Sex, Lies, and Evangelicals: Mica Francis Miller and the Godly Wife

If you haven't already done so, you should watch the new Netflix series "Death of the Pastor's Wife." I thought it was well done and not lurid or exploitative, like so many true crime series are. I also appreciated that the family of the victim, Mica Francis Miller, was heavily involved. They clearly loved her and want her story to be told. 

I would also recommend that you listen to "Coerced: The Devotion & Death of Mica Francis Miller." It's a podcast done by Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell, the same investigative journalist duo who did the Murdaugh Murders Podcast (now called "True Sunlight"). They have been covering this case since the week after Mica Francis died, when her estranged husband's bizarre sermon announcing her death went viral online.

One of the themes I'm seeing on social media is people being appalled at John-Paul Miller's sermons about sex. He repeatedly talked about how wives owe sex to their husbands, and if they don't provide sex on demand, they are not godly wives, and it's their fault if their husbands stray. They are leading their husbands into sin if they withhold sex. People are shocked that he talked about such things in church, but I didn't even blink at that. I heard sermons like that in the Church of Christ all the time.

The fact is that people in fundamentalist and evangelical churches are obsessed with sex. We got sermons on the evils of sexual sins all the time. Sex before marriage is forbidden, and even having sexual thoughts and urges is condemned. Ideally, both parties enter marriage as virgins. Then after marriage, women, who are assumed not to have much of a sex drive, are supposed to somehow miraculously be transformed into sexbots that can perform on demand for their husbands, who are assumed to be insatiable sex fiends. 

As with many other evangelical-fundamentalist doctrines, this view of sex and relationships primes women to be victims. We are taught that our wants and needs mean nothing in a marriage. Everything is supposed to revolve around the husband and his desires, since he is the head of the family and the wife is supposed to obey him without question. Failing to meet his every demand means you are not a "godly" wife. The godly wife has no will, no opinions, no hopes, no dreams, and no desires of her own. She only exists to serve and please her husband without expecting anything in return. How can such a power dynamic not inevitably lead to abusive and unhealthy relationships? In the end, the evangelical-fundamentalist doctrines on sex and marriage are lies, designed to keep men in positions of authority where they can abuse with impunity.

In the case of Mica Francis and her estranged husband, he was 15 years her senior and was also her pastor and employer, since she worked at his church. He controlled every aspect of her life. She couldn't escape him and his influence, and if even half of the allegations against him are true, her life with him was utter misery. I feel so sorry for her and her grieving family, and I really hope that the South Carolina legislature will pass Mica's Law, which would outlaw the kind of coercive control her husband used against her. Nobody should have to suffer at the hands of a "godly" husband the way she did.