The Problem with “Submission”: How Cultural and Religious Narratives Can Normalise Abuse

By Nyasha B. Dube

Introduction

In many African societies, the language of submission is deeply embedded in both faith and culture that it often sounds virtuous, even sacred. A “good woman,” it is said, is humble, forgiving, silent in suffering and obedient to her husband or elders. A “faithful wife” keeps the family together, even at the cost of her safety.

But devotion, when twisted by patriarchy, becomes domination.

Across Zimbabwe and sub-Saharan Africa, women frequently internalise messages that spiritual maturity and womanhood are proven by endurance, by carrying burdens quietly and “respecting” authority, even when that authority harms them. Churches, mosques and traditional elders may preach submission as a divine duty. Families advise daughters to “hold their marriage with endurance” or risk bringing shame to the household.

When faith or culture emphasize obedience without balance, without equal emphasis on justice, compassion or mutual respect, it creates space for abuse to hide behind moral language. As Frontiers in Human Dynamics (Pertek et al., 2023) illustrates, religion in forced displacement and vulnerable contexts can either serve as protection or deepen risk. When applied through patriarchal lenses, the very doctrines meant to offer comfort can normalise violence.

Communities must understand this paradox, this is not religion versus rights, it’s about reclaiming faith’s moral centre to protect human dignity.

The Power, And the Peril, of Submission Narratives

In theology, “submission” may represent humility before God or mutual service between spouses. In culture, it can mean respect and unity. But when these concepts are socially constructed within rigid hierarchies, they become ideological tools reinforcing gender inequality.

In many Zimbabwean religious circles, whether among the Apostolic sects, Pentecostal movements or conservative Christian denominations, the expectation is women should “submit,” men should “lead.” The church leaders and traditional elders often interpret obedience as divine order. A woman who questions her husband’s decision risks being labelled worldly, rebellious or spiritually immature. Submission becomes shorthand for virtue, patience and faithfulness. For many men, spiritual authority gets conflated with ownership. When husbands invoke scripture such as “wives, submit to your husbands,” they convert sacred language into an instrument of fear. These teachings penetrate early socialisation. Girls are instructed not to challenge boys, wives are told to tolerate, and mothers warn daughters, “No man will marry an argumentative woman.” Here, virtue is measured in silence.

Women who dare question mistreatment are branded a woman “without manners.” If she speaks about sexual assault, she risks labels like promiscuous, disrespectful or not wife material. In faith communities, she might be told she is possessed, bitter or has lost her faith. This moral policing enforces submission as both a behavioural expectation and a spiritual identity.

The result is a cultural conditioning that equates questioning with sin. Violence becomes invisible, rebranded as discipline or divine testing.

Submission as Silencing: How Narratives Enable Abuse

In GBV contexts, submission narratives function as practical mechanisms of control.

Abusers hide behind phrases like “You must honour me as your husband” or “A good woman forgives.” Survivors internalise guilt when they fail to live up to these virtues. This dynamic thrives within both faith and cultural systems that prioritise social cohesion over individual safety.

Marginalised women bear the heaviest burden. For them, religious and cultural belonging often determine access to shelter, food and social standing. To question authority could mean exile from the only support structures they know.

In Zimbabwe, religious institutions often mediate domestic conflict informally. Church elders or pastors urge couples to pray together or rather than separation. Women are instructed to fast, submit, and “wait for God to change him.” Spiritualised endurance is often mistaken for strength, while help-seeking is seen as failure.

And when women finally resist, they face a second layer of violence, social excommunication.

• A wife who files for divorce may be told her faith is weak.

• A woman who refuses conjugal sex may be accused of witchcraft.

• A survivor who reports abuse may be branded by community elders as bringing western feminism into the church.

  
  

Even educated women in urban congregations encounter subtle policing. The pulpit messages emphasise the virtuous woman who covers her husband’s faults, nurtures him through prayer and never exposes family shame. Silence becomes a theological command.

At community level, economic dependency deepens the trap. Women reliant on bride-wealth customs (lobola) are told that by accepting it, their families have transferred authority to the husband. This contractual perception feeds the myth that a woman’s will no longer belongs to her.

Transforming Narratives: Faith That Liberates, Not Silences

Yet within the same traditions lie seeds of liberation. Africa’s faith communities are not static, they evolve, reinterpret and reclaim meaning.

Engagement with faith leaders and theologians has shown significant potential for norm transformation. Studies such as the PMC initiative on Leveraging Faith Leaders to Prevent Violence (2024) demonstrate that when leaders are equipped to discern coercion disguised as piety, they become powerful allies for women’s safety.

In Zimbabwe, organisations like The Musasa Project, Zimbabwe Council of Churches, and Women and Law in Southern Africa have worked with clergy and traditional leaders to unpack misused scriptures. By exploring concepts such as mutual submission and equality before God, they have opened avenues for reinterpretation of sacred texts long used to justify abuse.

Key strategies that have proven effective include:

• Faith-sensitive dialogues: Bringing survivors, elders and clergy together to reflect on what true “love” and “submission” mean in scripture and tradition.

• Cultural reframing workshops: Using local languages to discuss respect as reciprocal honour, not unidirectional obedience.

• Safe spiritual spaces: Establishing church women’s fellowships or circles where survivors can pray without being silenced or judged.

• Training allies: Equipping faith-based networks to read coercive control as violence, not devotion.

• Community storytelling: Producing sermons, songs and theatre pieces that show strength in asking for help, not just in endurance.

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These initiatives succeed because they don’t attack religion, they invite believers to rediscover the core ethical teachings of their faiths, compassion, justice and human dignity.

Religious organisations can be crucial protective resources when leaders embrace survivor-centred theology. But without proper training, they can also become complicit in normalising abuse.

Calls to Donors and Allies

To dismantle submission narratives that silence women, actors across the ecosystem must reorient both funding and partnerships:

For Donors:

• Invest in faith-grounded norm-change initiatives, projects that re-script harmful doctrines of endurance by working with local theologians, women clergy and traditional leaders.

• Support long-term cultural transformation, not just awareness campaigns. Behavioural norms shift through sustained dialogue, not one-off workshops.

• Fund faith-sensitive counselling and refuge services for survivors. These should integrate prayer spaces and spiritual care to ensure survivors don’t see safety as betrayal of faith.

• Prioritise research on women’s resistance narratives, how women reinterpret doctrine to reclaim agency.

• Back grassroots interfaith networks that unite churches and traditional leaders around gender justice.

  
  

For Faith-Based Organisations and Human Rights Allies:

• Train leaders to recognise the theological misuse of “submission” and “forgiveness.”

• Develop sermons and educational materials that frame submission as mutual partnership.

• Encourage peer accountability among religious leaders who advise survivors, challenge teachings that equate silence with loyalty.

• Collaborate with women theologians and survivors in writing new discourse grounded in faith but guided by equality.

• Build bridges between rights language and religious ethics, so communities hear safety and autonomy as moral virtues, not secular rebellion.

  
  

Towards a Faith That Protects

Submission, when interpreted through domination, becomes a weapon, a subtle form of structural violence. It disempowers women by teaching them to equate obedience with holiness and silence with virtue. It strips their right to question, to resist, to survive. In Zimbabwe and across the African continent, women are already reclaiming their voices from within sacred spaces. They reinterpret scripture, retell proverbs and challenge sermons that erase them. They remind communities that God, in every faith tradition, honours justice and dignity above submission to harm.