Bishop Says Girls Should Skip College So They Wouldn’t Be Smarter Than Their Husbands

Edir Macedo is a Brazilian billionaire that made his fortune partly due to tithes he collected from the church he founded back in 1977: the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

The church’s scandals include horrible things like money laundering, child trafficking, and flat-out stealing from the church’s poorer members.

Macedo is on the news for a very different reason this week, however. Allegedly, he told his daughters to skip college so they wouldn’t become smarter than their eventual husbands.

Yes, you read that right.

He said that if his daughters, Cristiane and Viviane, attended college, it would be too problematic. He noted that if Cristiane were a doctor and had a high degree of knowledge and met a boy who had a low degree of knowledge, he would not be the head of the family, but she would be.

Macedo reportedly suggested in his speech that a woman’s happiness is only possible through submission to a man (as translated by Hypeness), and sending his daughters to college does not help them to submit.

It’s important to note, though, that the toxic idea of women giving up their identities to serve men is not held by many Christians, but that doesn’t stop fundamentalist Christians from discouraging women from getting a college education. Well, at least Macedo acknowledges that women can be smarter than men, and he’s afraid of intelligent women.