Rape Culture and the Redemptive Power of Scripture (Part One).
***** TRIGGER WARNING***** TRIGGER WARNING***** TRIGGER WARNING
This reflection contains profuse reference to extreme sexual violence, sexual assault and violent graphic murder in the biblical text. Please proceed with the requisite caution and do not read if the sensitive nature of the issues is likely to cause harm or distress.
No one could ever accuse the biblical authors of presenting varnished, abridged, one-dimensional or sanitised portraits of Israelite history – from our first parents and the homicide case involving their first two children right through to the inception of the ancient Jesus movement, with the betrayal of Judas Iscariot, the lynching of Jesus of Nazareth and the bizarre deaths of a certain Ananias and Sapphira. At times the history of God's people is not just one of disobedience and failure but of downright depravity and savagery. Perhaps the most gratuitous and ghastly example of the people’s abject degeneracy, comes at the tail end of a set of historical reflections which already depict Israel in the state of moral freefall; a lack of competent governance, a depraved indifference to divine statutes and a wanton disdain for moral culpability coalesce into the proverbial perfect storm in Judges 19.
In this next reflection, it is the details of this sordid tale with which we will be principally concerned. Having surveyed some of the ill-informed and even scurrilous tactics by which the Bible has been used in ways that cause harm, I want to explore some ways in which abuse can be contextualised within the biblical text to present a redemptive and life-affirming counter narrative. Whether abuse is the result of wilful, conscious, coercive and self-serving manipulation or the more subconscious side effect of actions done in ignorance, the trail of physical, emotional and spiritual destruction can be devastating. A critically important line of inquiry then, is what does the biblical text itself tell us about how God views abuse. I have deliberately chosen a particularly nefarious story, and a starkly ugly form of abuse because I think a strong case can be made for the following:
1. God hates abuse in all its forms
2. The heart of God is to stand with the victim and not the perpetrator of abuse
3. God affirms the dignity of all humanity without thought to status, rank, social standing, human approval metrics, gender, education, race, wealth or the like.
The purpose of this investigation is to broadly affirm the above and suggest that if the Bible is read as a communication expressing the heart of God, then it can speak authoritatively against abuse, coercion, manipulation and abuse. Of course, anyone with a warped and underhanded agenda can make the Bible say whatever they wanted to say (remember the curse of Ham)? Moreover, there are questions to be asked about some of the triumphalist narratives in the Hebrew Bible. Whilst it is commonplace to celebrate God's elect people taking over the promised land, theologians and biblical scholars have reasonably asked about the moral justification for the displacement of the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. It is not the purpose of this exploration to suggest that the portrait painted in scripture is uniform and simple; however, part of my objective is indeed to suggest that where we have sufficient data to decide, the strong weight of evidence confirms the three propositions above.
In her 1984 book, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, the eminent feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible presented a feminist critical reading of four passages of scripture which contain tragic stories involving terrible violence against female bodies. She sought to demonstrate that the stories revealed very pronounced patriarchal frameworks imbedded in the social world of the Hebrew Bible and as a result within much of our hermeneutics. Her four texts of terror were the stories of Hagar (Genesis 16; 21), Tamar, (2 Samuel 13), who was raped by her half-brother Amnon (and the ensuing neglect of her trauma), the rape and dismemberment of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 19–20 - the subject of this reflection) and the ghastly sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter (Judges 11) in order that he did not violate a vow he made to God. Trible sought, gallantly in my view, to name and expose the violence often side-lined or sanitised in certain readings, to confront the violence rather than attempt to resolve it and to retell the stories such that the women had both voice and agency (as we will see in the story in Judges 19 the concubine is not even named), and so their humanity could be recovered. She writes:
As a paradigm for encountering terror, this story offers sustenance for the present journey. To tell and hear tales of terror is to wrestle demons in the night, without a compassionate God to save us. In combat we wonder about the names of the demons. Our own names, however, we all too frightfully recognize. The fight itself is solitary and intense. We struggle mightily, only to be wounded. But yet we hold on, seeking a blessing: the healing of wounds and the restoration of health. If the blessing comes—and we dare not claim assurance—it does not come on our terms. Indeed, as we leave the land of terror, we limp [Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (40th Anniversary Edition): Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022), 4–5].
