The well-touted social conservative notion (pushed in your local abstinence-only classroom!) that traditional gender roles—where men have the right to dominate women—somehow cause less heartache and abuse than new-fangled egalitarianism has always puzzled me. It’s doesn’t pass the basic sniff test; while a minority of people are absolute angels who will never take advantage of their power over others, most of us are sadistic monsters on one level or another and need to have that tendency checked by power-sharing. Think of the Stanford prison experiment being replicated in one conservative Christian household after another—a lot of literal Bible-thumping is going to happen when men are given such absolute power over their wives.
Still, the issue of conservative Christianity and the strong potential for domestic violence hasn’t been examined much that I know of, so I read this article about the evangelical churches’ failure to help domestic violence victims with great interest. (Via Fred.) It’s a review of a book called Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence by Jocelyn Andersen, who survived a violent marriage and came out of the experience intensely critical of the religious community that she relied on to help her. Patriarchal religious beliefs fuel domestic violence, give abusers an excuse to continue, and shift blame to the victim. The routine prescription for domestic violence is to give the husband more, not less, power to lord over his wife in hopes that the increase in power over her will somehow mollify his violent reactions. For instance, a lot of the men who flocked to the Promise Keepers did so because they beat their wives and were about to lose their marriages. They were told that the cure for their problems was to be even more domineering and controlling. It’s sort of like prescribing a nothing-but-pizza-and-cookies diet to someone who’s trying to stop overeating.
Andersen says one big reason that men who profess to be Christians beat their wives is the doctrine of wifely submission.
“I believe the way this doctrine is taught and interpreted within many evangelical churches can lead men to believe it is their God-given right to exert authority over their wives,” she said in an e-mail interview. “This logically leads to problems with abuse when they attempt to assert this authority–especially with men who deal with unresolved anger issues,”
“In addition, the blame for the abuse is frequently shifted from the husband to the wife,” Andersen said. “This happens when she is told that she could be provoking the violence or that if she reacts submissively to his abuse, his behavior might change.”
Unsurprisingly, James Dobson, who feels like violent assertion of authority at home against dogs and children is a solid way to clear the sinuses, is soft on wife-beating, even as he maintains the official stance that you probably shouldn’t indulge.
Andersen says Dobson has helped to perpetuate an “insidious and persistent myth” that women stay in abusive relationships because they secretly get some sick satisfaction from it.
In a 1984 broadcast of his radio program, she says, Dobson told his listening audience that he had seen situations where the wife wanted to be beaten up. His hypothesis was that the wife achieved a certain moral advantage from being hit. If she pushed her husband into blacking her eye, the world–and God–would view her as a martyr. This way, he said, she could give herself a moral exit from the marriage, because the Bible says marriage is forever.
Dobson’s comments were essentially the same thing he said in a 1983 book against divorce, Love Must Be Tough. It was revised as recently as 1996, without a word changed about domestic violence.
Honestly, I don’t doubt that there are some victims of domestic violence who respond with a passive aggressive martyr trip. It’s not ideal, but if you can’t leave him yet for some reason, if passive aggression helps you survive, then I can’t blame you. Dobson’s attitude here is inexcusable, though. That victims of violence come up with some crazy survival strategies is not a reason to dismiss the violence against them, a fact that’s evident whenever you look outside of rape and domestic violence situations. If someone was in a hostage or kidnapping situation and was able to employ guilt trips against her captors to decrease the amount of violence against her, we’d applaud her creativity under pressure. Considering that a lot of women in violent marriages don’t feel they can leave, I don’t see why the situation should be so very different here.
But people like Dobson and other socially conservative Christians are primed to be apologists for wife-beating. The allergy to accepting that divorce is a good solution to bad marriages coupled with the belief that men really do have a right to dominate makes it incredibly difficult even well-meaning conservative Christians to address the problem. The only real solution to domestic violence is to empower and liberate women, from the bad marriages and from constricting gender roles that put them in submission to their husbands, and patriarchal religions close down the possibility of real solutions. Andersen, who is still an evangelical Christian, acknowledges this and strives to reinterpret the Bible so that men and women are more equal.
Andersen believes the real meaning of the text is that as the result of their sin, their godly directive to have dominion over the earth as equals would be perverted–Adam in a dysfunctional desire to dominate his wife (”he shall rule over thee”) and Eve in responding to mistreatment not by losing love and desire for her abusive husband but with an even more intense desire for her husband’s love, affection and acceptance (”thy desire shall be to thy husband).”
Whatever works for her, though I contend that it’s a big stretch to ignore the fact that Genesis is a big apology for male dominance. If you’re cherry-picking the text to make it seem like Christianity doesn’t have to be patriarchal, I’d go for claiming that Jesus has ushered in a new, more egalitarian era. But obviously, I think the better solution is to turn your back on religions that have excused male dominance for millenia.
78 Responses to “Conservative Christians and domestic violence”
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I agree with you.
“while a minority of people are absolute angels who will never take advantage of their power over others, most of us are sadistic monsters on one level or another and need to have that tendency checked by power-sharing.”
Exactly.
“I think the better solution is to turn your back on religions that have excused male dominance for millenia.”
Which religions don’t? I think they all do one way or another.
If I needed another reason to be atheist, this would be a good one. Luckily, I don’t.
