I
sent the below email to a pastor who has been open in conversing with me about
abuse, and am posting it here with minor clarifications because I thought it
might be helpful for others.
--------------
{initial
greetings deleted}
This
email is twofold — 1) suggestions for churches in handling abuse and 2)
my own narrative of how I felt [Church] failed me. The latter part of it,
I include not to blame, but just to make you aware of how deep the need for
understanding is on all levels — elders, pastors, and members.
My suggestions for churches in
handling abuse
1. Churches should be
willing to admit that they are not the same as professionals trained in abuse,
and seek outside help. Even
normal counselors do not have the resources to identify abuse and treat it.
I know it is very difficult for churches to defer to outside resources,
especially secular ones, but I believe there must be a humility and
acknowledgement that churches do not know what to do with abuse. When
churches take on the tone of “we know what abuse is, and we know what to do
with it,” it tells me that that church isn’t going to be approachable or
teachable about issues that they do not really have the training to handle.
For
instance, I have recommended time and time again the book Why Does He Do
That to pastors, Christian counselors, and leaders (not just in [Church]),
even to the point of offering to purchase copies for pastors (and I continue
that offer for anyone working at [Church]). It is considered by all abuse
professionals as the bible on domestic violence, and was written by a man who
worked for many years with abusers and knows their psyche well. None of
them accepted my offer, and so far none has told me that he has read the book.
(Actually, [Friend] told me in passing that she saw the book in your
office. If you are reading it, then I am very glad. It is really
the best resource out there for partner abuse situations.)
Most
domestic violence shelters are willing to partner with churches, both in
educating them with resources as well as taking on clientele to do evaluations
and provide services. I was impressed with one church that had a card in
the women’s room for the local abuse shelter. It read, “Is someone
hurting you?” and had phone numbers and resources on the back. I
recommend Genesis, a Dallas-based abuse shelter, if [Church] is looking for a
shelter to partner with. (http://www.genesisshelter.org) I do not
recommend Christian counseling or pastoral counseling for couples when there is
abuse. Genesis offers free, high-quality counseling and shelter to women
and children in need. They do not push for divorce or separation, but
rather help the woman be safe, heal, and make her own choices.
2. Churches should
understand that most abuse is not easy to see. Do not require “evidence” before you address the
possibility of abuse, because in my own marriage, we had someone living with us
in our very home for three months who never saw evidence of abuse. Also,
do not require that victims use the word abuse before you consider it. An
abused woman herself will not necessarily recognize the abuse, know how to
share it, or be safe enough to tell you that she is being abused without fear
of retribution. She may even deny the abuse. It must be a question
already on leaders’ minds, regardless of how mutual a conflict looks.
You
mentioned in your last email that the church would need to see "systematic
abnormal and suppressive control” in order to identify abuse. However, I
believe that nobody at [Church] would have ever seen this in my own marriage,
even though he was raping me, emotionally abusing me, and withholding basic
needs. Anyone without abuse training who tried to counsel us in marriage
saw me as the more conflicting and out-of-control spouse, while my ex came
across as humble, teachable, and willing to change — because he was utterly in
charge of the situation, controlling its image, and I was just trying to
survive. One illustration: The police show up at a house after a
neighbor’s 911 call about a domestic brawl. They walk in and see a
hysterical woman sobbing. The man is flushed but calm, and his face is
covered with scratches. The woman is incoherent, but the husband calmly
tells them that they were having an argument and she attacked him, hence the
scratches on his face. This actually occurs very often, accounting for the
high rate of domestic violence reported with women as the aggressors and the
large number of women who are convicted of domestic violence (and eventually
lose custody of their children to the actual abuser) after an episode of abuse.
However, the actual situation was that the husband was strangling the
wife — a common strategy of abusers because it leaves no bruises. What
does one do when one is being strangled? Fight desperately to get air,
even if it means with tooth and nail. So the abuser has visible scratches
on his face and is calm enough to cooperate with police and give evidence.
The woman usually has little credibility because of her high state of
emotion and because there are no marks on her. Similarly, in my marriage,
Christian marriage counselors repeatedly placed the blame on me because I was
usually sobbing uncontrollably in the meetings and refusing to agree that I was
50% to blame for the conflict, while he sat looking sad, agreeing to 50% of the
blame, and telling the counselors that he wanted to do his best and was trying
to be a good husband but I was just so difficult. My husband also
consistently told people that I was “controlling” and that he was “afraid of
me,” which were both not true. But he painted the picture he wanted to
outsiders. I, on the other hand, had been commanded to protect my
husband’s image, and was also afraid of him punishing me if I said anything,
and so I rarely told people about the things he did to me, or I minimized them
or excused them.
