The Church & Violence Against Women
— Sunday, November 25th, 2012 —
Male violence against women is a real problem in our culture, one the church must address. Our responsibility here is not simply at the level of social justice but at the level of ecclesical justice as well.
We must teach from our pulpits, our Sunday school classes, and our Vacation Bible Schools that women are to be cherished, honored, and protected by men. This means we teach men to reject American playboy consumerism in light of a Judgment Seat at which they will give account for their care for their families. It means we explicitly tell the women in our congregations, “A man who hits you has surrendered his headship, and that is the business both of the civil state in enacting public justice and of this church in enacting church discipline.”
Church discipline against wife-beaters must be clear and consistent. We must stand with women against predatory men in all areas of abandonment, divorce, and neglect. We must train up men, through godly mentoring as well as through biblical instruction, who will know that the model of a husband is a man who crucifies his selfish materialism, his libidinal fantasies, and his wrathful temper tantrums in order to care lovingly for a wife. We must also remind these young men that every idle word, and every hateful act, will be laid out in judgment before the eyes of the One to whom we must give an answer.
In the public arena, Christians as citizens should be the most insistent on legal protections for women. We should oppose a therapeutic redefinition of wife abuse as merely a psychological condition. And we should call on the powers-that-be to prosecute abusers of women and children in ways that will deter others and make clear society’s repugnance at such abuse.
Whatever our views on specific economic policies, we must recognize that much economic hardship of women in our age is the result of men who abandon their commitments. We should eschew obnoxious “welfare queen” rhetoric and work with others of goodwill to seek economic and social measures to provide a safety net for single mothers and abused women in jeopardy. We should join with others, including secular feminists, in seeking legal protections against such manifestations of a rape culture as sexual harassment, prostitution, and sex slavery.
An abusive man is not an over-enthusiastic complementarian. He is not a complementarian at all. He is a pathetic aping perversion of Adamic leadership. He rejects male headship because he rejects his role as provider and protector. As the culture grows more violent, more consumerist, more sexualized and more misogynistic, the answer is not a church more attenuated to the ambient culture, whether through a hyper-masculine paganism or through a gender-neutral feminism.
Instead, the answer is a truly counter-cultural church, a church that calls men to account for leadership, a leadership that cherishes and protects women and girls.
28 Responses to “The Church & Violence Against Women”
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Russell,
I agree with everything you’ve written, but I would add that it starts with an examination - by both men and women - of deeply embedded beliefs regarding gender relationships. The Church has accepted a patriarchal worldview for so many centuries that there is widespread unawareness regarding how those beliefs impact our views of and interactions between genders. Yes, we need to work against the physical mistreatment of women, but far more common within the Church is a cultural of control of women that is abusive mentally, emotionally, and spiritually but never crosses over into physical abuse. It is so subtle and pervasive that men don’t realize it is abuse and women accept it as normal. So while we are fighting the clearly abusive practices of domestic abuse and sex trafficking, we should also root out the deeply held beliefs that allowed those practices to bloom in the first place. They are in the Church. We just don’t typically cross certain lines.
@Krista Miller, Though I understand the situation you are referring to in regard to female control within the church, I have to disagree with you that the root of the problem is the abuse of men. I believe and have experienced in my own home, the sin of passivity (The Silence of Adam) as a detrimental factor in not only breaking down the home, but the church. Often the passive man promotes this type of behavior to avoid responsibility himself. Just a thought. Have you read Reforming Marriage by Douglas Wilson? A good read.
@Krista Miller, I’m 100% in concurrence.
@Krista Miller,
Unlike Terry and Emily, I can’t concur because it’s not clear what you’re talking about.
E.g., “we should also root out the deeply held beliefs that allowed those practices to bloom in the first place. They are in the Church. We just don’t typically cross certain lines.”
What exactly are you saying?
@Krista Miller,
It seems in my experience, for every Christian women who complains about a overly-controlling husband, there are 10 more who complain about their husbands being limp-wristed wimps. Not that there aren’t some mentally abusive husbands there, but i’ll agree with Terry that weak, passive men is a much bigger problem in the church.
