# Mark Driscoll — "gullible and easier to deceive" > [!quote] "Without blushing, Paul is simply stating that when it comes to leading in the church, women are unfit because they are more gullible and easier to deceive than men." > — Mark Driscoll, *Church Leadership* (Mars Hill Theology Series, 2004) ## Context From a teaching booklet on church governance written while Driscoll was building Mars Hill Church in Seattle into a national megachurch brand. Glossing 1 Timothy 2, he argues that the bar on women in church leadership rests not on circumstance but on an inherent female deficiency — that women are constitutionally more deceivable. The line is frequently cited (here via the complementarian scholar Denny Burk, who quotes it from Driscoll's text) as the clearest statement of the contempt beneath his hyper-masculine theology. ## Why this matters This is the megachurch register of the same religious-right gender doctrine that [[Douglas Wilson - penetrates conquers colonizes]] frames in high-theological terms: female subordination grounded in women's supposed nature rather than mere social role. Driscoll reached a young, online, "young, restless, Reformed" audience far larger than the seminary world, mainstreaming a [[Misogyny]] that presents itself as plain biblical obedience. It is a load-bearing node between 2000s evangelical [[Patriarchy]] and the masculinity politics that later went secular and political. ## Verification - **Citation of the passage:** [Denny Burk — "Mark Driscoll on Women in Ministry"](https://www.dennyburk.com/mark-driscoll-on-women-in-ministry-2/), quoting *Church Leadership*. - **Background:** [Mark Driscoll — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Driscoll). - **Status:** Verbatim as quoted from Driscoll's text; undisputed attribution. ## Related quotes - [[Douglas Wilson - penetrates conquers colonizes]] — the same-era patriarchal theology in its Reconstructionist form. - [[Pat Robertson - the feminist agenda]] — the older religious-right framing of women's equality as threat. - Featured in [[Misogyny on the Right]].