Finally,
recognize that abuse, even once diagnosed, is not easy to stop, and so the
first priority must be to protect the woman (and children), not rehabilitate
the man or save the marriage. When you think abuse might be going on, and
you want to wait it out and see, or give a little advice and see how it works
out, or encourage a wife to return and try again when a husband communicates
that he’s sorry, you’re basically communicating that you’re willing for her to
suffer more abuse.
3. Teach about abuse
extensively in your marriage classes — more than a brief, passing mention. Don’t assume that the abuse is the rare
case. 1 in 4 women experience partner abuse at some point in the United States.
That’s feasibly 25% of your marriage class.
If
one *must* teach about female submission (which personally, I think is taught
very badly in churches), one must recognize the door that opens to abuse and
address that specifically. When you give principles of submission,
understand that leaving it to the discretion of the man isn’t going to work
with an abusive man. The purpose of the teaching is not for the man; it’s
for the woman. An abusive man will abuse no matter what. Conversely, a
nonabusive man probably isn’t going to abuse no matter what power he’s given;
he’ll be reluctant to override his wife’s needs, and his heart will be softened
by her tears and complaints. He may claim to be the “leader," but he
doesn’t actually use his power over her. But an abusive man will take the
power to override his wife’s decision and use all the right language about it
(“The Lord is leading me this way;” “I prayerfully considered your concerns and
still feel this is the best decision;” “I am the head of the household and you
need to trust my godly leadership;” etc. etc.). What the teachings on
submission do is confuse the wife and take away her right to protest abuse,
because it’s all sanctioned by the church and she isn’t supposed to complain
about her husband. Bad teachings can confuse a woman enough that she thinks
that she is legitimately being asked to live in submission to her husband, and
she’s just a bad wife because it’s so hard for her to submit.
Many
times someone will give a principle of submission, and I’ll tell them of a
specific case in which my husband took it to the extreme, staying within the
letter of the law, but going far beyond what is normal. Obviously the
teacher never dreamed it would be taken to that extent. That’s the
problem with good-hearted Christians and abuse. They can’t imagine what
evil can do with their good-hearted advice. Christians don’t think about
saying, “If your wife gets on her knees, crying, and begs you to stop, then
stop what you’re doing” because they assume that normal people will do that.
They can’t imagine that asking a woman not to command her husband but to
submit to him might mean that she would get punished for telling him, “Pass the
salt” because it’s technically a command.
For
instance, if you tell wives that they should submit unconditionally to their
husbands in sex (as taught in Love and Respect; the sexual needs of women /
necessity of mutuality in sex are not addressed at all, despite the Biblical
command being completely mutual and equal), but you have some internal unspoken
line in your head where forcing submission crosses the line into rape, you must
discuss explicitly, in detail, all the way up to that line. Beating up a
woman and then forcing her to have sex is obviously rape. But what about
punishing her with other, seemingly unrelated conflicts, after she refuses sex?
What about emotionally sulking after she refuses? What about
telling the elders or the small group when she refuses to have sex? What
about shaming her spiritually? What about withholding something she needs
until she has sex with him? What about forcing her to wake up in the
middle of the night and service him? What about sex when she’s ill, or
crying after emotional abuse (with the threat that the abuse will continue if
she doesn't agree to sex)? When does it become coercion, overriding consent,
and when is it legitimate submission? If this isn’t addressed, and you
teach wives to submit in sex, then at some point you’re going to have wives
being raped, and they’ll be too confused by the teachings to recognize it, and
the church’ll never know it. (My situation.) But it’s extremely damaging.
Obviously this is not what any church wants, but if the abuser denies
doing any of the above to coerce a wife into sex, and the wife is too
emotionally incapacitated to report it with any credibility, how would someone
see what happens in the privacy of their home to know what’s really going on?
The main solution would be to equip a woman to see it, so she can
recognize it and reach out for help. Let her know what is not okay.
