We live in a global rape culture; gender violence has reached endemic levels in numerous countries and communities around the world, where sexual violence, family violence, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia have become a lived reality for many people (e.g. see UN Women 2017; United Nations Population Fund 2016; UNESCO 2016). Situated within this global rape culture, Christianity has, throughout its history and up to the present day, played a significant and often contentious role in shaping the social imaginary—or collective consciousness—surrounding gender violence. Within Christian interpretative traditions, certain biblical texts have often been used uncritically to support patriarchal gender hierarchies and cis-heteronormative discourses, which work to sustain and sanctify multiple forms of gendered violence (see e.g. Nason-Clark 1997; Haddad 2011; Vorster 2012). Church teachings (and church leaders) have counselled women to remain within violent marriages and forgive their abusers, promoted intolerance and negated the full humanity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans(gender) (LGBT) people, and sustained chronic levels of sexism and heteropatriarchy within church hierarchies, all in the name of the Christian faith. Equally problematic, in the past few decades, horrific levels of child abuse perpetrated by Christian individuals and institutions have come to light, despite systemic and self-preservatory attempts by these institutions to cover up this abuse.
To be sure, some Christian theologians and church leaders have responded to these issues by calling out and critiquing the complicity of the church and the Christian faith in perpetuating gender violence (e.g. see Adams and Fortune 1998; Althaus-Reid 2000, 2003; Fortune 1983, 2012; Nason-Clark 1999; Sneed 2010). Moreover , a number of Christian communities and organizations have begun to organize their efforts in educating congregants about gender violence prevention, as well as providing services that offer survivors pastoral care and support in their long journey towards healing. Laudable as these efforts doubtlessly are, they nevertheless do little to challenge the deeply entrenched structures, ideologies, and traditions within Christianity that play an undeniable role in sustaining gender violence within today’s global rape culture. To paraphrase Marie Marshall Fortune (2012, pp. 469−470), it is high time that members of the Christian community opened their eyes and ears to the pain of gender violence survivors, acknowledged the church’s responsibility to help survivors seek justice and healing, and admitted that the voices of these survivors have been (and continue to be) silenced by centuries of Christian teachings and traditions.
The aim of this volume is therefore to encourage and sustain conversations within the Christian tradition about this crucial issue. Weaving together insights from pastors, chaplains, sociologists, theologians, pastoral care providers, counsellors, and biblical scholars, the following chapters interrogate the complex and multifaceted relationships that exist between Christianity and gender violence. Authors approach this subject from a range of disciplinary perspectives, but all write from a place of recognition that urgent change is needed, and all share a commitment to making this change happen—within the academy, wider society, and the Christian community. The conversations included in this volume are by no means exhaustive in their analysis of this topic. Nor do any claim to hold “all the answers” to address this hugely complex problem. Nevertheless, we hope that readers are inspired to engage fruitfully in these conversations and begin their own. Our aim here is to foster transformative dialogues with the Christian community about our shared responsibility to end gender violence.
Starting off the conversation in Chap. 2, biblical scholar Emily Colgan delves into the best-selling book Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul, written by evangelical Christian couple Stasi and John Eldredge. The book offers Christian female readers guidance about what it means to live as a fully alive and feminine woman: a woman who is truly “captivating.” Drawing on a feminist epistemology, Colgan explores the imagery and ideology surrounding the depiction of women within this book. She contends that the gendered classifications at the heart of Captivating encode a patriarchal heteronormative logic, which contributes to an underlying rhetoric of gender violence and rape-supportive discourse. Through a close investigation of this text, Colgan’s analysis lays bare the symbolic world constructed in Captivating, and considers the qualitative impact that this world may have upon those who participate in its rhetorical vision of gender roles and relationships.
