Tangential Issues #3: Five Essential Questions from "Christianity, Patriarchy & Abuse"

 I have decided to focus on book reviews for the next little while. Yes, I am back writing the blog with more consistency. I have created a "dismantling rape culture" rating system to use as I analyse these books. More about that in the next post. 

Some questions that will be in the back of my mind as I write my reviews come from the book where my first ever published article appeared. That article is still close to the most downloaded and quoted work that I have published over the years. It vies with "Remember the Good, Forget the Bad".

In 1989, five essential questions were put to readers of Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (p. xv) that are still relevant. They are as follows with my comments as of the day that I publish this blog post:

1.        1.  Is patriarchy inherent in Christian theology? My Comment: Can we replace patriarchy with "rape culture", which is what I am primarily concerned with? The latter term is even more of a red flag. Whatever you call it, my answer would be yes - even today. [This was published three years before Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza coined the term, "kyriarchy" in 1992.]

2.        2.  Can we call our “corrected” Christianity Christianity? My Comment: Many of the articles in the original book offered alternatives to the prevailing theologies on whichever issue about which they were writing. Today we can read “queer theology”, “feminist theology”, "biblical feminist scholarship", and “liberation theology” to look for examples of  "corrected Christianity". The question is still relevant and as of my readings to date, it is hard to find anyone who really deals with that question. The problem implies questions of definition, essential beliefs, foundational texts, etc. or "who owns Christianity?".

3.       3.  Is there an essential message of liberation in Christianity that runs counter to patriarchal oppression? My Comments: This is the question that was and still is addressed by liberation theology. If this question left out the word, essential, then I would probably answer, yes. Certainly, this is a debatable issue. My question is: "What happens to the dispossessed when they become the possessors of the power that oppressed them?" The problem hasn't been, and I would argue, won't be solved by giving women positions of power in any of its institutions, although that is a start. The patriarchal structure of the texts is so embedded in Christianity that even the liberation theology message is bounded by the will of its god who "giveth and taketh away(KJV)" (adapted from Job 1:20-22 NRSVUE).

4.      4. Why do we struggle so hard to remain within the tradition? My Comments: This is so easy to answer. The existence of the Christian God is embedded in children from the day that they are born. The monotheistic Christian god, no matter what denomination or interpretation has one quality above all else that makes it hard to leave the tradition: that god is personally involved in their lives. Furthermore, if the first twenty years within the system was not blighted by abuse, then  one's community was critically important to shaping your life. Thus, challenging your community is like challenging your whole life. As those who read my blog know, this is a struggle that I have had to work through all my life (still working on that one!). I can only say that being raised is the United Church of Canada was a godsend, whether I knew that at the time or not.

5.   5. Is there anything worth saving in the Christian tradition? My Comments: I am sure there is. Which parts are worth saving is a debate that has been ongoing since Christianity's beginnings. The problem is the Christian Bible itself. If there is no Christian Bible, does Christianity even exist? Well, of course not. The problem is that these texts are foundational - but are they revealed by the deity? And what does "being revealed" even mean? Few of the answers to the latter two questions are as clear as the 1992 statement from the United Church of Canada: "The Word of God, in every case, is larger than the text of the Bible." There is also this from the 2023 UCC website. Their statement of faith with respect to the Bible says: “The Bible is the shared standard for our faith, but members are not required to adhere to any particular creed or formulation of doctrine.” It's a beginning.

Christianity & Forgiveness from my dissertation

One of the concerns of the daughter is often the question of forgiving the abuser, of making some form of peace with him. Part of the reason for this is the need to find some external validation that the victim was not responsible for the abuse that she/he suffered or validation that it really happened the way she remembers it. This is seldom forthcoming and puts the victims in the position of having to find within themselves that validation. However, forgiving the perpetrator is not a necessity for recovery from sexual assault or any other form of child abuse. These fathers did not do the best that they could. They are not entitled to forgiveness, it has to be earned. Even then, the daughter should not feel obliged to forgive what may be for her, unforgivable and unredeemable. If she wants to forgive, it must be for herself not for the father, the family or her therapist. The daughter has another option. She can simply let go, a feat that is difficult for the daughter. When all of her anger is vented, when she truly understands what happened to her, she can let go of the resentment, rather than let that resentment and anger control the rest of her life." She has then become a survivor.

