–– Paul Schlehlein
The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Mark it down as another win for feminism after South Africa’s highest courts recently ruled that a husband can legally take the surname of his wife, overturning a law that once barred them from doing so.
What has long been a common practice in Europe has now made its way to Africa, as the South African Constitutional Court decided that the previous law which only allowed male surnames in marriage, was a “colonial import” and did not promote gender equality. This came after both an Afrikaans and an English husband sued for not being allowed to take their respective wives’ surnames.
It was also argued that in many African cultures, women kept their birth names after marriage, a practice that changed only after “European colonisers and Christian missionaries” introduced their customs. By stating it this way, this decision made it explicit that African women who adopted their husband’s surname did so because of the arrival of Christianity.
A Response
How should the church respond? The answer is no, a husband should not take the surname of his wife, but the wife should take the surname of her husband, because God commands the wife to submit to and obey her husband and not the other way around.
God created men and women differently. As Jesus said, “from the beginning, God made them male and female” (Mk. 10:6). God created men with bigger muscles to protect the weak, with deeper voices to command authority, and with stronger emotions to enter danger. God created women with gentler dispositions to display mercy, with wider hips to bear children, and with finer features to radiate beauty.
God also created men and women to relate differently to each other. A husband and wife are not different from each other the way a blue and pink car are different from each other, driving side by side and jockeying for position. Rather, God designed them differently such that they actually accomplish more when together, similar to the way a violin and violin strings serve little purpose individually but make beautiful music when put together.
God created the husband as the head of the home (1Cor. 11:3) and the wife as his helper (Gn. 2:18), or as Proverbs puts it, the husband is the king and the wife is the crown upon his head (Pr. 12:4).
God commanded husbands to love their wives (Eph. 5:25) by leading them, providing for them, and protecting them, and He created wives to love being led (well), love being provided for (well), and love being protected (well). Conversely, God tells wives to submit to their husbands by obeying them, honouring them, and helping them, and He created husbands to love being obeyed (well), honoured (well), and helped (well). This is a feature God hardwired into humanity.
Practical Ways Women Do This
It’s not enough for wives to know that they must submit, but also how they can submit. A Bible that is misapplied or unapplied becomes nullified.
One way a wife can submit is by using respectful terms of endearment for her husband. In the Tsonga culture, there is a distinction between the “you” singular pronoun (wena) and the “you” plural (n’wina). To show respect, some people use the plural “you,” even if they’re speaking to just one person. In the old days, a woman was expected to refer to her husband in the “you” plural, similar to the way a woman in Victorian England may have referred to her husband as “Mr Darcy.” Today, these customs are in decline, in part because of the rise of feminism.
Another way women can honour their husbands is by taking their husbands’ surname at marriage. When the wife does so, she is saying to her husband: “You’re my head and I’ll follow you anywhere.” Should the husband do so, he is saying to his wife: “You’re my head and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
Objections
The first objector says the Bible never speaks on this matter, but this argument will not work. Scripture, for example, never specifically condemns cheating on tax returns either. Is one then allowed to defraud the government? No, and the moral syllogism helps us here. Proposition 1: Lying is sinful (Ex 20:16). Proposition 2: Avoiding paying taxes is lying. Conclusion: Therefore, avoiding paying taxes is sinful.
Similarly, consider Proposition 1: Wives must submit to their husbands (Eph 5:22). Proposition 2: A practical way wives can show submission to their husbands is by taking their husband’s surname. Conclusion: Wives should take the surname of their husbands.
Though the worldwide use of surnames is only a few centuries old, the Old Testament used other practical methods to show that the husband was the head of the home, such as counting children as the sons of their father (e.g. 1Chron. 25).
The second objector says surnames have no part of old African culture. That is true, but most African tribes have some kind of proverb in their language about two chiefs from the same village not working well together. God has not created marriage to have two chiefs. There is one chief, the husband, of whose surname the wife should now accept. And if women keeping their surname is so embedded in African culture as the media argues, why is South Africa the only African country that allows this?
Conclusion
Countries that want to maintain their Judeo-Christian foundations should not allow a husband to take the surname of his wife, as this acts counter to the biblical command for wives to submit to their husbands. Instead, the bigger problem in African culture is not that women take the surnames of their husbands too often, but that this is not done enough.
Hundreds of thousands of youth carry the surname of their mother, not their father, because their parents never married. Any nation that promotes marriage in which one man marries one woman and that woman honours her husband by taking his surname will be blessed abundantly by God.