I struggled with this for some time; last year I read a really insightful book by David Instone-Brewer an evangelical scholar who did his doctoral work on rabbinics. Brewer’s excellent study resolved the issue for me. Brewer puts Christ’s words in the context of rabbinic debates of his day. He argues, persuasively I think, that in Christ’s day there was by and large a consensus amongst rabbinical schools that the torah allowed divorce when one spouse seriously neglected the other (by such things as refusing to feed them, abandoning them, refusing to give them clothes, etc and abuse would fall under this). Debate revolved around what were licit grounds in addition to this, particularly in light of Deuteronomy 24. The Shammai school argued that Deut 24 also allowed divorce in cases of adultery, whereas the Hillel school allowed a man to divorce his wife for adultery and “any matter” which in some readings included finding another women attractive or dumping her because she did not cook a meal well.

Christ’s words, then, about not divorcing for “any cause” but only for adultery, meant that he was siding with Shammai and hence his statements did not rule out divorce for other grounds. Brewers account also makes sense of the different wordings in Mark and Matthew and the slightly different statements of Paul. Read in its context then, Christ was rejecting the Hillel claim that a man could divorce his wife for any reason at all. He was not rejecting the traditional Jewish claim that a women could leave an abusive spouse. It is interesting to note also that the scriptural practise of paying a “mohar” (often incorrectly interpreted as bride price) was designed to protect women in this way. The groom was required to pay a significant sum of money to the women’s father which he then had to hold in trust for the woman (remember in the ancient world women often married in their teens). If the man was abusive, cheated on her or abandoned her, this money would go to the women to help her get on her own feet, it was a substantial sum of money and, as a result, women who divorced in these situations had a fair amount of financial support. I’d love to write something on this as a resource for battered women or groups helping them sometime. I think it would be helpful for those who deal with evangelical Christian women to assist them in a way that does not make them feel like they are compromising their religious beliefs if they leave an abusive spouse, in fact Madeleine’s law paper on domestic violence that she referred to addressed this issue.

That makes me deeply sad. I don’t think that a woman’s difficulty to leave a violent relationship can ever be described as ‘failure’. That’s not a situation any person should have to live in – it takes a lot strength for a woman being abused to ensure that she and her kids just get by from day to day. The failure lies with the person inflicting the violence, and with anyone who knows something’s wrong yet does nothing.

I agree entirely, it’s mistaken to think that it is the woman’s fault.

The ironic thing is that DVVs that I have known have actually all been fairly strong, intelligent people and from what I have read this is the norm – they are not the doormats people making cringe statements make them out to be. From what I have read this is partly why the abuser feels the need to control because they are outwitted on some level – you don’t need to control a doormat.

Its one of those things that you either have to live through or watch someone live through or really study to get the complexity of so I try to not get too riled when someone says it.

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But from time to time I’ve heard people make comments like, ‘I’d never put up with an abusive relationship – I’m a strong person’ (not often from someone professing Christian beliefs, admittedly), and this makes me cringe. It’s just not a situation in which making character judgements is helpful. I’ve known women who’ve stuck with abusive relationships out of a commitment to marriage as an institution – and although I don’t agree with their interpretation of marriage, I do have some respect for this. Every now and again an abusive partner does make a commitment to mend his ways – which of course makes the decision whether to call time on the marriage more tricky.

My relationship with my older two children’s father was de facto (common law marriage in the eyes of the church) until 6 weeks after the birth of my eldest daughter as I had made a pact with myself that if the violence I have been subjected to during pregnancy continued after birth I would leave. My child would not witness violence.

After I threw him out I came to the realisation that God was real and I needed to follow him. While it took me another 4 years from that point to get following him to loosely resemble what a Christian’s life should look like and countless reconcilliations including one that resulted in my son due to my addiction/inability to let go of the hope that the person I had loved and committed myself to would change, at no point did he become a Christian or treat me as a Christian husband should treat me so the church, rightly, agreed that I was under no obligation to pursue the relationship or wait and pray, especially in the face of the violence. The church was prepared to support me escaping the relationship permanently years before I was. I should add that due to my moving around the country and explored theology I was in 5 churches during this period, a range of denominations from presbytarian to pentecostal to calvinist reformed, and every one of them had pretty much the same response (though the latter’s was the most theologically correct).

While some churches do and have gotten it wrong, I think most have a fairly correct understanding of how to balance the commitment to marriage with the prohibition against divorce.

Recent blog post: Bullying (Again) and Coming Posts

People, when faced with having to make hard, life changing choices and their mental state is somewhat fragile due to what they have gone through, need time to made those choices when they themselves are ready to make them. However, when children that they are responsible for are also being harmed by their taking time I think on some level, some responsibility and ownership for the harm that befalls the children falls on the person delaying removing them if, and only if, they could have left but chose not to.

The level of that responsibility is clearly not huge – the person causing the harm is most certainly who should be shouldering the brunt of it and I think factors such as how feasible removing the children and yourself from harm also should weigh in – if someone is not capable of leaving or the level of abuse is so severe they are mentally paralysed or they have zero means to leave then of course no responsibility for not leaving should be put on them to any degree at all.

But in my situation I had family who wanted to help, I had friends who wanted to help, I had welfare at my disposal and I could work; and although I was dealing with a violent abusive and controlling person, he was not at the extreme psycho end of the spectrum and he would not and did not prevent me from leaving him. Yes my capacity to leave was diminished by the abuse but it was not extinguished and looking back, I delayed longer than I should have. Given this, I choose to take some, not much, just a little, responsibility for making the decision to get involved with him which, given what I knew about him, was a dumb choice and the decision to linger when I could have left but I didn’t want to deal with it.

