*Please be advised that this post deals with themes of violence and abuse against women.

On 25 November 1960, three Catholic sisters were brutally murdered in the Dominican Republic. The reason? They had dared to stand against Rafael Trujillo, aka El Jefe, the Dominican dictator whose rule was marked by violence, injustice, and corruption, and saw the deaths of tens of thousands of his own people.

In 2000, more than 30 years after the Mirabal sisters’ murders, the United Nations declared, in their memory, 25 November to be the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Whilst these murders are shocking, violence against women takes many forms, some much less obvious than the murders of Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal. The question for Christians is how do we respond to it? But, before we answer that question, it’s important to recognise just how big an issue violence against women actually is.

The scope of violence against women

Statistics suggest that over one in three women globally will, at some point in their lives, experience gender-based violence. If that feels like an abstract number to you, think about it this way: how many women or girls are in your church, school, workplace, neighbourhood, among your family or friends? Now apply the one-in-three statistic.

Elaine Storkey, former LICC Executive Director, once described it as a ‘global pandemic’. This is an unfortunate reality of our everyday lives, and even if you are personally unaffected, the chances are there will be women and girls around you who are victims and survivors of gender-based violence. In our workplaces, neighbourhoods, regular haunts – even our churches.

It saddens me to write the last phrase because the church is supposed to be a place of safety and sanctuary to all. But the reality is that the church, like other societal institutions, has a poor track record in supporting and protecting women survivors of gender-based violence. At times, it has been complicit in, or even, the cause of their suffering.^[i]

Studies have shown there are several reasons for this, but predominant among them is an over-emphasis on submission and headship, or an imbalance of power between men and women, and a lack of care and concern for victims of domestic violence.^[ii]

Take Kiara, whose husband’s verbal and emotional abuse eventually turned violent and resulted in his being arrested. This man called himself a Christian. He attended church regularly. He was respected by the elders and community. And yet, behind closed doors, Kiara endured years of verbal, emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse. And what was her church’s response? She should be more ‘submissive’.^[iii]

Verses (like Ephesians 5:22 and Colossians 3:18) that supposedly point towards wifely submission and obedience become excuses for abusers to enact their violence with religious indignation and zeal. A culture of victim blaming and shaming has, in many cases that have since come to light, led to some church leaders advising women to remain in abusive marriages and submit to the authority of the man even when it extends to regular beatings, rape, or even murder. The underlying message is that the abuse is the woman’s fault – for not being submissive, obedient, patient, or even forgiving enough.

The church’s response has been telling. Rather than seeking to care and advocate for the vulnerable, oppressed, and abused, the church has so often chosen to privilege its reputation over the wellbeing of victims and survivors.^[iv] Only now is this slowly starting to change.^[v]

Dinah: silence and inaction in the face of gender-based violence

The Bible is not silent on the issue of abuse. One such story is found in Genesis 34, where Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, is brutally raped by Shechem, prince of the city also called Shechem. Jacob’s response is telling. He does nothing. He waits until his sons return from the ‘fields’, and even then, the indignation is theirs and not his. His inaction is in stark contrast to the violent deception of his sons. When Hamor, Shechem’s father, professes Shechem’s love for Dinah and his desire to marry her, the brothers are seemingly concerned with issues of intermarriage and covenant, insisting the Shechemites are circumcised. On the third day, while the men of the city are still in pain (v25), Dinah’s brothers enact their terrible revenge, killing all the men and rescuing their sister – who, it turns out, has been held captive by Shechem in the city this whole time. So much for love.

And this is the moment when we finally hear Jacob speak. But not to offer his traumatised daughter solace and comfort. No, his words are directed at his sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s full brothers. ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land’ (v30a). Far from being concerned about his daughter’s welfare, the thing that occupies Jacob in this moment is worry about his own reputation before the ‘people living in the land’. Simeon and Levi’s response is cutting: ‘Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?’ (v31).

Jacob’s failure to intervene leads directly to the massacre of thousands, and to his daughter’s continuing captivity at the hands of her rapist. His silence and inaction leave a catastrophic, dark stain on the history the church’s response to gender-based violence. The model that Jacob set continues to this day as countless women and girls endure abuse at the hands of men, while the church, either in ignorance or malice, turns a blind eye.

The woman at the well: redeeming Dinah’s legacy

Yet, this isn’t the response that Jesus offers in John 4 to a woman who has suffered loss, heartbreak, and abandonment at the hands of men – at a time when a woman’s security and her ability to survive, rightly or wrongly, depended on the men around her – and who comes to the well in need of more than just physical refreshment.

Long has the church wrongly accused this poor woman of being an adulteress, a pariah and shame to her sex.[vi] The truth is that few men in that culture would marry an adulteress or a divorcee – why would he when a man’s honour was tied to the chastity, purity, and honour of his wife? Moreover, women couldn’t initiate divorce. Not only that, but it wasn’t uncommon for women to remarry after her husbands died. Put all this together and it’s likely that this woman’s husbands had died, and/or abandoned or divorced her. To survive, she would have had to seek support from a brother or father-in-law, or become a second wife or concubine to a man who couldn’t or wouldn’t fully marry her. Far from being a pariah, this woman – like Dinah – has been let down by the society around her.

