Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 05:1 (Summer 2000)
Article: Shepherd’s Pie
Author: Tim Bayly

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Shepherd’s Pie

Wife Abuse: Evangelical Feminists’ Stalking-Horse

Tim Bayly

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:31, 32

It’s no accident the move to legitimate sodomy has experienced its greatest success precisely during the past decade when AIDS has decimated the homosexualist community. From Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity, to legislators in Washington D. C., to the National Institutes of Health, there has (quite properly) been a surge of compassion for the sick and dying, but this compassion has provided perfect cover for the entry of same-sex intimacy into the mainstream of public approval.

Why kick a man when he’s down? Sensing the political advantage victims possess in our culture, the sodomy lobby’s rhetoric has been successful, and wrongheaded compassion has trumped God’s Moral Law.

Similarly, compassion for victims of domestic abuse has been a potent weapon in the hands of those opposing God’s universal law of father-rule. Consider this from a 1998 release by Baker Books:

Patriarchal beliefs about marital relationships make women vulnerable to abuse and powerless to protect themselves once abuse occurs…. Patriarchal attitudes founded in religious beliefs contribute to the abuse and subjugation of women within marital relationships…. Religious teachings that support the primacy of males … have served not only to keep women silent but also to keep them vulnerable.1

The line of attack is clear: paint a graphic picture of wives suffering at the hands of their husbands, and when the reader’s compassion has softened him up, go in for the kill, presenting the biblical doctrine of father-rule as the real culprit.

But what of men abused by their wives?

A Potent Weapon

The book’s title, Healing the Hurting: Giving Hope and Help to Abused Women, makes it clear that women, not men, are the abused. Chapter titles serve to further indoctrinate: “Power, Patriarchy, and Abusive Marriages,” “Battered Christian Women,” “Christian Men Who Hate Women,” “The Silent Killer of Christian Marriages,” “The Evangelical Family Is Sacred, But Is It Safe,” “Group Work with Evangelical Abused Wives,” and “A Theological Analysis of Hierarchalism.” Women are the victims, men the brutes, and patriarchy the ritual enemy to be destroyed.

It’s worth noting that this work is co-edited by Christians for Biblical Equality’s (CBE) preside...

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