Domestic violence within our plain culture?

[jahertz]

Grace, it takes a lot to startle me at this point in my life, but I confess I'm taken aback by your decision to open your participation in a public thread by launching vague abuse smears against unnamed board members of an organization you just learned about, regarding a person you admit to not knowing in the present. I think good taste at the very least dictates that you should retract your unsourced public smear and replace it with something helpful, such as documentation of the historic abuse you allege happened, sent directly to the organization you suspect is being duped by said abuser.

As vice-president of LifeRing Ministries, I would be as good a choice to receive such intelligence as anyone. PM me through the Mennonet message system if you like and we can exchange contact info. But please refrain now and in the future from casually smearing Christian ministries in public without evidence. That's unprofessional, irresponsible, and destructive.

First of all, the information I relayed in my comments were NOT unsourced or without evidence. I am amazed that you accuse me of smearing an unnamed board member and a ministry, when the depiction of a husband in the description on the website, is a really bad smear on a man in a very public manner. I am in NO WAY defending the actions of this husband, or that he should not have been held accountable, but airing that past dirty laundry in such detail, compromises the integrity of your ministry. If we claim to be true followers of Christ, and believe in forgiveness, do we air the past dirty laundry of an Indvidual so publicly? Should I have contacted the ministry privately? Maybe, However the airing of dirty laundry was NOT private on the ministry's website. Using your words, "That's unprofessional, irresponsible, and destructive."

As for the claim that men routinely hit women because they "snap" and can't help themselves and are then unfairly blamed, this is pretty much a recitation of the default cover story of every wife beater who ever got caught, "Christian" or otherwise.

If there's one thing all conservative Anabaptists agree on, it's that men are called to be spiritual leaders in the home. I can think of no circumstance in which the Gospel definition of Christian leadership can be stretched to shift or reduce a man's responsibility for a physical attack on his wife, under any provocation whatsoever.

You put words in my mouth. If you read my post I DID NOT say that man can't help themselves and in no way did I defend abuse. Nor did I say that men are unfairly blamed or their responsibility be reduced. I said sometimes, (not always) the women can be verbally abusing and gaslight their husbands, and the women are deemed as the poor abused woman, when she participated in abuse as well.

Bottom line, I believe in each individual person taking responsibility for their abuse, whether it is the man or the wife. You seem to completely negate the fact that sometimes women can be abusers as well, especially with their words and manipulation.

Christian leaders don't get to bask in all the status of "headship" and then suddenly claim helplessness when we feel so "henpecked" or worn out by our wives that we are simply overwhelmed by the urge to slug them a good one. That's not Christianity, that's old-fashioned unregenerate heathen buck-passing, and we men have proven quite capable of doing it for centuries without additional cheerleading from women, thank you very much.

And neither should verbally abusive, manipulating, gaslighting women be coddled and not be made accountable. "That's not Christianity, that's old-fashioned unregenerate heathen buck-passing, some women have proven quite capable of doing it for centuries without additional cheerleading from men, thank you very much".

BTW, I had no one in mind in my comments, but have been close to some situations where I saw women treat their husbands horribly with their words and manipulation. Yet they are given a pass because they are "women".

Grace, I doubt it's worthwhile for me to respond to everything you said here, but I'd just like to point out that it's deeply disingenuous to accuse someone of a "smear" for stating truthfully that a woman's husband served time for attempting to murder her. I assume you are a reader of the Bible; if so, you've surely noticed that people who commit crimes like murder do not get a carefully-curated coverup of their crimes when their victims' stories are told, so that no one's feelings are hurt by the unpleasant details. If "airing dirty laundry" is to be deemed a crime, the authors of the Bible are some of the worst offenders to be found anywhere. Does that fact that King David's "past dirty laundry" is repeatedly and frankly spelled out "compromise the integrity" of the Bible?

Indeed, I could have searched far without finding a more potent example of the disordered priorities that have led to our current DV crisis than the fact that someone like you, an apparently Plain woman, expresses far less intensity of anger that a man tried to murder his wife than that the wife, after narrowly surviving, had the gall to make him look bad by mentioning it publicly. May God have mercy on our erring souls.

[Grace]

Grace, I doubt it's worthwhile for me to respond to everything you said here, but I'd just like to point out that it's deeply disingenuous to accuse someone of a "smear" for stating truthfully that a woman's husband served time for attempting to murder her. I assume you are a reader of the Bible; if so, you've surely noticed that people who commit crimes like murder do not get a carefully-curated coverup of their crimes when their victims' stories are told, so that no one's feelings are hurt by the unpleasant details. If "airing dirty laundry" is to be deemed a crime, the authors of the Bible are some of the worst offenders to be found anywhere. Does that fact that King David's "past dirty laundry" is repeatedly and frankly spelled out "compromise the integrity" of the Bible?