You know, I really don’t get how a woman can supposedly “make” a man hit her. It’s not like we have psychic control over men, and if we did, wouldn’t we make them do something other than hit us? And if the abuse was actually just some crazy scheme of hers to get out of the marriage, then why wouldn’t she leave right away? Logic isn’t actually a part of that hypothesis, appearently. But then, I guess to Dobson, his dog probably pushed him into strapping him to the top of the van so he could have a “moral exit” to piss on the family van while god viewed him as a martyr.
You know, I think people like that prove better than anything else that there isn’t a god.
Whoa. It seems to me that these households are filled with rigidity and anger. Anger coming from where? Perhaps their own upbringing. What’s missing for me is that there could ever be a sense of freedom and joy, sensuality and pleasure in a household ruled with an iron fist, tough love etc.
Which is not to say that consensual well communicated power dynamics couldn’t exist in a healthy marriage/partnership etc. I mean that these relationships seem primarily fear based. Two halves of a meta personality disorder-controlling narcissistic/passive histrionic.
No joy? No me that’s for sure.
I’ve long since fallen away from my liberal Christian upbringing, but I always was pretty fond of Christ and his general sense of forgiveness and love, his acceptance of women as leaders and it sure seems to me that these conservative Christians are still kickin’ it old testament style.
Too bad. We need more love and joy and pleasure in this world.
I thought it was Mitt Romney who strapped his dog to the top of his van?
OK, I’m going to rant here…
The problem isn’t just power, but rather *unchecked* power. These “Conservative” “Christians” are all about unchecked power: ‘I have the right to beat you, verbally abuse you, force you to work (and other things) and NO ONE has the right to tell me to stop.’
In the military (a lot of my stories start like this), they taught us about authority and responsibility. Those of us who were non-coms were granted authority but were restrained by responsibility as well. To have responsibility without authority is to be blamed for things you do cannot do anything about; to have authority without responsibility is to be able to abuse power. Just as the seaman is responsible to the petty officer, the petty officer is responsible to the chief, the chief to the lieutenant, the LT to the Captain, the captain to the Admiral, the Admiral to the President and the President to the people, so to must the head of household be responisble for the use/misuse of his authority… something that is NOT seen in these “Christian” “Conservatives”.
So the husbands are Authoritarians without responibilities, and the wives and children find themselves responsible without authority… and you end up with scenes like
“You don’t have dinner on the table!” *wack!*
“You didn’t give me money to buy food”
“Don’t talk back!” *wack!*
“Mommy, I’m hungry”
“Stop whining!” *wack!*
It becomes the wife’s fault for not having dinner ready, not having the house clean, not being ready to provide sexual satisfaction on call… and hubby is not held responisble for his misuse of authority. Or if he is held responisible, it’s HER FAULT.
(Evil story)
Military wives often find themselves in a catch 22. Living in military housing, what money they get comes from the husbands military paycheck. If they report the abuse, the husband is punished by being thrown out of the military… and the wife finds herself without a house or any money. And so, silence is encouraged: “You don’t want to lose your house!”
These “Christians” seem to follow the same rules.
Hawker Hurricane
Rambling Diest who doesn’t trust Priests.
“I believe the way this doctrine is taught and interpreted within many evangelical churches can lead men to believe it is their God-given right to exert authority over their wives,�
Just go to the source. Despite what wayward and other Christians say, Paul is unambiguous as to who leads a household. The Great Chain of Being is “God (Christ) -> Men -> Women -> Children”. Sure, he hems and haws about obligations of men to “their” women, but it’s impossible not to glean that men own women, they are their masters, and the patriarch requires submission. There’s no way to teach this passage without either lying or acting like other passages subsume its dictates, and many people, as shown by this post, will not agree.
Then, what really pisses me off is that they quote Galatians like a mantra. “See, we Christians do not see a distinction between men and women!” Except when you require a wife to submit to her husband. Uh huh. We know.
Oh crap, in the spamulator again.
Excellent article Amanda - thanks for linking to it.
But I do have issues with you saying this:
While the reasons that you state for going to Promise Keepers may have been true for some, the “cure” you mention is blatantly false.
Having been to Promise Keepers, the idea that being “more domineering and controlling” would cure a marriage was never stated or implied.
Gawd is he ever dishonest. In his world as well as in many Conservative Christians homes the ONLY morally acceptable reason for divorce is infidelity. Domestic abuse in their world is NOT a reason for divorce.
I’ve argued with these assholes about how my divorce from my ex-husband due in large part to his violence (in which he did say to me during one of this rages that he would kill me - I kinda believed him since he did have his hands around my fucking throat and I was sliding into unconsciousness). But that was okay in their world, I should stay in that toxic relationship permeated by fear, because marriage is “forever.â€?
I did hear during a talk dominionist Michael Farris tell a large group of Conservative Christians that a husband’s violence against his wife is unacceptable and that there was no excuse for it since it destroyed the relationship. . . however the end result was not an advisement for women in these relationship to get out and get to safety. It was to continue to work within the marriage and through the church to bring your marriage into the godly model.
And to only used “approved� Christian marriage counselors – ones who won’t council women to divorce or tell you do to something that will lead you away from the church.
I come from East Tennessee and I observed the constantly high level of domestic abuse in the Baptist community. The love of drink, the sin it was, and the saving that always had to be done was a downright fetish among that population. Still is to a degree.
If you go for some sort of spook in the sky you’re willfully nuts.
But you have the Promise keepers all wrong. They weren’t what you claim. The PKs were not liked by the traditional Baptists as the PKs were a group that turned the concept of the man being in charge of chattel into the man being in “charge” by serving his wife and family. In fact, the PKs were a secularzation (sp?) of traditional biblical mores.
