Christian Domestic Discipline, “wife spanking,” Christian Patriarchy Movement, Spanking of Adult Children, Denominational Practices and teachings
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Two summers ago, I received a phone call from a pastor who shared his growing concern about wife-spanking in his family of churches. Months later, I finally reported on the topic of wife spanking in this article: The Christian Patriarchy Movement’s Dark Secret of Wife Spanking. Wife spanking is often referred to as Christian Domestic Discipline, as if to make it more politically correct. As far as I’m concerned, it should be called assault and reported to authorities immediately. The article was popular with over 600 comments. Since then, the most common search term which brings people to the blog is”wife spanking.” Some of the search phrases make me want to vomit.
I’m issuing a trigger warning for this subject. It is very disturbing to read. Please be careful if you are easily triggered by topics of abuse.
Last week, I received an e-mail from “Lauren,” a victim of domestic violence, “Christian Domestic Discipline” or “wife spanking:”
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Julie Anne:
I found an old post of yours from last year. Thank you for writing and shedding light on another form of domestic abuse that doesn’t get talked about very much. It’s one thing when it is a Ray Rice situation like in the news now. But I think there are probably other women in conservative or controlling “Christian” households where the husband thinks it is OK to spank his wife like just another child in the house.
I was in such a relationship for a while. I grew up in a very conservative, Southern household and was spanked at home until I left. So when my husband spanked me the first time, I was embarrassed, but I thought maybe it was my fault or somehow it was OK.
It was very difficult because it was not like I had a black eye or bruises. It was just always his open hand on my bottom which made me feel like I could never tell someone else or explain it. It took a long time for me to have the strength to leave him.
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My head went spinning. Did Lauren and her husband have any connections with the Patriarchy Movement? Or were they connected with teachings similar to an article I wrote, Wife Undermines Her Husband’s Authority in Front of Children, He Disciplines Her?
Update (12/28/15): previously, there were two YouTube videos posted of Dr. Phil’s show posted here. They have since been removed from YouTube. I was able to find the two snippets from the show below:
The husband in the article (and Dr. Phil’s show) also claimed to be a Christian (non-denominational background). He spanked his wife so he could get the “demons out” and to stop the bad behavior which he labeled as narcissism. He demanded that his wife call him “sir.”
Pat Robertson is another known figure in Christiandom who has said some shocking statements about how husbands should treat wives. He responded to a question from a husband about his unruly wife saying the husband could become a Muslim so he could beat his wife. See for yourself. The clip is just over one minute long:
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Where are these teachings coming from?
Is it limited to a specific area or denomination?
How can it be prevalent and endorsed in some circles of Christianity and yet called out as abuse in others?
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After reading Lauren’s letter and sharing back and forth e-mails, I had so many questions. I wanted to know how did Lauren get from the point where “wife spanking” was considered “normal” to the place where she said, “THIS IS WRONG – it is ABUSE!”
Lauren and I exchanged e-mails (edited slightly for brevity) and Lauren gave me permission to share with you our conversation, in the hopes that it will help other wives and also shed light on this dark secret in Christianity:
Lauren,
BRAVO for you!! I’m so glad you found the strength to leave your abusive marriage. How did you finally put it all together that wife spanking was wrong? Did you find someone to share with?
I know I am a question box but I also know that what you experienced is going on in homes around the country and people just like you are labeling it as “normal” just because of what you described – – because parents are taught that it’s ok to spank children even through adulthood as long as they are under the father’s roof. It makes complete sense that someone raised in this culture would extend it to domestic abuse.
How are you doing now? Did you get support from friends and family after leaving him?
Julie Anne,
I got support from friends and it was only when I opened up to them that they helped me see it was wrong. I am not estranged from my parents but I did not get their support. Instead, they wanted to know what I had done wrong to “need” to be punished and felt that I had abandoned my wedding vows when I left him. 😦
I think you are exactly right. I got spanked at home until I left to be with my ex when I was 21. Our church pastor growing up would talk about disciplining according to emotional age, not actual age. And I was told that since I was acting immaturely, this was the consequence. I don’t know where the line is, but looking back now I think I can say that spanking even at 14 or 15 was not right and certainly not up to the age I was.
It took such a long time because that line had been blurred from growing up and then being married. I didn’t see it as abuse. It was not like he was drunk and beating me with his fists. It was confusing because it felt no different than when I was at home. I would commit some offense that my parents/husband thought was wrong, I was told I was going to be punished, I would end up over a lap and afterward would be told to pray.
I am doing much better now and am very glad to be removed from all that. Not only him, but the church and the people there.
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Lauren,
Yes, that makes a lot of sense – it was a normal progression for you. You went from your father as protector/provider/authority to your husband as protector/provider/authority. It’s a logical progression.
[I then asked Lauren if she’d be willing to share her story anonymously.]
Julie Anne,
I think I would be OK with that, especially if anonymous. I imagine the biggest thing other women might be experiencing is that embarrassment, demoralizing, and feeling very disempowered. Especially in situations where the woman feels something is wrong but might not think of herself as “abused.” 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 lbs). Yet I was expected to call him “sir” at all times and I was often addressed as “young lady” or “little girl,” which was a constant put-down that made me feel small and powerless.
Even the words used I think make some women question whether it is wrong or not. It’s not called “beatings” or “abuse,” which is what it is. 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.
He wasn’t hitting me with closed fists or objects. 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 shelter’s scared for their lives. While he never threatened my life physically and I still think he would never have that in him, the fact is that the abuse did threaten my “life” in terms of making me feel very alone and afraid not very good inside.
Lauren
Lauren,
The size difference between you and he is considerable and would be very threatening. From what you describe, it sounds like he had a sense of entitlement over you – you were an object to be owned rather than a cherished wife to be treasured and loved.
Was your church part of a particular denomination? Were you homeschooled or was homeschooling prominent in your church? Did you hear of anyone else going through the same thing? How about at your own home growing up, was your mother spanked? Did you meet your ex-husband at church or was he from outside the church?
JA
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Julie Anne,
The thing is that he never raged. At times he could be very sweet and charming. But over it all was always this sense of control and “he was the man.” 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 towards Christ. The thing is I never felt “threatened.” Just utterly powerless. I never truly “fought back” as if I was fighting for my life. But often I would struggle or try to escape but he was big and strong enough to hold me in place and then would tell me I was getting more for disobeying and struggling.
Our church was non-denominational but was charismatic and evangelical. It was not required (since I know lots of kids in my youth groups were in regular schools) but home-schooling was definitely pushed. I was home-schooled and was raised to not even think about college. I don’t know how wide-spread the practice was, but I remember my parents had no problem threatening me with discipline where other people from our church were within earshot and don’t remember ever hearing any kind of shock or outrage from anyone else.
I don’t know if my Mom was ever spanked. I never heard or suspected anything growing up. Until I moved out, both her and my father spanked me, although he did most of it.
We met through church but I don’t know what his family background was. His mother had passed away long ago and his father died shortly after our wedding and I never got to talk to him much. Our church also pushed heavily this idea of “modesty” even at young levels. Church youth group leaders would tell young ladies that “modest is hottest” and make it clear that exposing any kind of skin somehow made a woman “loose” or “of a certain kind.” My parents had total veto power over what I could wear.
Until I left the house, with being petite along with their ideas of modesty, I still wore little girl style underpants. Comfortable, but very childish, very full coverage stuff. I remember being mortified our wedding night and wanted to find something sexy that would make me feel good (and I thought he would like, too). I bought some lingerie (nothing really scandalous) and wore a pair one night. He told me I was never to wear such “slutty” clothing and made me throw them all away (after beating my bottom).
Lauren
Lauren,
Ok, so this is more widespread than I suspected if it’s crossing over into charismatic churches. What was your parents’ response about the spanking? Were they surprised by it?
Because of his behavior – with no rage, just an expectancy of needing to control you, it makes me think this was normal within his background or upbringing. Did you tell him why you were leaving? What was his response? Was your church aware of what was going on? I’m wondering what their thoughts were on it? Are you officially divorced now?
The modesty issue and him not wanting you to get any kind of lingerie shows a real distorted view of sexuality. I can’t remember if you said how long you were married. Do you have any children? I’m just so pleased to know that you were able to break free. Are you able to support yourself okay? Did you go straight from home to marriage without any schooling?