Indeed, I could have searched far without finding a more potent example of the disordered priorities that have led to our current DV crisis than the fact that someone like you, an apparently Plain woman, expresses far less intensity of anger that a man tried to murder his wife than that the wife, after narrowly surviving, had the gall to make him look bad by mentioning it publicly. May God have mercy on our erring souls.

Once again you put words in my mouth and didn't actually read what I said. I find ALL abuse very upsetting and all abusers need to be held accountable for their actions. That includes the abuse women can heap on their husbands as well, something you refuse to acknowledge. I know that this individual's husband paid the price for his actions. How much more do you think he needs to pay for what he did? Is making sure everyone knows what he did 27 years ago, a picture of what Jesus taught us in the scriptures about forgiveness?

Matthew 6 14 & 15
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 18 21 & 22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Luke 17 3 & 4
So watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.
Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Luke 6 14 & 15
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

[jahertz]

Once again you put words in my mouth and didn't actually read what I said. I find ALL abuse very upsetting and all abusers need to be held accountable for their actions. That includes the abuse women can heap on their husbands as well, something you refuse to acknowledge. I know that this individual's husband paid the price for his actions. How much more do you think he needs to pay for what he did? Is making sure everyone knows what he did 27 years ago, a picture of what Jesus taught us in the scriptures about forgiveness?

Matthew 6 14 & 15
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 18 21 & 22
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Luke 17 3 & 4
So watch yourselves. “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.
Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Luke 6 14 & 15
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Grace, the Scriptures never, not once, equate forgiveness with burying awkward parts of one's story to protect the reputation of a wicked and destructive person, even if that person did subsequently repent—and a key mark of godly repentance is a total and final end of trying to protect one's reputation from the consequences of past sin. Again, having everyone know about one's attempted murder twenty-seven years later is nothing compared to the gruesome stories of crime preserved about named people in Scripture, for millions of people to read thousands of years later and counting.

Surviving attempted murder by one's spouse is life-altering and soul-shaking to an extent scarcely imaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced such a thing. In what possible world is it just or fair to demand that someone living with the scars of that kind of trauma constantly censor her story so the perpetrator of the violence doesn't have to look bad?

My personal number one tip for anyone who doesn't want to end up cast as an attempted murderer in someone else's story is to do one's level best, by the grace of God, to avoid trying to kill people. When it comes to protecting one's reputation, I've observed that an ounce of not being a murderer is worth a truckload of trying to shut people up later.

This idea that forgiveness means victims must stop mentioning what was done to them is deeply entrenched and commonly taught in Plain culture, Grace, and has been eloquently displayed in your quoted comments here. Tragically for the communities who have embraced it, it is a doctrine of demons which has poisoned our churches and families and stands as a formidable block against communal repentance of our failure to stand with Jesus and his broken lambs, and our failure to expose and root out the wolves who still feast freely at our communion tables.

This anti-Christ teaching ultimately serves one purpose: to ensure that wolves are not stripped of their sheep's clothing and thus maintain access to a steady supply of prey. On the record, I stand firmly against this teaching and am firmly committed to combating it wherever it appears, for the sake of Jesus and his church.

[Grace]

Grace, the Scriptures never, not once, equate forgiveness with burying awkward parts of one's story to protect the reputation of a wicked and destructive person, even if that person did subsequently repent—and a key mark of godly repentance is a total and final end of trying to protect one's reputation from the consequences of past sin. Again, having everyone know about one's attempted murder twenty-seven years later is nothing compared to the gruesome stories of crime preserved about named people in Scripture, for millions of people to read thousands of years later and counting.

Surviving attempted murder by one's spouse is life-altering and soul-shaking to an extent scarcely imaginable to anyone who hasn't experienced such a thing. In what possible world is it just or fair to demand that someone living with the scars of that kind of trauma constantly censor her story so the perpetrator of the violence doesn't have to look bad?

My personal number one tip for anyone who doesn't want to end up cast as an attempted murderer in someone else's story is to do one's level best, by the grace of God, to avoid trying to kill people. When it comes to protecting one's reputation, I've observed that an ounce of not being a murderer is worth a truckload of trying to shut people up later.

This idea that forgiveness means victims must stop mentioning what was done to them is deeply entrenched and commonly taught in Plain culture, Grace, and has been eloquently displayed in your quoted comments here. Tragically for the communities who have embraced it, it is a doctrine of demons which has poisoned our churches and families and stands as a formidable block against communal repentance of our failure to stand with Jesus and his broken lambs, and our failure to expose and root out the wolves who still feast freely at our communion tables.

This anti-Christ teaching ultimately serves one purpose: to ensure that wolves are not stripped of their sheep's clothing and thus maintain access to a steady supply of prey. On the record, I stand firmly against this teaching and am firmly committed to combating it wherever it appears, for the sake of Jesus and his church.

