UK Cleric to Women: 'Submit to Your Husbands'

Two clerics at a British church have shocked parishioners by urging wives to "submit to their husbands in everything." Angus MacLeay of St. Nicholas Church in Kent distributed a leaflet last week entitled "The Role of Women in the Church," which tells women to "remain silent" whenever possible and take a submissive role in the household "in recognition of the fact that husbands are head of the family as Christ is head of the church."

Mark Oden built on MacLeay's position in a sermon, blaming current divorce rates on the behavior of "modern women," the Telegraph reports. "We know marriage is not working," Oden told the congregation. "Wives, submit to your own husbands." Several female parishioners have left the church in disgust. "How can they talk that way in the 21st century?” said one. “No wonder the church is losing touch if this is the kind of gobbledegook they want us to believe." (More Britain stories.)