Thank you so much for answering all of these questions and your willingness to share your story publicly. I know it will be very, very enlightening to many people. The church needs to know this is going on.
thanks again,
Julie Anne
Julie Anne,
Thankfully my friend helped me move and helped me get set up and even helped me secure a job. She was there every step of the way.
We had no children (thankfully) and we are fully divorced. When I left he was convinced that it was because of my friend and being led astray and away from God. He did not stalk me or anything but vowed to constantly pray for me to come to my senses and return.
My parents were a little surprised at first but I think they see spanking as not the same as abuse. They told me that I needed to do a better job of obeying and not being disrespectful or difficult and told me I needed to pray more to be a better wife. When I left him, they did not abandon me but at the same time were not fully supportive and told me they were praying for us to work it out. I love them but our relationship is often strained.
I am in my early 30s and this past 4th of July I was there and we had a bit of an argument. They threatened to spank me if I didn’t back down and I have no doubt it wasn’t an idle threat.
Lauren
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Conclusion (from Julie Anne)
Part of me wishes this practice of wife spanking was limited to just one denomination so it could be easier to expose, but it is clear from the above examples that we cannot. In the above examples, we see non-denominational, charismatic/evangelical, Reformed Presbyterian denominations represented.
The abuse comes in different forms. In Dr. Phil’s example, we see a bully who used rage and anger as he spanked/assaulted his wife. He did it in front of his children as they watched and cried, saying that mommies get spanked for bad behavior, too.
In Lauren’s situation, she described her husband as calm and never in anger, yet he referred to her in demeaning terms, “little girl,” as a father would say to a child. However, his “spanking” was always controlled which must have made it all the more confusing to Lauren.
Spanking of Children through Adulthood and Transfer of Headship
In my former church, we were taught by our pastor that civil laws regarding adulthood did not apply when it came to disciplining children in our homes. We were told that it was biblical to spank our teenagers, even ones who were over legal adulthood. This same pastor also told husbands to get control of their wives. Even without saying the word “spanking,” it would be easy for a husband sitting in a pew to take that kind of teaching and think that a pastor was giving his stamp of approval for wife spanking to get her under control.
We need to consider the importance of the correlation of spanking of children through adulthood and also the transfer of headship from father to new husband when a young lady gets married. It seems that both of these components make it much more likely for a woman to be the victim of domestic violence/wife spanking.
It’s important to note that Lauren was spanked as a child through adulthood. The last paragraph of Lauren’s e-mail revealed her parents sided with Lauren’s husband and believed her to be disobedient to her husband. They did not see his authority as abusive, but appropriate. Apparently in their world, girls do not grow up . . . ever. No wonder Lauren was so confused in her marriage. It’s quite amazing that she had the strength to leave.
This post has been very difficult for me emotionally. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. I had another thought about the “transfer of headship” in marriage. It seems the only difference between the role of a father and the role of new husband is that the new husband gets sexual privileges and now has someone to cook and clean for him, and bear children. I see no other difference in how these wives are treated compared to how they were treated as daughters. These abused wives are treated as children or objects to be owned.
We need to be aware of the existence of this atrocity in our churches and be bold in calling it out when we see it. It is insidious that this practice has continued in the name of God and Christianity. Young boys in these homes will likely learn this behavior of entitlement over women and repeat it. Young girls will also learn from the behavior and may find themselves with abusive men because of familiarity. In an abusive home, children do not have a sense of a normal healthy marriage, so this modeling of abusive behavior could affect generations.
When we protect and defend abused wives, we are also protecting and defending their children and future generations.
I’m very grateful to Lauren for her e-mail and being willing to shed more light into this abusive practice so that we can have more understanding of what she and many others are going through. May we all work to protect women and expose this shameful sin and crime in our churches.
photo credit: Chiara Cremaschi via photopin cc
Spiritual Sounding Board 
This is mind boggling. If I didn’t know this website to be reputable, I would have thought this was an article from the Onion. It is just so “unreal.” Lauren, I am so sorry for what you have gone through and I applaud you for being so courageous and removing yourself from that man’s abuse. I hope your parents will come to their senses and treat you with the love, dignity and respect that you deserve and that your relationship with them can be healed. I think of how Jesus treated women and that is how you are to be treated. I will be praying for you and that the Lord will lead you to people who will be vessels of grace and truth into your life.
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Anita, Unfortunately this is as REAL as it is disturbingly bizzare.
My father had to deal with this in a Sunday school class where some idiot was defending the practice ” as long as it didn’t go too far and cross the line over to abuse”. A few days after this occurred, I was having lunch with the folks and they asked me if I had ever heard of this . The shock on their faces was immediately evident when I told of the topic being discussed on a popular christian dating site, after some “man” posted a thread examining the merits of this and what a help it can be in a christian marriage. My father said ” you know before Dad died ( my grandfather lived to age 97) he got to the point of just not getting some of what is going on in today’s church. I’m understanding more of what he was going through and why he was so upset.”. I reply ME TOO !
Unless we speak out and confront this evil and unscriptural practice and those like it, it will grow and we will have additional victims and generations that continue it. i have my fifth niece arriving in a few months. God help me if any of them ever get involved with a nutjob that is into this. I wonder why this seems to be something occurring in reformed circles. Did John Calvin teach wife spanking in between slaughtering Christians that disagreed with him ?
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The fact that “CDD” is even a thing sickens me, and like you, I consider it no different than punching your wife in the face. Here’s a question though- have you ever heard of it the other way around, a wife spanking a husband? I’m guessing not, due to the accompanying theology surrounding it, and the perverse view of authority and whatnot. But yeah- I’m glad she was able to get out
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First of all, hats off to you, Lauren, for getting out as quickly as you did. My prayer is that you will continue the journey to recovery and fully embrace the fact that none of this was your fault. You did not deserve this kind of treatment from your parents nor from your husband. You are a woman dearly loved by the King of the Universe–not property and certainly not childish.
I am bothered by so much in this article. But as a domestic violence professional and as the former partner of a pedophile, I wonder about the correlation between viewing women as children/property and child sexual abuse. I also am wondering if this practice of wife spanking/beating has a sexual connection, i.e porn addiction, etc. It just seems like it is too easy of a “justification” for a “Christian” man to engage in perversion and whitewash it as “scriptural.”
Scott, I fully agree with your father and grandfather–I can’t believe what is going on in churches these days.
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Lauren, I am so sorry to hear of what you’ve gone through, and rejoice that you are out of it.
For anyone reading the comments: please don’t fool yourselves into thinking that abuse is more prevalent in some sections of society or the church than others. It’s not the doctrines of Calvinism or Pentacostalism or Dispensationalism or Catholicism or Charismatics or Arminians or any other segment that fosters this abuse. These practices are fostered by abusive people in all parts of the church who take advantage of their size and power and wrong thinking to oppress and abuse others.
I know because I’ve seen it in my courtroom for almost 20 years. An abuser can make any belief system support their abuse, because all they need to do is tell themselves that what they are doing is right and then their beliefs fall into line.
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Tim, you say it’s not the doctrines that foster the abuse. It may not be the doctrine per se, but . . .
When we were at the cult church, most of the people we knew spanked their misbehaving teens (and some were older than 18). A group of us started going to the church at the same time and I know that some only started spanking their older children again because of his teaching. The teaching was pretty powerful – – that we were turning our children over to Satan if we did not use the “rod.”
I’m also thinking about the pastor who contacted me a couple summers ago – -wife spanking was prevalent there and it was taught from the top and it was expected. If you are in an environment in which the majority of people are practicing this, and you have convinced yourself it is the godly thing to do, you will likely go along with it . . .even if there is something deep inside that questions it. Peer pressure is powerful and if you are in a place where being a manly man and the head of the home is so important, and then it is found out that you don’t “control your wife,” this might cause one to cross that line. Let’s face it, abusive leaders lead people to do wrong things, even drink poisonous Koolaid.
So, yes, I truly believe that it does pop up more prominently in some church groups, encouraged/endorsed by church leaders, especially in churches with strong adherence to male headship and Patriarchy.
Now the other side of the coin is there are abusers who were born abusers and who will take any teaching and twist it to give themselves permission to abuse. Those are the ones that don’t care about male headship, what denomination, where they live – -they are going to abuse simply because they can.
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I agree, JA. It’s not that Calvinism or Charismatic doctrine or whatever leads inexorably to spanking; if it did, then every Calvinist or Charismatic would spank. It’s that people who identify with these and other doctrines use them to pursue their own perverted doctrines and promote the abuse.