Wow those are harsh words. Let me remind you that coddling and protecting abusive wives is the doctrine of demons and a very anti-Christ way of thinking, as well. I am confused why you can't acknowledge that fact.

One more thing as reminder. There is an almighty God....and your NOT Him.

[jahertz]

Wow those are harsh words. Let me remind you that coddling and protecting abusive wives is the doctrine of demons and a very anti-Christ way of thinking, as well. I am confused why you can't acknowledge that fact.

One more thing as reminder, then I digress. There is an almighty God....and your NOT Him.

Those words, Grace, were meant to be harsh. The eternal souls of my brothers and sisters are on the line, and no believer should be ashamed to agree with the harsh words of Jesus against those with power and status who crush and destroy the weak.

If, as I understand it, you mean to equate my defense of a Christian survivor's freedom to mention that an intimate partner once tried to kill her with "coddling and protecting abusive wives," then I must firmly disagree with your insistence that this is a doctrine of demons, and I tremble for you.

My only hope, as well as yours, is that there is an almighty God who holds every soul in his hand, and that he is merciful and just and able.

[Grace]

Those words, Grace, were meant to be harsh. The eternal souls of my brothers and sisters are on the line, and no believer should be ashamed to agree with the harsh words of Jesus against those with power and status who crush and destroy the weak.

If, as I understand it, you mean to equate my defense of a Christian survivor's freedom to mention that an intimate partner once tried to kill her with "coddling and protecting abusive wives," then I must firmly disagree with your insistence that this is a doctrine of demons, and I tremble for you.

My only hope, as well as yours, is that there is an almighty God who holds every soul in his hand, and that he is merciful and just and able.

Stop misconstruing what I said. I wasn't talking about a specific person when I mentioned coddling and protecting abusive women. You still will not acknowledge that sometimes women can be manipulative, gaslighters and verbally abusive to their husbands. I find it ironic when the verbal manipulating abuse of some wives, is completely glossed over and protected by those who claim they want to help those who have been abused.

I agree with your last sentence. God is just and able and in His time he will work in the lives of people.

[jahertz]

Since it's been repeatedly implied that I deny the existence of female abusers, it's probably worthwhile at this point to state on the record that everyone in this work knows there ARE abusive women who control and dominate their intimate partners, although even in mainstream Western society female domestic abusers appear to be significantly less common than male due to a complex and shifting mix of biological and social factors. I am personally aware of such cases, but I and others whose experience I trust believe them to be comparatively rare in Plain circles. This observation matches what one would expect given the social conditioning and spiritual teaching on gender relations to which most Plain men and women are subject.

Because this ALWAYS comes up eventually in these discussions—usually, but not always, as a strawman—let me preemptively repudiate the idea that the generally higher male propensity to domestic abuse is linked to some inherent moral inferiority of males to females. This is sometimes implied if not actively asserted in radical feminist circles, and I know of no credible evidence for it in biology, sociology, religious history, or Scripture. I can't even imagine how one would begin testing such a claim.

As believers, we have no reason to deny that our broken world comprises about equal numbers of wicked men and wicked women. But believers in any orthodox Christian tradition also affirm that the genders are created distinct by God, specially fitted for characteristic roles in the Creation order. These created differences, which I imagine any of us could enumerate at length, lead to characteristic gender-linked patterns on a host of physical, social, and spiritual axes—and they lead to gender-linked patterns of sin, with men being more prone, on average, to some types and women more prone, on average, to others. Social conditioning also influences how these differences unfold.

So when, as an Anabaptist addressing the specific sin pattern of domestic abuse in the specific context of Plain churches, I say that this sin appears far more prevalent among men than among women, please do not hear me say that men are naughty and women are nice, and thus churches ought to give women a free pass to do as they like, while breathing hellfire and brimstone at the pet sins of men. In my experience in Plain circles, I've found that the characteristic sins of the fair sex tend to be well understood, frequently rehearsed in public, and covered and denounced quite regularly and explicitly in Sunday sermons and casual conversation. I'm just here, you might say, to fill in a few gaps.

Pastors, other people helpers, and the churches where they serve need to be aware that both male and female domestic abuse is possible, and learn the skills needed to correctly identify both. Part of that skillset is the awareness that one is statistically far more likely in Plain circles to encounter male-on-female domestic abuse than the reverse.

If I hear scratching at the door of my home in the woods of Oklahoma, it is possible that I am being visited by a roving Tasmanian Devil. However, as I approach the door and prepare for what I may encounter there, dozens of species will be higher in my awareness than the toothy bandit from down under. That's as it should be: when we approach a complex situation requiring intervention, competence includes beginning our investigation by ruling out the most common scenarios before proceeding to the rare ones.

