Who is Stewart-Allen Clarke? Pastor asks women to be 'attractive' as men marry them for sex, slammed as sexist
A Missouri pastor has been labeled "sexist" after he delivered a sermon telling women to keep their body weight under control because sex is the "main reason" that men marry women.
Stewart-Allen Clark, a preacher at the First General Baptist Church in Malden, Missouri, said in his February 21 that each man needs "an attractive wife." According to him, not all women can be "trophy wives" like former first lady Melania Trump, but "you don't need to look like a butch either... To him, you should look like the most beautiful woman in the room."
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Clark then rhetorically answered how wives can keep their husbands from cheating on them: "Weight control." "Don't give him a reason to be looking around," Clark continued. "Don't let yourself go."
As reported by Newsweek, the preacher dedicated an entire section of his sermon to that topic, including one anecdote from his days as a marriage counselor when a woman apparently lost 100 pounds after her husband called her "a fat b*tch."
"I have a friend. He has put a 'divorce weight' on his wife—that's how important this is," Clark said. "One little boy asked, 'Why do girls wear make-up and perfume?' Because they're ugly and they stink. You don't want to be ugly and stink."
Clark later added that men couldn't help but feel attracted to "beautiful women" because "God made us this way." He then claimed sexual attraction is the "main reason" that men marry women. "It's the truth. Men have needs," he added.
Clark, who no longer does marriage counseling, also said that many beautiful women had "snakes in their heads" rather than God in their hearts. Later, while discussing sexual intimacy, he quoted 1 Corinthians 7:4. "The wife has no longer all rights over her body, but shares them with her husband," he stated. "So whenever she's not in the mood, dig out your Bible," the pastor quipped.
"And likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife," Clark added, acknowledging the verse's second half. According to Newsweek, he addressed this verse after insisting that men should only have sex with their wives but also needed to feel admired by them.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, General Baptist Ministries, the national organization whose name graces Clark's church and a number of others, said that the Malden, Missouri church had complete "autonomy" over its sermons and that the national organization "does not have authority related to the employment of any pastor or church leader in a local congregation," it wrote.
"General Baptists believe that every woman was created in the image of God, and they should be valued for that reason," the statement added. "Furthermore, we believe that all individuals regardless of any other factors are so loved by God that Christ died for them."