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Scott asked: ” Did John Calvin teach wife spanking in between slaughtering Christians that disagreed with him ?”
My first introduction to this concept was not in the church, it was actually in a John Wayne movie, McLintock (I think that’s how it’s spelled). The movie made the point that women need to be tamed, and a wife needs the occasional correction to keep her in line. It was presented as quite a joke.
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refugee, Shakespeare use it as well in The Taming of the Shrew.
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I can’t believe I used to laugh at this movie… well, I was just a kid then. Now, after googling these scenes from the movie (you can also find the entire movie on Youtube, if for some reason you’d want to watch it), I felt sick at seeing them.
Our children used to love this movie, when they were little. I wonder if it’s because they found the novelty of grownups receiving spankings to be refreshing. Spankings were fairly rare in their experience, but they did happen. How I wish I had been mentored by someone with a kinder, gentler, child-raising philosophy.
Because I’m including links in this post, I don’t know if it will be moderated, or allowed to post. Warning for triggers. I was also sickened, while finding these clips, to discover there is actually a “spank your date” website. Not going to post that one, for obvious reasons.
John Wayne pursues and finally catches and spanks his wife, in front of the entire Western town, with all the townspeople cheering his efforts.
John Wayne encourages his future son-in-law to start off his married life on the right foot… er, hand… er, coal shovel paddle.
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In some of these old movies, the wives are called “girls,” too.
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Oh, Tim, that’s right, I’d forgotten about Taming of the Shrew, and Kiss Me, Kate, which was my first introduction to that story — growing up, I was more familiar with musical theater than whatever-kind-of-theatre you’d call Shakespeare. We read the requisite Shakespeare play in 8th grade (Romeo and Juliet), and I managed to avoid the Bard from there on out until, while homeschooling our children, I ran across an excellent series of children’s Shakespeare.
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Lauren – Thank you so much for sharing your story! I am amazed at your strength for being able to get out of an abusive relationship. I hope that you are surrounded in love and support as you move on in life.
The issue of wife spanking only became apparent to me when Julie Anne posted her first article. I was appalled, but not surprised that this is happening. I have worked with domestic violence victims for many years and have never had one told me that they were spanked by their partner. What a shame that this abusive teaching is upheld by Christian leaders.
Tim – I saw a production of Taming of the Shrew this summer and had forgotten that wife spanking was spoken of. I felt very uncomfortable with the notion or even laughing about such a thing.
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I remember seeing Taming of the Shrew on a video in high school and getting so creeped out by it then. Again – women = objects for man’s pleasure with no choice.
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Does anyone here remember the preacher David “goodfathr” Zublick from the late 90s/early 2000s? I remember coming across his Christian spanking site via his now defunct “ParentNow” organization which heavily endorsed teenager and, IRCC, wife spanking. It was a pretty huge site and he had plans for a family Christian spanking show for subscribers until his site went down for some reason.
He’s done a good job erasing some of connections to his “goodfathr” persona. This is all I could find regarding him:
http://www.nospank.net/stepp.htm
Here’s an archive of his old site (Possible trigger alert):
https://web.archive.org/web/20000110235806/http://www.geocities.com/~goodfathr/index.html
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@Ripberger:
Family. Christian. Spanking. Show.
(My brain is going “TILT! TILT! TILT!”)
For. Subscribers. Only.
(Just like a porn site.)
Scary thing is, these days you could probably pitch it as a Reality Show.
THIS IS JERRY SPRINGER COUNTRY. OR SOUTH PARK. EITHER WAY.
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Lauren, thank you for sharing your story. When you teach us, we learn what to watch for so we can help others or guard against it ourselves.
It sounds like your ex-husband has some problems with sexuality. The panties issue and calling you a girl – that’s not healthy. The spanking may have grown out of that. You are so smart and brave to get away. I hope you’re working thru any emotional wounds.
My mother is the “you will respect your mother” type – don’t disagree, don’t criticize if she is inappropriate. I have to remind her I will walk out if she doesn’t respect my adult status. As a parent of adult children, I get the temptation but also understand they owe me nothing. I made the choice to have a family and they are adults. They can disagree as any other adult would. Sounds like your parents need to learn that lesson.
I hope your next 60 years on this earth are full of joy and healthy relationships.
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I’m thinking that there is something in the past that leads to this. Remember the scenes from “The Quiet Man” where Sean Thornton (John Wayne) goes to the railroad station, takes Mary Kate from the carriage and drags her back to her brother’s farm, where he demands her dowry and then gets into a huge, long fight with her brother?
And whatever it was, it affected people. I know a man who grew up Methodist and insisted, despite the words not being in his wife’s marriage vows, that the failure to obey allowed him to inflict “discipline” on her, often to her face.
So somehow I think there is historical precedent that would explain at least a portion of this. Perhaps those who would emulate Wayne in the movies listed here ought to remember that his second wife tried to shoot him for one too many affairs. (and speaking of religion, it’s also worth noting that Wayne’s tumultuous private life did not keep him out of Scottish Rite–there was a certain tolerance for male misbehavior at the time, to put it mildly)
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It wasn’t just Old Movies. I remember “Old Testament” Star Trek from the mid-Sixties, where in the Bright Future of the 23rd Century Starfleet women still wore micro-minis and nothing was wrong with a man occasionally casually slapping a woman’s butt as a catcall.
Any SF future maps to the present (as in time of writing) in some way. Trick is to map across in areas & customs & behaviors that don’t go stale. As in a reader or viewer half a century later going “HUH?”
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@BikeBubba:
There was a LOT of “tolerance for male misbehavior at the time”. And not just sexually; drunk driving wasn’t seen as “really bad” until around the 1970s. Before that, you had stand-up comics whose shtick was “acting drunk onstage”.
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Yeah but John Wayne was a Calvinist !
Just playing , but in my experience every wife Spanker from RC WackJob to the idiot sent to prison for two years has been a Calvinist. The Perls, Calvinists. The vast majority of the Patriarchy movement, Calvinists. If reformed folks don’t like their reputation , they need to clean up their own camp before reforming anything else or attempting to turn other churches.
Sorry but I’m not seeing wife spanking and other assorted Patriarchial crap in any of the 37 Bible church or mainline denominations that I do business with. Granted I have only been to services at a few of them but still I just never hear about it anywhere but within reformed circles . I don’t buy that it’s Not theology driven, clearly it’s very common in Patriarchial households and most of them are reformed. Personally I believe it’s part of their unhealthy focus on discipline in general.
Reformed guys are always filing Church court charges on someone, filing a brief about some church member’s divorce with the elders , or otherwise meddling in other beliviers affairs. Hard to deny, it’s a characteristic of the belief system.
Funny story, once I was involved in a dispute with a small corporation that basicly was very slow in paying us. Finally we sued. I get a call from the defendant making the issue that the case should have been filed in church court. I said, ” never heard of it, see you in General District on the 9th”. Twenty minutes latter I get this call from my Dad. The reformed guy that doesn’t pay his bills had his pastor call my parent’s pastor, because he didn’t know where I went to church. When I called the pastor back and informed him that I’m not interested in his interference or counsel in the matter he seemed shocked. Mind you I was in my mid- twenties when this occurred. Then I get this letter from the reformed bill evader insulting the court and stating he wouldn’t pay any judgment from civil court. Needless to say the judge wasn’t amushed when he read this stupid letter or by the defendent’s conduct in the court. I got a judgment for $28,500 plus all legal fees (which is unusual in my state) and he ended up with a $500 sanction for running his mouth to the judge and not following proper court room proceedures. My attorney had never seen anything like that happen. On the way out of court he was like, “stay away from these people”. Umm excuse me , I don’t go looking for them.
It took a while but after a sheriff showed up to levy his trucks and equipment I got paid, the Justice system did exactly what it is supposed to do. Church courts ? I have Zero faith in them after seeing the numerous examples of elder conduct with cases like CJ Baloney and company and various other situations. For me, it’s straight to civil court every time. The reformed guy that doesn’t like to pay his bills will just have to consider me an infidel. In fact coming from anyone within that movement I would actually consider it a compliment.
People don’t form their impressions about Calvinists just because they disagree with the theology, it’s from first hand experience in dealing with them. When the above situation occurred in my life, I had never even heard of Calvin. The baptist church I grew up in and attended till my early twenties wasn’t exactly teaching church history, they were more focused on the Fundementals of the faith.
