery with her in his heart.” Looking with lust is not guiltless. It is also a matter of common sense and common courtesy that a husband should never let his wife catch him looking admiringly at another woman; it is rude, and it is demeaning and hurtful to his wife. Pastor Clark never inserted that caveat into his sermon, and he should have said it at least once for every three times he said, “men are going to look.”
All of that said, I think Pastor Clark was, in his main points, correct. Most of what he said would not have needed to be said a hundred years ago, and would not have been controversial even 60 years ago. It would all fall into the category of “the facts of life", positions so widely known and shared by the culture that they would be termed “common sense.”
Unfortunately, common sense is becoming less and ever less common these days, and every institution of our society has organized itself to rebel against the facts of life.
But, yes, men are visually oriented; that is a fact, not an opinion. Yes, women who want a happy marriage should not “let themselves go,” but maintain their looks as best they can (that is my opinion, your mileage may vary). In regard to makeup, Pastor Clark even used the saying I’ve countless times heard attributed to HMS Richards: “If the barn needs painting, paint it.” And if you haven’t heard that a dozen times, you haven’t been an Adventist very long.
I do wish Pastor Clark had emphasized mutuality a little more. He notes that this apostolic directive is mutual: “The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife.”
But the whole thing is mutual; yes, a man needs sex more than a woman, but women enjoy sex, too, and women need for their husbands to find them attractive. I’m not a woman, but somehow I’m pretty sure that a woman will be much happier—and more fulfilled as a woman—if she knows she is attractive to her husband. So the advice is not just to meet the man’s needs but the woman’s, too. The mutuality element was missing from Pastor Clark’s sermon. Had he tried to imagine the woman’s perspective, and how a woman who looks good, who looks like a woman, will also benefit in terms of self-esteem, confidence and security—as well as general feminine empowerment—it might have taken the “sexist” edge off his sermon.
Here is a video by Dennis Prager, a conservative religious Jew, on the power of visual stimuli on men. This is primarily for the ladies, to help you understand men; we men already know that this is true:
I’m anxious to hear your thoughts. Agree or disagree? Sexism or practical advice?