I just get frustrated when people think the church needs to become more feminist when generally, women greatly outnumber men in the pews and it’s typically the man who has to be pressured by the women into marriage. Though I am now married, when I was single, it constantly sickened me to hear from liberals that Conservative Christian Men, who actually sought a lifetime commitment to a women, were the bad guys, while most men in the secular world simply wanted to hook up.
Here is a blog series were I try to deal with the issues of abuse and chronic neglect within a thoroughly biblical, gospel-centered paradigm — http://www.bradhambrick.com/selfcenteredspouse.
As a church this is a subject for which we must become more skilled in our assessment and pastoral care. Thank you for bringing the subject out of the shadows.
Russell,
This article could not have come at a better time! I have spent 25 years in an abusive marriage. Emotional, verbal, psychological abuse, eventually to include physical abuse. Every time I cried out for help, I was told perhaps I was not making my husband happy, not meeting his sexual desires, or had become a burden to him in light of the physical illnesses I began to suffer do to the stress. I was told that the problem was me. That I needed to change. That I was leading the household and not showing respect for my husband. The man I lived with was as you have described in your article. The children and I were suffering deeply. We were scared, shamed and ignored by the Church and Christian friends. My husband was treated with respect. A few inquiring phone calls to listen to his woes. He later abandoned us. Left us homeless, with no money, all of our belongings locked in a warehouse that we cannot pay to get out. He sends money inconsistently, using it mostly to control and manipulate. All of this my Christian brothers and sisters witnessed. No one called my husband to accountability. No one offered a place for us to stay or comfort from the trauma we were going through. During this time my children witnessed that the only assistance we received was from non believers. I finally chose to get assistance from the police when my husband hit me in the back of the head the other night. There has been so much guilt, shame and confusion placed on me by the church. Mine is certainly not an isolated incident. I am watching the same thing happen to another women in a different church. She has been turned out for speaking out against her husband’s abuse. Your article speaks of Biblical truths that sadly no longer exist in most churches today. Male headship is abused for the sake of male ego. Provision and protection are looked at as a burden. I am deeply saddened by the fact that my son has no male role model who is willing to step up and teach him about Biblical Manhood or God’s love for him.
@Terry Moates,
Dear Terry, I hear you and I believe you. Your story is very similar to hundreds if not thousands of stories I’ve read or heard from other Christian survivors of domestic abuse. I’m a survivor myself and I write and advocate for other Christian survivors.
Please visit A Cry For Justice where I blog with Ps Jeff Crippen. You will find lots of help and support there. And please email me if you wish. Click on my name and you’ll be taken to the blog.
Blessing and ((((((((hugs))))))))
Barb
PS. if you are wondering about the divorce issue, I’ve written a book called Not Under Bondage which examines all the divorce texts with a particular focus on what they say in cases of domestic abuse.
@Terry Moates,
Dear Terry,
I’ve been in your shoes. The church is very much blind to how their attitudes and teachings are contrary to what Jesus would do. Seek your answers in the Word, look for people to support you. You can be free of this evil and find hope and peace and love again. Put your trust and faith in God and he will guide you. Find Christian support, it is out there and you will feel His love and know you are doing the right thing. 30 years after the fact, my ex husband finally admitted his abuse of me and his family….there is hope.
Russell - Thank you for this excellent and much needed article. I am a pastor in Oregon and as a result of abuse having occurred in our church 4 years ago, I studied this subject and recently wrote a book, just published, entitled A Cry for Justice: How the Evil of Domestic Abuse Hides in Your Church (Calvary Press). I hope that many, many pastors will read it and learn.
A point that I had to learn - when we speak about domestic abuse, we should not use terms like wife-batterers or physical violence. The reason is that these terms are bullhorn announcements that we believe abuse is always and only physical abuse. People who are knowledgeable in the field will cease hearing us and abusers themselves will be enabled in their deceit - “well, I have never actually HIT my wife.” Yet every abuse victim will tell us that the emotional, psychological, and spiritual terrorism are the worst.
