4. Abuse of Power: Perversions In the Name of Patriarchy
Perversions in the Name of Patriarchy
While patriarchy may not be the overarching cause of all abuse, it is an enormously significant factor, because in traditional patriarchy, males have a disproportionate share of power . . . So while patriarchy is not the sole explanation for violence against women, we would expect that male headship would be distorted by insecure, unhealthy men to justify their domination and abuse of women.
STEVEN TRACY
One might imagine that the “insecure, unhealthy men” Steven Tracy refers to in this chapter’s epigraph would be easily identified. We should be able to spot that sort of person—a staff member or a deacon at a church, the friendly neighbor next door. Most of the time, however, such men operate under the radar. My ex-husband was intelligent, articulate, and charming. Telltale signs of trouble were always blamed on others. In 1970, we moved from New Jersey, where we had lived for the first two years of our marriage, to the Chicago area, where he had been accepted for graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Although his previous problems at other schools would not have been erased from the record, his high Graduate Record Exam scores were impressive enough for admission. Within a year, however, there were problems. His thesis director, upset by his obstinate attitude, refused to continue working with him, forcing him to find another professor, who agreed to take him on only if he wrote on an entirely different topic. He blamed his difficulties on “liberalism,” on the school in general, and on both professors, though in the end, he completed a satisfactory thesis and was allowed to graduate.
With graduation in sight (now four years into our marriage), he applied to be a pastoral candidate of a small Bible church in Woodstock, Illinois. Of five candidates, the church chose him. In the three years that followed, I recall only one sermon that church elders found objectionable. On his first Mothers’ Day in the pulpit, he preached on Mary, whom he verbally pummeled for trying to keep Jesus “tied to her apron strings.” Say what? It was a thinly disguised rant against mothers and women in general. I sat in the congregation as bewildered as everyone else.
Yet attendance continued to increase to the point where new facilities were needed. Land was purchased, and my ex-husband prepared for the groundbreaking ceremony. Within months, however, in the spring of 1975, it was learned that he had been arrested for repeated theft of coffee and donut money at the county jail, where he had gone weekly to make pastoral visits.
The wretched shame I felt after we both had been confronted in our home by a church elder and his wife (who along with others—though not me—had seen the notice of the arrest in the local paper) was one of the most painful episodes of my marriage. I would have endured a dozen beatings to have escaped such humiliation. To my bewilderment, though, my ex-husband barely seemed bothered. To alleviate my sting of guilt, he agreed (on my insistence) to preach the following Sunday night a sermon of deep contrition from Psalm 51—a sermon I practically dictated to him.
As a result of his “sincere” and public apology, the church board allowed him to stay on until the end of the summer, giving us time to sell our house and for him to find another position. A number of people left the church, or at least temporarily stopped attending, but others treated us kindly, me in particular, mother of a toddler. On our last Sunday, some newer members, unaware of the behind-the-scenes negotiations, wept openly and seemed to blame the church leaders for the loss of their beloved pastor.
Despite a lengthy record of wrongdoing dating back to his early years at Wheaton College, his charm and obvious capabilities (and my behind-the-scenes maneuvering) opened doors for a Bible church ministry in Crown Point, Indiana, and further graduate studies at Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. I was very upset by what had happened in Woodstock (and questioned his claim to have been unfairly treated at Trinity), but he was my husband, and I was convinced that his commitment to turn his life around was for real. While new doors were opening, however, the violence behind closed doors continued. That was not how it was supposed to be. My dreams of a happy marriage continued to fade.
I’ve sometimes wondered about the wives of the biblical patriarchs. Did they, too, lose the hope of happiness? In my book Dynamic Women of the Bible, I have compared myself to a little-known patriarchal wife:
I once lived on 532 Pleasant Street in a small Midwestern town surrounded by rich farmland and large dairy herds. It was an idyllic setting, or so it seemed on the surface. But sin and scandal were all too real. I was a young minister’s wife and a new mother. Life was good. Then there was that unforgettable knock on the door. My world fell apart. We were forced to leave town unexpectedly and under a cloud as a result of the exposure of my husband’s hidden misdeeds. God might have rained down fire on that town or on us, but he did not. When we left, I looked back with anguish and guilt and utter sadness. Yes, I looked back. For me the shame was searing, and I can still feel that hot metaphorical sulfur singeing my skin now nearly forty years later.1
The allusion here is to Lot’s wife. In certain ways, I identify with her. Sodom, like Woodstock, was a small town surrounded by farmland. Like me, she was no doubt a busy wife and mother who may have enjoyed gardening and hanging clothes on the line. We both fled town with our small families, and we both looked back. For me, there was no pillar of salt, only shame and sorrow.
