Evangelical clergyman Bishop Macedo says it is against God's will for women to get educated

UNIVERSAL Church of the Kingdom of God clergyman Bishop Edir Macedo has courted controversy by declaring that daughters should not be allowed to seek higher education because if they do they will be smarter than their husbands.

Certain to raise eyebrows at a time when the world is reeling from the scourge of inequality, Bishop Macedo's comments will no doubt attract a vicious backlash. He added that he is against higher education for his daughters because they are supposed to serve God and not themselves: 

Bishop Macedo said: "When they went out, I said they would just go to high school and they wouldn’t go to college. My wife supported me but the relatives found it absurd. Why don’t you go to college? Because if you graduate from a particular profession, you will serve yourself, you will work for yourself but I don’t want that, you came to serve God.

"If  she was a doctor and had a high degree of knowledge and found a boy who had a low degree of knowledge, he would not be the head, she would be the head and if it were the head, it would not serve God’s will. I want my daughters to marry a male, a man who has to be head. They have to be head because if they are not head their marriage is doomed to failure."

Indicating that a woman’s happiness is only possible through submission to a man, the bishop pointed out that sending his daughters to college does not help them to submit. His views are a common theme expressed by many conservative Christians, as for example, radio host Jesse Lee Peterson recently claimed that educated women make bad wives and mothers.

Mr Peterson declared: "Women, God has given you the gift of being the assistant of the man, to watch over his children, to make sure things are well at home, to be there when the kids come home, to cook, clean, provide in that way. There is no greater job for a woman than that and I don’t know why these men would marry these women if they don’t have that mindset.

 "It’s like being married to another man, it’s selfishness, it’s not love. Men, you need to come back to your proper state of being so God can give you the right kind of woman to marry. I wouldn’t recommend you marry these educated women with these degrees, as they don’t make for good wives and mothers."!

Like many conservative Christians, Bishop Macedo argued that daughters should remain uneducated and skip college so that they are not smarter than their future husbands. His views are likely to attract a fierce response from the feminist movement.