In some respects, I am taking my cue from Trible’s work. I do not, however, wish to see these (admittedly very difficult narratives) as ‘texts of terror’ but rather texts of tension where, by exposing the graphic and gruesome nature of the violence, and the often pathetic, vacillating and anaemic response of the men involved, we may see the divine heart more clearly and recover these texts as resistance narratives – exhortations to a sustained rethinking of the prevention, prosecution and pedagogy of abuse. After this introductory preamble, I will offer a brief outline of rape culture in the biblical text in order to contextualise my reading of Judges 19 before offering some practical reflections for Christ centred deconstruction, thinking about the role of the Bible within the lived experience of believing community. I will, however, have to reserve my actual reading of Judges 19 for Part 2, so I do beg for your patience. This is a very complex area, and I want to do my best to do it justice. Just one or two more important caveats before we proceed.
In the first instance, I want to stress that I am NOT an expert in abuse counselling, theorising about abuse, dealing with issues of violence against women or sexual violence more broadly. My paper ““Preaching from Mars Hill”: Mark Driscoll, Paul and the Inflected Rhetoric of Ideal Masculinity” is soon to be published in a volume called The Bible and Abuse in Church and Community: Perspectives on Coercive Control and Hypermasculinity from Researchers and Practitioners. This publication emerged from a colloquium called Abusing God: Reading the Bible in the #Metoo Movement. I also worked on a theological manual for ministers, clergy and lay leaders on the dangers of fragile hypermasculinity in church spaces. I have taught courses on biblical masculinity studies for postgraduate students and have a keen personal interest in the role of men in creating spiritually healthy worship spaces. As such, I want to make it clear that I am drawing on my own research and study as well as deferring to others in the field who are experts. My training is in biblical criticism, and I do not purport to be anything more than someone who interprets the biblical text for academic and devotional purposes. There are plenty of people who would be far more qualified than I am to speak on these issues.
Secondly, my objective in this analysis is to present the biblical text as an ultimately redeeming narrative and not as an unproblematic piece of literature. It is very important that this platform is Christ centred deconstruction and not Bible centred deconstruction. I consider the Bible to be the most foundational text within the human experience, and it is clearly a very important facet in how I interpret the world. However, we should know more fall into bibliolatry then we should craft a golden calf and offer worship to it. There are plenty of people who do not identify as Christian, religious, spiritual or theistic who have very valuable and significant things to say in the fight against abuse in all its forms. Given the number of people who identify as Christian in the world and the consequent significance of the biblical text in how such people allow their opinions and worldviews to be shaped, demonstrating the power of the Bible to speak a substantial word against abuse is an important exercise.
Thirdly, I want to speak very briefly to those who are in the midst of deconstruction journeys in which abuse has played a formative role. An analysis like this is intended only to be a very small spoke in the wheel. You may well be in a position where the pain you have felt has come from people using the Bible to shape your view of the human experience. It is entirely possible that listening to the warbling of a stranger, who despite everything still identifies as Christian, attempting to demonstrate that ‘the Bible really isn't so bad after all’, is the very last thing you would want to hear. If that in any way describes you, then I want you to be as convinced as possible reading these words on a page that I am an ally. If the only reason this analysis helps you is in suggesting that the harmful and destructive things that were said or done to you are in no way the final word, I would consider it a win even if you entirely rejected the faith of Jesus Christ. Without the testimony of people like yourself none of my writing would make any sense or have any lasting meaning. The very fact you are reading this at all speaks volumes about your bravery. This is not my attempt to console or counsel you; it is my attempt to get alongside you. It is my attempt to say that I may not identify with or understand everything you feel but I am listening, and I am with you heart and soul.
The Bible and Rape Culture.
Hopefully, I have spelled out the underlying premise with reasonable clarity: the Bible has the hermeneutic potential to unmask authoritarianism and to name and shame spiritual abuse which can lead to physical, sexual or emotional abuse. As per an earlier chapter, I consider spiritual abuse to be the use of religious authority to justify other acts of abuse. Often time, the religious authority in question is the Bible. If I tell you that David Berg, the founder of the cult group the Children of God, (later to become known as The Family International), found a way to read John 15:12 (Jesus’ command to love one another) with Matthew 18:3 (Jesus’ directive that his followers must become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of God) to suggest that showing sexual love to children was consistent with the purposes of God, you would rightly question the sheer level of mental gymnastics necessary to draw such a thoroughly maladjusted conclusion. Other forms of very spurious biblical hermeneutics have allowed people in Christian leadership to defend socially and spiritually aberrant behaviours, even if those behaviours are not in the immediate instance as graphically diabolical as child abuse. Using 1 Corinthians 7:3–4 to legitimise demanding sexual favours from a spouse is spiritually abusive. Using 1 Timothy 2:13–14 to justify muting female voices is spiritually abusive. Using Matthew 18:15–17 to defend the resistance to transparency when sin and scandal muddy the waters of discipleship is spiritually abusive. Yet, in diverse religious contexts, I have witnessed all three – and I dare say I am not alone. In the words of Everhart:
To overlay abuse with God-talk is to layer further abuse on the victim. Sanctioning injustice with the “love of God” is a double whammy for victims but occurs frequently in church circles [Ruth Everhart, The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2020), electronic version].
