Editor’s Note: “International Voices” is a monthly series of articles featuring resources and reflections from the IBTS community, a theological training school and research center in Amsterdam.
As a son who witnesses his father’s violence against his mother, I am a victim of violence against women.
The physical violence only affected my mother, but the psychological violence weighed on everyone. I somatized this climate of violence, suffering from epilepsy until I was seventeen. My other siblings, instead, suffered from anxiety, nervous breakdowns, and bulimia.
When it comes to gender violence, churches are often obstacles rather than solutions.
In many congregations, women are partially or fully excluded from ministries. There are women pastors in the Adventist tradition I belong to, but ordination is denied to them.
The discrimination of churches against women significantly weakens the credibility of their commitment to fighting gender violence.
Churches are also often unprepared for gender violence. A wall of silence and shame is created around the abuse women suffer.
I once met a woman who, for months, was angry and could not forgive her sixteen-year-old daughter who “got raped.” She, like many other church members, believes that if a woman is raped, it is for something wrong she has done. It is her fault.
With their emphasis on sin and their fear of sex, many churches end up transmitting feelings of guilt, rather than consolation, to the victims.
Churches must break down the walls of silence and shame. Violence and abuse must be named and denounced, and victims must not be seen as guilty of the violence against them.
The gospels themselves teach this, not hiding a bitter truth: Jesus suffered physical and, perhaps, even sexual abuse before his execution.
In the ancient Roman empire, soldiers tortured those condemned to death, sometimes by way of rape. Although it wasn’t written in the biblical narrative, Jesus may have experienced this.
What is certain is that he was stripped naked, scourged, dressed and then exposed naked on the cross again, humiliated in front of the contemptuous gaze of the crowd. This harkens to the modern experience of women’s nakedness being exposed on social media without their consent.
With this in mind, churches must begin to see the “Christology of abuse”: Jesus understands women who suffer physical and sexual abuse because he also suffered it. There is no sin and no guilt in being the victim of violence and abuse.
Uninformed pastoral care practices also sometimes hinder healing from abuse. The faithful woman must “carry her cross” (that is, suffer violence) for the love of her children and her husband, who, thanks to his docile testimony, could repent and come to faith.
The church encouraged my mother to be patient and to endure, praying for the Lord to give her the strength to “carry her cross.” However, without judging the past and the good intentions of many soul carers, this harmful practice of pastoral care must be identified and corrected.
Indeed, the true meaning of the cross is not to legitimize suffering, but to denounce it.
The cross is not the place of Christ’s suicide but of his unjust condemnation to death. The cross of Christ should not be placed on the woman herself by inviting her to endure the violence. Instead, pastors and churches must take up the cross of condemning violence and protecting women.
It is too easy for the church to ask victims to endure violence and blame them if they can’t. However, it is the church’s responsibility to help them escape their oppression.
Eighteen years ago, my father became seriously ill with Parkinson’s disease. My mother cared for him until his death in November 2021. In his illness and state of dependence, my father asked forgiveness from my mother, his children and the Adventist church in which he was baptized.
The epilogue was exactly what the pastoral care of acceptance wanted: if you endure, your testimony will conquer your oppressor. However, it wasn’t exactly a happy ending.
My mother was condemned to unhappiness. For thirty years, she was abused.
For fifteen more years, she was the caretaker for her abuser. Now, she is sick from so many blows and fatigue.
All of us in our family carry in our minds and bodies the wounds of so much violence inflicted during those thirty years.
I cannot know what would have happened if my mother had been helped differently. Still, as a parent, I try to teach my daughter, who will soon turn seventeen, that God has given her physical and psychological dignity.
A happy woman is much more useful to God and the church than an abused wife.Churches must break down the walls of silence and shame. Violence and abuse must be named and denounced, and victims must not be seen as guilty of the violence against them.