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“in my experience every wife Spanker … has been a Calvinist”
Tell me one of your beliefs – faith based or otherwise – and I’ll find someone who believes the same and has done horrible things. There are idiots and abusers in everybody’s “camp”.
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Lauren,
I’m in the middle of teaching division right now, or I’d have a LOT more to say.
I just want to take a second to applaud your bravery for leaving that situation. That takes guts, especially since your ex had your parents support. Bravo to you! You have nothing to be ashamed of. It’s your ex and your parents who should have their tails tucked between their legs.
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JA, this is completely off topic. Sorry, but it I have to say it. This is not the only blog I frequent, but this IS the only one where the owner is not a complete comment-control freak. You are an amazing, strong and confident woman to allow a free reign like this to everyone. No matter what one one may say, think, believe or write, you are above everyone and all. You know what owners censor out most often? The TRUTH! You are not afraid of truth and that IS awesome. You are one of a kind.
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Thank you, Jerry. Having a voice that is heard and respected is very important to me. And it has come at a personal price. That is why this place is called SSB. I don’t want it to only reflect only my voice, but others like Lauren’s, whose story must be told and heard.
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@Tim:
But is there something in the Calvinist Camp that tends to attract this kind of idiots and abusers? Not in the sense of making them into abusers, but in the sense of existing abusers finding them a place of welcome or place to hide?
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That’s what I was wondering too, HUG. What is it about those churches (and they are a minority of Reformed minded churches, I’m sure) that a) attracts the crazies, and b) gives their leaders such an outsized influence on other believers?
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i find the ‘infantilizing’ of grown women fascinating. It supports my hypothesis that these men are terrified of women and their power. If a female child is allowed to become a fully realized adult woman then she might actually have power (sex?) over men.
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It occurs to me that what we have here is a bunch of people talking about anecdotes–which are not data. If I flip things around and take a look around the blogosphere, I find any number of people who are not Calvinist in their soteriology (knowledge of salvation) who are advocates of “domestic discipline.”
But let’s assume we’ve got a decent correlation–good “p” value and all for the statisticians out there. Now what does that mean?
Well, it could mean Calvinism results in abuse a la “The Scarlet Letter”, or it could mean simply that independent Reformed churches (and home churches) like those of Driscoll, MacDonald, and SGM are the “flavor of the month” in the same way that “nondenomimational” churches were the “flavor of the month” a couple of decades back.
In other words, it’s going to take some serious data to prove a cause here, not to mention some actual applications that do indeed go from Calvin himself, or at least something like the Westminster Confessions or the Synod of Dort.
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Bike Bubba – I hope they cover stuff like this in the statistics class I need to take.
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What they will tell you in statistics class is that when two factors A and B are significantly correlated in a data set, they could be related in one of three ways. A could cause B. B could cause A. A third factor, C could cause both A and B. Or, despite statistical significance, the correlation might just be coincidence for your data set and other day sets investigating A and B won’t find a correlation.
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Anecdotes are data. They aren’t great data, but they are a start and can lead to exploratory study of something about which very little is known.
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“I am in my early 30s and this past 4th of July I was there and we had a bit of an argument. They threatened to spank me if I didn’t back down and I have no doubt it wasn’t an idle threat.”
Holy $#!t…
If that had been me in that situation, I would have had to leave and cut off all contact with them at that point. To me that’s just delusional, to think it’s appropriate to try to spank a 30-something adult. Maybe it’s partly the church they go to, but it seems to me that people’s heads aren’t on right. Glad she got out of there.
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Julie Anne–dunno what your academic history is, but for me, the first, and more interesting question is actually the logical one. If we assume a link, what does it mean? To draw a picture, it took researchers decades to prove smoking caused lung cancer–the link is easy, causation is tough.
But yes, a good statistics class will teach you that. That said, the guy who taught me “design of experiments” (part of what Marsha is getting at with her comment at 2:24) noted that he was very grateful for the way it’s often taught in colleges, because it means he gets paid very handsomely for teaching it right.
And to comment on Marsha’s 2:29 comment, anecdotes only become data once (here’s that logic again) you manage to get some sample that may reasonably be said to be representative. Until you do, you simply have anecdotes.
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“That’s what I was wondering too, HUG. What is it about those churches (and they are a minority of Reformed minded churches, I’m sure) that a) attracts the crazies, and b) gives their leaders such an outsized influence on other believers?”
There has been a long running debate about whether Calvinism attracts certain personality types– especially argumentative, highly intellectual, authority-oriented types. It’s Calvinism that has the infamous “cage stage” that recent converts typically go through, where they make themselves more obnoxious than the average new convert to whatever. Maybe it’s the postmillenial eschatology, with the resulting push for eventual worldwide transformation. It’s almost like whole theological traditions take on the personalities of their founders or cultures where the tradition originally took root.
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Oh, so that’s how I avoided those pitfalls. I’m an a-mil Calvinist. (A-trib too.)
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One thing regarding “cage stage” is that I’ve noticed that not too many Calvinists have actually read anything by…Calvin. It does appeal to those who style themselves, rightly or wrongly, as intellectuals, but I’ve rarely met one who has read anything like “The Institutes.” There could be something–if the data hold of course–of a combination of intellectual + newset thing.
As the famously un-intellectual Spartans told Philip, of course, “If.”
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The pastor/dictator of the local church we were a part of for a few years considered himself a hard-core Calvinist. He was a weird combination of bluish-collar he-man (lots of talk of punching folks in the neck) and intellectual. He started his church because he was unhappy at how things were done at the mega where he’d been employed, and siphoned off a good half of the college group he’d been teaching. The new church was young, and followed him pretty blindly into authoritarianism.
I insisted we leave after about three years of increasing discomfort over both doctrine and attitude. The years after that the church imploded in a spectacular fashion, as the pastor’s abuse of many finally caught up with him. It’s become a minor sensation in our greater metro area. And just as an aside, this guy also refused to deal with my husband’s continual alcohol abuse after I became desperate enough to bring it to his attention, aside from a “you won’t do it anymore, right?”
So my own experience is Calvinism:abusiveness=\=protection of victims.
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NJ– “If that had been me in that situation, I would have had to leave and cut off all contact with them at that point. To me that’s just delusional, to think it’s appropriate to try to spank a 30-something adult.”
No contact would definitely be my next move. Before doing that, however, I would make it clear that I’d file an assault report with local authorities and request a restraining order. These parents need to be enlightened that to strike a 30-something adult is a crime.
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Data simply means a piece of information and you may think I taught this incorrectly, but an anecdote is in fact a piece of information.
The best data comes from double-blinded placebo-controlled experiments but there many areas to be investigated in which such an experiment would be either impossible or immoral to carry out. We do correlation studies instead.
My first husband had a autosomal dominant genetic disorder. He and his mother were diagnosed with it the same year. The average age of onset is 39.5 years of age. They were both older
For years, families reported that onset seemed to occur at an earlier age with each generation as it did with my husband’s family. Since these were anecdotes, doctors dismissed them as meaningless, reasoning that people were just watching for the disease once they knew it was in the family and picking up on symptoms sooner. After all, it is a genetic disease and it didn’t seem to make sense that a gene would change from generation to generation; aren’t mutations rare?
But in fact, the anecdote tellers were onto something. The gene was discovered twenty years ago and the disease was found to be caused by a genetic stutter in a section of a gene which makes an important protein for the brain. This section encodes for glutamate and the code C-A-G is repeated around twenty times on the normal gene. On the disease gene the number of repeats had expanded to around forty or more.
This expansion is unstable. It can contract, stay the same, or increase upon transmission to the next generation, with the trend going to expansion. The number of repeats is associated with earlier onset, the more repeats of the CAG code, the earlier the age of onset. So with each generation, there is in fact a tendency toward earlier onset.
You cannot see this at the individual level or even in every family. It only becomes clear in large data sets, but the researchers knew to look for it because of anecdotes, pieces of information that might mean something. This time they did.
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@BikeBubba:
“You don’t need any intellect to be an Intellectual.”
— one of the Father Brown mysteries
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Since theater is being discussed I’ll chime in about tommow nights festivities. Tomorrow I have a date with Eva Peron at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. 🙂
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Scott, this is OT, but “CJ Baloney” is the best name yet!!
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“as a domestic violence professional and as the former partner of a pedophile, I wonder about the correlation between viewing women as children/property and child sexual abuse. I also am wondering if this practice of wife spanking/beating has a sexual connection, i.e porn addiction, etc”
Brenda, your questions are my questions….Except that I long ago decided that infantilzing women is all too dang close to child sexual abuse for me. It has that same, creepy, dirty-minded feel to it, IMO.
