Wives’ submission to husbands

Wives’ submission to husbands is presented as a religious rule whose authority in Molotschna depends on interpretation as much as on scripture. During the women’s deliberations about leaving, Mejal Loewen asks whether departure would make them disobedient wives. Salome Friesen and Ona Friesen expose the unequal conditions under which that question has been answered: the women cannot read the Bible, and the men who tell them what it requires also hold power over their lives.

The Rule and the Decision to Leave

Mejal raises the rule while the women are weighing whether to leave Molotschna after years of attacks on girls and women. Their choice is shaped by immediate concern for their children’s safety, but also by the threat that, if they do not forgive the accused men, they themselves will have to leave the colony. The rule of submission therefore bears on a decision made under pressure, not on an abstract dispute about marriage.

Mejal frames departure as a possible failure to obey husbands. Salome answers that the women cannot verify what the Bible says because they cannot read it. Their knowledge of the rule comes from Peters, the elders, and their husbands—all men. She argues that leaving cannot simply be declared unbiblical when the women have been denied direct access to the text on which that judgment supposedly rests.

Who Gets to Interpret Scripture

The discussion distinguishes the Bible from the interpretations handed down to the women. Salome’s objection is not only that their knowledge has gaps; it is that male authorities control how scripture is explained to them. Ona agrees that being unable to read or write places the women at a serious disadvantage whenever biblical meaning is negotiated. The submission rule thus operates alongside restrictions on literacy: the women are expected to follow a religious instruction they cannot independently examine.

Salome tests the authority of husbands by asking whether a wife would have to accept a husband’s claim that scripture justified harm to her or to children. The example makes the danger of unchecked interpretation concrete without settling what the Bible itself says. Mejal’s initial appeal to received teaching meets Salome’s question about its source: the men who prescribe submission are also the people interpreting the command. The women’s disagreement concerns not just what obedience requires, but who is permitted to define it.

Submission, Pacifism, and Protection

The women’s argument about obedience unfolds alongside a religious argument for leaving. Agata Friesen reasons that remaining would expose them to further violence and risk turning the colony into a place of conflict. She identifies pacifism as a central commitment of Mennonite faith and holds that leaving would better preserve it. In her account, departure is not a rejection of faith but a way to practice it without entering a cycle of violence.

Agata also places responsibility for protecting the women and children within their religious obligations. Leaving, she argues, allows the women to pursue peace and forgiveness without making forgiveness a coerced response to danger, and to teach their children those values even when they differ from their fathers’ expectations. The rule of submission is therefore weighed against duties the women also understand as religious: care for children, nonviolence, and fidelity to faith.

Collective Judgment and the Rule’s Significance

The women’s deliberation turns an instruction often treated as settled into a question they can examine together. Their limited access to scripture remains a real constraint, but it also sharpens their challenge to the authority of those who claim to speak for it. Their reasoning does not establish that the Bible commands wives to leave; instead, it contests the assumption that husbands’ interpretations must decide whether leaving is disobedient.

Agata describes the women’s decision to influence their sons as an expression of motherhood, faith, love, and peace, rather than a revolution for its own sake. That collective judgment complicates the demand for submission: the women recognize obligations to their children and to their faith that cannot be reduced to obedience to husbands. In the debate, religious commitment remains central, but its interpretation is no longer left exclusively to male authority.