Religion does ruin everything. It needs to be stamped out. Now if you agree with those two statements, one has to wonder why there is so much respect for Islam coming from sites like this. I see the mission of the secular USA as ridding the world of the horrors of religion and specifically protecting and attacking one of the most violent and mysoginistic religions ever to be invented on the face of this Earth.
We are taming the religious beast here in the West. We need to go after religion’s biggest and most vile offender–and without an ounce of respect while we do it.
No that’s not true, the power over the husband is the church. It’s in the wedding vows they take.
You know, I really don’t get how a woman can supposedly “make� a man hit her. It’s not like we have psychic control over men, and if we did, wouldn’t we make them do something other than hit us?
It sounds weird, but I’ve observed at least one case like this– it was long enough ago that I can’t really rely on my memories to analyze it, but my guess is that the intensity of the battles made the periods of happy domesticity more valuable, or something. And the woman married four times during her life, with each husband beating her, while the husband married three times with violence only being an issue when married to her… years later, her son said that for whatever reason, she needed those battles, that she couldn’t live in any sort of peaceful environment.
Disclaimer: I am in no way saying that there is ever any justification for beating one’s spouse; after all, we are all responsible for our own behavior. All I’m saying is that there are most likely people out there who, for whatever twisted reasons, need pain and will try to get others to provide it… sort of like adding mega passive aggression to say, cutting, in the sense that they won’t even take direct responsibility for abusing themselves.
I have a bit of a different take on it (surprise, surprise)
The religious right has been spending the last 25 years or so tearing down the limits of morality on a civil society. What I mean by that, is through their focus on morality on sex, that’s been done with a specific purpose, to turn everything else into non-moral issues. Meaning that if you have the right ideology (and it’s not even actions. Just what you believe) on sex, then your morality is confirmed. It doesn’t matter if you steal, if you beat your wife, none of that matters.
And that’s why progress is so hard to do. Because as we’re trying to expand the definitions of morality in terms of civil society, there’s this other group trying to dismiss morality as a whole.
Part of the cycle of domestic violence is the “tension” phase, and during that time, the victim can predict that she will get abused, and to some extent control when she will get hit. This is essentially a rational response. If 1) I can’t leave, and 2) I have a reason that it’s better to be hit on Friday than on Saturday, then 3) I’m going to instigate on Friday to bring on the inevitable. It may be a weak form of control, or an illusion of control, but it’s better than no control at all.
Letts, “everyone knows” someone who “had to” be in an abusive relationship, and frankly it’s a load of crap. She didn’t “need pain”, she just didn’t know how to 1) find men who didn’t mix pain with pleasure and 2) didn’t know how to accept pain-free pleasure, given that a lifetime of abuse had left her thinking she “deserved it”. It takes a LOT of inner work to go from being an abuse victim to being an abuse survivor, and frankly, a lot of abuse victims are so focused on day to day economic and emotional survival that they have no energy to spare to learn how to accept and appreciate themselves, and to be in an unabusive relationship.
No that’s not true, the power over the husband is the church. It’s in the wedding vows they take.
But when the church is reinforcing the power structure, and failing to do anything about the abuse, that power over the husband might as well be non-existent.
People will always use the Bible (or any other religious text) to justify what they already believe.
The parts in the Bible that are often quoted to justify spousal abuse, child abuse, and slavery, (Colossians 3:18-4:1;Ephesians 5:22-6:9) in fact mean nothing of the sort. In these passages, Paul is trying to reconcile the concept of equality in Christ with the concept that people should be content with their station in life, which means they are often in unequal relationships.
He has three examples of relationships that were certainly unequal in the first century Mediterranean: husband/wife, parent/child, master/slave. Paul tells the weaker partner to accept their position, but also commands the stronger partner not to abuse their power. Paul was speaking primarily to the stronger partner, yet the emphasis is often turned around by people who want to justify their bad behavior.
Wives should submit to their husbands, but husbands should love their wives as themselves.
Children should obey their parents, but parents should not provoke their children to anger.
Slaves should obey their masters, but masters should treat their slaves fairly, for they too have a master.
Paul was no revolutionary, since he believed that the world would end soon, and history has shown he was a bit naive about how he would be understood.
Perhaps we should not be blaming Paul for what he did not mean to say, but wondering why these people are interpreting Paul the way that they do?
Thus the marriage between the religious right, big money, and the military-industrial complex.
They all need each other.
Well they will exercise it in certain circumstances but in general not to protect a female member of the congregation from the abuse of her husband.
So yes, the end result is the same. But you will hear them say “a husband has authority over his wife just as the church has authority over him.”
Absolutely! I got my first introduction to patriarchy as a child, in a church, listening to the preacher go on and on about “Man is the Head of the Family” and “Women may not lead Men” and “Women’s role is help-meet to Men” and “Marriage is forever” all that shit. I hated it, because my dad was abusive. I always wanted my mom to divorce him and make him go away.
That preacher drove me away from Christianity. I could never believe that any god worth worshiping would arbitrarily put half his creations at the mercy of the other half.
Wish I had more time, but I gotta tear out of the office this instant.
Re “women making men hit them.” To my shame I often had that kind of relationship with one of my sisters. Years later, when we were both young adults at college and good friends, she told me she used to deliberately provoke me in ways she knew would “make” me hit her; her point was precisely to demonstrate that I was some kind of moral monster.
