The outspoken senior pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mark Driscoll, has drawn the ire of pro-life activist and Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins for calling Christian stay-at-home dads “worse than a non-Christian.”
In a strong rebuke on X Sunday night, Driscoll invoked 1 Timothy 5:8, declaring: “A Christian man who doesn’t work is worse than a non-Christian. This includes you, stay-at-home dads.”
According to 1 Timothy 5:8, “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
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It’s a message Driscoll has been preaching throughout his ministry for years, including on Mother’s Day when he announced to his social media followers that: “If you’re a voluntary stay at home dad forcing mom to leave the kids to make the income, God thinks you’re worse than an unbeliever (and he’s sending them to hell, so).”
On Tuesday afternoon, Hawkins, who has overseen the growth of the activist organization to over 1,400 school and university campuses since 2006, vehemently disagreed with Driscoll and insisted he owes her husband an apology.
“@PastorMark owes my husband an apology for this post. My husband was a schoolteacher for 10 yrs, and we decided that, with two of our children having cystic fibrosis, he would stay at home to care for & teach our children while I continue to lead Students for Life to fight to end Planned Parenthood & the violence of abortion. He is 100% a Christian and the best example of a male role model I know,” she said on X before further criticizing hypocritical pastors and conservative commentators.
“I’m 100% done with the ‘manly’ advice some pastors and other conservative commentators want to give men and women about what the role of men ‘really should be.’ Most of these men have cheated on their wives or have found to be in some other public sin. It’s sickening,” she argued while calling Driscoll’s comment a “cheap shot” and asking if he doesn’t consider taking care of his children “work.”
Researchers estimate that there are approximately 2.1 million stay-at-home dads in America, who make up about 20% of the stay-at-home parent population, according to data from the Pew Research Center. The share of fathers who stay at home with their children for any reason has almost doubled since 1989, the data shows.
In 2021, some 79% of stay-at-home moms reported that they took care of the home or family. About 9% of them said they stayed home because they were ill or disabled, while smaller shares said they didn’t work because they were retired, students, or simply unable to find work.
Some 23% of stay-at-home dads reported in 2021 that they stayed home to care for the home or family, while 13% said they are home because they can’t find employment. Since 1989, the share of stay-at-home fathers who say they do so to care for the family has quadrupled.
Another 34% of fathers said they were not working due to illness or disability, 13% said they were retired and 8% said they were students.
Stay-at-home dads were less likely than working fathers to have completed at least a bachelor’s degree. Some 40% of them lived in poverty compared with just 5% of working fathers. They also tended to be older than working fathers.
In a 2008 video clip from his time at the now-defunct Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, which he co-founded, Driscoll and his wife, Grace, explained their convictions about how 1 Timothy 5:8 should be applied in families.
“We’re built as women to be home with our kids, and the Titus 2 women, we’re supposed to be loving our husband and children, busy at home, homeward focused, pure, kind, self-controlled so that we don’t malign the word of God,” Grace Driscoll said.
Driscoll argued that secular culture perverted the message of what man’s role in the home should be.
“You live in an absolutely perverted, corrupted, stupid, culture. It’s a culture of hook-up, shack-up, break-up. It’s a culture in which men act like Peter Pan and they’re boys way too long,” he said.
“If you cannot provide for your family, you are not a man,” he continued before noting some circumstances in which men might not be able to honor the Bible.
“Maybe you get injured, you get sick, you get cancer, totally understood we’re not legalists. But if you’re an able-bodied man, your job is to provide for the needs of your family,” he said.
Driscoll argued that a man taking on the role of providing for his family might mean living a simpler life to honor God, but suggested it was better than giving in to the world’s value system.
Christian apologetics ministry Got Questions doesn’t see 1 Timothy 5:8 as a biblical mandate against stay-at-home dads.
“The bottom line is this: a man who dodges his natural duty to provide for his family or who lacks the foresight to take care of them is living contrary to his religion. This has nothing to do with whether or not he is a stay-at-home dad,” the ministry noted. “Generally speaking, if one spouse is going to work while the other spouse stays at home, it is better for the husband to be the primary financial provider and the wife to be the primary homemaker, but in no sense is that a biblical mandate.”
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