Forgiveness of one's enemies, of anyone who has harmed you, is one of the 'prime directives' of Christianity. It is not just encouraged but regarded as necessary that a Christian adult survivor of incest should eventually, not just come to terms with her experience of sexual assault, but also forgive her abuser. It is argued that without forgiveness the survivor will always remain unhealed. Christianity with its emphasis on loving one's neighbour and turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven or forever, gives divine sanction and authority to the repression of that anger. It is axiomatic for Christianity that one is always striving to be like Christ, the 'imago dei' is placed as the epitome for which Christians should strive. Christians must emulate Jesus, who forgave those who crucified him even while he was suffering on the cross. There is little material written on therapeutic spiritual intervention for the incest survivor in terms of Christianity. However, a fair amount of material for battered women in abusive domestic relationships is beginning to accumulate. With respect to battered wives, it is argued that forgiveness requires that the abusive husband undergo true metanoia or repentance. These men must turn their lives around and truly understand the evil which they have committed when they beat their wives. At the same time, however, women are told to look to their 'sin of silence' and pray for forgiveness from God. But if the daughter speaks up, she is often not believed. Chaos ensues, and often the family is broken apart. On the other hand, if she forgives her father, maybe everything will be all right.

Christianity, with its emphasis on forgiveness can give the daughter the idea that she must forgive her father even while he is abusing her. And even more distressing, she may feel that she must continue to let him keep abusing her. Letting go is a difficult option for the Christian daughter. Jesus forgave his murderers even while he was on the cross, Maria Goretti forgave Alessandro while she was dying. All the daughter's training propels her to forgiving her father - to the detriment of her recovery. For forgiveness can be premature and impede recovery. To force forgiveness means that the daughter will have to stifle her anger at her father and her anger at god. To make the process that much more difficult, how would she go about forgiving the father god for his failure to protect her after he had promised?

NOTE: I omitted the footnotes from this - people can click on the link to the dissertation if they want to see those.

I Knew It

Just wasn't as willing to commit to my gut instinct 3 and a half years ago as I am today.

Here is the Richard Dawkins' post:
http://richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2012/12/22/physical-versus-mental-child-abuse#.UOAsYW_AeJo. I did post a version of this blog as a comment on the Dawkins' blog.

Here is my post from May 20th, 2009:
http://whatsanatheisttodo.blogspot.ca/search?q=dawkins

This is an update on the comments that I made then. I had/have no problem with "religion is child abuse" but took exception to his dismissal of the impact of sexual abuse on the child. Here are some further thoughts:


It is true that the mild form of sexual abuse that Dawkins describes is probably less damaging than believing, truly believing in hell. However, he had the advantage of being able to talk with his fellow classmates about it - solidarity is a great healer/dismisser. However, has he ever considered what might have happened had he reported this man to the superiors at the school? (Just asking)

I remember how we used to all talk about staying away from "legs" Hooper, the physics teacher & the French teacher in high school. These incidents are not the stuff of long term psychological destruction (unless one got caught in the web). I just still have this sneaking suspicion that it had more of an impact on his psyche than Dawkins is willing to admit - he does remember it and the feelings that the incident engendered - they apparently have not disappeared. I am pleased to hear him say finally that this too was part of his life-experience. I always use that "hermeneutics of suspicion" approach when people are as angry as he is about religion - that anger does not come from a vacuum or other people's experiences - the personal is still political. It is what we do with that anger that will change the world over the long run.

However, this doesn't give Dawkins the right to dismiss the destructive power of the kind of sexual abuse many of us endured within the Christian system. It feels like I have spent a lifetime talking and writing about the damaging doctrines of Christianity - the subtle and not-so-subtle ones. My contention is that the doctrines make it even more difficult to cope with any kind sexual abuse. A number of commentators on this blog have pointed this out.

The combination (Christian teachings and sexual abuse) is lethal for many, and a lifetime psychological drain for most of us. And I agree with Dawkins that we would be better off without these horrible religious systems.

This is the last paragraph from my 1993 dissertation. Twenty years later (I finished it in August 1992 - defended in '93) and nothing much has changed - I could update the footnotes and the examples in the dissertation but why bother? I am still addressing the same issues but there are new players on the block and the arguments for "Christian virtues" are more nuanced than they were. Oh well, so goes academia!

