My heart quakes within me,
and the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling have come over me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I said, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest
I would flee to a far-off place
and make my lodging in the wilderness."
For had it been an adversary who taunted me, then I could have borne it;
or had it been an enemy who vaunted himself against me,
then I could have hidden from him.
But it was you, a man after my own heart,
my companion, my own familiar friend.
We took sweet counsel together,
and walked with the throng in the house of God.
My companion stretched forth his hand against his comrade;
he has broken his covenant.
—Psalm 55:5-8, 12-14, 20
Two policemen were standing on the elevator. I stepped on, wondering what had brought them to my apartment building. A robbery, a rape—"What happened?" I asked.
"Just a domestic," one of them replied assuringly. Just a domestic. In the shelter for battered women where I had lived and worked, "just a domestic" meant black eyes and disfigured faces, broken bones and traumatized children. Sometimes it means a miscarriage, maybe even a woman's death.
I cannot think of this violence—violence against women that takes place at home—without remembering women I have known: Anna, Barbara, Linda. I think of how they suffered, how God suffered with them, and how often those around them stood by in silence.
According to the FBI, one of every two women is beaten at one point during a marriage. Twenty-eight percent are battered at least once a year, 20 percent at least every two months. In a random sample of married men, 10 percent admitted to regularly engaging in "extreme physical abuse" of their wives.
The reasons for wife abuse are many, but they all center on the social arrangements of patriarchy: the economic dependence of women, sex roles which prescribe authority to men and obedience to women, the psychologies of dominance and dependency these arrangements create, and the ultimate threat of violence which undergirds patriarchal power. The societal arrangements that support wife abuse have been helped in no small way by the institutional collusion of church and state.
Historically the church has made major contributions to the victimization of women in the home. During medieval times when the state and the church were closely aligned, a woman could be burned alive for threatening her husband, scolding or nagging him, or miscarrying, even if the miscarriage was caused by her violent husband. Canon law permitted wife-beating. Men were told from the pulpit to beat their wives and women to kiss the rod that beat them. With such legitimation, even priests who were moved to speak against the brutality of their parishioners did no more than ask men to show some restraint, or to abuse their wives with a good attitude.
In the Rules of Marriage compiled by Friar Cherubino of Siena between 1450 and 1481, he writes:
When you see your wife commit an offense, don't rush at her with insults and violent blows … Scold her sharply, bully and terrify her. And if this still doesn't work ... take up a stick and beat her soundly, for it is better to punish the body and correct the soul than to damage the soul and spare the body … Then readily beat her, not in rage but out of charity and concern for her soul, so that the beating will redound to your merit and her good.
The Reformation brought some elevation of women's status, but church leaders continued to condone battering. Martin Luther married Katherina von Bora in 1524, largely to express his belief in the holiness of marriage, a state as fitting for the clergy as for the laity. But he later remarked, "George Kark has taken a rich wife and sold his freedom. I am luckier, for when Katie gets saucy, she gets nothing but a box in the ear."
In colonial New England the Puritans outlawed not only physical but also verbal abuse between husbands and wives. Rigorous in their enforcement of these laws, they did not necessarily wait for the injured party to come forward. When Daniel Ela told his wife Elizabeth that "shee was none of his wife, shee was but his Servantt," neighbors reported him to the civil authorities. Although Elizabeth contended "that I have nothinge Agenst my husband to Charge him with," the Essex County Court fined him 40 shillings.
For the most part, however, the colonies modeled their statutes after British Common Law. The "rule of thumb," considered the model of clemency in its day, allowed a husband to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his own thumb.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most states revoked their laws permitting men to batter their wives. But marriage still gives a husband the right to commit criminal acts against his wife that would be impermissible were he a stranger. In a majority of states, a husband can rape his wife without any threat of legal consequence. Although it is a crime for him to assault her, the legal system seldom intervenes when the criminal and victim are husband and wife. A husband can still beat and badger his wife with little fear of consequence.
Police officers seldom arrest batterers, even in the face of obvious abuse and injury. Their training teaches them to view domestic violence as a crisis in need of mediation, rather than a crime to be prosecuted. Typically, police advise a batterer to "take a walk and cool off" and counsel the woman against pressing charges. This approach denies not only the danger a battered woman faces—especially after the police leave—but also police officers' experience with the criminality of batterers. A quarter of all police assaults and 20 percent of police deaths occur as a result of intervention in domestic assaults.
Churches respond in various ways to battered women. Some conservative churches still hold to beliefs about battering that border on superstition, vaguely derived from Scripture: if she were truly submissive, her husband would not respond to her violently; Jesus is using her example of patience and forgiveness to bring her husband to Christ; her husband's violence is testing sent by God's Spirit to upbuild her faith.