In my experience, one common source of failure in Plain domestic abuse intervention is that many of us are conditioned to be hyper-vigilant against domineering wives and tolerant or even indulgent toward the same traits in husbands. So when a crisis arises in a marriage, we tend to dig first for evidence that the wife is out of her place, and to readily build that narrative on what is sometimes the flimsiest of evidence—an undertaking which an abusive husband always eagerly supports. I believe this mistake is generally unintended, but it is without question costing us precious souls, and I believe we are all duty bound to do what we can to correct it.

[steve-in-kville]

Welcome to MN. Come for the conflict. Stay for the plot

[Neto]

I should probably stay out of this, because I've kind of already "had my say". But I will "come to Grace's defense", because I think she has made it clear that one should expect male abuse to generally take a different form than female abuse. Men are *probably* more likely to "get physical*, where as women will tend to use the tongue more, and probably more *efficiently* than men. I know of a couple where the wife's father tended to be pretty verbally abusive to his adult children. Much to my embarrassment, I personally witnessed this (to children of both genders), and I see signs that tell me that at least one of his daughters is verbally abusive to her husband. But I would never expect him to ever mention it to anyone, because "that's not how a real man treats his wife". He will probably "go to the grave" with this secret securely locked away. Even men whose wives physically abuse them will often take this same stance, and they would never strike back. No, not all, but I would surmise that most genuinely Christian men would fit in this category.

[jahertz]

I should probably stay out of this, because I've kind of already "had my say". But I will "come to Grace's defense", because I think she has made it clear that one should expect male abuse to generally take a different form than female abuse. Men are *probably* more likely to "get physical*, where as women will tend to use the tongue more, and probably more *efficiently* than men. I know of a couple where the wife's father tended to be pretty verbally abusive to his adult children. Much to my embarrassment, I personally witnessed this (to children of both genders), and I see signs that tell me that at least one of his daughters is verbally abusive to her husband. But I would never expect him to ever mention it to anyone, because "that's not how a real man treats his wife". He will probably "go to the grave" with this secret securely locked away. Even men whose wives physically abuse them will often take this same stance, and they would never strike back. No, not all, but I would surmise that most genuinely Christian men would fit in this category.

Just to clarify terms a bit, the word "abuse" is generally used with a more specific, narrow definition in the field of family counseling or domestic violence intervention than it is in casual non-specialist conversation. I bring this up because what we mean when we talk about abuse has important implications for how we interact with families and suspected "abusers."

Because of my involvement in DV, I generally to use the word "abuse" in roughly the standard sense used by DV advocates and counselors. That is, abuse in this sense is not just any harmful behavior by one person toward another. There are couples and families where conflicts tend to be marked by yelling, demeaning language, and even sporadic physical scuffles. This behavior is certainly suboptimal and ungodly, and if it happens in the church it needs to be addressed and corrected, but it is not necessarily abusive in the classic sense.

To identify abuse, one looks for a pattern of consistent destructive, threatening, or demeaning behavior over time, directed by one partner toward the other, say, in a marriage, and aimed at control and domination of the victim by the abuser. The pattern of one-way control and domination over time is the key defining mark of an abusive relationship.

If both partners in a marriage yell whatever they want at each other in an argument, louder and louder, until one of them walks out and slams the door, you're certainly looking at carnality and bad relationship skills, but you're likely not looking at abuse. In an abusive relationship, one partner can say anything he (or she) wants with impunity, but if the other is deemed to have crossed the line, the abusive partner makes sure the victim suffers. In an abusive relationship, one partner is fully in charge, often including strict control of money, travel, and social interactions, and the other partner must comply or face the consequences. The abuser threatens and controls and orders, and the victim ducks her head and obeys, but is punished nonetheless.

A failure to distinguish between ordinary family dysfunction, such as poor conflict management, and full-blown domestic abuse is a common source of failure for ministry teams who encounter a real abuse crisis. Often church leaders have experience coaching families successfully through ordinary relationship problems, since such problems are more common and tend to be aired more freely than abuse. So in good faith, they approach an abuse situation, where a wicked and hypocritical partner is callously dominating and cowing a crushed and broken weaker partner, and they try to apply the classic strategies they have used effectively before. It's an apparently reasonable strategy, but it has disastrous results.

The application of typical family or marriage counseling to an abuse situation reliably makes the abuse situation worse, leaving the abuser empowered and the victim feeling even more trapped. If the church involved does not figure out their mistake on time and change tack, it is highly likely that one or both partners will end up leaving the church, and perhaps the faith. Or the abuse may go underground and continue to multiply its poisonous effects as each generation of the expanding family learns by example that power is about exploiting or being exploited, and how to hide from others at any cost the ugly things we do to each other behind closed doors. It is these situations that have long putrified in the shadows of Anabaptist churches, to the detriment of our families and our witness to the world. It is these we need to learn to handle far more effectively, without leaving the other undone.