Let her know that there is a safe place for help. And then if a
wife reaches out for help, don’t immediately confront the abuser and try to fix
the marriage, as then it would just reverberate back into punishment for her.
(I should have repeated here point #1 -- Refer her to experts.)
Please,
please, please, reconsider having the book Love and Respect taught in the
church. I see that you still have
[the class advertised] on the website. I have reread and reread the book,
trying to keep an open mind, but I believe that the book is misogynistic. It
allows rape (unconditional respect expressed in sex without conditions and when
the woman doesn’t want it) and takes away consent. It often blames women
for men’s shortcomings (e.g. a woman’s refusal to have unconditional sex caused
her husband to have an affair; a woman’s aggressiveness caused her husband to
become passive, etc. etc.) It hands all authority to the man and removes
a woman’s right to protest. It assumes that husbands are “good-willed”
but does not address if they are not (the section “When it simply doesn’t work”
merely dismisses one’s predicament as a trial and tribulation that we must
endure for Jesus’s reward). It predicts wrongly that if a woman submits
to a man, then he will automatically love her and respond with love to her.
This does not work in abuse. Also, and probably worst of all, the
book constantly uses misogynistic language, painting men as rather innocent,
well-meaning, but clueless, but often describing women in misogynistic terms,
as little animals with sharp hoofs, and constantly characterizing their actions
as “railing,” “venomous words,” “frontal attack,” “firing her venomous little
darts,” “a witch [with] a broom,” a “disrespectful black widow spider using
your venom to devour me!” “verbal death blows,” “coming at you with disrespect
flashing in her eyes and venom shooting from her tongue,” etc. One
example sentence: “[Women] are masters of the art [verbal argument], and
husbands can feel helpless before the onslaught.” The husband, on the other
hand, is often characterized as just clueless, clumsy or helpless, the worst
words being a “Neanderthal" or “caveman” who wants to hide away in a cave
from his contentious and vexing woman. When the author, Eggerichs,
describes a husband’s abuse, he might call it “harsh and unloving,” but he more
often chalks it up to cluelessness, and he doesn’t wax poetic in negative
descriptions of men as he does with women. Even his positive descriptions
of women are actually misogynistic and dehumanizing — “sweet tender woman, “
“lovely doe,” “sensitive creature,” “delicate” etc. This language is
very, very disturbing to see in Christian literature and encourages disrespect
and devaluation of women.
The
book is also extremely unclear about abuse. In his description of his own
childhood, Eggerichs describes his own parents’ marriage not as an abuse
situation but as a “lack of respect / lack of love” situation in which he holds
both parents equally responsible — even though in other texts he has described
his father as raging at his mother, strangling her, and throwing furniture —
classic abuse. He states that his parents separated and came back
together many times, and even that his father eventually became a believer
because of his mother's commitment to respect him. What he doesn’t say,
however, is that the abuse stopped, even after his father’s conversion.
He vaguely says that things changed in the marriage, but that’s all I
could find.
Eggerichs
does at one point briefly condemn abuse and urges an abused wife to seek
protection and help, without going into any specifics about what abuse actually
is and how she would do that. However, he then immediately
contradictorily goes on to applaud a wife who returned to abuse and began
showing her abusive husband respect. Eggerichs reports that their
“relationship improved considerably” because she began remaining "quiet
and dignified instead of arguing," and quotes her describing herself as
guilty of “rebellion, contempt, disobedience.” The book does not say that
the abuse stopped. It also does not take into account that often an
abusive relationship will seem to improve because if a husband can control his
wife with a look or a word instead of a blow or direct conflict, of course that
makes the relationship look better on the outside, even though the reality is
that the level of abusive control is higher than ever. It sounds like
this wife lost her right to consent or protest, and that she wrongly took
responsibility for the abuse. I myself had many moments of hope that my
increasing submission was changing my marriage, and it appears the author
talked with this woman at such a moment. But I personally do not doubt
that the abuse in that marriage, like mine, continued. In chapter 5 there
is another story of a man who threw a dish at his wife and ended up in jail.
The author applauds the wife for being silent about the abusive incident.
What message does this send to wives? The same message I received for
many years — don’t cause your husband to lose face. Don’t tell people about the
things he’s doing to you. Stay quiet. Don’t complain. Even if
it is abuse.