How we read the Bible matters; it can only be an authority within the Christian experience to the extent that we exercise great exegetical responsibility plumbing its depths for direction. One element of this responsibility is in the care and sensitivity with which we handle a topic like rape, and there are a number of complex questions which matter to this end. We will explore some of these below talking about rape culture in the Bible. It is within this context we will launch into a reading of Judges 19.
Whilst it is not the case that all the conditions in which sexual assault took place in ancient societies can simply be mapped onto a modern society, some key aspects of the phenomenon are far more universally applicable. Sexual assault is only in very exceptional cases about sexual gratification today. Far more typically, it is about the obtuse exercise of power, the desire for control and the warped attempt at fulfilling some social deficiency which is quite independent from the gratification of carnal lust. I would suggest that this is as true in ancient societies as it is in modern ones.
I have, on occasion, been asked why the biblical writers would include rape narratives within their stories, to which, initially, I reiterate that the biblical writers did not feel duty bound to sanitise their narratives or indeed the characters about which their narratives revolved. With the possible exception of Jesus, (I say ‘possible’ because some might question Jesus’ abandoning his parents at the Passover when he was 12 or other such stories), the Bible paints rather ‘warts-and-all’ portraits of its heroes - and from Abraham, Moses and David, to Peter, James, Paul and the other Apostles, nobody gets a pass! However, as we shall see with the case of Judges 19, the heart of these very difficult narratives goes much further than unvarnished biographies. A much more immediately pressing issue is the expression of outrage.
It is insufficient to simply conclude that an abuse such as rape violates basic moral propriety. One scarcely need be invested in a sacred text to arrive at that conclusion. Even to the irreligious, that rape is a moral violation does not need to be spelled out. However, if a religious community is going to be able to speak authoritatively against ethical injustice, spelling out the frameworks within which its witness functions is paramount. By the end of this reflection, I want readers to be in no doubt whatsoever about where God is positioned with respect to abuse. The Hebrew term used to describe the act of sexual assault in Judges 19:23–24 is נְבָלָה (nebalah). It is generally rendered ‘vile sin’, ‘disgraceful act’, ‘outrage’ or ‘senseless folly’. It is surely not coincidental that the same term is used to describe the act of rape against Tamar by her half-brother Amnon in 2 Sam. 13:12. The same word is applied to the rape of Dinah in Gen. 34:
7 Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard about it; and the men were grieved, and they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing (nebalah) in Israel by sleeping with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done (Gen. 34:7, emphasis added).
Like every sexual assault in the Bible, the rape of Dinah by Shechem the son of Hamor, was a sickening thing – and such a thing ought not to be done. Except that men drifted from God and “did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg. 17:6; 21:25), such a thing as rape ought not to be done.
Yet the social world that emerges from the Hebrew Bible is one in which a rape culture is clearly embedded. When Ruth wanted to glean in the same fields as Boaz’s entourage, she had to be reassured that none of the servants would touch her:
Watch the field where the men are harvesting and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you (Ruth 2:9).
The fact that Ruth was a foreigner probably rendered her even more vulnerable, but the nature of the society is captured insofar as Boaz had to make a point of warning the men not to touch her. It is within this same social context that King Xerxes’ fury raged against queen Vashti after her refusal to be paraded in front of his guests. He was so perturbed at the prospect of women everywhere stubbornly resisting patriarchy, that he issued a decree openly banning women from challenging their husbands, dismissed Vashti and organised an impromptu beauty contest to find a replacement for her (Esther 1:10–2:4). Biblical ‘rape culture’ might even be said to be primordial. In the prologue of Genesis 6, we read of the so-called sons of God, those angelic beings who became inflamed with lust for human women. The crime that sparked the original rebellion in heaven according to these texts was, thus, the sexual objectification of women. Interestingly, one Jewish source, reflecting on the reworking of Genesis 6 in 1 Enoch, provides one of the earliest examples of “gaslighting” in the texts:
For women are evil, my children, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over man, they scheme treacherously how they might entice him to themselves by means of their looks. 2 And whomever they cannot enchant by their appearance they conquer by a stratagem (Testament of Reuben 5:1–2).