"Theologians have failed to address child development issues and have underestimated the impact of Christian stories on the developing minds of children. These stories, even when stripped of their most virulent content, are still stories of violence. The stories of Ishmael's banishment, Cain and Abel, Abraham's intention to sacrifice Isaac, David and Goliath, Herod's murder of the infants, John the Baptist's death, the stoning of Stephen, the death of Ananias and Sapphira, the blinding of Paul are all violent stories at the behest of a greater good. Nowhere is that made clearer than in the passion narrative of Christianity. From the agony in Gethsemane to the betrayal by Peter, from the scourging of Jesus to the final crucifixion, the resurrection story of Jesus, the central glorifying image of Christianity, is imbued through and through with violence. These stories and many others are burned into the minds of Christian children forever. Supposedly, they are the stories about a loving god and how he cares for his children. What they are, in reality, are stories about a god who does not accept disobedience, requires that his children suffer, and punishes them when they fail. Furthermore, he is not above sacrificing one of them when he thinks it is necessary, whether it is his own son or an eleven-year-old girl. These are not abstract issues like questions of intentionality over which many a theologian has written many a page, but concrete issues concerning the lessons Christians are teaching their children about how life is to be lived. I was once asked, after delivering a paper at the American Academy of Religion on this topic, whether there would be anything left of Christianity if the 'virtues' I was discussing were dropped from the Christian theological agenda. My flippant response was, "Let's drop them and find out". My more serious response was that forty years from now we would have a group of people calling themselves Christians, but whose Christianity would bear little resemblance to what exists in the present. After finishing the research for this thesis and writing the dissertation, I now end with a more dire prediction. If Christianity does not reinvent itself, does not renounce the rationale for the necessity of the crucifixion, it will not only help to maintain child sexual assault as a continuing social problem, but it will also be a major factor in its continuing recreation, and the cycle of abuse will not end."


Thanks to Marie Celeste Hale for posting the following: http://mirandaceleste.net/2012/12/30/child-abuse-and-catholic-indoctrination-on-being-kindling-wood-for-hell/

Tangential Issues #4: A "Dismantling Rape Culture" Rating System for articles and books

Rape Culture: The Personal (fighting crocodiles) and the Systemic (clearing the swamp)

I am beginning to wonder about the purpose of many of the books and articles in the area of biblical scholarship that I have been reading over the last eight months. Are these works attempting to achieve anything vis-à-vis sexual violence against the believer in the pew or only within that group of Christians who make up its interpretative and authoritative strata? I have been finding it more and more difficult to understand how much of the biblical scholarship research that I read (or watch) would make a difference in eliminating rape culture in the long run. 

The #MeToo movement has made it possible to bring back into the foreground the problems of sexual violence in the Christian Bible, theology and norms. However, so often, what I am reading seems uninterested in solving the systemic nature of the problem in Christianity. The authors don't appear to be interested in or believe that there is a systemic nature to the problem in Christianity. If they interpret something differently, then that will be enough. 

You could say that they are worried about the crocodiles, and forget and/or rather don't believe that the crocodiles live in a Christian swamp created over the last 2,000 years. Furthermore, it seems to me that many of them are trying to reinvent the wheel. The ground-breaking work that was done in the late 1980s and early 1990s seems to have disappeared into thin air. What we need is a spaceship that is built on previous biblical and theological scholarship on sexual violence; in other words, a fundamental shift in the understanding of the nature of the universe and divinity. The historian in me sometimes wonders whether they even know that the wheel was already invented!!

So, as I start to put up a number of reviews, I will be asking two questions:

1. How useful is this book in the short run in the goal of helping Christian/ex-Christians survivors come to terms with the attempted murder of their souls.

2. How useful is this book in the long run in the goal of dismantling rape culture? 

My concerns in these books will be about addressing the problem of the systematic structure of rape culture in Christianity. This is a long term goal for many of us. However, helping victims in the here and now is also necessary. There aren't enough of us to walk the long path with the victims as they struggle to become survivors. I do accept that there are short term solutions that will help, and I certainly hope that they will change the face of Christianity in the future. 

Yes, I understand that many of you would argue that rape culture is not systemic to Christianity - stay tuned over the next few months or years to read why I believe that it is. 

My bottom line is that one needs to clean up the mess in one's own house before one even attempts to fix the world.

NOTE: The "dismantling rape culture" part of the title of the post comes from a 2021 book by Tracey Nicholls entitled Dismantling Rape Culture: The Peacebuilding Power of "MeToo". It is available FREE on Kindle or from other sources.

If you want to know more about Early Christianity and more, I recommend

LEARN FROM A NEW TESTAMENT SCHOLAR!

ONLINE COURSES BY DR. BART EHRMAN

And NO, I am getting any remuneration for the recommendation. 

They are very accessible even for someone who has no real understanding of Christianity. 

I would also recommend them for Christians who think they know about early Christianity.

I used his introductory textbook when I was teaching early Christianity - the first addition decades ago - these courses are not expensive and worth every penny, as far as I am concerned!!

