‘A husband expects a yes’: wife schools and the Christian nationalist movement
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
What is the rise of Christian conservative influencers teaching women?
Today, the rise of Christian conservative influencers teaching women to be submissive.
I'm just your average little small town pastor's wife. We're Reformed Baptist.
One morning, Guardian feature writer Elena Dimopoulos was drinking her coffee and scrolling through TikTok when something caught her eye.
What is the concept of proactive submission in marriage?
Calling this proactive submission. This is where we're actually going to be pitching leadership opportunities to our husbands and
And she is promising you that if you have lost your way in your marriage, if your husband isn't paying the attention that you want him to, she has the answer for you. And you will find it in the six-week class that she is selling you.
It was an ad for an online school for wives. She was intrigued, so she paid the $17 and signed up.
Who is Tilly Dillehay and what does she teach?
She's sitting on the ground, and it's really informal, like you would maybe be talking with a friend.
Oh, hi there. Let's talk about the honor of attention. This is a...
She speaks pretty softly. You get the sense that she has probably done this type of talk in a church somewhere with other wives in real life.
And show them that you're listening, that you're glad to see them. This is the kind of thing you can do with your husband when he comes home or just when he walks into the room to tell you something.
The woman was called Tilly Dillehay, one of a raft of Christian conservative women building online businesses by promising women that they can find happiness if they would only follow a few simple rules.
She has amazing eye contact with the camera, which might sound silly, but it's really, really easy to feel like she's giving you this kind of womanly wisdom that you get from your girlfriends, right?
And underneath the soft furnishings and the cozy girl talk, the rules are clear. Stay at home. Submit to your husband.
I think the first thing that really got me, and she says this pretty early on, is if you're going to suffer, suffer as a righteous woman. And that, I think, was the first sign that Something here was off because she doesn't actually want to make women's lives better. She just wants to make women more palatable for their husbands and their church communities.
What kind of a world are these influencers helping to build? And who will really benefit? From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today in Focus, the rise of the wife school and who is really behind them. Alana Dimopoulos, you are a features writer for The Guardian based in New York. Welcome to Today in Focus. Thank you so much, Annie.
What are the controversial teachings in Tilly's wife school?
So we are here today to talk about your recent foray into the world of wife schools. So tell us, why did you sign up?
I mean, how can you not be just intrigued by the idea of wife school? I'm a single woman. I don't have a husband and I'm not trying to be a good wife. But I think that there is a lot happening right now in the conservative Christian womenosphere and how these influencers are speaking to women and trying to mold women into these kind of ideal, picture-perfect step for fundamentalist Christian wives. That is really intriguing to me. Just the idea of just teaching submission in this obvious of a way was really shocking to me and obviously very terrifying, but it definitely made me want to learn a little bit more. So I signed up for this class with this woman, Tilly Dillehay. I wanted to know what they were teaching women because I didn't know if it would literally be, you know, this is how you fold your laundry or something or if it was more substantial than that.
And who was the course marketed to? Was it single women? Was it women who were still married?
It was marketed to wives.
How do these teachings affect women's roles in marriage?
And it's not going to teach you how to find a husband. It's assuming you already have a husband. It's assuming you have a husband, probably some kids. And it's assuming that the spark has gone from your marriage. It's never explicitly said, but I kind of got the assumption sometimes that She might be speaking to women who are dealing with like a recent infidelity with their husband because it's really kind of how to sort of, if your man has, you know, withdrawn, here's how to kind of grab him back.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:09
2
What is the rise of Christian conservative influencers teaching women?
0:09–0:39
3
What is the concept of proactive submission in marriage?
0:39–1:18
4
Who is Tilly Dillehay and what does she teach?
1:18–3:25
5
What are the controversial teachings in Tilly's wife school?
3:25–4:40
6
How do these teachings affect women's roles in marriage?
4:40–5:57
7
What are the implications of these teachings on women's autonomy?
5:57–6:22
8
How is Doug Wilson connected to Tilly Dillehay's movement?
6:22–26:15