Part of biblical patriarchy is passing the mantel on to the oldest son to carry on the generational line. But God has a way of turning things upside down, and we see time and again that the oldest son does not carry on the line, as was true with the sons of the three patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Patriarchs dominated their households as ruler of the family. Period. Except for the exceptions. We find that Sarah not only orders Abraham around, as in telling him to give her a baby through her maidservant Hagar, but we also find God telling Abraham to do what Sarah tells him to do when Sarah later orders Hagar out of the household.
As was true with the reversal of the old patriarchal practice of favoring the oldest son, so was it true that women sometimes ruled the roost. This is particularly the case with Rebekah. Through her clever manipulation, she managed to secure the blessing for her favorite second-born son, Jacob. Indeed, her manipulation and dishonesty rivaled that of her father-in-law, Abraham, who convinced the Egyptian pharaoh that Sarah was not his wife, but only his sister. Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife, was as devious as he was, sneaky enough to surreptitiously steal her father’s household gods and then lie about it.
The Bible is a gold mine for anyone seeking to understand domestic relationships, and it spares nothing by way of family dysfunction. Whole books have been written on these patriarchs who walk out of the pages of Genesis, and we could write a treatise on just their domestic relationships alone. But for the purpose of this volume, it is important to understand how abuse, even domestic violence, is passed down from generation to generation. It is also significant to recognize that even as Abraham’s sin of betraying Sarah is not censured by God, neither is Rebekah’s pattern of manipulation. More significantly, Rebekah is not censured by God for taking on what would have been considered her husband’s rightful patriarchal duties.
The wives of Old Testament patriarchs do not live enviable lives. They are expected to give birth to sons, and for the three most-noted of them—Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel—it becomes a painful struggle. Indeed, this is another pattern that emerges in the Genesis account. Sarah’s ordeal is familiar—that of giving birth to her only child at age ninety. Rebekah, who bears twins, endures twenty years of barrenness prior to that most painful childbirth. Rachel is initially barren and competes with the fertile Leah for babies until finally giving birth to Joseph and Benjamin.
Although the patriarchs in Genesis are not known as good husbands and fathers, there are men in the Old Testament who are admirable. Elkanah, married to Hannah, is a loving husband who is anguished by her barrenness. His words are those of a compassionate husband desperately seeking to bring comfort: “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8). Here in this ancient patriarchal age is a man who deeply loves his wife—and not just because she’s giving him sons (since he has another wife for whom baby making is her forte). He’s touched by her heartbreak. Later she has the joy of bearing children, and her firstborn, Samuel, grows up to be a fine man and, for my money, the greatest prophet in Israel.
Another example of a caring patriarch is Boaz, who comes to life in the story of Naomi and Ruth. “Introduced into the narrative as a man of valor,” writes Carolyn Custis James, he “has a lot to lose. Yet amazingly, even with two strong women in his life . . . Boaz gains significantly. He . . . is not diminished, marginalized, or feminized in the slightest by being outnumbered and influenced by Ruth and Naomi.”2
Indeed, one of the most intriguing marriages in the Old Testament is arranged by Naomi, who sends her widowed daughter-in-law in the dark of night to, some say, seduce an older man with deep pockets. Naomi clearly lays out her purpose:
“My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for . . . Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash, put on perfume, and get dressed in your best clothes . . . When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”
RUTH 3:1–4
The plan works. Soon Ruth and Boaz have a bouncing baby boy, Obed. The text tells us how elated grandmother Naomi is, though we doubt her joy exceeds that of Boaz, who has become the father of the most beautiful little baby boy in Bethlehem—a boy who will grow up to be the father of Jesse and grandfather of David.
Though David is the darling of the ladies—and the Lord—he does not treat women well. Indeed, he treated his first wife, Michal (daughter of King Saul), badly. To him, she was no more than a royal trophy. Yet she loved David and loyally protected him when her father was seeking to kill him. But soon, Saul demanded that she be sent away from David and married to another man, Paltiel. We know little about this man except that he was devoted to his wife. After Saul died, David commanded that his royal trophy be returned to him, though surely not for love. Here are some of the saddest lines in Scripture: “Then David sent . . . orders and had [Michal] taken away from her husband Paltiel son of Laish. Her husband, however, went with her, weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim. Then Abner said to him, ‘Go back home!’ So he went back” (2 Samuel 3:14–16).
As we read of these generations in Genesis and beyond, it is also important to consider our own ancestry and how it may have been infected by generations of dysfunction and domestic violence. The only family patriarch I knew well when I was growing up was my mother’s father. He was a nice old man who gave us each a dollar on our birthdays. Then one evening, everything changed. I was thirteen and had taken over my older brother’s chores of milking the cows. I was alone and greeted him as he came through the barn door. I went about my work and may have been kidding with him as usual when all of a sudden he grabbed me and kissed me hard on the lips. Horrified, I pulled away and immediately got back to my work.
