"Death of The Pastor's Wife"
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Opinion Writer
New York Times
“Death of the Pastor’s Wife” has been one of the top ten TV shows on Netflix since it debuted on August 26. The documentary series is about the abusive, terrifying marriage of Mica Francis Miller, a South Carolina woman who died in 2024, and John-Paul Miller, the pastor and founder of Solid Rock Church in Myrtle Beach, S.C., a nondenominational evangelical parish.
Mica’s death was ruled a suicide, and the documentary touches on some unanswered questions about how she died. But it is much more about how her husband used the power of the pulpit against her. He took advantage of Mica’s strong faith as a method of control.
John-Paul appeared to leverage his standing in the community and with law enforcement to isolate Mica from her friends and family. Her husband’s overarching method of manipulation was convincing his wife that if she did not submit to his whims fully she would be disobeying God.
Rich McHugh, an investigative correspondent for NewsNation who interviewed John-Paul after Mica’s death, said in the documentary, “It feels less like a woman simply choosing to end her life and more like someone who is trying to get away from an abusive relationship and couldn’t.” McHugh characterized her death as “murder by suicide.”
I think there is more to the series’s popularity than its potential murder mystery. The show speaks to a kind of awakening among America’s young women that I have touched on before: They are disgusted by the misogyny and hypocrisy of some conservative churches and are disaffiliating from organized religion as a result. This upends decades of female-dominated worship. Now, young men and women observe at roughly equal rates.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “In 2024, 40% of women ages 18-29 identified as religiously unaffiliated, which represents an 11-percentage point increase from 29% in 2013,” while the percentage of religiously unaffiliated young men remained stable, around 35 percent.
John-Paul’s hold on Mica was so strong, in part, because he met her when she was a teenage parishioner of his. In his church, Mica was taught to submit to both her pastor and her husband. “Obey those who have authority over you, for no authority can exist without God’s permission,” John-Paul preaches to his flock, along with citing Ephesians 5:33, about wives respecting their husbands. Clips of him preaching are peppered throughout the documentary. In multiple sermons, John-Paul said things like, “If you don’t meet your husband’s sexual needs, Satan will put 20 different options before his eyes before the day is over with.”
John-Paul allegedly abused Mica in multiple ways over the course of their relationship, including sexually. He harassed her when she tried to get away from him; after her death, John-Paul was indicted by a federal grand jury on cyberstalking charges.
Mica’s relatives and friends said they felt John-Paul used the Bible to control Mica. “She was very submissive and she felt that was how she could honor God,” one of her friends, Bruna Pabon, explained. When Mica finally did get the strength to leave, many in the church sided with John-Paul. According to her brother, her social circle “went down to essentially nothing.”
While John-Paul Miller’s abuse was extreme and unusual in its cruelty, many churches and religious influencers preach that women should submit to their husbands, sexually and otherwise.
Alex Clark, a right-wing influencer who hosts the podcast “Culture Apothecary,” recently interviewed the Christian author Tilly Dillehay for a series called “Wife School.” The episode is titled “Sex Isn’t Optional: Why Wives Should Pursue Pleasure,” and though Dillehay says a woman should get pleasure from marital sex, she ultimately makes a version of the same arguments Miller does — that agreeing to sex, even when you don’t feel like it, is both commanded by God and a “shield” against infidelity.
Dillehay has an online course called Wife School. A Guardian article on these kinds of classes summarizes Dillehay’s advice about how to become “the kind of woman who inspires a godly leader”: “Part of Wife School’s ‘homework’ involves a worksheet instructing wives to ask for their husbands’ permission on nearly every decision: ‘Is it all right if I go out with the ladies on Saturday?’ ‘Is it OK with you if I budget $300 for a new chair?’ ‘Can I have your blessing to sign up for the women’s retreat committee?’”
Clark and Dillehay may stoke the culture war fires — in her “Culture Apothecary” appearance, Dillehay makes a dig at “the poor, single, liberal writer from The Guardian” who was concerned about women being coerced — but their message is likely backfiring, said Sarah Stankorb, the author of the new book “Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion.” Stankorb traces how American Christianity became intertwined with a specific brand of political conservatism and talks to the women who left the church along the way.
Stankorb, who was raised religious herself, is a graduate of divinity school and is also the author of “Disobedient Women: How a Small Group of Faithful Women Exposed Abuse, Brought Down Powerful Pastors, and Ignited an Evangelical Reckoning.” In a phone call, she explained that there have been many pain points over the past few decades for Christian women of all ages.
Some of the women Stankorb interviewed for her book were appalled by the cover-ups of sexual abuse scandals that were brought to light by the #ChurchToo movement, an offshoot of #MeToo that focused on sexual abuse by religious leaders. Some were victims of such abuse. Many could not stomach their pastors siding with political figures like Donald Trump, who have credible allegations of sexual abuse against them.
She told me that the idea that women must submit to their husbands can be a “pipeline for abuse,” and that more young women seem to be aware of stories like Mica Miller’s, which go viral. The immoral behavior of spiritual leaders who are meant to be their superiors creates a dissonance for women who are raised to obey men, because they are living in a relatively more equal, secular broader society.
The women Stankorb interviewed were often heartbroken, though many of them still define themselves as Christians, and they find solace in their beliefs. The same is true of Mica Miller, whose faith could not be destroyed by her pastor husband. Before she died, Mica posted a video on social media in which she said, “I’m God’s bride first. You don’t have to stay in an abusive relationship, whether that’s sexual, or alcohol abuse, or physical abuse, psychological abuse, making you think that this is all your fault or you’re not giving it your all when you know you are.” She added, “He’s got you, and he sees you and he loves you.”
If only Mica had a whole community of people telling her that she never had to subordinate herself to a man before any of this ever happened.
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