But there was no way for that to happen without my having bought into a lot of ideological/cultural crap. I’ve expounded before about dominator societies and all that and can’t now.
My tendency to be provoked to stupid violence pretty much vanished when I left home, where these “values” were perpetuated in the thoroughy hypocritical dominator manner. No time to explore the dynamics now; it was explicitly against the official rules to threaten violence against anyone female or smaller or weaker than me, yet that kind of behavior was in fact systematically cultivated–gotta let it go at that for now.
My tendency to rely on stupid verbal bluster took longer to eradicate.
These things have to do with social games, and I hold people, adults especially, morally responsible to examine the consequences of their more or less reflexive behavior, and if they are objectively found wanting, to figure out how to bring these behaviors in line with reasonable morality.
Gotta run; will miss y’all till Friday….
The parts in the Bible that are often quoted to justify spousal abuse, child abuse, and slavery, (Colossians 3:18-4:1;Ephesians 5:22-6:9) in fact mean nothing of the sort.
To you.
Hmm. Maybe you’re right, BadKitty. Dobson was the one who beat his doggie for sleeping in the wrong spot.
Latts, that sounds so sad.
I think that abusive or controlling men will look for an abused women in much the same way we think an abused women will look for an abusive man, which I think is part of why women get into abusive relationship after abusive relationship. It sounds like the first husband in your story majorly fucked up but got himself together after the first divorce (or maybe the other women just got out when he got too controlling but before he hit them), but she never recovered from what he did to her. Your comparison to cutting is kinda interesting, but I think people would be horrified if someone cut someone who had a prior problem with cutting, or even if they just gave the person razors and encouraged them to start back up again. For some reason reason we don’t have the same anger at a man who hits a women who’s been abused before, instead we wonder if she was looking for it….
As someone who used to work at a battered women’s and children’s house, I can unequivocally say that I have never seen a woman who has brought on the violence done to her (very few did practice violence, but they were not allowed to stay). I can also say that abuse is so debilitating that many women only see death as an alternative. It can be a sort of weird Helsinki syndrome situation BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS DEATH. To those outside of the situation, you cannot abstract it. I couldn’t imagine what these women were going through. Seeing the children playacting out abuse on the playground served as a constant reminder that this should never, ever, ever, ever, EVER be tolerated. Not inside or outside of the church. It spans generations and is evil.
I hope people that automatically turn off from “bible stuff” will take a minute to read this. I am actually a person who works in domestic violence for a living, and I am probably also what people might consider a “conservative christian” (perhaps).
I think people often confuse “conservative christianity” with “what the bible actually says.”
When Paul says “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her” that means a husband has to love his wife enough to DIE for her whether or not he feels like it. THAT is the job description of the husband.
So — going from there, while “submit” is a tough word for me, if I am “submitting” to a person whose job is to love me like that, they are NEVER going to hurt, abuse, or Lord themselves over me. If they are, they are not doing their job right.
I agree that there is not NEARLY enough in evangelical/conservative churches about this issue — and it is SO important that it is discussed. I have heard a few, but there need to be more.
Thanks for taking a moment to read/listen.
Whatever works for her, though I contend that it’s a big stretch to ignore the fact that Genesis is a big apology for male dominance.
Genesis is pretty clear in chapter three - where it talks about the man having authority over the woman - that such a system is a curse. It’s being descriptive, not prescriptive. I’m not trying to defend anything here. I just want the text to be able to say what it really says.
While the reasons that you state for going to Promise Keepers may have been true for some, the “cure� you mention is blatantly false.
Having been to Promise Keepers, the idea that being “more domineering and controlling� would cure a marriage was never stated or implied.
I’ve been to a couple of them as well. One, in particular, was the setting of a much needed reconciliation between my brother, my father and me. Having said that, though, Amanda’s description is correct. Certainly much of the talk at the conferences is about serving one’s family, but the context is clearly one of the absolute leader deigning to serve his subjects. It’s like noblesse oblige.
Sorry, dave. Not buying it. PK teaches the “man is the head of the household” line, which I do believe means that men are the heads of the household.
Maybe that’s your chapter. I know I heard that in the 2 meetings I was painfully subjected to. Never again. And the boob that dragged me to them beat his wife (my cousin), and is still regularly playing catch-22 games and suing for custody.
Latts:
Been there. And when I refused to hit or abuse her, she finally broke and started hitting me.
Paul didn’t write to the world from the United States in the 21st century. He wrote in the 1st century Mediterranean to very specific audience.
To take Paul out of any sort of textual or historical context and without a major grain of salt is to make the same mistake as the fundamentalists. You can’t take Paul literally because Paul contradicts himself on points such as these. For example, he tells the Timothy that he forbids women from teaching or having authority over men (1 Timothy 2:12), yet he tells the Romans to listen to a woman, Phoebe, who will be arriving in Rome shortly (Romans 16:1-2).
My question is why 1 Timothy 2:12 is seen as authoritative by so many and not Romans 16:1-2?
My question is why 1 Timothy 2:12 is seen as authoritative by so many and not Romans 16:1-2?
Why is any of it seen as authoritative? I have no need to go picking and choosing the writings of a 1st century hack to come up with the idea that women are equal to men.
The parts in the Bible that are often quoted to justify spousal abuse, child abuse, and slavery, (Colossians 3:18-4:1;Ephesians 5:22-6:9) in fact mean nothing of the sort.