In
chapter 6, the author writes: “I continually find wives who have been so
hurt and even abused that they don’t think they can
forgive their husbands. And I find husbands who just don’t know what to
do when she won’t forgive. And they eventually start thinking, Could
anyone live with this woman? I’m certainly not having much luck.” Strange
— the husband is abusive, yet the author phrases it as the woman who is hard to
live with — calling her “this woman” (derogatory; repeated in the book).
The next chapter goes on to pour guilt on wives who cannot forgive their
unloving husbands who the author already acknowledged have been abusive.
“Why be unforgiving when all he wanted was to feel that you still
respected who he is as a human being?” This implies that 1) it is the
wife’s fault that the husband acted unlovingly, 2) the husband is the victim of
lack of respect, not the perpetrator of the abuse, and 3) the wife owes him
forgiveness rather than forgiveness being an undeserved gift.
I am
not the only person who believes this book is misogynistic and dangerous —
please see https://cryingoutforjustice.com/2016/07/11/love-and-respect-by-emerson-eggerichs-is-a-dangerous-book-one-star-review-by-avid-reader/ and http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sarahoverthemoon/2013/11/what-love-and-respect-fireproof-abuse/.
Positive
marriage lessons can be taught through mutual submission — respecting and
loving each other, trying to learn what is hurting / offending the other
person, putting the other person before oneself, and trying to speak each
other’s languages. I feel that it doesn’t need to be gendered in this
way. All of the examples of wives "disrespecting” husbands could
simply be rephrased in terms of treating people with kindness and dignity
rather than as respect and submission, and same with men loving women. At
the very least, sex should be taught as a mutual thing, as stated in the Bible,
with the pleasure of the woman being equally emphasized and important as the
man’s.
My Interactions with [Church]
regarding my abusive marriage
Again,
I hesitated to include this section because my intention here is not to assign
blame or hurt individuals with the following narrative. I am not asking
for apologies. Therefore, I have left out names. However, I felt like it
is important for me to point out that [Church], while a great church with many
gifts and strengths, is all-around ill-equipped to handle abusive marriages.
The interactions that contributed to my disappearance from church were
with both leaders and members of the church, and were fairly consistent
throughout the church.
1.
During my marriage, I reached out to an esteemed missionary couple
(supported by the church) visiting. I shared a little bit about my
troubled marriage with the wife and begged her for help. Without asking
any questions or knowing any details, she sharply rebuked me and told me I
needed to submit more to my husband and give him more sex. I was devastated.
Later, during my separation, some friends who are missionaries supported by
[Church] asked not a single question about the abuse, nor did they express any
sympathy for my sufferings. The first and only question was how could I
possibly commit the sin of divorce instead of being Christlike and
forgiving.
2.
After I announced my separation, my small group (couples) basically never
reached out to me or invited me back. I saw a few individuals at church
and they said hi, but they never asked me any questions or initiated deeper
conversation. Two female members, months later, asked me for help, and I
did see one of the members who lived near me a few times, but the group itself
did not reach out to me in love to help me during the time I needed it most.
It felt clear to me that I was no longer welcome at the group, perhaps
because they were couples and I was no longer a couple. I don’t feel
angry at them. I chalk this up to them being young and not knowing what
to do in what appeared to be a morally gray situation. Still, it was
hurtful. The silence and the immediate exile were hurtful. I felt
abandoned by the group that until that moment had described our relationship as
“family."
3.
One of the pastors of [Church] stopped me in the foyer of the church,
having heard about my separation from others, and told me that his own marriage
had gone through rough times, but he and his wife worked through them, and
their marriage is better than ever and he’s so glad he didn’t give up.
This pastor had not heard my story from me firsthand and did not ask me
for any of the details. He told me that God would be more glorified if I
stayed with my husband than if I left. I emailed that pastor later (you
were CCed), and he apologized to me, took back that statement, and said he
wished he hadn’t said anything. I responded to that email and said I
appreciated the response. That was the extent of the interaction, and we
never spoke again.
4.
I was invited to meet with another pastor at [Church] because my husband
had met with him. The pastor asked me to read through a book on spiritual
warfare. I do not consider marital abuse a spiritual warfare matter
because it makes it all Satan’s fault and diminishes the responsibility of the
abuser, while studies show that abusive partners have a longterm problem with
their worldview, not with mental health or spiritual issues. It is not a
temporary problem but a deeply ingrained worldview problem. My abusive ex
met with that pastor a number of times, read a book on spiritual warfare, and
spent time praying with that pastor for God to cast out the abusive spirit.