Later, after he had left, I told my mother in no uncertain terms that if Grandpa ever came to the barn again while I was there, I would walk off the job. What is most stunning about this encounter, as I later reflected, was that my mother’s only comment was that she would make sure he would never again go to the barn while I was there. And she did. I remember her coming out as soon as he drove his truck into the yard. She would take a position between him and the barn. She kept him at bay. But why didn’t she question me further? Had she herself been abused? Discussing that episode after she had died, my two sisters and I surmised that she may have been abused by her father, particularly after we learned that he had for years sexually abused a cousin. And we also learned about another “wife” (and children he sired) who lived on the Iron Range in Minnesota. He spent more time there than was required for a second job.
Grandpa died many years ago. How am I supposed to remember him? As an evil man only? He is part of my heritage, my bloodline. Far more distant on my father’s side is Helmut Stellrecht, a strategist for Adolf Hitler now rating his own German language Wikipedia entry. How do we deal with ancestries sullied and corrupted by every kind of cruelty? Is it our duty to own that heritage and vow to do what we can to turn it around? It was my good fortune to have parents who did not perpetuate abuse. But my marriage to an abuser set the stage for such behavior to be passed on to future generations.
We see this same pattern among the patriarchs and those who followed them. But patriarch does not necessarily carry with it negative connotations. He is the male head of the family (as opposed to matriarch), and when given that, the connotation is a respected and wise man. Although patriarchy has gotten a bad press, a respected wise grandfather or father or husband who has a reputation for fatherliness and strength of character is a key ingredient in turning a pattern of abuse around.
This concept of patriarchy is appealing to many women, particularly in the black community, where fatherhood is too often a missing element. There is, according to the late Don Browning, who was a leading scholar on marriage, an alarming “world fatherhood problem.”3 More serious than authoritarian headship is male “neglect, absence and failure of responsibility.”4
When comparing equality in marriage to racial equality, as I have previously done, it is only fair to say that many African-American women might not see the same parallel. Like white women, they certainly confront domestic violence perpetrated by husbands and fathers of their children. So, even while asserting their equal place in the marriage, the most important issue to them is a caring man who is responsible, present, and accounted for.
And so it was for me. That my ex-husband was violent toward me (and occasionally toward Carlton) is only part of the picture. That he later entirely abandoned his patriarchal role as father, leaving a thirteen-year-old boy floundering, is one more example of the “world fatherhood problem.” It is a sad reality among whites as well as blacks. For nearly twenty years, Carlton did not know where his father lived and had no means of contacting him—until a cousin located him through his online search capabilities. When Carlton later surprised his father with a visit to his home on St. Simons Island, the conversation was awkward. Sure, they could pet the dogs and laugh at their playfulness, but then what? It would have been too revealing for his father to ask, Did you ever finish eighth grade? Graduate from high school? Play any sports? Get married? (The answer to that question was perhaps assumed, since Carlton was accompanied by his thirteen-year-old daughter.)
Where was his father for those momentous events? He would have had no trouble finding Carlton, whose address remained the same for many years. Absent father at sports meets. Absent father at graduation. Absent father at wedding. Absent father who never heard a granddaughter’s baby talk, who never read her a picture book or heard her sing a solo with the Girls Choral Academy. Failed patriarchy. A sad, drawn-out episode in the world fatherhood problem. In recent years, Carlton has on many occasions introduced me and John as “my mom and dad.” Carlton and John get along very well and have an easy father/son relationship—John’s only son, Carlton’s only dad.
The Bible offers powerful pictures of patriarchy, both good and bad. The story of the prodigal son is a classic. Here Jesus is talking about God and his love for his children—in this case, a son who wastes his inheritance and is utterly wasted himself. But the Father’s strong arms embrace the son and welcome him home. What a beautiful picture of patriarchy!
Patriarchy as it is perceived today is often very different from Old Testament patriarchy. In fact, the Christian Patriarchy movement in North America has moved into reality TV with the Duggar family. “Though the Duggars do describe themselves as conservative Christians,” writes Kathryn Joyce, “in reality, they follow a . . . pro-life-purist lifestyle known as Quiverfull, where women forgo all birth-control options . . . This resurgent emphasis on women’s submissiveness takes many forms,”5 including the Southern Baptist statement that the wife must “graciously submit” to her husband’s “loving headship” (as well as the many books published by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).