Meh. Look, Paul did at least establish that women, children and slaves are persons, but that’s about it. The question is not, “how can we make Paul fit our current ideas about human relationships?” If we’re going to take the Bible seriously - and I understand that many of us here really don’t see the need, so call me a masochist I guess - then let’s just recognize that Paul managed to take a step in the right direction and then build on that in light of our experiences and the way our understanding of the world has developed.
Wayward, I don’t blame Paul for being a man of his times, but that he was a man of his time does make it problematic using him as some sort of ultimate guide to life. He is an interesting example of why progress is good, though. Not against learning from history, but religious authority implies that we can’t improve upon it.
It’s interesting to note you’re making the Bible say what you want it to say just as much as those using it to justify another worldview.
Except a loving, caring, interventionist god who for some damned reason never seems to show up.
Then the police show up and arrest you. One of my clients was repeatedly there. He once went to report the abuse to the police, and the desk cops laughed in his face.
Then there’s that whole Christian Domestic Discipline site - I’m sure that many of you have seen it.
http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/
you will hear them say “a husband has authority over his wife just as the church has authority over him.�
It does say that, but in reality, only the husband’s own conscience allows the the church to have any control over his behavior. He can go to a different church, start his own church, or leave the church altogether, and none of these things have any mitigating effect on his authority over his wife.
These people do not say “Only devout, church-going men have authority over their wives, because the church provides a check to prevent that authority from being abused.” They say “men have authority over their wives.” Full stop.
These people do not say “Only devout, church-going men have authority over their wives, because the church provides a check to prevent that authority from being abused.� They say “men have authority over their wives.�
Objective evidence repeatedly show that there is little difference between these two statements.
Waitaminute - wouldn’t an omniscient god know that the wife had “made” him do it, and therefore not view her as a martyr? Or does James Dobson know more than god?
My six year old understands the idea that no one can “make” her act out. You are responsible for your own emotions and your own actions. Why is this concept so difficult for adults to understand?
Actually, it was his second (middle) marriage and her fourth (last); I think they were in their late thirties/forties and she died of a stroke IIRC, leaving him a widower. They were both alcoholics, which of course made the violence snowball, but the physical abuse (obviously, he wasn’t much fun to be around when drinking whether he was violent or not) was a constant in her marital relationships, not his. By all accounts, she was willing to take the first swing, but she was petite & it would have been easy for even an average man to knock her down. Like I said above, there’s no excuse for actually doing the hitting, but it’s certainly possible to bring some abuse-seeking behaviors into a relationship.
BTW, this case had no religious component that I ever heard of (just to address the original topic).
I know this is serious but OMFG!! I’m laughing so hard I can’t keep the mouse moving where I want it.
Crotchless pantaloons?
By any other name this is BDSM … these folk are biblicly “in the lifestyle”
Yeah I know it’s probably not a full informed choice, or even knowing that they have a choice … but OMG it looks like something the I’d get in spam.
Despite what wayward and other Christians say, Paul is unambiguous as to who leads a household.
Yeah, Paul was a complete shithead most of the time. He was also unmarried. Simon Peter was apparently married, and you don’t get the same constant harping on male authority from I or II Peter. Coincidence?
Sometimes, I wonder if even Paul would be surprised and uncomfortable over his personal letters to various churches and their leaders becoming Infallible Holy Writ. It’s not like he was actually the Pope-boss of all those congregations. And Barnabas was apparently (very occasionally) able to talk him down off his high horse when he was being a stupid jerk. Paul was all, “John Mark has failed to meet my standards. He is dead to me.” And Barnabas was like, “Paul, sit down and stop behaving like a dick.” And Paul eventually came around, and allowed that Mark was okay after all. These weren’t the actions of someone who was a conduit for the unquestioned Word of God at every waking moment. If only Marcion of Sinope’s “reformation” of Jew-tainted Christianity had been completely denounced as heretical, including his assertion of Paul’s epistles as preeminent in the forming Canon.
Oh, and sometimes I secretly dream that in Hell, Dr. Dobson will be forced into gay marriage with an abusive spouse who owns rabid dachsunds. But I try to suppress such unworthy thoughts.
Sure… I don’t disagree that PK teaches that the “man is the head of the household.” But from my experiences PK does not teach that as meaning men should be more “domineering and controlling.”Don’t get me wrong - I am no fan of PK. But I did not experience anything similar to the need to be more “domineering and controlling.” Saying that men are the head of the household (something that I do not agree with) is not the same thing as saying that men should be more “domineering and controlling.” Of course - there are some (many?) men who use being the head of the household as an excuse to be more domineering and controlling. But they are not necessarily the same thing.
I wholeheartedly agree that a fundamentalist reading of the christian scriptures is a fool’s calling and I also agree that rightwing fundamentalist christian culture is about as far from the “original” tenets of christianity as a philosophical structure as you can possibly get.
Most biblical scholars would I think agree that Paul more than any other author ascribed to texts in the new testament was modified and reinterpreted, edited and reconstructed throughout western history to reinforce the status quo. For us to be discussing specific verses and passages, as if we ourselves were fundamentalists, seems to be a wasted effort, even if we grant ourselves the opportunity to note apparently obvious contradictions.
for a more measured reading of the letters of Paul, I would like to suggest John Dominic Crossan’s In search of Paul. For me, it was a way to see the letters bouncing back and forth across the mediterranean in the 1st century BCE as a fascinating interplay between philosphies, cultures and social justice. Anything else right now seems pointless.