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“The panties issue and calling you a girl – that’s not healthy. The spanking may have grown out of that.” That was VERY disturbing to hear for me, too.
I would like to point out that a couple of celebrities of times past had the same panties fetish. (Blecch!!! Elvis Presley tops that list. Makes me wonder what we never heard about).
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I concur with Marsha.
Anecdotal information may not be quantifiable, but it is qualifiable. Aberrancy in any situation is not insignificant, just because it is not common. Though data may be limited on a subject so that no generalizations can be made about the population of people who experience something other than the norm or the ideal, the anecdotes are still significant. And it can be approached as a discipline and with integrity, so long as it is understood that the anecdote may not be representative. It is just a starting point.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/#2
I have been asked about how many people follow aberrant homeschooling and how many “quivering daughters” there are out there in the US. I don’t think that we will ever get anything remotely close to an accurate number. I feel comfortable saying that about 2 million families have been affected by the Evangelical Christian homeschooling movement in some way, but as Kathryn Joyce notes, her estimate of followers of extreme Quiverfull homeschooling numbers at about 25K.
It’s complicated, because of the gross overlapping with complementarianism which embraces so many of the same ideals. Looking at just the numbers of denominations that embrace the Danvers Statement, they number as high as 25 million. (But within that largest group of 16+ million within the Southern Baptist Convention, not all who participate embrace those beliefs.)
Professional journals publish this early data as case studies to inform their specialty of trends in such cases. Those case studies are never insignificant, particularly where harm is involved.
It reminds me of a dangerous intersection where people in our community rallied within local government for them to install a traffic light. Initially, we were told that there had not been enough fatalities to warrant a light, though there were many collisions and injuries there regularly, and it was stressful to negotiate the turn. And it was at the entrance/exit to the community college that was heavily trafficked by young people including teens who attended VoTech on the campus (a population at risk). Eventually, the accumulated fatalities warranted a traffic light.
I thought of this example of the traffic light when I first started protesting the Vision Forum type of patriarchy within homeschooling. People didn’t want to talk about it or put their reputations at stake to reveal the problems and the heavy consequences suffered by the casualties of the movement. Early on, I started to say, “When enough bodies pile up in its wake, people will pay attention. But, oh, the collateral damage in the interim!” Part of me hoped I was wrong, for the sake of the wounded. Well, the bodies finally piled up high enough, and the anecdotal population suddenly warranted the attention of the populous, didn’t it?
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Zooey,
I had a long discussion with Maureen Canning about this issue a few years ago regarding this general topic. She is the director of the sex addiction program at the Meadows in Wickensburg, AR, the position previously held by Patrick Carnes who wrote the Betrayal Bond and other books on the topic. There is another population of second generation adults within patriarchy who, because of aggressive spanking, have had a functional “fusion” of sexual pleasure and pain because of genitalia stimulation. There is a sexual element to it, and this fusion (sometimes manifesting via sex addiction) is not uncommon among adult children who have endured aggressive corporal punishment.
I asked the question of whether it was always dysfunctional. She said that the real tell as to whether the behavior was dysfunctional was to look at its influence on intimacy. Does the practice within a sexual relationship enhance intimacy, or does it involve manipulation and a power play dynamic? How can any intimacy be fostered through abuse? Whether people admit that there is a sexual element to it or not, it is certainly dysfunctional.
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http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com/2011/03/finding-alternative-model-for-child.html
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I can’t even hear the word spank without thinking sexual connotation. The word itself makes me ill. At least the IFB school I went to called our spankings hacks or swats, that was a little better. But I can’t even think about those without the picture of the girls bent completely over grabbing their ankles with male teachers swatting and the boys by one teacher who appeared to be swinging the paddle so far underneath them as to hit their bits. Sick stuff.
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Jerry wrote:
This is not the only blog I frequent, but this IS the only one where the owner is not a complete comment-control freak. You are an amazing, strong and confident woman to allow a free reign like this to everyone.
I agree Jerry and kudos should go out to Julie Anne. TWW (the wartburg watch) is another blog (also run by women) which is an exponent of toleration. There is one place which is purportedly the cat’s meow for dissidents but my comments get $hit-canned on sight even though I’ve never trolled and have always been civil and respectful toward their belief system. There really is no nice way to say it except by way of a loose metaphor: Theirs is a male-centric exclusive country club that doesn’t allow Jews.
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Jacob Prasch would not like this blog very well as he has verbalized insults against “mommy bloggers.”
What I cannot figure out is if God, the Holy Spirit is still speaking to us today, then how come He isn’t convicting people of their gluttony (obesity) all the while lending insult to those they deem “the lesser, the stupid, the female mommy blogger?”
Perhaps God’s children only have “selective hearing” regarding the Holy Spirit and the fruits of mankind (2 Timothy 3:1-7).
My prayers go out to those who are humiliated by this act of raw coward discipline. If we are to indeed model Jesus, where is this “discipline” commanded within His teachings?
God be with all who visit this amazing blog!
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“There is another population of second generation adults within patriarchy who, because of aggressive spanking, have had a functional “fusion” of sexual pleasure and pain because of genitalia stimulation. There is a sexual element to it, and this fusion (sometimes manifesting via sex addiction) is not uncommon among adult children who have endured aggressive corporal punishment.”
That’s interesting. I wonder if that could be a factor for those who cross the line into things like sadomasochism. After all the promotion of “aggressive corporal punishment” as being the godly way of child rearing by the Pearls and others, I wish this kind of information could be made available via seminar in the large homeschool conventions as well as the HSLDA membership. No doubt it would be controversial, but at least would get well-meaning teachers and parents thinking.
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Marsha, I’m sorry, but you are incorrect; anecdotes are information and can suggest an experiment, but they are not data. Data requires a credible argument that the information are representative of something.
To draw a picture, there are, according to Wikipedia, more victims of domestic violence annually (5 million) than there are Reformed Christians (3-4 million), and other data (FBI) suggest that unmarried couples (about a third of adult couples) are something like 3x more likely to have domestic violence.
OK, now what is your control? If we compare Presbyterian married couples to the population as a whole, we are in effect comparing them mostly to unmarried people living in sin. They could be pretty bad and still look good in comparison. So we would have to measure the behavior of Presbyterian married couples to other married couples–and if we want to blame Calvinism, we then need to make sure that we get enough samples in the control so we can compare the behavior of Calvinists to Catholics, Arminian Baptists, Arminian Methodists, Episcopalians….
….and then we need to some how suss out whether those “Calvinists”, “Arminians”, and “Anglicans” actually hold to denominational distinctives….to use a picture we’ve used, there’s not much fellowship between Marion Morrison (John Wayne) and R.C. Sproul, no matter what one thinks of either.
So the need to figure out what you’re actually measuring, and its significance, is huge. And if you guessed that, people being people, social science research is a mess, you would be exactly right.
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As a retired social science researcher, I naturally disagree that research in that area is a mess. And of course I don’t think I am wrong about anecdotes either.
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JA: You say in your article that wife spanking occurs in an unspecified Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Which one?
I am also curious as to whether anyone has found this strange behavior is taught or practiced in any Lutheran denominations.
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Bike Bubba,
There is all kinds of bad research out there in every venue — and it depends on the skill and ethics of the researcher, and politics has a lot to do with what makes it into the literature. I did an amazingly statistically significant study with my husband disproving that drug recognition experts can detect the class of drug that affects an intoxicated driver. I had 246 cases that I included (and I excluded about 100 to be conservative). DRE’s are experts at detecting impairment, but their success rate of detecting specific drug class via specific impairment proved to be 40% accurate. I could do just as well, guessing at random or flipping a coin. We presented at a meeting, but we couldn’t get that paper published for anything. All of the good money in the tox field comes from law enforcement, so no one would touch it.
I’ve also been involved with a submitted article for which I pulled literature to demonstrate that the five case studies from all over the place and from different medical examiners claiming that a particular drug level a fatal level. It was truly lousy research that made grossly unfounded conclusions on too little data, and the people I worked for at the time refused to publish it. Because of the politics and the witch hunt to get convictions, another publication accepted it immediately and made sure that it was published in the next journal, bypassing the usual long wait time to see such a study make it to press. That was actually an article that should have been a good collection of five anectodal case studies, but it is now published, giving ME’s cause to claim homicide in certain circumstances.