Oh, those well meaning pastoral counsellors & educators

And God bless them, they do mean well but most of the time, they really don't have a clue.

The earlier post brought to mind another incident from the 2002 AAR regional conference. I was delivering a paper called, "God Isn't Really like That! - Or is he? The Child, the Bible and the Patriarchal God". The woman who was chairing the session was so excited to meet me. She had read my articles and wanted to know if maybe, sometime, I would like to lecture in one of her classes. She also told me that Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza had mentioned me in her latest book, Wisdom Ways (which I ran out and bought, of course). I delivered the paper and there were lots of questions that continued after the session. The next day, while we were all in line for cafeteria-style lunch, she came up to me and said something like, I think I know why are so interested in all of this. You were in a sexual relationship with your minister when you were about 17. Where she got that age is beyond me. I stood in line and looked at her for a minute, thinking about how I was going to answer this. I did not, at that time, bring my personal history into these academic discussions, for what should be obvious reasons (at some point, I will do a blog on the horror show that evolved when I did about 3 years later). I looked at her and said, "No, I was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest when I was 8 years old." I don't recall the rest of the minimal conversation, but it had something to do with how I didn't really think that the issues were well handled within the pastoral counselling department at St. Paul's, after she said that they had a course in the Canon Law (!!!) department that dealt with that. Needless to say, I never heard from her again.

What was sort of funny (not ha ha funny, but ironic funny) was that about 3 years later, as a peer reviewer for the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, I was sent a paper (on impact of child sexual abuse on some adult women) that came from the MA in Pastoral Counselling program at St. Paul's. St. Paul's is a Roman Catholic seminary and university with one of the best libraries in North America. After a first quick run through of a paper, the first place I go to for the review process is the bibliography to see whether the appropriate literature had been accessed for the review of literature. This review of literature should serve as the basis for understanding material, setting up the hypothesis and discussing the results. It was missing at least 6 critical books (and my dissertation). All 7 of these items were easily available at either St. Paul's or the University of Ottawa or Carleton University (the 3 universities are rather close together, so distance isn't an excuse & St. Paul's and the University of Ottawa are affiliated). I actually checked the on-line libraries at U of O & Carleton. All of these items would have answered the questions that the authors of the paper had in their discussion section of the paper. They would also have changed the structure of some of the questions that were asked of the participants. It was my recommendation to send the paper back to the drawing board, in large part because of this. I wasn't surprised, but it is so depressing to actually see how little things had changed. I should note that I would have been one of a minimum of three reviewers, so mine wasn't the sole decision maker on this submission.

We are finally getting a number of dissertation on the subject of god images, spirituality, psychology, child sexual abuse and religion (read Christianity - there is such a privileging of Christianity in most writings - they use "religion" when they mean Christianity). I will be reviewing them on the blog. From a cursory glance at a couple of them, it will not be a happy task. I love electronic databases - they make tracking these things so much easier that it was even 5 years ago, but it does mean that I don't have any reason not to keep up with the latest in my field! Maybe this will spur me to publish a book, who knows?

Proof-Texting: Everybody Does It!!

 First let's look at two definitions of proof-texting.

"Proof texting is the method by which a person appeals to a biblical text to prove or justify a theological position without regard for the context of the passage they are citing. ... Yet, while the method of proof texting can be problematic, nevertheless theology must still maintain a thoroughly biblical character." (Theopedia) [Missing text is an example of the worst of proof-texting according to the author of this post] Emphasis mine. This post leads to a myriad of explanations about the different problems - there seems to be an agenda behind all of the links, but it still has a lot of useful information about the problems of proof-texting.

"A proof text is a passage of scripture presented as proof for a theological doctrine, belief, or principle. Prooftexting (sometimes "proof-texting" or "proof texting") is the practice of using quotations from a document, either for the purpose of exegesis, or to establish a proposition in eisegesis (introducing one's own presuppositions, agendas, or biases). Such quotes may not accurately reflect the original intent of the author, and a document quoted in such a manner, when read as a whole, may not support the proposition for which it was cited. The term has currency primarily in theological and exegetical circles." (Wikipedia) I would add the exegesis is far from "value free". 

This is a predominantly Christian issue at this point in time, although in the future, I can see it being applicable to the scholars from other religions who are parsing their own religious texts. From the ultra-conservative to the ultra-liberal, Christian theologians, pastoral counsellors, biblical scholars of all genres, as well as pastors can be accused of proof-texting. It is the nature of the primary text - The Christian Bible (which includes The Hebrew Bible and The Jesus (et al) Bible, as well as the Apocrypha in some forms of Christianity) that causes the problem, of course. It contains myriads of contradictory statements because the texts are from different genres, different time periods, different theological points of view, all of which can create very different understandings of the texts themselves and allow for radically different understandings of the core message of Christianity (if there can even be a core message).

