By Bria Isaacson, Copy Editor
In high school, I dated a manipulative man. He guilt-tripped me into doing things, shamed and mocked me. He insisted on always being right and never let me speak up. He made me feel like I was never enough, withheld love from me and ultimately made me feel depressed and worthless. He told stories about emotionally abusing people—”crushing souls,” as he called it—and he made jokes about how he could so easily do the same to me.
I believed him. For a year and a half, I dated this man, and during this time and after our break-up, I was both in love with this man and terrified of him.
Every time I thought of breaking up with him, I didn’t, because I decided to forgive him instead. I knew that my place, as a woman, was to submit to men, and I believed that our relationship was representative of such. My church taught submission, love above all else and forgiveness for all sins. So this is what I did.
My church never preached on healthy relationships, it didn’t talk about healthy mutual submission, it didn’t ever mention manipulation or abuse; in my church, I only saw quiet wives sitting in the audiences, wives who might lead a women’s Bible study but never preach a sermon. This reinforced what I was hearing—or not hearing—from the pulpit: women must be under men.
This theology crushed me. My church taught me how to be the perfect victim: submissive, quiet, accepting and a believer in redemption and change. While none of these are dangerous characteristics on their own, they were dangerous when paired with the low self-esteem and desperation of my younger self and millions of others in our churches.
One in three women and one in four men have experienced physical violence from a partner or spouse in their lifetimes, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV). Physical abuse is only one aspect of domestic abuse, also known as intimate partner violence; there is also emotional/psychological abuse, sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, financial abuse and cyber/digital abuse.
By preaching only submission, the church doesn’t fight abuse as it should.
When we as a church teach only love, we sell God short, because he embodies more. Jesus did not come to earth and display love alone; he was also courageous and bold.
If we do not teach our girls the power of Christ over all things, we are setting them up to be taken advantage of.
Psychologist James Alsdurf and professor Phyllis Alsdurf wrote about the connection between “the ability to suffer violence” and Christian beliefs, saying, “It is a perspective that makes women more susceptible to violence….”
Tying Christ’s suffering to domestic abuse and making an abused woman believe this is her “cross which God has seen fit to place upon her,” as John Calvin wrote to an abused woman, is a horrendous form of spiritual abuse.
Secondly, by not preaching on abuse, we are letting our women fall into the traps of dangerous men.
A 2016 study conducted by Lifeway and Sojourners found that 65 percent of pastors speak one or fewer times a year about domestic and sexual violence. In addition, only about half of our churches have a plan to assist victims of domestic abuse.
This is a shame because in some ways, the church actually struggles more with abuse, as women in religious communities are less likely to leave abusive marriages, more likely to believe the abuser will change, less likely to get help from their community and more likely to believe the abuse is their fault, according to researcher Nancy Nason-Clark.
Annette Gillespie, CEO of Safe Steps Family Violence Centre, found that it was common for women in abusive relationships to feel immense shame from the church because of their broken relationships, and often these women chose to leave the church when they left their relationships. The abusive men, in an ironic twist, often stayed in the church.
The church, therefore, houses both the abused and the abuser, and both learn their debilitating behaviors at least partly from the church. While the abused are locked into a misreading of Scripture, the abuser has often built that cage out of carefully selected phrases and verses.
Genesis 3, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and Ephesians 5:22-24 are often taken out of context and used as “proof texts” to erroneously support the subordination of women to men. Scripture is not the problem, rather it’s the misreading of Scripture, and this misreading can leave the abused men and women without a place to stand.
If we do not teach men and women how to stand up for themselves in relationships, we are accepting the curse described in Genesis 3 that reads, “Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.”
Do we as a church understand that we don’t need to accept this curse? We live in a broken world, and we will struggle with this, but it can be overcome! I believe Christ died to free us from this too.
Let us never accept the curse again.
We can start by holding our children, male and female, to the same standards of purity and by teaching them of both love and power. We can start by calling out abuse in our churches, instead of sitting by and acting as though we have none. We can start by telling our women that forgiveness is not synonymous with staying. We can start by emphasizing reciprocal relationships, relationships of mutual love and sacrifice.
We need to tell our girls and women that love does not cover over a multitude of wrongs when those wrongs are physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain and bondage.
This was the teaching I yearned to know. Teaching love and forgiveness to all regardless of context, asking the abused to suffer because Christ suffered, and subordinating women to men are harmful teachings that the church needs to cease.
“The church must no longer lend its support, tacit or otherwise, to hierarchy and patriarchy,” Alsdurf and Alsdurf wrote. “It must support Christ’s emancipation proclamation to women.”
