User Comments

1. 

   8/15/07

   Sicarii

   This is indeed a difficult issue to approach. Thank you for the post!
   
   I'm concerned about domestic violence in Christian marriages, being a married Christian myself.
   
   As a husband, I do heed God's Word to be head of the family, but at the same time, I don't believe in lording it over my wife and demanding her submission through violence. While its true that wives are to submit to their husbands, so too does God say that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves His Church!
   
   And that doesn't involve violence, because our Lord certainly doesn't deal with us thus.
   
   In part 2 of my series on Christian marriages, I wrote about this aspect of how husbands should treat their wives too. I hope it is of interest to you as well.
   
   www.sicarii.net/2007/07/25/the-christian-perspective-on-marriage-part-two-g...

   [reply]
2. 

   8/15/07

   clioandme

   I was a little confused about why domestic violence in a Christian marriage would be any different than any other marriage. Sicarii's comments help make it a little clearer, but I assume he speaks for a rather small slice of Christian husbands. I don't know any husbands, believers or not, who maintain that their wives are supposed to submit to them.

   [reply]
   1. 

      8/15/07

      MadameX

      Mark, it's different because Christian principles (very generally speaking) prohibit divorce and require a woman to be "submissive" to her husband. A dizzying number of vocal Christian ministers and counselors have interpreted this to mean that a woman has an obligation before God to return again and again to an increasingly violent and even life-threatening living arrangement.
   2. 

      8/15/07

      clioandme

      I could see where that would cause some conflicts of conscience. Still, in various Protestant traditions, ministers are no different than other people, but they still manage to claim a lot of authority. In the Catholic Church that's different, but perhaps more in theory than in practice? Anyway, thanks for the additional context.
   3. 

      8/15/07

      MadameX

      In the Catholic church, actually, this has tended to be something less of a problem than in Protestant churches; I think the reason is precisely what you suggest, with an ironic twist. In theory, the Catholic church relies on church doctrine in combination with the Bible, while Protestants (generally) claim to rely only on the Bible. The problem, of course, is that when ministers get up to preach, they don't simply read from the Bible--they inject their own messages and interpretations and warnings and such. The same is true in pastoral counseling and such.
      
      Thus, where the Catholic church has codified doctrine, Protestant women seeking counsel from their ministers are largely dependent upon the individual interpretations of the minister himself--there is no, for instance, official and universal Episcopalian view on domestic violence.
   4. 

      8/15/07

      clioandme

      Not in the Catholic Church either?
   5. 

      8/15/07

      MadameX

      Not explicitly domestic violence, no. But the Catholic church clearly makes provision for physical separation makes it "practically impossible" to live together, and for the right and obligation to defy otherwise legitimate authority when moral law demands it, and what is expected of one spouse when another falls into serious sin of any kind--most issues are thus in the Catholic church; while there isn't a specific "rule" for every possible eventuality, there are applicable doctrines for virtually anthing that might arise.
   6. 

      8/15/07

      clioandme

      Good stuff.
      
      [edit: at least in theory]
3. 

   8/15/07

   clioandme

   Oh gosh. And the phrase "submission to our spouses" comes up in the about box of the blog, albeit in the context of it being a complicated issue.

   [reply]
4. 

   8/15/07

   robinj

   My family wasn't "religious" in the devotion type sense but even we had that your husband is the master of the house and if he hits you ....then you must have provoked him concept drummed into us.....thou shall not question.....

   [reply]