It is these sorts of considerations which contribute to what is often referred to as a rape culture within the social world of the biblical text. Vaka’uta writes that a rape culture is:
…a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviours commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by some forms of bodily abuse or some combination of these [Nāsili Vaka’uta, “Kalanga: (sh)Outing Bodily Abuse in the Bible, Society and Churches,” in (ed.) Jione Havea, Bordered Bodies, Bothered Voices: Native and Migrant Theologies (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2022), 165].
Similarly, Bluhm writes:
Rape Culture is an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, the objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual violence, thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety [Tiffany Bluhm, Prey Tell: Why We Silence Women Who Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2021), 89].
Hung notes the following depraved ideas that often accompany modern rape culture:
• Men are within their rights to pressure women into sex; after all, women like to play “hard to get” and know they want it.
• You can’t blame a man if he sexually assaults a woman dressed in revealing clothing. Guys can’t help themselves sometimes; she was asking for it anyway.
• We should believe a celebrity or pro athlete accused of sexual assault more than we should believe his accuser, given that there are so many “gold diggers” out there.
• It’s not really a man’s fault if he has sex at a party with a woman who’s too drunk to know what’s going on. What did she expect would happen?
• We should go easy on promising, talented young men who’ve committed sexual assault. They have their whole lives in front of them, and we don’t want to ruin their futures.
• There’s no such thing as “date rape.” Sex can happen on dates! But legitimate rape—where a guy jumps out and attacks a random woman—that is truly a horrible thing.
[Eugene Hung, “Defending My Daughters against Rape Culture,” Mutuality Magazine 24:1 (2017): 14].However, as I hope to demonstrate in Part 2 of this reflection through a reading of Judges 19, the biblical text contains a formidable pushback against these very depraved social lenses. Consider the following in Deuteronomy 22:
25 “But if the man finds the girl who is betrothed in the field, and the man seizes her and rapes her, then only the man who raped her shall die. 26 And you are not to do anything to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbour and murders him, so is this case. 27 When he found her in the field, the betrothed girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.
A few things stand out:
V25: There is no room for victim blaming – only the man is culpable, and nothing is to be done to the girl (v.26). Valenti puts it best:
Now, should we treat women as independent agents, responsible for themselves? Of course. But being responsible has nothing to do with being raped. Women don’t get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren’t careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them [Jessica Valenti, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2010), 150–151].
Whatever the abuse, making villains out of victims is godless. If Christian leaders are indeed concerned about those in the throes of deconstruction, empathetic and humble engagement which is open to listening, non-defensive, non-accusatory, committed to truth and not just defending a position is what brings about the purposes of God.
V26: the author equates rape with murder - the rape victim is the innocent in the same way that the murder victim cannot be blamed for being murdered. Christian leaders dealing with issues of sexual abuse within the believing community must internalise this most pivotal idea. Any attempt to victim blame is no different to blaming a murder victim for their death. Keener nicely summarises:
If an engaged woman was raped, the man who raped her was put to death for committing adultery against her impending marriage union (Deut. 22:25). She, however, was not to be punished, for as the Bible explicitly says, “there is no sin in her worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbour and murders him, so is this case” (22:26). In fact, if no one else was present as a witness of her innocence but she was clearly penetrated, biblical law assumes her innocence without requiring witnesses (22:27); the burden of proof is not on her to prove that she did not consent [Craig Keener, “The Bible and Rape,” Priscilla Papers 8:3 (1994): 4].
There are two further important facets to consider in navigating ancient rape culture. One involves socioeconomic considerations and the other is to do with honour and shame. We will briefly look at both in that order.
Needless to say, premarital chastity was an expectation in ancient Israelite society, which added an extra layer of complexity for victims of sexual assault. Life was challenging enough for widows and female divorcees; rape victims had lost their virginity against their will, but it is unlikely that many Israelite men would have been sympathetic in this regard. It would have been no less challenging for a rape victim to find a husband than it would for a woman who could not prove her virginity for any other reason (a widow or someone previously married). As such, the rapist had not just violated her sexually, physically and emotionally, but in a society where a woman's financial security was usually attached to a significant male figure, he had violated her economically. The somewhat strange sounding laws about marrying one’s violator Are aimed at reckoning with this quandary:
28 “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and has sexual relations with her, and they are discovered, 29 then the man who had sexual relations with her shall give the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife, because he has violated her; he is not allowed to divorce her all his days (Deut. 22:28–29).
