Part of this feels like the ‘Prayer Gossip’ that is rife in Quiverfull – talking to others about the person with the problem under the guise of stating that you are going to get help for, or pray for them. Let’s be real here. People that do the Prayer Gossip thing are only going to talk and cluck over their problems without lifting a finger, taking some sort of sick joy in spreading your dilemma to others.

Original letter here.

Cannot believe that she’s asking if this might be God wanting her friend to stay with an abusive husband. It’s clear that if only a few of things in this letter are true that her husband is abusive and no one, I repeat NO ONE should be enabling or tolerating abuse in their daily lives.

This is one of the worst outcomes of patriarchal religion. It encourages submission to weak petty dictator type of guys who gets increasingly controlling and abusive. The religion attracts men with awful tendencies and provides encouragement of abusive behaviors by taking scriptures out of context.

You might expect a pastors wife, or someone that claims to be a older woman teaching younger woman might advise someone to at the very least immediately remove their child and themselves from a situation of abuse. Not immediately start ranting that divorce is always wrong.

Staying in the abuse is how women end up murdered in their own homes. Violence escalates, verbal abusive today, moving into physical abuse and possible death tomorrow.

The ministry made the questionable choice of telling this friend that divorce allows Satan to ruin the relationship between the mother and children, giving the wife no out ever for abuse.

Part of me is shocked that anyone might ever think that a spouse that is abusive and unrepentant should be given endless chances to change. Even if that spouse show no inclination or need to change. The answer says in the unquoted part that a wife must submit so that God can change the man and that the witnessing of this joyful submission will keep the children safely under the protection of God. Not what it actually does, normalize abuse in the eyes of the children, leaving them vulnerable to recreation of the same dynamic in their own love relationships.

Using the threat that you will lose the love of your children if you take them out of an abusive situation and into a healthy living situation is sick and twisted. Fear mongering at its most primal. There has to be a special place in hell for women who cause other women and children to be put in harms way.

Yesterday morning I learned from a college professor here in Costa Rica how incredibly high the rate of spousal abuse and homicides of women by their partners is here and in many other very Catholic countries that are patriarchal in nature. Disturbingly high. She’s determined to put in place help and knowledge out there for women experiencing abuse at the hands of their partners. Part of that knowledge is helping those women walk out of their abuse without paying the ultimate price. No, being more submissive or keeping your children at risk for abuse does not figure into it. Nor should it ever!