Sometimes the process works, but it begins with anecdotal data. When we know enough and have enough well-collected data, then we can throw all of the math at it that we can to try to disprove it in order to see if it stands up to scrutiny. It is a discipline, governed by principles and ethics, when people follow them and is the seed of good research.
But just because the data seems to show something? I have a book for you that might be an interesting read, and sadly, lies get into the literature often:
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Cindy K as you might remember, I am on the prosecution side of the Courtroom, but your research re DREs sounds interesting.
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NJ wrote I wonder if that could be a factor for those who cross the line into things like sadomasochism.
According to my detailed discussion with M. Canning, it absolutely does. It doesn’t for all, of course. And what amazed me was that she didn’t even bat an eye when I explained the practices and what I thought was a phenomena, though it is not widely reported for obvious reasons. When I approached her, I expected some degree of surprise or a disturbed reaction on her part — because I find it disturbing and hard to consider. She knew far more about it than I did, essentially, and talked with me about how common this is among people with pathologies according to their reported histories.
(Note that this is different than people who get into BDSM and aren’t from a “Pearl-style child training” upbringing, but is one possible outcome reported by people who endure aggressive corporal punishment as children.)
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Keith,
The politics that prevented publication came from the people who will say whatever prosecutors want them to say in court (my husband calls them “whores”) and from the law enforcement end of things, though it was recognized among some circles in toxicology.
You should have been a fly on the wall the first time my husband came home from testifying (not long after we were married) and said, “I had to testify against the worst whore today.” My jaw hit the floor. All I could picture in my mind was a prostitute in a vice case, and I couldn’t figure out how he would have had anything to do with that kind of testimony. Then he explained the concept of the expert witness who will bend the truth for money. 😉
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The best evidence money can buy!
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Sexual feelings are extremely diffuse and are easily generalized to other aspects of the situation. If you think about it, this is true for everyone. The wife is wearing the special nightie or the husband puts on cologne and these have an affect on the partner through past association. It becomes a problem when the associations are unusual and cause dysfunction. When I took abnormal psychology years ago, we read about the case of a man who had to have a large handbag and a baby coach in the room to be able to perform. He was a young teen when seduced by a neighbor in a room where both items were present. I am not surprised that spanking can lead to sexual problems.
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Marsha,
Maureen’s explanation was really cool, and I was honored that she stood there with me and another nurse to explain this to me. The rest of the crowd cleared out of the lecture room while she took the precious time to explain.
She looked and me and said something to the effect of this:
Think about what it’s like when you slap only the palm of your hand firmly with the fingers of your other hand as she demonstrated. The vibration of the impact doesn’t just remain in the palm, but you can feel the vibrations travel up through your fingertips. The more relaxed your hand, the greater the vibration that travels up through your fingers. In this same way, when children are spanked very aggressively, that vibration travels into the perineum of the child. In that sense, there is, for some, a degree of stimulation of the genitalia. At different stages of physical and mental development, there are spurts of awareness of sexual organs accompanied by bursts of elevated sex hormones (with a definitive one at about age five). — Think about when your kids start to notice the differences between male and female characteristics.
We lay down memory emotionally and physically, especially if something involves trauma. We can develop “flashbulb memories” of trauma experiences when our body goes on high alert in physical survival mode in an effort of self-protection. For some, the perfect storm develops, and at least some children exposed to severe punishment associate this sexual stimulation with pain.
I think that after the development of secondary sex characteristics in particular, especially for young women, the whole spanking issue must be sexual on some level.
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(Marsha, you would have loved her.)
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I am certain I would have, Cindy!
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@NJ:
That sounds like a lot of the USSR fanboys I encountered in the Seventies & Eighties. Guess they had to go somewhere after the Second Russian Revolution ended their Beloved Soviet Union.
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JA said, “it sounds like he had a sense of entitlement over you – you were an object to be owned rather than a cherished wife to be treasured and loved.”
I think that this statement is at the heart of the matter in situations like this and most types of abuse. I jumping in a little late so I apologize if someone else has said this, I just skimmed the comments. I think that a mindset of “I am better than you because…” is what turns people into objects that are placed on earth to satisfy the “superior” person. It is the most tolerated sin in the church because a person can continue to appear to be an “upstanding” member while indulging in this type of thinking. Sadly, it never seems to just stay an attitude, it eventually affects how the “superior” person treats those around him/her, meaning those he/she considers “inferior,” and does untold damage to families and church members.
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Sorry to be a bother, but in the article Julie Anne says that this so-called CDD occurs in the Reformed Presbyterian Denomination. Could someone say which one? Was it the RC Sproul, Jr. group, or was it another such as RPCNA, RPCUS, PRC, etc.
Also, has anyone ever heard of this in Lutheran circles?
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Keith,
The comments that I quoted on my original CDD article implicated RC Sproul, Jr. I obviously cannot verify that. The pastor I spoke with said it was within RC’s group. What does that mean exactly? I’m not sure, but certainly we can say Reformed Presbyterian, but I would suspect it would be the smaller groups that have sprouted up. My guess would say these churches would be big on Patriarchy, maybe homeschooling as well. Carl Trueman is Presbyterian and he said he hadn’t heard of it, so it obviously hasn’t been prevalent in all circles.
Haven’t had any reports in Lutheran circles.
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“That sounds like a lot of the USSR fanboys I encountered in the Seventies & Eighties. Guess they had to go somewhere after the Second Russian Revolution ended their Beloved Soviet Union.”
Believe it or not HUG, there are still those who uphold North Korea as a paragon of virtue.
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Marsha, you may disagree that social science papers are a mess,but if one takes the situation I’ve drawn out, and how the comparison would usually be done, I don’t see how you come to any other conclusion. Other examples include the Kellerman study that ignored whose gun murder victims died by (generally someone else’s),Kinsey’s infamous Table 34 and horribly bad samples (all male settings as a proxy for the population as a whole) rebuked by no less than Tukey, numerous studies of corporal punishment of children that make no distinction between spanking and physical injury of a child, studies of homosexual parenting that explicitly choose single parents as a control (most of them), and the like. It is a litany of unforced errors, sad to say.
And that’s why I would caution that we ought to be very careful to be working from properly collected data, not anecdotes, before indicting a whole church movement. Perhaps Reformed believers of a certain stripe are more likely to spank their wives than others. However, unsourced allegations about R.C. Sproul do not prove this.
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Julie Anne: Thanks, it seems like this is somewhat sub rosa…but we need to be vigilant lest it crop up in other churches. Remind me a bit of the way pedophile rings have operated.
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Thanks for the new word of the day – I had to look up sub rosa – lol.
But yes, absolutely, it is hidden and secretive. The pastor I spoke with said you will never see literature on it. It is only discussed at “heads of household” meetings and privately with men whose wives are “disobedient.” So, I imagine a lot of this is in private counseling from man to man. It’s definitely known, but no one is going to and say, “yes, we do this, and it is Biblical” because they know the political and even legal repercussions.
I’ve done a lot of research on this and you can find very old articles only on Wayback Machine.
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Keith,
I suspect that, just as Vyckie Garrison points out that Patriarchy is not a denomination (that it springs up in various denominations), wife-spanking is also an ideology that could possibly infect different denominations that tend to view women lower on the hierarchical totem pole. Sometimes this stuff creeps in through families who present it as “biblical” and it spreads. Sometimes it may be the leadership of the church teaching it. Sometimes it could be a single, aberrant, dysfunctional family practicing it in a particular church.
I doubt there is going to be any churches or leaders who will go on record defending what could be legally considered assault. You can find some consenting wives who are willing to blog or write about their experience (though I don’t recommend looking for it. I wish I never had. Need. Bleach. For. Brain.).
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Bike Bubba, Kinsey was a biologist and Kellermann’s degree is in public health, but I have taken due note of the contempt you have for my field of sociology and for me and will not respond to you again. I don’t mind someone disagreeing with me but I do take exception to being told “Sorry, but you are wrong” as if despite having a Ph.D. in sociology from Bryn Mawr College, I can’t possibly understand data collection and analysis or research. By the way, I won a national award from the Justice Research and Statistics Association.