There are all sorts of difficulties with the above text, not least of all that the money is paid to the woman's father whilst she must marry her rapist. If they are not discovered, the implication is that the man will be believed and not the woman (see v. 24). Nonetheless, this is an attempt at financial security. The far more likely eventuality is outlined in Exodus 22:
16 “If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and sleeps with her, he must pay a dowry for her to be his wife. 17 If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the dowry for virgins.
Here, again, I think Keener is superb:
The consequence of such a law would be to discourage rape. It sent a message to the man: Sex is an act of intimacy and is only proper in the context of a committed relationship. If you are going to have sex with someone, you must be prepared to support her for the rest of your life. If you force her against her will, you must not only be ready to support her, but also to do without the benefit of ever having her affections—to be ready for her and her father to exercise the right of refusal. This apparently kept rape rare in ancient Israel. Modern laws may not offer sufficient vindication for a rape victim, or demand sufficient restitution from her assailant, but the Bible leaves no question concerning whose side God is on [Keener, “Bible and Rape,” 5].
The very sordid story of the rape of Tamar contains allusions to her own fear of financial ruin and of a destroyed future if her half-brother Amnon made good on his wicked intention to violate her. More significantly for this reflection, it depicts how shame would feature in the context of living in the aftermath of sexual assault. The sheer desperation in Tamar’s voice speaks volumes:
11 When she brought them to him to eat, he took hold of her and said to her, “Come, sleep with me, my sister.” 12 But she said to him, “No, my brother, do not violate me, for such a thing is not done in Israel; do not do this disgraceful sin! 13 As for me, where could I get rid of my shame? And as for you, you will be like one of the fools in Israel. Now then, please speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you” (2 Sam. 13:11–13, emphases added).
Tamar knew intuitively that the stigma of rape would never leave her and that this stigma would have dire consequences for her future. She even tried to suggest that it would be a negative stain on Amnon's own name. She was so desperate she even begged that he would simply marry her rather than violate her - she protested that the king would not object and that they could at least be in a legitimate union. In an honour and shame economy, Tamar’s life was in ruins, and, by all accounts, she gave up hope. The obtuse power differential is palpable, and as we are about to see, Amnon took full advantage of his power over Tamar. The narrator relates the following:
14 However, he would not listen to her; since he was stronger than she, he violated her and slept with her. 15 Then Amnon hated her with a very great hatred; indeed, the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, “Get up, go away!” 16 But she said to him, “No, because this wrong in sending me away is greater than the other that you have done to me!” Yet he would not listen to her. 17 Then he called his young man who attended him and said, “Now throw this woman out of my presence, and lock the door behind her!” 18 Now she had on a long-sleeved garment; for this is how the virgin daughters of the king dressed themselves in robes. Then his attendant took her out and locked the door behind her. 19 Tamar took ashes and put them on her head and tore her long-sleeved garment which was on her; and she put her hand on her head and went on her way, crying out as she went… So, Tamar remained and was isolated in her brother Absalom’s house (2 Sam. 13:14–19, 20b).
Amnon physically overpowered her (v.14) which is very often what happens in cases of male against female sexual assault. Verse 15 outlines a rather strange but not too uncommon phenomenon - the abuser’s resentment of the victim. This could arise from the abuser’s fear of being outed by the victim, or an inverted guilt stemming from some sense that the victim enticed them. Whatever its origin, it simply compounds the evil of the act. Tamar's plea in verse 16 again reiterates the combination of shame and destroyed future security - she felt that being sent away after the violation was worse than the violation itself. Observe closely her reaction - she tore the long robe that signified virginity, put ashes on her head as one would do when mourning a loss, cried profusely and then became a recluse in her brother's house (vv. 19–20). I think this is indicative of her having given up on life – a woefully sad reality that affects victims of sexual abuse to this very day. In addressing the feelings of loss suffered by some rape victims, often overwhelmed with shame, who end up giving up on life, Muck poignantly summarises:
We grieve when we lose something important to us. The rape victim’s loss is profound. She has lost not another loved one; she has lost her own loved one, herself. She feels less than whole. She has lost control of her life. She has lost hope. She has lost dignity and self-worth [Terry C. Muck, Sins of the Body: Ministry in a Sexual Society (Waco, TX: Christianity Today; Word Books, 1989), 143].