And here’s another interesting connection: both these episodes happen in the same place.[vii] It’s no accident that John, in verse 6, mentions Jacob’s Well – the very same plot of land that Jacob bought from Shechem’s father, Hamor, in Genesis 33. This place, which had seen such trauma and violence, becomes a place of healing and restoration.

It’s the middle of the day, which is not necessarily a sign of her promiscuity, simply a remark about why Jesus would need a drink. She comes to the well and a Jewish man asks her for a drink even though Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans (v9b). But Jesus goes a step further and draws her into a theological conversation at a time when theology wasn’t for girls, only for boys and men. Yet this woman clearly knows her stuff, and (spoiler alert) she is the first in John’s Gospel to be commissioned into sharing his good news with others! Not only that but, if she really were a well-known ‘promiscuous’ woman, would the townspeople have respected her enough to immediately believe her testimony when even a respectable woman’s testimony in that society meant very little?

As much as the story is about Jesus, it’s also about this unknown woman. A woman with a mind of her own, a voice of her own, a story of her own. A survivor. And Jesus doesn’t silence her. He doesn’t mansplain or denigrate or undermine. Jesus meets her where she’s at. He tells her about her past, not to shame her (a common misconception), but rather to show her that he sees her. He sees her pain and suffering. His actions demonstrate that the inadequate response of the society around her is not in keeping with his message of hope, healing and, redemption. In doing so, Christ displays the response that we all should towards those who have suffered violence and abuse.

A Christian response to gender-based violence

The question for us as Christians is how might we follow in Jesus’ footsteps in our everyday lives? Here at LICC, we have the 6Ms framework, which I think is helpful for showing us how to respond as Christians to violence against women.

We are to model God’s character and love, proving that we are safe people to be vulnerable with. We are to make good work in caring for, and comforting, survivors. We are to minister to them, revealing the compassion and love of Christ when they feel overwhelmed by shame and fear. We are to mould the culture around us, acknowledging and calling out violence when we see it. We are to be mouthpieces of truth and justice, speaking up for those whose voices society wants to turn a deaf ear to. We are to be messengers of a gospel that is about God’s love for the broken, the oppressed, and the shamed.

God, who entered into our own suffering, understands what it feels like to be broken and battered by society’s sin, and made a way for us to not only get through it but overcome it.

If we were to respond a little less like Jacob and a little more like Jesus, the deafening silence that surrounds violence against women may well lift, providing hope, safety and compassion to all survivors of gender-based violence and abuse.

Rebekah Rankin
Team Operations Coordinator, LICC
Rebekah holds a degree in Biblical Studies and French.

*If you are a survivor of gender-based violence, or know someone who is currently subjected to it, then here are some helpful, non-judgemental organisations who seek to support people like you or your loved one.

Home – Women’s Aid

Gender-based violence services – Refuge

Home – Restored

Hestia Life Beyond Crisis

Home | End Violence Against Women

Find your local Rape Crisis centre | Rape Crisis England & Wales

Support Line – NAPAC

References

[i] For further exploration of these issues, please see the following resources: Pamela Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response (2012); Margaret Kennedy, Sexual Abuse of Women by Priests and Ministers to Whom They Go for Pastoral Care and Support (2003); Kathleen M Sands, Speaking Out: Clergy Sexual Abuse: Where Are the Women? (2003).

[ii] For more discussion and perspectives on the ideas of submission and headship, and its relation to gender inequality in the church, see the following resources: What Will Submission to My Husband Look Like? | Desiring God; Women, inequality and the Church – SAFER (a domestic and family violence resource for Australian churches); Abuser-friendly church cultures – SAFER; Katia Adam, Equal: What the Bible Says about Women, Men and Authority (2019); Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (2021); Cynthia Long Westfall, Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ (2016); Lucy Peppiatt, Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts (2019).

[iii] Elaine Storkey, Scars Across Humanity (2018).

[iv] This has even been seen recently in the revelations about the church’s response to the abuse carried out by John Smyth. It has also been seen in the abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the last 20 years.

[v] Let me be clear: such abuse is not all Christian men, just as gender-based violence more generally is not all men. Most of the Christian men whom I know are horrified and saddened by the realities of gender-based violence both within society and the church. But if the one-in-three statistic includes Christian women, then it stands to reason that some of their abusers will also be men who call themselves ‘Christian’. In the same way, not all churches are unsafe places for victims and survivors of gender-based violence. But if the worrying trend of the last few decades shows us anything, it is that this problem also affects the church, and historically, it has not responded in a victim- and survivor-centred way. As such, the church as a whole needs to reconsider how its teachings on gender roles and relationships directly influences attitudes and beliefs that are linked to gender-based violence in general, and violence against women in particular.

[vi] Two examples of more traditional interpretations of the Samaritan Woman at the Well can be found here and here. Much as there is theological truth in what John Piper has to say, his premise that she is an ‘adulteress’ or ‘living with her boyfriend’ is misguided and impacts on his ability to fundamentally understand who this woman actually is and what she has endured.

[vii] If you’re interested in finding out more, I would recommend this podcast series by Kat Armstrong, in particular the discussion in episode 5 with Dr Lynn Cohick.