These days, in church, I use the NT letters (when I use them) as a way to discuss issues that we are currently dealing with as a congregation; a starting point into how this particular community I am in can work through its own problems. There is very little else in the christian bible about how to live and grow together where the emphasis is placed on loving each other rather than living in fear of a jealous god.
(1) I used to work with a guy who was in PK. When I tried talking about the movement to him, I braced him about the apparent drive to subjegate the rest of the family under the father’s rule, he claimed that the men “had to step up and take responsibility.” When I asked him just what they were taking responsibility *for,* his answer was “running the family.” When I asked him why it was the *men* who were to be responsible and why weren’t the women included inthis responsibility, he really didn’t have an answer, just that the “men had to do it.” Oh, and so mamny of society’s ills were because of all these single-parent families with no man at the head….
(2) One of the ways to make dominionists and bibicle literalists turn purple is to point out that the bibical passages usually used to justify dominion over the earth, and over women and children, were not spoken by Christ, but by very mortal individuals, like paul. WHo even if he *was* a “man of his times” appeared to be a man who really didn’t want to upset the applecart of *his* priviledge.
Crotchless pantaloons?
By any other name this is BDSM … these folk are biblicly “in the lifestyle�
If you read back through the archives, you’ll see that he also asked his wife to start wearing skirts/crotchless pantaloons all the time so she could be “available” to him — whether she wanted to be or not — all the time.
I get this horrible image of the husband wandering in, bending her over the table, and going to town with nary a word. Sort of the way rabbits do it.
The whole CDD site advocates domestic violence and rape — using the Bible to justify it –as far as I am concerned. I feel awful for the kids raised in that environment.
Exactly.
Trying to fit my mind into the Christian Domestic Discipline thing for a minute - if it’s not abusive (and I ain’t sayin’ that, so don’t even go there) and the woman consents, she’s completely abjuring her duty to be an adult. She no longer has to take responsibility for her own actions because Hubby Darling will manage her behavior and keep her on the straight and narrow. Ladies, what if God decides you should be a widow and calls Hubby Darling home? How are you going to manage things on your own if you don’t do so now?
I don’t know. The whole thing befuddles me and I can’t even make out the internal logic to it.
[throws hands in the air]
“How are you going to manage things on your own if you don’t do so now?”
Don’t be silly. You just find another one.
Dodged. At the the time, we lived in an apartment where it seemed screaming wasn’t worth calling the cops. Reporting to the police was pointless to me for the reasons you point out, especially since I could, and did entually, move out.
The rages she put up and I endured were abusive to herself as well as me - we’d go through cycles where she’d begin hitting or attempting to cut herself and then going for me when I would restrain her. As she’d damage herself, as well as me, I could transport her to the local hospital for suicide observation. It’ll strike a few people as a bad solution, but it did keep both of us out of jail and our records clean.
She no longer has to take responsibility for her own actions because Hubby Darling will manage her behavior and keep her on the straight and narrow.
Exactly. If you red a couple of the ancillary blogs, one of them is by a woman who basically lets her husband “discipline” her if she strays from her darn diet, and doesn’t lose “enough” weight per week. Another woman has weekly “maintenance” sessions to ensure she remains in the proper state of mind.
It’s a more violent version of “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it ” wit an added, “If you do, I’ll spank you.”
Holy crap. I’d never heard of the Stanford Prison thing, and I’m incredibly weirded out.
Jsmine —
the video shot during the prison simulation is just surreal when you realize that these people were just a safe word away from the abuse.
Absolutly baonkers.
Crabby -
I only had time to read one article and the whole juxtaposition of the exact same lifestyle. One confirmed and celebrated by them and the other called immoral, and the ONLY difference is the “Biblical� citation. This just hit a certain part of my psyche for which the only response was uproarious laughter.
I guess using chemise and pantaloons (crotch-in and crotchless) helps continue the illusion that all this is “sanctified” but using a harness under a skirt and blouse would be far more apt. God put her there for his amusement.
I’m pretty sure if I read more articles they would sound just like the articles I’ve read of the master-slave dynamic and their stories.
Actually that might be an interesting thing to do. Get a website and post the articles from each lifestyle (really the same just under a different name) side by side.
“while a minority of people are absolute angels who will never take advantage of their power over others, most of us are sadistic monsters on one level or another…”
Ouch, that sounds like something a christian would say, and like virtually everything else they say, I happen to disagree. There are sadistic monsters, yes, but the hardly represent a majority. Takes religion to make someone nasty, that doesn’t come naturally.
‘“I believe the way this doctrine is taught and interpreted within many evangelical churches can lead men to believe it is their God-given right to exert authority over their wives,â€?…’
Hmm. Perhaps. How can one debate what happens “within many evangelical churches”? I personally believe it’s far stinkier than that, as far as smell tests go. I would suggest that in a majority of evangelical churches men are lead to believe that it is their god-imposed responsibility to exert authority over their wives. Not unlike judaism or islam, tis a foul religion, christianity, make no mistake about it, as women are mere chattel.
Oh, Eddie Izzard has this SO covered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoBYYElyP4c
I agree. And anybody who disagrees with us shall be beaten and thrown into a wood chipper.
Not answering anyone in particular…
To say that “God has Authority over me” is functionally equal to saying “No one has Authority over me”. If God never exercises this authority, then he might as well not have it.
