Obey Thy Husband

It is a metaphor that infuriates both liberated women and spirited youth. God holds in his hands a hammer (symbolizing a husband). The husband/hammer bangs a chisel (representing the obedient wife) that "chips away the rough edges" to turn a diamond in the rough (a teenager) into a gem.

God to husband to wife to child. That is "God's chain of command," the most controversial of the "universal, underlying, nonoptional principles" of family life that are being proclaimed by the Rev. Bill Gothard, 39, to mass audiences in two dozen cities from Seattle to Philadelphia. This year as many as 500,000 people, some via closed-circuit TV, will attend Gothard's traveling "Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts," which consists of 28 hours of lectures in a week's time (basic cost for the course: $45). These throngs hear about the lectures only by word of mouth; Gothard buys no advertising.

Few Jokes. Standing ramrod-straight in a business suit, Gothard lectures with few gestures, fewer jokes, no vocal theatrics and as props, only an easel for sketching and an overhead projector that flashes charts and lists of "Basic Steps" or "Root Problems" on a screen. Yet his hearers sit in rapt attention, jotting in thick red notebooks. Half of the listeners are in their teens or 20s, half are older couples, mostly white Protestant and middle class, eager for packaged help on the woes that afflict modern American families. Thousands are so enthusiastic that they take the course a second time.

After graduating in 1957 from Wheaton (Ill.) College and being ordained by the conservative, independent La Grange Bible Church, Gothard worked with teen-agers in suburban churches as well as youth gangs in Chicago. Both groups were similarly disturbed, he decided, and their family life was to blame. To counteract their personal problems, he developed a set of absolute "principles," like his theory about God's chain of command.

Gothard's philosophy is that people should recognize the difficulties of life as part of God's plan and use them for their spiritual benefit. His opening lecture on self-acceptance closes with a prayer to "give God a vote of confidence for how he has made us so far." Next comes family life. Children must be totally obedient. A religious teenager, for example, should not attend a church college if atheistic parents order him not to. As for a man's wife, she "has to realize that God accomplishes his ultimate will through the decisions of the husband, even when the husband is wrong." Citing I Thessalonians 5:18 ("In every thing give thanks"), Gothard even advises a wife whose husband chastises her to say, "God, thank you for this beating." And Gothard adds to Christ's words from the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But you know what you are doing through them to build character in me."

Besides following the chain of command in the family, Christians should also be obedient to their employers and their government, Gothard asserts. Only if an order from a parent, the state or a boss conflicts with God's explicit commandments may it be disobeyed. But first the Christian is supposed to follow six complex steps, beginning with an examination of his own bad attitudes.

On the side, Gothard dispenses assorted fundamentalist opinions. He favors fasting, tithing and Bible memorization, while opposing liberal Bible criticism, much of higher education, highly rhythmic music, working wives, explicit sex education and any sexual arousal before marriage. As for homosexuality, Gothard says that when it is made "a normal way of life, then it's all over for a society, and we are right at that point."

Since Gothard's impact is just starting to be felt in liberal churches, most criticisms till now have been raised by Evangelicals. Wheaton Bible Professor Alan Johnson protests that Gothard's docile acceptance of life "takes the sting out of evil and even transforms it into a good." Johnson's colleague Gordon Fee thinks that Gothard's approach to Bible interpretation is simpleminded. "You cannot just stamp the 1st century culture onto the 20th century and say it is the divine order," says Fee.

Scrap Subjects. Gothard, cheerfully convinced that he teaches only what the Bible does, is less concerned with his critics than with administering a budget that should reach $8 million this year. The money goes into a 200-acre headquarters complex in Oak Brook, Ill., where a staff of 70 answers 200 spiritual "Dear Abby" letters per month, prepares advanced seminars and is developing a national training center for pastors and schoolteachers, as well as a "character curriculum" that he hopes many colleges will adopt. According to Gothard, they should scrap conventional subjects and rebuild courses around 49 virtues, including diligence, loyalty and tact.

Gothard, a bachelor, gets a salary of only $600 a month, drives a 1970 Chevy and still lives with his parents in La Grange, Ill. No one, he believes, should leave home until he marries. As for the fact that he is an unmarried man dispensing dogma on husband-wife problems and child rearing, Gothard is unworried. Says he: "We have some pretty good precedents for that: Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul."

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