These sorts of distinctions are very complex. While I think there is an element of truth to the kneejerk response “why doesn’t he/she just leave?” even though I concede it is never that simple because each case is different due to the circumstances as these effect the degree of culpability, we are usually talking about adults with some degree of capability who are not actually trapped in their situations; obviously sometimes this is the case but it is not the norm. When it is just you to consider you have the luxury of time and hesitation, when there are children to consider you have an obligation to get to the point you can leave as fast as possible and if you delay when you could leave then you have to own some of that.

Having set out some of my thinking, going back to my first paragraph, I feel that by owning some degree of the failure I am taking responsibility for my new, violence free life and in a strange way owning it is empowering. I am not and was not a powerless victim that things just happened too, I was an adult who made choices and whilst I made some bad ones, ultimately I stepped up and made good ones – to me that sits better.

Recent blog post: Bullying (Again) and Coming Posts

It’s certainly a bridge too far to suggest that Christianity causes domestic violence. I think it’s fairer to say that the value a society places on marriage (which doesn’t stem only from Christianity) can be related to how difficult it is for non-traditional families to manage. Life for a woman who leaves a relationship (particularly if she has kids, and is leaving a violent relationship) can be hard, stressful and lonely – the more so if she doesn’t have family or financial resources to help. I know women who’ve left violent partners with a deep sense of failure that they weren’t able to hold their marriages together. It should be possible to respect marriage and those who enter into it without the corollary being that, when marriages/relationships don’t work, the people involved are failures or deserve some sort of punitive response.

A couple I know met through their church, got married, and became the poster-children for marriage within their congregation. When their marriage started to fail, the church put a lot of pressure on them to stay together. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, but it did cause them a fair amount of extra unhappiness and humiliation as their marriage disintegrated while everyone watched.

I think the Christian approach should be supportiveness towards those who are married (in a meaningful way – eg by being understanding of the challenges that couples inevitably go through, not by offering dumb platitudes), while recognising that shit does in fact happen, and that people coming out of marriages for whatever reason still need support from their communities.

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If I understand you correctly on the moral value of autonomy I probably agree with you but it does come down to how you define autonomy – Matt keeps saying “I must write a post on autonomy some time”, I wish he would. There are a lot of different views so it depends what you mean by it.

I agree that the Sodom and Gomorrah incident can be read rather disturbingly, however, I don’t think that Lot is being portrayed as being a good person in that passage. There is an irony present in the text that is worth highlighting in that Lot gets raped by his daughters in the next chapter. Genesis has a lot of ironies where people do wrong things and then what they do comes back to them – this is common with the patriarchs and is particularly true of Jacob as well. The Torah, which Genesis is the preface to, actually has laws that condemn different things that the patriarchs did. Anyway, I have asked Matt to do his Sunday Scripture post on this passage so hopefully he will expound further tomorrow. He is off reading commentaries on it right now so it looks likely!

Matt has written something explaining turning the other cheek previously too, An Eye for an Eye and Turning the Other Cheek.

I have heard what you said about Falwell before. I am not familiar with the legislation that was proposed or what the problem with it was. We all know that the way opposing sides spin each others positions is often very unfair – eg opponents of the removal of s59 as a defence from the crimes act were accused of supporting child abuse and those who support abortion as a lawful option are often portrayed as being anti-life – so I am not sure if the reports around Falwell’s position is accurate. I don’t agree with everything he says but as points out in Genocide ! Who Cares? Tell them about crazy Falwell and Tinky Winky he is often unjustly maligned.

While there is always going to be disagreement as to what the correct position is and how to weight various positions in any group, Christians as a whole oppose domestic violence and support strict enforcement of domestic violence laws. The puritans in the 16th century were very strong on opposing domestic violence as were most of the reformers – people were excommunicated for it, a practice that I would happily see revived.

Your comments reminded me that I once wrote a paper for Law, Society and Domestic violence refuting the claim that Christianity was the cause of domestic violence. I have often meant to bring it out and pull out bit of it and turn it into a blog post.

Anyway you will find no argument from us against the notion that the current laws in New Zealand against domestic violence and the implementation and application of them are not tough enough.

I am a survivor of domestic violence. I grew up witnessing it and that experience caused me massive harm. I then went on to have more than one relationship that turned violent [I should make it clear that I am NOT in such a relationship currently].

I have a broken bone that protrudes from my hand and a scar on my back where my vertebrae was cracked from a kick and then pinched the surrounding tissue resulting in a major abscess that had to be surgically drained. The x-rays and drugs administered during this time were given to me before I knew I was pregnant with my oldest son who turned out to have Aspergers Syndrome – I always have worried that these were the cause of his disability.

My teenage daughter has been massively messed up because of both my initial failure to leave her father and my inability once I did, due to the failure and limitations of the legal system, to keep her father away from her and her brother (who ironically, due to his Aspergers, can separate the issues from the emotions and is largely unaffected). Due to the failure of the law and legal system, the man that left these injuries on me and has caused irreparable harm to my children, continues to abuse and harass me and harm my children to this day. The most recent incident was in the last week. Any sensible legal moves that can improve the plight of victims of domestic violence and their children has both Matt’s and my support.

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