SEDUCTIVE THEORIES OF MARRIAGE
EDUCATION
By Dr. E.S. Williams
Belmont House Publishing. 226 pages. £6.95
ISBN 978 0 954 849 344
Seductive Theories of marriage education is the third book by Dr Williams in a series which aims to expose the anti-Christian roots of popular psychology, which has invaded our culture and found enormous acceptance within the church.
In this one he focuses on the whole business of marriage education, demonstrating the pernicious influence of Carl Rogers and others. Carl Rogers is probably the most significant psychologist of the twentieth century and he was an ardent secularist, openly antagonistic to Biblical Christianity.
Traditional roles a curse?
Dr Williams points out that the same people who were proponents of divorce as the happiest solution to a marriage in trouble then devised and proposed marriage education as the way forward. Their big idea was that it was traditional roles in marriage that had caused all pain, because they oppressed women, so what everyone needed was a new kind of marriage of ‘equal regard’ and lots of training in communication skills, anger management and conflict resolution. All these ideas and others were taken up by Christians and given a Biblical veneer. As such they form a significant component of many extremely popular Christian marriage programmes, courses and resources. What is significantly absent from the courses Dr Williams examined is any mention of male headship and female submission in marriage and its relationship to the larger and hugely significant mystery of Christ and the church.(Ephesians 5)
In fact in many cases Scripture has been twisted to empty it of meaning or even to reverse it. The whole and sole point of marriage according to these courses is to be happy. There is no mention of God’s glory; there is no mention of the fact that problems in marriages are due to sin or that repentance is a more appropriate recourse than merely learning a new technique.
The point is well made. In their eagerness to find acceptance with all kinds of people, the church has undoubtedly been guilty of watering down unpopular Biblical concepts or of ignorantly presenting some of the narcissistic and godless mantras of popular psychology as Christian. Dr Williams is systematic and thorough; he names names and he lets the perpetrators have it, both barrels: Gary Chapman’s ‘love languages’, Rob Parsons ’60 minute wisdom’, Holy Trinity Brompton’s marriage course are among the most famous of those who fall foul of this analysis.
This is not comfortable reading but it is salutary. Even where a reader might not agree with Dr Williams’ conclusion that all people need is to be taught Biblical marriage from the pulpit, there are some important insights and warnings for any church leader. It does no harm to put our practices under some severe Biblical scrutiny. The book makes you think and that must be good.
Dr Williams will not care about this, I imagine, but this useful and courageous book might reach a wider readership if he was less vitriolic and allowed for the fact that in God’s world where people are made in God’s image, sometimes even the observations of unbelievers are true. Truth is truth wherever you find it. The apostle Paul was not afraid to quote a pagan poet and use it to illustrate his point. There is rather too much derision of what Dr Williams sees as puerile nonsense or trivia. But our lives are made up of small moments and trivial actions. It is not out of keeping with male headship, surely, for a man to lovingly serve his wife (Did not Christ himself come to serve?) or to express appreciation of her (Not all spoken appreciation is flattery). Read it with discernment and wear your flak jacket.