I hope you can read my book. It is available at Amazon or you can get it at calvarypress.com
Apologies if I sound self-promoting. I am just trying my best to get the message into the hands of as many pastors and church leaders as possible. Thanks again.
I appreciate your thoughts and insight. However, in light of government’s increaseing instrusion into our lives (e.g. the Affordable Care Act and the Federal government’s control of the practice of medicine through rules and regulations) I have come to the conclusion that love is being pushed out of our lives. And no, this is ot a political/partisan statement. While government may provide services and money, it cannot love. For love to enter the world it has to find the right entry point which is, of course, Jesus. If Christians, either individually or corporately, move into the lives of those who have been traumatized and disordered and the provide succor and aid, love enters the world. And it is love that shines the light of Jesus.
My point: it is good to encourage government to enact laws to delineate wrong (i.e. providing a decent sense of public morality) and to teach our people to be more open to seeing the hurt in the world (and our churches) but these efforts, while good and necessary, do not provide an entry point for love. For example, here in Oklahoma we do the safe ministries like disaster relief, care for children and senior adults). All of these are good. But we seem to avoid the hard ones like the issue of which you speak. I am coming to the conclusion we need to do more. Any ideas as to what can we do, or what ought we to do, to actually succor and welcome in love and truth those of whom you speak?
In His Love,
Jim Lockhart
Let me ask you something Dr. Moore. Do you really believe in reporting abuse to the authorities? If so, then why have you publicly endorsed a man to told church members not to cooperate with the authorities after child sexual abuse occured:
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2012/11/07/phillip-gunn-sbts-al-mohler-legal-rightmoral-right/
@Krista Miller
Does the patriarchal worldview you cite refer to the privilege that produces the 13 to 1 occupational death rate, the 17 to 1 incarceration rate, the 2 to 1 unemployment rate, 100 percent draft registration rate, 5 year gap in life expectancy, and so on… in favor of whom?
The problem with Mr. Moore’s mostly befitting proscriptions is that they’ve given way to social demagoguery that gender feminists leveraged into the cultural consciousness, cultivating a class of perpetually aggrieved victims of (over) half of our population. Political pandering along Mr. Moore’s lines. has created a vast bastard factory of the family court system by way of ostensibly just, but wrongheaded laws such as the VAWA.
To ‘love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it’ is a concept that turned the ancient world on its head. I’m not sure that narrative that so zealously presupposes rape culture, misogyny, wife-beaters and so on smacks of ecclesial jingoism.
@Peter Lough,
I too find it interesting that feminists are always blaming “patriarchy” for spousal abuse and rape, when the biggest indicator of whether a man will be a rapist or a women beater is if he grew up without a father. As “patriarchy” wanes in our society, less men will desire marriage, there are more out-of-wedlock births, and the result is more men with these violent tendencies. As I mentioned in my previous posts, Hypocrites have been among God’s people since the days of Cain and Able. But still the safest place for a women is to be in a marriage to man with traditional values. Cohabitating women are much more likely to be abused than married women.
Finally, if I attended a church where it was taught that Christian Men are subtilely abusing their wives and not even knowing it, I would high-tail it out of there in a second, and I’m sure my wife would too.
Thank you for blogging on this issue, Russell.
I am particularly pleased that you say “Church discipline against wife-beaters must be clear and consistent.” So many churches don’t discipline abusers, they just get roped in by the abuser’s feigned repentance and are effectually enlisted as one of the abuser’s allies against his spouse.
I’m a little concerned about your statement that “We must stand with women against predatory men in all areas of abandonment, divorce, and neglect.”
What do you mean by the church standing against predatory men in the area of divorce? Do you mean you would endorse the victim of abuse taking out a divorcing that will set them legally free from the perpetrator? Or do you mean you would not countenance divorce for abuse?
