Excerpted with permission from Charisma News Service A Pentecostal pastor's strict marriage contract with his wife has been likened to a license for slavery by a judge in Washington, D.C. The document was slammed by Frank Schwelb as an appeals court rejected Myles Spires Jr.'s attempt to have the agreement upheld as part of his divorce hearing. Schwelb took the unusual step of having the contract printed in its entirety as an appendix to the court ruling, citing it as "a striking example of the lengths to which some men would go to formalize the absurd and to exalt to contractual status their petty domestic tyranny," Laws News Network (LNN) reported. The document spelled out how Spires' wife had to carry out his requests precisely, could not have money without his permission, nor disagree with him in public. She said she had signed it reluctantly. Spires, former pastor of Abundant Life Apostolic Church in southeast Washington, said the agreement was rooted in the Bible and an attempt to work out their marriage problems. "We belonged to a strict Pentecostal order, very fundamentalist. Some of its teachings are very extreme, if taken literally," he said, reported LNN. "In modern times, they may seem as being oppressive." The appeals court upheld an earlier decision that the contract was "unenforceable," and that custody of the three children should go to Spires' wife.