If not offspring of the same parents, these parachurch movements—Quiverfull, the Patriarchy movement, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW)—are kissing cousins. All three strongly promote male headship and female submission and marriage at a young age that produces many offspring. In fact, an article posted on the CBMW website by assistant editor Greg Gibson is titled, “5 Reasons Why Getting Married Young Is Still a Good Thing.” Here he states his underlying thesis clearly: “When you as a young person embrace the pursuit of early marriage, you are standing firm on the Word of God by embracing the roles God has designed for you at an early age. By doing this, you are reflecting back to the world, not only God’s design for gender roles, but also God’s design for marriage.”6
The CBMW’s promotion of young marriage is closely related to the concept of “dateship” promoted by Owen Strachan, executive director of the organization. Dateship is dependent on a patriarchal father—or father figure—who determines if an initial meeting for coffee can be permitted to progress to the next level. The steps for continuing are summed up in a guest blog by Tim Fall on The Wartburg Watch 2015:
• First date goes well? The man asks the father for a second date with his daughter.
• Next step goes well? The man asks the father for permission to court his daughter.
• That step goes well? The man asks the father for permission to marry his daughter.
While those in CBMW and in the Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements regard these steps as proper for courting and dateship, in reality, there are many absent fathers and fathers like my own, who wasn’t willing to play that role, even if I had wanted him to. Nor does Strachan’s proposal work for many couples, each living on their own, who are contemplating marriage, as Tim Fall’s scenario humorously suggests:
“Sir, your daughter and I had coffee together and now I’d like to take her to dinner.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m CEO of a Fortune 500 company.”
“All right, you can take her out this weekend. I’ll tell her to cancel her trip to Europe as head of the U.S. delegation to the economic summit.”7
In its introduction to Tim Fall’s guest blog, The Wartburg Watch also makes reference to the child marriage of Maranatha, daughter of Stan Owen, who was a “spiritual mentor” to Matthew Chapman, a ministerial student at Baylor University. Matthew expressed his interest in Maranatha when she was thirteen. They began living together as a married couple (having essentially gone through the process of dateship) when she was fifteen and he was twenty-eight, a union that took place in the 1990s and has received widespread publicity on the Internet. Did the marriage work out? Apparently so. In 2008, the couple’s daughter, Lauren, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, married a twenty-six-year-old man.8
There are many red flags regarding this Patriarchy movement, particularly as it is utilized to prop up a species of male headship that often borders on abuse and sometimes clearly goes over the line. “Wife spanking,” as absurd as it sounds, is defended among those on the fringe of the Patriarchy movement. I once knew a woman who told me she had been spanked on a number of occasions early in her marriage by a very decent man I highly respected in every other way. He is now deceased, and I’ve lost contact with his wife, but I think back and wonder, How could that have been true? And I also wonder why I wasn’t shocked by her story. “Lauren” (not the Lauren above), who writes anonymously, presents in detail a sobering version of her story:
My husband was only two years older (but he is close to 6 feet tall and heavily muscled and I am around 5 feet tall and under 100 pounds) . . . Calling it just a “spanking” in some ways covers up what is going on, I think. I know for a long time I did not consider myself a battered or abused wife . . . It ranged anywhere from a swat or two over my clothing up to him pulling down my pants for episodes that left me bawling. But he never swore, or acted out of control. So I deluded myself to thinking that I wasn’t like those women in shelters scared for their lives . . . My wedding vows included a vow to obey and he would often remind me that God commanded wives to submit and obey their husbands as they were supposed to do toward Christ. The thing is I never felt “threatened.” Just utterly powerless.9
Where, if any, is there common ground among those who call for equality in marriage and those who argue for male headship? Russell Moore, who heads up the Ethics Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, has chided fellow complementarians for their lack of enthusiasm for the terms patriarchal and patriarchy. He rightly points out that complementarians are playing into contemporary culture rather than being countercultural: “Even to use the word ‘patriarchy’ in an evangelical context is uncomfortable since the word is deemed ‘negative’ even by most complementarians. But evangelicals should ask why patriarchy seems negative to those of us who serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God and Father of Jesus Christ.”10
There is much in Moore’s overall perspective on male headship with which I disagree, but there is also common ground. Patriarchy is certainly an honest way for proponents of male headship to identify themselves, and strong and wise fatherhood is critical for healthy families. In a good marriage where there are children, strength and wisdom characterize both parents. How I wished that my ex-husband had been such a father and that I could look back to my grandfather as the great patriarch of the family.
It is unfortunate that so many Christians today who tout family values and strong father figures at the same time curtail women’s roles. Indeed unfortunate, when we realize that mutuality in marriage offers the securest foundation for a family. I resonate with the words of Carolyn Osiek:
I fully support the renewal of fatherhood
and fatherly responsibility.
I do not believe that it must be at
the expense of women.11