Many churches remain naive to the violence in their congregations. Still others are aware and respond with much sympathy and faithfulness to what they understand. But it is only recently that the church has begun to focus on the nature of battering itself. Until now most of us have simply not known how to respond adequately to the broad range of problems that domestic violence generates.
To date, some of the best responses to domestic violence have emerged from the battered women's shelter movement. The first shelter for battered women opened in London, England, in 1975 under the direction of Erin Pizzey, author of the groundbreaking book Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear. In the following years, as a growing number of feminists became aware of the widespread nature of the problem, shelters opened in almost every state in the United States.
And in the 10 years of its grassroots existence, the battered women's shelter movement has made remarkable progress. In spite of meager resources, hostile government agencies, and internal struggles, 700 shelters have been started, almost 50 state coalitions have been organized, and thousands of women have been empowered toward a new life.
Shelter programs are designed to address a complex array of problems facing the battered woman. They provide a safe haven for her and her children while she examines her options. At the shelter she is free of financial dependence on the batterer. Child care workers may take care of her children for a few hours a week, giving her time to deal with legal and private concerns while the children receive specialized care and attention.
Many shelters provide legal, welfare, and housing information, as well as access to legal counsel. Most important, shelter residents and staff together give her a willing ear, believe her stories, support her decisions, and acknowledge again and again her worth.
I lived and worked in a shelter for battered women for two years. During that time, I came to share deeply in the experiences of many women. On any given day, usually around 7:30 a.m., two piercing rings of the hotline phone would waken me.
"Hello, Women's Place, may I help you?"
A doctor from the state hospital emergency room is calling. "We have a woman here with numerous contusions, abrasions, lacerations, a broken nose. She says these were caused by her husband. Do you have room for her?"
I ask to speak to the woman. Her name is Anna. English is not her native language, but we can understand each other—barely. She tells me she left her husband two weeks ago because he abused her. She has been staying at a hotel about 30 miles away. This morning her husband found her, beat her up, and took their 3-year-old son, who had witnessed the entire assault.
I ask her some questions about the history of the marriage—how long he has been violent, what kind of police involvement there has been. We discuss whether she wants to come to the shelter, what we offer, some of our rules. We agree that it is a good idea for her to come. Because I will need to consult with other staff members, I ask her for a number where she can be reached in an hour or so.
The staff consults, and I call her back. She has given me the number of the hotel, and the manager, who is very upset about what happened that morning, won't give me any information about Anna. I explain who I am and why I am calling. "How do I know you're telling me the truth?" she demands. "No, I'm not telling you whether she's here."
"If you see Anna," I tell the manager, "please tell her we called and that we want her to stay with us." I leave our number.
I call back the doctor, and he tells me Anna has left. He laughs in response to a voice I hear in the background. "There's a guy here who says, 'Oh well, she must have deserved it.'"
His words echo in my stunned silence. Then he awkwardly explains, "Well, uh, there's this other doctor here. He's kind of a chauvinist pig, but he's all right." He offers to go look for Anna.
An hour later Anna calls back, and two staff members pick her up. Meanwhile, I ready a room for her with the help of another resident, Barbara.
As we make the bed for Anna, Barbara tells me that she talked to her husband on the phone today. Her youngest child, whom she had not been able to take with her when she fled, is now in the hospital with meningitis. Her husband had neglected to give the child the medication that would have prevented this recurrence.
Barbara has been at the shelter for three weeks and plans to reconcile with her husband, since he has promised to go to counseling. He says he will never hit her again, and that he will be a new man. It's part of the pattern. Unless he seeks help, works very hard at changing, and receives a lot of grace, it is likely he will only be more violent the next time.
She is worried, but brightens as she shares a remark he made about his upcoming counseling: "It'll cost five dollars, but you're worth it."
"I'd say you're worth a lot more than five dollars," I respond.
We have recommended that she live apart from him for a while until his commitment to counseling is well demonstrated and she sees some real changes in him. But he is wooing her back, and she will probably go.
We finish the room, and I head to the kitchen for lunch. I'm still thinking, five dollars. She has been worth my life's blood for the last three weeks; she should be worth his for a lifetime.
Lunch is government surplus cheese and peanut butter on white bread and chicken noodle soup. Linda, another resident, walks in the back door. Weakly she leans her head against the wall in the hallway. Linda has been with us just a few days, and we don't know much of her story. But we know that she shudders visibly whenever a man walks through the room; if he loiters, she has to leave. She is frightened, and, we are discovering, she is suicidal.
