Everything you say is making me more and more grateful for my husband and myself being anomalies. We have friends who are trapped in an environment such as you describe, who have been cut off from communicating with us because we disagree so strongly with the prevailing attitude. And we recently left a church because of similar issues, which are far too prevalent in American Evangelical circles.

But as far as Christianity as a whole is concerned, I would encourage you to look beyond modern American evangelicalism. There are so many brilliant, strong, devoted men who were impacted by Christianity and impacted it in return. Early church fathers like Augustine (our son’s middle name), reformers like Luther and Calvin, and current theologians like Peter Leithart are well worth studying. They don’t just follow Jesus because the women in their lives drag them along. (Especially Luther the monk!) There are places, times, people, and communities where Christianity and marriage are a lot closer to what they were meant to be. They are sadly rare in the cultural moment, but don’t throw all of us out with the bathwater.

In the meantime, I am sorry for the bad experiences you’ve had.