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Back in the ’90s, this was a topic of discussion of interest on the “CCC” Complementarian forum that was originally started by CBMW (think of the Bailey Bros era). It was then sold to Bill Mouser. There were different levels of that site, and they used to have a more private section that was called the “cafe” or had the word in it. There were archives that I’ve seen and didn’t think it serious enough to copy, back when they were still retrievable, but they’ve been deleted or they weren’t archived. I tried to get back into them when RC protested JA’s discussion of the matter here on SSB and complained to Martin Selbrede about it. There’s still an electronic copy of the CCC discussions somewhere on some server out there in cyberland, I would think, but I can’t find it and don’t have a burning interest in it. I’ve talked to four other people who were involved with the discussion at the time who also recall this material as well.
I made a general reference to the belief that husbands should discipline wives (per a novel interpretation of Hebrews 12) when I spoke about patriarchy in 2008, but given the other host of pejorative subjects that I had to tackle, I didn’t include this. I wish I had kept copies of it all. I also chose not to discuss the use of corporal punishment that has been employed within this end of the homeschooling movement. I only had so much time, and I felt like this was an entirely different topic.
Considering that domestic abuse itself is excused within complementarianism and that groups that include both CBMW and the Gothard-minded talk about the duty of wives to suffer under the principle of hierarchy, I was more interested in the general principles that facilitate abuse in general. This was a commonplace discussion in the Gothard affiliated, high demand church I attended in the ’90s, and wives were told to suffer to gain purification when they were beaten. And noting the ontological subordination arguments made widely in complementarianism, I found that the real kerygma of error to be ideological. Is it then such a stretch to believe that fringe elements within this subculture extend this belief to condone discipline as well as violence? The real problem, as I see it, is the ideology. As is often quoted among the fringe and as a beloved book title within the Phillips/Sproul Jr/Wilson subculture of Theonomy states, “ideas have consequences.”
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Bryn Marr?!!! That explains it, Marsha. A fellow Philadelphia Yankee. We were both corrupted by spending time in Quaker City. Sergius Martin-George is one, too. We just don’t understand the domesticated, civilized traditions of the Christian South (TM).
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There are old publications among Independent Fundamental Baptists about wife-spanking, and this is where I’ve heard most of the reports about the practice. Dwayne Walker and those involved with HEAL have copies of them which I didn’t keep. Non-mainstream Mormons have been involved with the practice. I know of two Reformed Baptist churches affiliated with the fringy end of homeschooling who taught it, according to former members, and these denominations did come together under the complementarianism tent. I don’t believe that it was a widespread practice, but it was discussed as an issue and certain people advocated for it. And what you will find admitted publicly as a position on the matter was often a different matter when discussed in private among the likeminded.
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Marsha, those are the degrees Kinsey and Kellerman earned, but if we follow your logic, we would assume that Deming and Shewhart are known for their discoveries in physics instead of industrial quality. Basic genetic fallacy on your part.
The proper question is not “what were their degrees?”, but rather whether the research of Kinsey and Kellerman fits into realm of sociology. And it clearly does. Even the ASA gives a really, really broad definition of the discipline as “an overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics”.
Good luck excluding researchers from “sociology” when the definition includes a statement that broad!
And your reference to your reward and your Ph.D.? “Appeal to authority” fallacy, isn’t it? By that standard, we ought to defer to a “former Constitutional law professor” who headed the Harvard Law Review when he, in direct contradiction of Marbury vs. Madison, claimed that the courts do not overturn duly passed laws.
Sorry, I’m going to stick with Chief Justice Marshall and the data on this one.
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Bike Bubba,
You’re really grasping at straws with ^^this^^ comment. You’re using appeal to authority yourself by citing these other experts to establish yourself as an authority. Agree to disagree and argue fairly. You’re posturing — and you’re giving the impression that you’re intimidated.
If Marsha’s wrong, why is any skin off your nose? That shouldn’t make the truth any less credible or true.
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Has anyone ever considered that Kinsey is to sociology what Cyril Wecht is to medical examiners, coroners, and the investigation of [cause of] death?
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If the accusations regarding Sproul Jr. happened before his defrocking, that would have been when his church was still in the RPCGA. It’s a tiny micro-presbyterian denomination on the east coast that specializes in a few extrabiblical things like an insistence on no public schools for the kids, family integrated church services, no women in the military, and head of household voting as well as meetings. No personal experience; it was right there on their website.
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NJ, no, it was after his defrocking and started his new church group.
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“There is another population of second generation adults within patriarchy who, because of aggressive spanking, have had a functional “fusion” of sexual pleasure and pain because of genitalia stimulation. There is a sexual element to it, and this fusion (sometimes manifesting via sex addiction) is not uncommon among adult children who have endured aggressive corporal punishment.”
Thanks for saying that, Cindy K! I had suspected it in the penumbra of my mind, but you’ve made it crystal clear.
Thinking about this is hard, but it’s important to do so.
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Lauren, thanks very much for sharing your story in this post. I shall be referring our readers to it often, I think.
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@ Keith:
As a Lutheran – dear God I hope not.
That being said, I have caught (ultra)conservative LCMS folks promoting the Pearls’ child training books, as well as one site run by some women who promote basically Lutheran Quiverfull. The site name is the Sisters of Perpetual Parturition. (Sounds like an order of nuns from Monty Python to me, but they’re dead serious.) In the LCMS at least, this stuff seems confined to the “Confessing Lutheran” and “Brothers of John the Steadfast” circles. I’m in the more liberal / sensible end of the LCMS so I haven’t seen any of this in person, and I don’t know that much about it. But no, I have not seen anyone advocating wife spanking.
I can’t speak for the WELS, though, which is where I would expect this to show up first. I’d be even more worried about some of the micro-denominations like the Lutheran Brethren.
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Please be more precise in the future and title posts like this Calvinist Domestic Discipline…since no Christian spanks their wife, since Christians believe in freewill and moral responsibility before God and reject once saved always saved which enables people to do such things. A Christian would be afraid that if he beat his wife God would punish him for it, while a Calvinist says “whoohoo, I’m elect. God, you can’t touch me. I dare you to try! But Jesus is stronger than you and he won’t let you! Yeah, God your Jesus’ b%#@ and he won’t allow it! Jesus is my side! He’s a friend of sinners, especially wife-beaters like me and ‘real-man’ Calvinist preacher Mark Driscoll!!!!! CHRIST is central, and the rest of the Trinity can #$%$% off! Christ won’t let yall touch me! I can get away with anything! In your face Father!!!!!!” In fact, that prayer is so common among Calvinists, I’m surprised they haven’t put out some kind of Book of Common Prayer containing it.
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Before the “you can’t blame it on the Calvinists” comments start: YES I CAN.
Furthermore, its time to start calling people like this out. Its time to put a label on them. If they claim to be “Arminian” then point out that Arminius was a Calvinist. Arminius thought his Calvinism was more in line with John Calvin than that of his rivals. His rivals disagreed, and condemned him at the Synod of Dort.
Does the fact that rival Calvinists condemned Arminius mean he ceased to be a Calvinist? Hardly. So Arminians are Calvinists too. Classical Arminians, I mean, as quite frankly many people the Calvinists will call “Arminians” would not label themselves that and are more what is sometimes called Semi-Pelagians. Anyone, however, who keeps OSAS around is a classical Arminian whether they like the label or not, and being a classical Arminian is being a Calvinist, since Arminius’ system is Calvinism, even Calvinism more in line with Calvin (per his own statements).
So its time to quit even letting the classical Arminians hide behind the label of Arminian and point out that they’re just another type of Calvinist so we refuse to give them a separate label but will call them Calvinists too.
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Hey Lauren:
Glad you got out. Your ex-husband should not call himself a “Christian man” because Christian men do not assault and batter their wives claiming some authority from the Bible — because it is not there.
I don’t know how far along you are in your recovery or how long ago this happened, but if you are emotionally able and the statute of limitations hasn’t run out, with a narcissistic fool like your ex, you could probably get him to admit to the battery either in writing or e-mail — if he hasn’t already. Don’t accuse him directly, just tell him you’re still trying to sort things out and wish he could explain the Biblical foundation for him spanking you. He’s probably so full of himself and his false beliefs that he would relish the opportunity to tell you how much he loves you and just wanted to do what he thought was right in the eyes of God by beating you and is probably delusional enough to think you may come back.
Get him to admit it, have him arrested and then sue him in civil court for damages.
A public lawsuit about wife spanking would open the eyes and ears of many other victims and abusers. Your abusive parents will be very scared.
Lauren, you were made in the image of God. Your body houses the Holy Spirit. God never intended for your body to be harmed by anyone – let alone a scared, little child calling himself a “Christian man”.