After a number of sessions, he reported that the “evil spirit of
abuse" had flown away from him, pictured as a black spirit. Having
already experienced many such “miracles” during the marriage in which Jesus
supposedly touched my ex and changed him into a new man (oddly, this only
occurred when I was on the verge of leaving or had already left him), I didn’t
find this convincing enough to return to him, especially since he continued to
say and do abusive things in his attempts to get me back and crossed boundaries
that we had both agreed on.
5.
An elder at [Church] invited me to give my testimony for a class on inner
healing. I wrote my testimony of God rescuing me out of abuse and him
always, always being there for me. I poured my heart into that testimony
and made myself vulnerable through it. The testimony was read out loud at
the class by someone else, and I did not attend. What I didn’t know was
that my then-estranged husband was also invited to write his testimony —
basically of how repentant he was and sorry he was and how God had changed him
and how much he wanted to save the marriage. I later heard that the two
testimonies were read back to back and presented as a couple’s testimony.
I was devastated when I heard that. I felt violated and unsafe.
The juxtaposition of the two testimonies implied support of my ex’s
repentance and led an audience to believe entirely in his side of the story and
hope fervently for the reconciliation of that marriage.
6.
I wrote an email to the pastors and elders about my situation. In
it, I asked not to be condemned. I had hoped for support and love.
I only received silence to that email as well.
7.
The last time I ever attended a church as a member, a sermon was given at
[Church] about marriage. In it, the speaker declared firmly that everyone
who was involved in divorce was in some way responsible for it and involved in
sin. The speaker also declared that God never approves or mandates
divorce, that the divorce is always against God’s will. (Not true…Exodus
21:11; Jeremiah 3:8. God himself is divorced.) He did not say that
the broken marriage was against God’s will — but the divorce was. I
walked out of the church and never walked back in as a worshipper. I do
not repent of my divorce; I remain extremely grateful and relieved about it,
and I believe that God rescued me through it. Not everyone in [Church]
would condemn me for that, but there are those that would and did, and the
pulpit authorized that condemnation by saying that I was definitely in sin somehow,
somewhere, regarding my marriage and its dissolution. I cannot feel safe
in a community where that belief isn’t clearly contradicted, let alone stated
from the pulpit. I cannot feel safe in a community that refuses to
approve of my divorce from a rapist and an abuser. I feel safe with God;
not with people.
8.
Though I am not at liberty to share details, I know of at least one other
woman at [Church] whose husband was physically abusing her. She was
appealing to her small group leaders every time he hurt her, and they did not
know what to do and were unable to help her or even to really believe her —
they felt she was exaggerating. The husband to my knowledge is still in
the church, welcomed and accepted, but the wife no longer goes. The world
is full of abused women who have left the church because it is an unsafe place,
while their abusers enjoy welcome and acceptance in communities that largely
sympathize with them and blame the wives for the separations / divorces, as in
the video we discussed. [The church had posted a video of a man from the
community talking about his healing journey after his wife had left him.
In it, there were many signs of abuse, which the church did not
recognize. I’d discussed it with this pastor, and he’d been open to
hearing my take on it, though it took him a while, as well as me bringing in my
abuse counselor as a reference, to see the red flags, even though they were
quite blatantly clear to me, my counselor, and to the friend who attends the
church who first noticed the problem signs.]
Of
course I ought to note that even in all the misunderstanding, there were some
individuals who were kind to me. [Friend] was one of the first people I
shared with — we sat in [Church]’s prayer room and I told her my story and she
believed me and supported me. [Friend2] was a friend who not only stood
by me but also has championed suffering abused women in other contexts.
And I want to thank you that as a pastor at [Church], you did not condemn
me, at one point you seemed angry on my behalf (something I rarely saw in
pastors hearing about the abuse), and you even seemed to think that there was
still a place in ministry for me. Thank you that the video that we
discussed has finally come off the website. I did check back periodically
and noticed that it stayed up for a long time, but I see that it is now gone.
Thank you for that.
I
truly hope that [Church] can rise to the occasion and be a better resource for
women and children who are victims of intimate partner violence. I am
happy to remain an external resource for you if you should have any questions.
Thank you for having an open ear to listen.
Yours
truly,
SL
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