If you mean you wouldn’t countenance divorce for abuse, how is would that be ’standing against the predatory man”?
Thank you, thank you Mr. Moore, for taking a stand and saying it LOUD! I am a survivor of domestic abuse in the home and church. My husband of only 2 months started hitting me and praying prayers over me “Lord, I want to thank you for not allowing me to hit her today.” I was asked not to report the abuse to the police, but allow leadership to handle this in house. However, beatings and threats continued. At a counseling meeting held to discuss the abuse, my then husband, expressed that I was not sleeping with him anymore; however, he failed to say it was because of the abuse and the fact I had learned he would rather favor himself than touch me. Or the fact, he was addicted to porn. Shockingly, I was told by leadership, in that meeting, that perhaps I was the problem and was not doing my “wifely duties.” And that because I had been molested as a child, perhaps I was bipolar. In fear of my life, I moved out and this man beat me once again. I pressed charges and he was found guilty of domestic violence. My church….well that is another story all together. My name and character was slandered, yet I held my peace and God vindicated me in the courts; the judge annulled my marriage . After the guilty verdict, I asked if I wanted him (husband) to remain, but I did not feel that was my call; that belong to leadership. Leadership decided to allow him to stay, and for him to be counseled. He stay, and he was not counseled. I left. It took me many years to heal emotionally and to forgive. But God, with his enduring mercy, healed my broken heart, and wounds that were deep in my soul. As of today, I am advocate against domestic violence and currently co-starring in a gosple play “Behind Closed Doors, ” a depiction of domestic violence and the cover up in the church. Once again, I salute you for having the courage to stand up and say ENOUGH!
Sincerely,
Ms. Shawn Stanley - An Instrument for God
This is the WORST appology for Domestic Violence I ever read:
I think it’s time to recognize that it’s estimated 40 % of victims can be men who either suffer, explode, or leave and end up paying thru the nose: either way any serious discussion of DV must account for this…
http://www.bulletininserts.org/bulletininsert.aspx?bulletininsert_id=89
We live in a broken world, make no mistake. I agree whole heartedly with the premise of this piece calling the Church to actually be the Church in the hurtful places of life. Especially where it calls for men to be held accountable as sacrificially loving leaders.
I live with a wife who has worked to provoke me (unsuccessfully) to the point of violence on three major occasions, this last time I recognized it fully for what it was and where the root came from. I pulled our Church family in and we received independent counseling from outside the Church. My wife knows fully the veracity of what I told her during our engagement - that I am not that man who would duplicate what we grew up in under any circumstances, that I am a new creation and will not live in any of those futile ways from our childhoods. This last time I broke the generational curse of violence lodged in her life by telling her “I’m not your daddy and I have never abused you, I will never beat you, and if that’s what you need then tonight is where we part ways because I can only be faithful to my side of the vows - I can’t do yours for you.”
That truth spoken into her life in that intense moment of conflict finally shattered something desperately twisted in her and made the way for our marriage to continue more in line with God’s intentions. What if we as the Church learned how to proactively speak the truth into the hard, broken places of peoples sick lives before they were shattered beyond repair?
That would require and honesty and openness few are willing to live out publicly. That would require a deeper understanding of, and adherence to 2Cor1:3-4 than most of us could ever handle. We deal with these messy issues within the Church far too often with one of the greatest tools of the enemy of our souls - SHAME. The victim is caught in false shame, the perpetrator may not have any proper shame, and the Church doesn’t know precisely how to deal with a bad situation so they add shame to the circumstance because of their own inability to find unconditional muscular love that would be the healing hand of Jesus in that family’s life.
The saw of violence cuts both ways and we’re all only as sick as our secrets. It’s not until those secrets are drawn out into the Light and dealt with through identification, confession, and repentance that we can gain real healing. Life in this broken world is messy, there are no simple solutions, and love is an action verb - so stop waiting for some one else more qualified to speak Truth in love into a hurting family’s life and roll up your own sleeves. God made us from the dust of the ground, did you think that you could keep your hands clean loving others?