Promise Keepers: I knew a member some 10-12 years ago. He was a wierd customer who lied a lot. I take/took everything he said about it with a grain of salt. Because of this, I tend to look at PK with a great deal of skepticism.
My parents were in a mutually abusive relationship. They got over it after they divorced. Now that they have married other people they are friends. Go figure.
It’s doesn’t pass the basic sniff test; while a minority of people are absolute angels who will never take advantage of their power over others, most of us are sadistic monsters on one level or another and need to have that tendency checked by power-sharing.
About 85%, if I recall the Milgram experiments correctly.
“Paul didn’t write to the world from the United States in the 21st century. He wrote in the 1st century Mediterranean…” etc…
“I don’t blame Paul for being a man of his times, but that he was a man of his time does make it…” etc…
Umm, I’ve seen no evidence, anywhere that “Paul” ever existed at all. His travels do resemble those of Josephus, but that as close to historicity as one gets. There’s nothing independent of the bible.
Its a boys club ladies. Invented by boys, for boys.
From Wikipedia:
“The Milgram experiment was a seminal series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience.”
Hey Phoenician in a time of Romans. Haven’t had the pleasure of reading you since the days when Adam Yoshida was still taking himself seriously. Hell, I used to go there just to read your comments. Nice to see you again. Will have to check out your blog.
I’ve seen no evidence, anywhere that “Paul� ever existed at all.
I believe that I read somewhere that there are church documents at various places on his travels that speak of him visiting, but that is not to say they weren’t forged. i give the benefit of the doubt that he existed. That he was either a total hack or someone whose works were heavily edited after his death makes me believe that he should probably be ignored by people who wish to bring about a system of social justice and equality. Then again, that goes for a lot of the Bible as well. Basically, rationality makes any need for the Bible obsolete, despite the fact that a few core ideas of rationality can be found, an some form or another, at a few places in the Bible.
Faith, meh. If you need a dude from the first century to tell you that your wife is your equal, and when he doesn’t do it unequivocally, you assume she isn’t, then I cannot help you.
Well, “Domestic Discipline” emerged before “Christian Domestic Discipline”… it’s not like this kind of idea popped up from the minds of fundamentalists. There were plenty of sites and discussion about couples where one or both were subject to spankings before this came up. Painting it Jesus and calling it Christian isn’t surprising.
DD is a complicated thing. I tend to view it as pure kink, D&S and spanking play… a game that people enjoy all the more because they pretend it’s real. But I don’t know how many people view it seriously, without a kink overtone.
But it’s an old-ish idea. Google the Spencer Spanking Plan; I think it’s from the 40s. I don’t know how mainstream it was, and I don’t even know if it wasn’t something written in the 90s that people claimed was old. (If it’s new, it took a pretty skilled author to pull off a convincing fake, IMHO.)
Another reason why I’m Unitarian Universalist. I knew that the wingnut Christians condoned violence against women — like they always have done.
It’s just the old “benevolent dictatorship” idea dressed up in Biblical clothes. The ancients had no real concept of institutionalized egalitarian relationships, so the default was always, “yeah, you need an absolute ruler, but that ruler should be just and decent”. The Bible isn’t really saying anything radical there. Plato’s Philosopher King looks very similar, though Plato does introduce merit, as opposed to birth, as the criterion for choosing a leader.
The problem with all of that, as thousands of years of experience have shown, is that the “benevolent” part usually breaks down before the “dictatorship” does. Empathy, which is the key to benevolence, is hard to cultivate and maintain in a person who is set apart from others, and told she is “higher” or “better” than the rest. Amanda makes a very good pont when she talks about eqality being a “check” on abuse, and I believe this works in a very concrete sense (if we are equally protected by society’s rules and laws, it is much more dangerous for me to act out against you), and in the sense that it breeds empathy (if I see myself as equal to you, it is much harder for me to harm you, because in a sense, it is like harming myself).
So, yes, PK does in fact greenlight domination, which, by default sets the stage for “domineering and controlling” behavior. Even if it is not explicit in their teachings, it IS implicit, and we are right back to the “benevolent dictatorship” that usually isn’t benevolent at all.
I don’t disagree that PK teaches that the “man is the head of the household.� But from my experiences PK does not teach that as meaning men should be more “domineering and controlling.�
That you don’t see the contradiction in that statement says a lot about the casual acceptance of inequality in our society. To be the head of a person is to dominate and control her. If you don’t dominate and control, you’re not her head. Really, it’s tautological.
Ouch, that sounds like something a christian would say, and like virtually everything else they say, I happen to disagree. There are sadistic monsters, yes, but the hardly represent a majority.
Please explain:
The patriarchy
Lynchings
The Holocaust
Abu Gharib
In light of your theory that most people don’t have this dark side that is kept in check by a social contract.
Look, I like people. But we are social animals and even those of us who are cognizant of the fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely and that people don’t give up privilege willfully have trouble not falling into roles. Put a person into a role that calls for easy sadism, and the majority of people will slip into it. The “few bad apples” crap is generally an excuse by authorities trying to obscure their own use of the ugly side of human nature for their own ends.
Are you serious? Come on…do you really believe that all nasty people are like that because of religion?
That is a pretty ridiculous statement.
I do see the contradiction, but I am also okay with contradictions. I believe that it is possible to be a “leader” of something (or in other words, the “head”) without being domineering and controlling. I do not think that leadership necessitates dominance and control.With that said, I am not in agreement with the PK’s and other Christian’s idea of what it means to be “head of the woman.” All I am saying is that there can be leadership and headship without being domineering and control.