These contradictions have been a problem from the beginning of Christianity. The church fathers were wrestling with this problem. They truly believed that all of the texts were divinely inspired and ultimately determinative for understanding "god's will" for believers. And that all the Scriptures could be harmonized. This was the assumption of Saint Augustine of Hippo, and moving forward to the Reformation period, Jean (John) Calvin to name two theologians who gave it a try. From a humanistic point of view, some of their solutions are dreadfully awful. Just saying!

The problem as I see it is that any "proof from the text", whether regarding "domestic violence" or whether Jesus was "a prophet, an apocalyptic, a fundamentalist, socially progressive or prosperity gospel supporter (see Matt. 25:14-30)" can all be proved and disproved by scriptural texts. Hence the dilemma that Christians find themselves in, particularly those who are trying to change things in the realm of violence - sexual or physical, systemic (war) or individual (gender issues). As long as The Christian Bible is considered to be "the revealed word of god" and it just has to be interpreted correctly, proof-texting will remain the bug-a-boo of Christian theology.  

Here are three of my posts that address this issue in one way or another.

Vessels of Terror - revised

I have been meaning to write a comment in response to the blog Atonement, Cycles of Abuse, and Virtue/Atonement [this blog post is no longer available so I have removed the link] ever since I read it in the spring. It is gratifying to see how seriously students took the conundrums posed by mine and Brown & Parker’s articles in Patriarchy, Christianity and Abuse: A Feminist Critique.

What struck me the most was the reference to M.Shawn Copeland’s concept of “vessels of terror”. This is a powerful way of explaining the problem that people like myself have with Christian theology to those whose faith has never been destroyed by the very core values of their belief system.

A good example to explain how something seemingly innocuous can become a “vessel of terror”: I was explaining this concept to a friend of mine and he asked me whether the following story would be a good explanation of what I was talking about. A particular painting by Otto Donald Rogers of a prairie field with a leather belt on the ground was part of an installation in an Ottawa office building. A woman who would have had to face the painting every day from her cubicle said that she couldn't live with it. It reminded her of the beatings that she had had as a child. The installers took the piece out of the installation. This painting of Otto Rogers was a “vessel of terror” for this woman.

I tend to try and stay away from using the formal structures of theology, however, it appears that what I tend to do is called “a Hermeneutics of Critical Evaluation”: a bottom-up or ethnographic form of analysis (I discovered that this is the formal way to describe what I do in Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways, 77). And this form of hermeneutics or biblical/theological interpretation if heard by “traditional (read malestream) hermeneutics” can only lead to serious questions about the received wisdom of the last two thousand years of Christianity.

There is an attachment to these beliefs (or virtues) that are at the core of Christianity. For so many people, they work to explain the world. However, just because people use the identified virtues of the system to find some way to ameliorate their position, that doesn't undo the damage that they have already caused. In fact, they serve to maintain the status quo. There are examples in the discussion on the atonement blog of women who use these beliefs to “get them through the night”. While it is understandable, I would argue that all this does is keep them in a place where they can be damaged again and again by these “vessels of terror”. Suffering, for example, can be accepted because this is part of the travails of this world, and you will be rewarded in the next life if you just "keep your chin up" ("God doesn't give you a mountain that you can't climb" - ask This time Lord, you gave me a mountain this time). It keeps the abused in their place and reproduces the structures that will allow the next generation to be abused once more. In the long term, it changes nothing, which is why I couldn't stay within the confines of the Christian belief system. In the final analysis, the structures/virtues are so embedded in the core belief system that there is no way to make any kind of compromise with it. And Lord knows I tried!

I do understand why people try so hard to find some way to make the belief system work. If they can’t make it work at some level, then where do they go? Is there any way around them? What do you replace them with? How much time will people actually spend trying to mitigate the impact of these "vessels of terror”?

I can only say, “Go watch Deliver Us From Evil, then tell me that these “vessels of terror” are worth keeping.” If you have already watched it, then go watch it again. 

ADDENDUM:
I looked to see if I could find the Otto Rogers' painting that I talked about. I didn't. However, I really like this one. It is called Marching Trees and is apparently currently on sale at the Paul Kuhn Gallery, although I couldn't find it on the gallery's website.