Violence Against Women a 'Daily Domestic War' Say Consultation Participants
Episcopal News Service. May 13, 1992 [92114]
Marci Darin, Editor of the Journal for Women's Ministry
Mobilized by what one speaker labeled a "daily domestic war," representatives from seven New England dioceses gathered at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston on April 25 seeking ways to counter the escalating violence against women. The consultation was sponsored by the national Committee on the Status of Women, which will formulate recommendations to the next General Convention on the issue of violence against women.
"We are here because we care, because we want to understand why women fear men, why men kill women, and because we want to stop it," former chair of Women in Crisis Committee in the Diocese of Massachusetts, Mary Meader, told the more than 80 participants, many of whom were themselves survivors of domestic violence or sexual abuse.
Cautioning against being "silent and nice," Meader challenged participants to harness their rage over the escalating violence for the "serious moral activity of radical social change."
"Today, almost 20 years after the ordination of the first women priests, the church still struggles with us 'uppity' women who are neither nice nor polite," Meader told the predominantly female gathering that included representatives from rape crisis lines and battered women's shelters, Episcopal Church Women, and the Episcopal Divinity School.
Despite significant gains in public awareness and increasing resources for battered and abused women, violence against women is on the rise, Meader asserted.
"Feminists offer the only plausible explanation -- backlash. When male patriarchal control is challenged, women's terror is intensified," Meader observed, citing the results of a recent national crime survey that revealed 683,000 reported rapes in 1990, a fivefold increase over the previous poll. The survey estimated that a woman is battered every 15 seconds in the United States, a statistic that translates into almost three million casualties each year.
"It is difficult to wrap our minds around these numbers -- to suspend our disbelief that the men we have birthed and those we love beat and kill us. Many women die because they cannot suspend this disbelief," Meader said.
Speakers at the day-long consultation stressed the systematic nature of violence against women and the complicity of the church in perpetuating this violence. "Violence against women is deeply embedded in Christian history, theology, and scripture. It is woven into the very fabric of our lives and our culture," Meader said.
Exploring spiritual violence, the Rev. Anne Fowler, a member of the Women in Crisis Committee and rector of All Saints, Stoneham, Massachusetts, cited "historical biblicalism" as the root of "our distorted view of women." "Reading the Bible to learn how women ought to be treated is like reading the sports pages to find a definition of date rape," Fowler remarked.
Fowler, who identified herself as a sexual-abuse survivor, called for a new Christian ethic and theology that "reflect the historical nature of our culture and our faith. We need a new creation-centered theology, one based on the first Genesis story, where man and woman are both created in the image of God," she said.
Speaking on the subject of economic violence toward women, especially women of color, a Boston advocate for economically disadvantaged women cited the "character assassination" that fuels unjust economic policies. "Under this system, welfare is seen as a place where lazy women go to reproduce with abandon and avoid work," said Rebecca Johnson of Women for Economic Justice. In reality, she said, the average time an African-American woman receives welfare is now two years, "not generations."
The church must "debunk the myths" that support unjust economic systems. "We must affirm the values of child raising, and affirmative-action policies that work toward full employment," Johnson said.
Asked what specific steps the church should take in confronting violence against women, participants cited the institution of mandatory seminary training on the issue; preparation of resources for parishes, including rituals for healing; designating a national day of prayer for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse; and revision of the lectionary to exclude passages that debase women. Other suggestions included making the issue a priority at the next General Convention and asking dioceses to explore the issue of violence against women at convocations and diocesan conventions.
One speaker seemed to capture both the conflict participants expressed about remaining part of an institution that perpetuates violence against them and the hope for healing.
"We have been abused, we have been done violence to, we have been betrayed by our closest intimates," Fowler observed. "We walk with a stoop, spiritually speaking, as did the biblical woman bent over. And we speak with a strange and different language, perhaps. But we are coming into the light."