In Chap. 3, Robert Berra continues this exploration of evangelical Christian gender discourses, focusing on the role of men’s ministries in perpetuating cis-heteronormative and patriarchal ideals of masculinity. Berra argues that patriarchal strands running through the fabric of Christian theology, history, and practice bear a significant measure of responsibility for creating conditions that bestow upon men a sense of entitlement to control and access others’ bodies (particularly women’s bodies). Men’s ministries may participate in perpetuating these strands, thereby (unwittingly or not) propagating rape myths that help to sustain rape cultures. Berra deliberates the appeal and theoretical underpinnings of men’s ministries, analysing their entreaty to churches to “invite men back,” in order to correct what they call “the feminization of the church.” Critiquing David Murrow’s best-selling book, Why Men Hate Going to Church, as an example of the ambient level of sexism within some men’s ministry movements, he then sketches the difficulties and prospects—both practical and theological—of developing a men’s ministry as a site of resistance to rape culture.
In Chap. 4, the focus remains on problematic Christian discourses of masculinity, as Kathleen McPhillips explores Christian institutional contributions to cultures of sexual violence, looking particularly at the work of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017). This Royal Commission has investigated the pervasive occurrence of child sexual abuse within different institutions in Australia, including various faith-based communities. McPhillips explores the central reasons why sexual violence against children has been so widespread in religious organizations, especially the Catholic Church, which recorded the highest levels of child abuse of any organization investigated by the Commission. Specifically, she focuses on the abuses perpetrated within institutions run by the Marist Brothers, a male teaching order of Catholic celibate men, considering the particular role that its institutional framework and discourses of masculinity played in its culture of abuse.
Chapter 5 continues to interrogate church complicity in the perpetuation of gendered violence, as Daphne Marsden considers conservative Christian teachings on gender roles and hierarchies, and the ways that these are rooted in biblically based teachings on male headship and female submission. She explores both egalitarian and complementarian Christian readings of certain biblical texts, noting how the latter may validate patriarchal patterns of male hegemony, which justify spousal violence and prevent abused women from seeking or receiving support. Interspersed throughout her discussion are the testimonies of Christian women impacted by such violence, whose words illustrate first-hand some of the consequences of conservative Christian teachings on gender relationships. These women also serve as a reminder that the lives of real people are impacted by theological and biblical debates around church teachings and theologies. Marsden’s chapter ends with some practical guidance on what churches can do to begin tackling spousal violence and the patriarchal ideologies that underpin it.
In Chap. 6, Jo Henderson-Merrygold investigates other Christian discourses which can likewise contribute to gender violence—in this case, the systemic and epistemic violence experienced by LGBT people. She discusses the historic significance of the church as arbiter of morality and decency, particularly its influence on the creation and perpetuation of what Michel Foucalt (1979) called epistemes and discourses—those networks of beliefs, ideologies, social practices, and power relations that shape people’s understandings of and engagements with the world. Focusing on Christian heteronormative discourses of gender and sexuality, Henderson-Merrygold considers the ways that these are drawn upon to prescribe the recognition of others’ humanity in light of their gender identities and sexual preferences. Building on Gayatri Spivak’s work on epistemic violence and Judith Butler’s notion of “undoing” humanity, she explores how these discourses render queer lives and experiences unintelligible and not human, and the implications of this for the lived experiences of LGBT people. Specifically, she argues that these discourses may sustain certain forms of epistemic and systemic violence against the LGBT community, identifying its members as “Other,” while denying recognition to their full humanity and thus rendering them increasingly marginalized and vulnerable.
In Chap. 7, Dianne Rayson stays with this focus on the humanity of the “Other” as she studies the writings of twentieth-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the implications of his own theologies for contemporary discussions of gendered violence. Specifically, she focuses on Bonhoeffer’s early lecture “The Right to Self-Assertion” (1932), where he interrogates how power subverts relationships and ultimately results in the domination of the “Other” (including women) through systemic subjugation and war. Rayson examines this neglected piece of writing by Bonhoeffer in light of the problem of ra...