Sexual and Family Violence: A Growing Issue for the Churches
by Lois Gehr Livezey
Dr. Livezey is assistant professor of Christian social ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
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The problem of sexual and family violence is at least as old as Lot’s offer of his daughters to the men of Sodom, an offer all the more grievous because it was made in the name of the ethic of hospitality to strangers and sojourners: "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof" (Gen. 19:8). Lot, however, is remembered in Christian tradition as the "righteous" Lot (II Peter 2:7) ; his act of giving his daughters to violence and violation goes unnoticed. The betrayal of intimates and the conspiracy of silence so commonly bound together in sexual and family violence are also features of this biblical story.
In the intervening centuries theologians have only occasionally addressed issues of sexual assault or domestic abuse. In The City of God Augustine did write on the meaning of rape, which had become an issue for the church with the rape of Christian women during the sack of Rome in 410, and he begins his discussion with the apt judgment that responsibility for rape belongs to the rapist, not the raped. But all too quickly Augustine’s perverse version of the hermeneutics of suspicion becomes clear: he suggests that women may experience rape with pleasure, and that such women may be getting what they deserve. In facing the perennial question of why this crime is inflicted on Christian women, he opines:
Some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free play at present by the secret judgment of God . . . Moreover, it is possible that those Christian women, who are unconscious of any undue pride on account of their virtuous chastity, whereby they sinlessly suffered the violence of their captors, had yet some lurking infirmity which might have betrayed them into a proud and contemptuous bearing, had they not been subjected to the humiliation that befell them in the taking of the city [Whitney J. Oates, editor, Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, vol. 2 (Random House, 1948) , p. 351.
Clearly, Augustine’s doctrine of sin -- with its inextricable mix of sex and lust -- and his doctrine of divine providence lead him into speculations that are unhinged from the experience of rape and invidious to the women violated.
John Calvin wrote the following words to a battered woman seeking his counsel:
We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity; and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her, but when there is imminent peril to her life . . . [W]e . . . exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens ["Letter From Calvin to an Unknown Woman," June 4, 1559, Calvini Opera, XVII, col. 539, in P. E. Hughes, editor, The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Eerdmans, 1966) , pp. 344-345].
In this brief letter, the familiar but devastating themes in pastoral responses to battered women are given classical expression. Violence and "tyranny" at home are women’s "lot," a fate to be suffered rather than a problem to be solved. Indeed, Calvin, like Augustine before him and countless others since, seems compelled to explain violence against women by appealing ultimately to the will of God. The inviolability of the institution of marriage justifies a deaf ear and a blind eye to the violation of a woman’s body and spirit through torture and terror. Only the clear and present danger of death legitimates the separation of batterer and battered -- and Calvin does not seem to regard the ever-present life-threatening potential of such violence very seriously. He takes for granted the subordination and servanthood of women in family relations. Calvin stops short of justifying wife- and child-beating in the name of patriarchal duty and discipline, but his message is clear: the Christian duty of a battered wife is not to oppose violence and violation but to endure it and, further, to please her batterer husband.
In Christian Scripture and tradition, then, we find an ethic of care for strangers that renders precarious the protection of daughters; an ethic of chastity -- laden with innuendos of pleasure, lust and pride -- that renders precarious the moral standing and human rights of women; and an ethic of Christian duty that renders precarious the basic safety of wives. Our theological heritage is an accomplice to sexual violence and violation.
For the most part, the complicity of the churches and their theologians in sexual violence is a complicity of silence. We have simply crossed to the other side of the road, in the dubious tradition of the religious leaders in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Even today, when issues of sexual violence receive considerable media attention, surveys and studies indicate that the majority of ministers and seminary students know almost nothing about the dynamics of sexual and family violence and have little or no experience in dealing with it.
by Lois Gehr Livezey
Dr. Livezey is assistant professor of Christian social ethics at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The problem of sexual and family violence is at least as old as Lot’s offer of his daughters to the men of Sodom, an offer all the more grievous because it was made in the name of the ethic of hospitality to strangers and sojourners: "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof" (Gen. 19:8). Lot, however, is remembered in Christian tradition as the "righteous" Lot (II Peter 2:7) ; his act of giving his daughters to violence and violation goes unnoticed. The betrayal of intimates and the conspiracy of silence so commonly bound together in sexual and family violence are also features of this biblical story.
In the intervening centuries theologians have only occasionally addressed issues of sexual assault or domestic abuse. In The City of God Augustine did write on the meaning of rape, which had become an issue for the church with the rape of Christian women during the sack of Rome in 410, and he begins his discussion with the apt judgment that responsibility for rape belongs to the rapist, not the raped. But all too quickly Augustine’s perverse version of the hermeneutics of suspicion becomes clear: he suggests that women may experience rape with pleasure, and that such women may be getting what they deserve. In facing the perennial question of why this crime is inflicted on Christian women, he opines:
Some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free play at present by the secret judgment of God . . . Moreover, it is possible that those Christian women, who are unconscious of any undue pride on account of their virtuous chastity, whereby they sinlessly suffered the violence of their captors, had yet some lurking infirmity which might have betrayed them into a proud and contemptuous bearing, had they not been subjected to the humiliation that befell them in the taking of the city [Whitney J. Oates, editor, Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, vol. 2 (Random House, 1948) , p. 351.
Clearly, Augustine’s doctrine of sin -- with its inextricable mix of sex and lust -- and his doctrine of divine providence lead him into speculations that are unhinged from the experience of rape and invidious to the women violated.
John Calvin wrote the following words to a battered woman seeking his counsel:
We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by force of necessity; and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her, but when there is imminent peril to her life . . . [W]e . . . exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her; and meanwhile not to deviate from the duty which she has before God to please her husband, but to be faithful whatever happens ["Letter From Calvin to an Unknown Woman," June 4, 1559, Calvini Opera, XVII, col. 539, in P. E. Hughes, editor, The Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva in the Time of Calvin (Eerdmans, 1966) , pp. 344-345].
In this brief letter, the familiar but devastating themes in pastoral responses to battered women are given classical expression. Violence and "tyranny" at home are women’s "lot," a fate to be suffered rather than a problem to be solved. Indeed, Calvin, like Augustine before him and countless others since, seems compelled to explain violence against women by appealing ultimately to the will of God. The inviolability of the institution of marriage justifies a deaf ear and a blind eye to the violation of a woman’s body and spirit through torture and terror. Only the clear and present danger of death legitimates the separation of batterer and battered -- and Calvin does not seem to regard the ever-present life-threatening potential of such violence very seriously. He takes for granted the subordination and servanthood of women in family relations. Calvin stops short of justifying wife- and child-beating in the name of patriarchal duty and discipline, but his message is clear: the Christian duty of a battered wife is not to oppose violence and violation but to endure it and, further, to please her batterer husband.
In Christian Scripture and tradition, then, we find an ethic of care for strangers that renders precarious the protection of daughters; an ethic of chastity -- laden with innuendos of pleasure, lust and pride -- that renders precarious the moral standing and human rights of women; and an ethic of Christian duty that renders precarious the basic safety of wives. Our theological heritage is an accomplice to sexual violence and violation.
For the most part, the complicity of the churches and their theologians in sexual violence is a complicity of silence. We have simply crossed to the other side of the road, in the dubious tradition of the religious leaders in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Even today, when issues of sexual violence receive considerable media attention, surveys and studies indicate that the majority of ministers and seminary students know almost nothing about the dynamics of sexual and family violence and have little or no experience in dealing with it.