Clytemnestra: Actually that might be an interesting thing to do. Get a website and post the articles from each lifestyle (really the same just under a different name) side by side.
In her book “Remaking Love,” Barbara Ehrenreich did that with Beverly LaHaye’s marriage manual and “The Story of O.” They were virtually indistinguishable from each other.
Back in college, I read an article (which I could remember the name) about how difficult it was for domestic violence advocates to convince conservative Christian women to get help/come to the shelter. Usually, they would call the center with the line, “I’m a bible believing Christian, but…” as if being a Christian meant that they had to submit to being abused.
Basically, the advocates would tell them, “The marriage is already broken. Vows have already been severed. But not by you. Therefore, you have every right to leave.”
Okay, lets just assume that Paul did … they why on earth would any of his writings have any relevancy? Why should people pay ANY attention to what is said therein at all? If we have grown beyond Paul’s “start” as a society, then why the fuck pay any attention to any religious text that includes such.
I am NEVER going to understand the cherry-picking approach of christians of any ilk. If your religion has holy prescriptions of behaviour, rooted in the devine, what gives any one proclamation any more or less strength than any other? If you adhere to some piece of scripture but not another, when each has equality validity being biblical proclamations, then you’re not being a christian, you’re making moral and ethical decisions from a rationa secular perspective.
The moment you’ve gone to making your decisions about which sections to follow yourself and which to not, and which are merely steps and which are the whole enchilada, then you’ve surpassed your religion.
The moment you’ve gone to making your decisions about which sections to follow yourself and which to not, and which are merely steps and which are the whole enchilada, then you’ve surpassed your religion.
Awesomely put. There is no reason for religion, unless you have a fear of the afterlife, whcih, okay, have at feeling better about what awaits you, but your religion is not truth. No. Back away from the stupid.
I can’t put it more succinctly. Religion says that there is always absolute truth, beyond reason and external evidence, and I cannot believe that. Ethics, rationality, dialectic, all of these provide mechanisms for discerning truth, but as to one person’s opinion, which is what each book of the Bible can only purport to be, no. That is not absolute truth.
Come on…do you really believe that all nasty people are like that because of religion?
Religion is not merely Judeo-Christianity. Stalinism was based on religion, despite any claim to atheism it might have had. An infallible dictator, marshaling the forces of justice and right for the good of Communism? That doesn’t sound familiar? I’m sorry, but any system of understanding that establishes the idea of absolute truth via dictate is a religion.
Now, there is a such thing as dementia in a single person, as well as insanity. But as to widespread doctrine, ideologies from which evil has transpired in our history can be reduced to singular ideology, backed by seemingly omnipotent force, and controlled via propaganda. Tell me that that is not an adequate definition of religion, and state the reasons why.
I’m not suprised
Using the web would be more accessible and using something as “old fashion” as a frame set one could link actual active sites, and articles for a side by side comparision of CDD and BDSM.
Given enough play I wonder how certain persons would react. and in the ewwwwww corner as I was thinking about this on my way home today I kind of though BillO would get a rise out of it.
I came across the CCD site just the other day, and was pretty distressed by it. If folks are into BDSM, and they’ve worked out a safe way to play, I see no problem with it. But these people are advocating it as a religious obligation for women. It’s no longer play, then, but abuse cloaked in ritual.
I think the same way about people who decide to order their lives according to the Biblical model for family relations: as long as there’s a basic level of respect from all parties, and everyone agrees that human rights are inviolate, it’s all good.
The moment a man (or woman) starts abusing that trust, he’s failed both his family and his God. His spouse should take action, which might include leaving the marriage for good.
If folks are into BDSM, and they’ve worked out a safe way to play, I see no problem with it.
Really? No Devil’s Advocacy? No questioning of whether safe words are adequate, or whether BDSM women are setting themselves up to be raped? Wow. I’m wholly surprised. Honestly.
If their partners take advantage of them and don’t respect the safe word as initially agreed upon, it’s rape; it’s assault, pure and simple. And like all other rape, it is clearly not the victim’s fault.
I can’t even bring myself to play the Devil’s Advocate on that point.
I can’t believe anyone here is arguing that the Promise Keepers are somehow above all this. They do a lot of work with men whose marriages are failing - some of them have to be abuse cases - but they always preach that their members have marital problems because they’ve spurned the responsibility that God has given them to lead their families. I can’t see how that can be interpreted any other way than, “be more controlling, and all your problems will go away.” They’re supposed to apologize to their wives for letting them have any control over the household, for God’s sake!
And then they tell the audience that, even if they don’t adhere to the organization and its Seven Promises, they owe this to God anyway because of all the nifty perks He bestows on men. Noblesse oblige, indeed.
It’s pretty much basic psych that people who have grown up in abusive households tend (absent significant therapy and/or personal redirection) to perpetuate the abuse as perpetrator, victim, or both. If being consistently judged as bad and inadequate is your experience of being loved or of loving someone else, then you’re either going to find someone who makes you feel that way or else take the person who loves you and get them to make you feel that way (by violence or otherwise). If they don’t get mad and lash out, how can you know they really care about you, right?
And of course the nastier versions of christianity, where all of us are bad and inadequate and only the abitrary, capricious favor of the Biggest of all Daddies can save us from hell, are pretty much the type of this kind of abusive upbringing…