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Hester,
Wayne Grudem claims that the LCMS is complementarian and accepts the Danvers Statement. How they parse that out and to what extent, I know not, but I will not attend there as a consequence.
Wayne A. Grudem. Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism. Multnomah Books.
“Three influential denominations are included among those that hold a Two-Point Complementarian position. These three denominations are the Southern Baptist Convention (at 26 million members, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States), the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (2.6 million members), and the smaller but very influential Presbyterian Church in America (316,000 members).”
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“…with a narcissistic fool like your ex, you could probably get him to admit to the battery either in writing or e-mail — if he hasn’t already. Don’t accuse him directly, just tell him you’re still trying to sort things out and wish he could explain the Biblical foundation for him spanking you. He’s probably so full of himself and his false beliefs that he would relish the opportunity to tell you how much he loves you and just wanted to do what he thought was right in the eyes of God by beating you and is probably delusional enough to think you may come back.
“Get him to admit it, have him arrested and then sue him in civil court for damages.
“A public lawsuit about wife spanking would open the eyes and ears of many other victims and abusers. ”
AMEN, Christian Father/Husband. Not only did I hit the *like* button for your comment, I have to say again, I LIKE IT!
Thank you for being such a supportive voice for survivors of abuse!
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Hester: Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for your information. I guess I could go over to the John the Steadfast site and just ask those guys. As regards the Pearls, no confessional Lutheran should be using their stuff. He is not a Lutheran, and apparently advocates discipline which constitutes child abuse. If Lutherans are using his material I think they should stop doing so. If Pastors are encouraging the use of his stuff, parishioners should make this known to the approriate people. Further I think this would me one more reason to keep the “evangelicals” at arm’s length. The liberals, fundamentalists, ecumenists, parachurch orgs and so on truly have a “different spirit”.
Cindy K: I think this term “complementarian” must come from evangelical/baptist/parachurch types, in LCMS/WELS/ELS the term “male headship” is used.
I like how Grudem steps in to make the “save” for the PCA. The “very influential” Presbyterians are always amazed that they are not really the center of everyone’s attention.
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Please excuse typos in my post…typing without glasses again.
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This is comming from the perspective of a (single until this gets sorted) guy still struggling to defeat these twisted fantasies, and while I make no excuses for them, it’s a lot harder than it sounds to break away even knowing how evil it is. Even before I reached puberty I had fantasies of horribly abusing my future kids (at the time I saw it as necessary corporal punishment), after puberty it transitioned to be more about a future lover. I was spanked by my dad up till 14, but it was the emotional outbursts and angry abruptness that hurt the most. I changed my name slightly because I’m about to mention that I later discovered that a few of my siblings had a similar reaction. Basically, they either rejected the abuse and acted out in ways that were called rebellious, or, like me, the mind accepted the abuse and sexualized the trauma as a coping mechanism. I think I was the most affected, I ended up sadistic, masochistic, and with a number of other fetishes that I won’t describe, except that I came to realize the common factors in all of theme were fear, punishment, pain, shame, bondage, and humiliation…all thoughts that Satan, not God, would have towards me.
If we really want to do away with this sadistic abuse, we have to do away with the concept of a sadistic God, and the entire teaching of Hell as a punishment God imposes on those who don’t love and obey Him. I believe Hell exists now more than I ever did, it is the logical but needless end of those tricked into finding pleasure in fear, punishment, pain, shame, bondage, humiliation…those tricked into loving and choosing for eternity death and darkness instead of life and light; it is a human choice that God on judgement day has no choice but to confirm, even if the pleasure was deceptive. If we don’t eradicate the lie that we deserve hell, we will never eradicate this sort of abuse, because it’s based on this lie that the book “The Search for Significance” words this way: “Those who fail are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished.”
I didn’t see any Scriptures that started me out thinking this craving for punishment was wrong, the Bible had always been read in the context of an angry, insecure God. God began speaking to me as a child, telling me that my fantasy life was hurting me, and in so doing, began to show me who He really was. I remember wondering if there was any material along the lines of my fantasies, I was curious but had no means of knowing without searching, and I remember God saying clear as day that there was all that on the internet, and more. (I wish I had just taken His word for it now).
Even though I still struggle in the natural, I consider myself free. I know I need to see it leave completely in the natural so I can one day help others leave this. Curiously enough, my shame from struggling with this in the natural is gone…good riddance, it just fed the cycle anyway. Thanks so much for this story. It humanized what the world objectifies and, absent the smoke and mirrors in “spanking stories,” it makes my heart break for the reality of what this is like and reminds me of the truth. Lauren, I immagine God has already done an amazing amount of healing, but I’ll pray that God continues to completely restore and heal everything damaged by that form of humiliation that involves suppression/denial of adulthood. I know a bit of how that hurts and what it can do. To those who say it’s Biblical: if this sort of thing is of God, than I’d rather love the Devil. But I have no fear that it would be.
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Kalub wrote:
“….Even before I reached puberty I had fantasies of horribly abusing my future kids (at the time I saw it as necessary corporal punishment), after puberty it transitioned to be more about a future lover. I was spanked by my dad up till 14, but it was the emotional outbursts and angry abruptness that hurt the most. I changed my name slightly because I’m about to mention that I later discovered that a few of my siblings had a similar reaction. Basically, they either rejected the abuse and acted out in ways that were called rebellious, or, like me, the mind accepted the abuse and sexualized the trauma as a coping mechanism….”
Thanks for your honest, transparent post about being abused by your dad and now your struggles with abusiveness in your life.
It’s not a surprise to me that you would struggle now with taking the position of your father, as an abuser: Because that would finally give you the position of power, instead of one of being a powerless victim.
The Bible does tell parents not to unnecessarily grieve and anger their children, which wasn’t done in your family. You were grieved, angered, and humiliated!
Some suggestions you may want to add on your journey of healing:
*cognitive therapy
*12-Step Programs (like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous or Sex Addicts Anonymous)
*Debtors Anonymous (abuse tends to also cause self-care/money problems for many people in their adult lives)
*group therapy
*books, like Bad Childhood, Good Life
Your past IS NOT your destiny! You can have power, love, and safety, and be a good role model.
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Kalub, that is a very honest post. Sexual feelings are diffuse and are easily generalized to other aspects of the situation especially when the feelings are new. Normally we don’t notice this because it is not a problem -men are aroused at seeing their wife in a sexy nightgown, for example, or a candlelight dinner arouses expectations for later, all because of past associations and that seems fine. We do notice when the associations are unusual and a partner finds it odd. I recall in one of my clinical psych texts, there was a case study of a man who could not perform without a large purse and a baby carriage in the room because his first encounter was with a neighbor woman in a room with both items.
It is not uncommon that sex and pain are united. Both cause a state of arousal and if coupled together in early experiences, can remain fused. There are a number of people who have grown up in families practicing corporal punishment that have reported struggling with masochistic and sadistic sexual tendencies. This is especially true when the child is older and required to bare his/her bottom for the abuse.
I applaud you for recognizing that this is not what you were meant to be and do. It is not your fault and therapy can help.
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Personally, if you want to call it abuse then fine. But the truth is, it isn’t. As long as you spank on the bottom and no where else then it’s called discipline. Two, the is a difference between physical discipline and abuse. You want to wrap it all into one and that isn’t fair. If you don’t want to practice then okay, that is your choice, BUT, To say that you should be the voice for all women and call your opinion gospel is a lot like legalism. You have no right to brand anyone an abuser until you look at the whole picture and why people practice this. So let what they do be between them and God and stop acting like you are the authority for everyone. Take care of your own life and shut the hell up.
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Thanks for writing about this important topic, Julie Ann! I’m actually writing a book about this phenomenon after speaking with quite a few women (and men) who currently practice this. (I went undercover.)
But my research has shown, while it may very well be more frequently popping up in patriarchal circles, it is by no means limited to those congregations. The only type of congregations that all of these wife-spanking people refused to go to were ones that ordained female pastors and taught egalitarianism. Any church that taught complementarianism was fair game for them to attend: their words not mine. All of them said they hid their proclivities from church friends. But many said they secretly suspected they weren’t the only ones to practice wife-spanking. They also heavily discussed how to bring up the topic of wife-spanking to your friend so as to “evangelize” them on the topic. They esp. thought they had a moral duty to tell any friends going through a divorce about wife-spanking as a way to “save their marriages.”
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pat Robertson is not a man of God….he rants about men abusing women, makes racists comments and it is a shame he has such a huge platform to spread his message of hate and evil.
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