The curse pronounced in 2 Samuel 12:10 had come full circle - Amnon came under judgment as did Absalom (Tamar's brother who killed Amnon for raping his sister) and, indeed, David himself. What is abundantly clear is that there was one innocent party in the entire scandal, and that was Tamar - her only crime, according to the author of 2 Samuel, was being beautiful (2 Sam. 13:1). Jesus, who always has the final word, is unambiguous about blaming female beauty for your own lack of self-control – you would be better off tearing your own eyes out than blaming a woman's beauty for your actions (Matt. 5:28–29)!
Closing Reflections
In somewhat depressingly ironic fashion, we should be grateful that the authors of the biblical text chose not to spare the blushes of its central characters. As gruesome as their offences sometimes are, the texts allow us to see the heart and hear the voice of God.
Rape and sexual assault are some of the most extreme and disturbing forms of abuse which occur. Analysing them, however, allows us to draw some important practical inferences about all forms of abuse. A few of the most immediate are listed below:
1. When abuse occurs, the most pressing demand upon those with any involvement is the healing, sanctuary and future of the victim. Part and parcel of this is the pursuit of justice.
2. We must as believing people, and I cannot emphasise this enough, be very conscious of the power dynamics that exist both in the church and in society more broadly. There are ways in which I as a person am actively disempowered - I am a person of colour, and I hold no official position within the believing community. There are also ways in which I do have power - I am male and have a PhD in New Testament studies. As such, it is very critical that I am responsible with my use of power. It is my responsibility to be particularly conscious of listening to female voices and equally conscious of speaking to those who do not have extensive education in biblical studies, so as not to come across as a domineering and arrogant know-it-all. As conscious as I am of both, whether I have been successful in either, is something you would have to ask others! The power held by men in Christian leadership has to be exercised responsibly; if vulnerable members of the community feel a sense of dis-ease in your presence, whilst it may not directly be your fault, as the one with power, you should take the initiative to address it sensitively and compassionately. There are those for whom, for example, people with academic education in theology or biblical studies will be intimidating. Whilst I cannot be held responsible for the sensitive constitutions of others, I must do what is in my power not to lord my education over others. The truth is, much of what I have learned about discipleship to Christ, I have learned from people who have no academic experience whatsoever, and for those people, I am truly grateful and forever indebted. Rape is the most extreme form of ‘power-abuse’, but the abuse of power can lead to all kinds of destructive outcomes, including fear, marginalisation and disempowerment.
3. Related to the above, deconstruction can be a confusing place for many. You may argue, of course, that deconstruction is a choice, which is an argument not wholly without merit. However, if someone's trauma or disillusionment forces them into a rethinking of faith, it is firstly, far less voluntary but, secondly, a somewhat heartless position to adopt. The power of listening to someone’s story, whether or not you understand or agree, is immense. I would plead with those in Christian leadership to do everything in their power not to respond to stories of abuse, marginalisation or confusion with dismissiveness, religious superiority, gaslighting, a sense that such stories are a hindrance to ‘the mission’ or with a pre-rehearsed lecture that you are hell-bent on delivering. You do not need to have a remedy or have all the answers - just listen, with as much empathy and as little judgment as is possible.
4. When navigating stories of abuse, you are very likely to hear accusatory assertions about the church, the Bible or indeed the Christian faith itself. Again, I would plead with those in power to have a sense of rational resilience. If someone has suffered abuse at the hands of another who claims to be Christian, it is inevitable that dark clouds will hang over the symbols and icons of Christian belief. Indeed, someone in that position reading this reflection might resent it for precisely those reasons (as I hinted at earlier). This is attention we simply have to wrestle with. The transatlantic slave trade was propped up by western Christian elites. It was dismantled, at least in part, by western Christian elites. This tension will never go away. Christian leaders have hurt people. Christian leaders must help people heal. This tension will never go away.
In the next instalment of this reflection, we will consider the sordid details of Judges 19 - for those who are following along I suggest you read Judges 19 and Judges 20. The narrator rounds off Judges 19 in a fashion no other passage of scripture ends with:
Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it, make a plan, and speak up!” (Judges 19:30, emphasis added).
In this contextualising section I have attempted to use rape culture in the social world of the Bible to present the biblical narrative as one of anti-abuse resistance. There are, of course, several instances in church settings where the abuse in question is indeed sexual. Judges 19: 30 incisively captures the only correct way forward. I might reword it thusly: do not keep silent; do not brush it under the carpet, make excuses or pretend it does not go on. Expose the fruitless deeds of darkness (Eph. 5:11) because this will ultimately achieve the purposes of God (with special thanks to Nadine Templer for doing exactly this).
To be continued….