I put an arm around her shoulders and help her through the kitchen to the living room couch. I ask her what is wrong. She says she has felt nauseated every morning for the last few days. The smell of lunch when she walked in the door has just about done her in.
I probe further. She has the symptoms of morning sickness. I ask her if she could be pregnant.
It's possible, she says, and adds, "That's all I need." If she is pregnant, she tells me, it is because of a gang rape led by her husband. "I been gang-raped so many times I can't even count 'em. When he don't feel like doing it, he sends his friends over without him."
We talk further and discuss her options. I wish she could cry; instead she goes to her room to lie down.
I wish I could cry.
Anna arrives shortly after, walking stiffly and painfully. She has seven stitches over her broken nose, and bruises larger than grapefruit. She is friendly but exhausted, so someone shows her to her room.
Later she will be assigned an advocate who will help her make decisions and go through the confusing procedures of counseling centers, the welfare department, housing searches, and legal proceedings. She will stay up late after the children have gone to bed, sharing "war stories" at the kitchen table. But for now she goes to her room, shabby but clean, and sleeps.
The kitchen table is often the central locus of healing during a woman's stay. With all our efforts at public education and systemic change, I often think our most important task is to provide a sanctuary where women can share their lives over those interminable cups of coffee. At the kitchen table the women gather for confessions and absolutions, shared stories, and the renewal of their lives.
"I used to wish he'd get in a wreck," one says, eyes lowered. "I prayed he would die on the way home. That's terrible, isn't it?" The others nod because they know, and in their compassion one woman regains a little more of her humanity.
"One time I left him and went to my Gramma's. Bob had been there looking for me, and Gramma said to me, 'You know, you should go back. He really loves you, honey.'
"I said, 'Gramma, don't you remember? Remember what it was like lying in bed by Grampa with your head pounding and your body aching? Did you feel like he loved you then?' But then Bob showed up. And I looked at him, and I knew I loved him. And I went back."
One woman is more jovial. "... And then I'm lying on the couch bleeding, and he says, 'I'm sorry, honey, let's make up.'
You know, like he thinks I'd really be in the mood ...!" The women break out in a fit of laughter.
And so do I. I join them in the kitchen when I can, because I find sustenance there, too. We who have been invited into the lives of battered women have seen unspeakable pain. But we have also watched the birth of new days in the strength, courage, and humor of the women.
A Reagan administration official once claimed that shelters for battered women are nothing but feminist indoctrination centers that serve to divide the family. As staff members we struggle daily with the questions of our power over and responsibility to the women. How do we express our disagreement with a decision while letting them know we believe in them? The question is always how to empower them, how to respect their freedom, how to meet the women where they are while calling them to grow.
Church women have participated in the women's shelter movement, contributing resources and volunteers, and becoming staff members. Some have started special ministries aimed at informing the church and helping Christian battered women understand their experience in light of the liberating Word. It has all been amazing to behold.
But it is a long battle, and in the midst of it I often wonder where my brothers are. Do they recognize the implications of our shelters for their own lives and ministries? Will they begin to minister to men as dramatically as women are ministering to women?
Coping with the problems of the battering man is no small task. Batterers come from all walks of life, but research indicates they have several common characteristics: they cannot tolerate stress and frustration, are extremely dependent on and jealous of their wives; they are given to depression and suicide, and they discount and deny their violence.
Battering men need to hear from all quarters—family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, clergy, criminal justice workers—that they can and must stop their violence, that their violence has no justification, that they hit because they want to hit, and that just as they learned to be violent, they can learn to be nonviolent.
Since many traditional counseling models ignore the pathology of batterers and blame women for the violence they receive, batterers must find a counselor or counseling group knowledgeable about battering men. About 60 such groups, which work in cooperation with shelters, have been started. Many more need to form.
Together men and women in the church can contribute financially to shelter and batterers' programs, become more informed, and reach out with a greater awareness of the dynamics of battering to families in their congregations plagued with violence. Ministers can speak out from the pulpit, and Christians can urge action from their church governing bodies.
Church members are in an especially good position to push for changes in the legal system regarding marriage, since clergy act as appointees of the state in marriage ceremonies. While ostensibly adjoining marriage partners to love, honor, and cherish one another, clergy also inaugurate couples into the regulations of the state which permit the women's abuse. If clergy and the Christians who witness the vows of marrying couples are to witness with integrity, they must work to change the laws and law enforcement practices that allow husbands to commit crimes against their wives.
Much remains to be done. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. I pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers to the field.
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