Unintended Consequences – Evangelical Feminism
by Keith Sharp
Brethren contend that a woman who “feels” threatened is obligated to leave her husband and file for divorce to force him into agreeing to get counseling, in direct violation of divine law. The woman’s feelings, justified or unjustified, trump the law of God.
The book Angry Men and the Women Who Love Them is endorsed by “Focus on the Family” and recommended by brethren. It asserts that the church should “validate” the wife’s claim she is abused, whether or not she has any proof. It lists the husband’s insistence on making major decisions along with violence as abuse. Couple this with the threat of divorce, that my brethren contend she is obligated to use, and the wife effectively assumes headship in the home.
From a practical standpoint, the wife leaving her husband to avoid violence (or vice versa) or to protect the children actually accomplishes nothing, for, statistically, the danger of violence from the abandoned spouse actually increases for the spouse who leaves (Ibid). The answer, both scriptural and practical, is to call the police and press charges, an exercise of civil rights allowed both by Scripture and civil law (Acts 25:9-11).
What do you think are the consequences of such rebellion against the divine plan for the home? Please seriously consider the following scholarly material.
“The decline of the family has now reached critical and truly dangerous proportions. Family breakdown touches virtually every family and every American. It is not only the major source of social instability in the Western world today but also seriously threatens civic freedom and constitutional government.”
….
“Almost invariably, the involuntarily divorced spouse will want and expect to continue enjoying the protections and prerogatives of private life: the right to live in the common home, to possess the common property, or—most vexing of all—to parent the common children. These claims must be terminated, using the penal system if necessary.“…. Unilateral divorce inescapably involves government agents forcibly removing legally innocent people from their homes, seizing their property, and separating them from their children. It inherently abrogates not only the inviolability of marriage but the very concept of private life.
“By far the most serious consequences involve children, who have become the principal weapons of the divorce machinery. Invariably the first action of a divorce court, once a divorce is filed, is to separate the children from one of their parents, usually the father. Until this happens, no one in the machinery acquires any power or earnings. The first principle and first action of divorce court therefore: Remove the father.
“This happens even if the father is innocent of any legal wrongdoing and is simply sitting in his own home minding his own business. The state seizes control of his children with no burden of proof to justify why. The burden of proof (and the financial burden) falls on the father to demonstrate why they should be returned.
“But while sensational examples can be found of anything, there is simply no evidence that the family and fatherhood crisis is caused primarily or even significantly by fathers abandoning their families, beating their wives, and molesting their children. Irrefutable evidence indicates that it is driven almost entirely by divorce courts forcibly separating parents from their children and using these false accusations as a rationalization”
“Contrary to popular belief, child support today has nothing to do with fathers abandoning their children, reneging on their marital vows, or even agreeing to divorce. It is automatically assessed on all non-custodial parents, even those divorced against their will who lose their children through no legal fault or agreement of their own. It is an entitlement for all single mothers, in other words, regardless of their behavior.
“Originally justified as a method of recovering welfare costs, child support has been transformed into a massive federal subsidy on middle-class divorce. No-fault divorce allowed a mother to divorce her husband for any reason or no reason and to take the children with her. Child support took the process a step further by allowing the divorcing mother to use the now-fatherless children to claim her husband’s income—also regardless of any fault on her part (or lack of fault on his) in abrogating the marriage agreement.
“By glancing at a child-support schedule, a mother can determine exactly how large a tax-free windfall she can force her husband to pay her simply by divorcing, money she may spend however she wishes with no accounting requirement. It is collected at gunpoint if necessary, and nonpayment means
incarceration without trial.“Like the welfare it was supposed to replace, child support finances family dissolution by paying mothers to divorce. Economist Robert Willis calculates that child-support levels vastly exceeding the cost of raising children create ‘an incentive for divorce by the custodial mother.’ His analysis indicates that only one-fifth to one-third of child-support payments are actually used for the children; the rest is profit for the custodial parent. Kimberly Folse and Hugo Varela-Alvarez write in the Journal of Socio-Economics that child support serves as an ‘economic incentive for middle-class women to seek divorce.’” (“Divorced from Reality,” by Stephen Baskerville [link] Stephen
Baskerville is Associate Professor of Government at Patrick Henry College and the author of Taken into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family [Cumberland House, 2007]).
Brethren speak only of a husband abusing his wife and of a husband using pornography. They can do a little research, as I did, and find out these important facts. Violence in marriage is about equally distributed between men and women: about half of the time it is both husband and wife, a fourth of the time just the husband, and a fourth just the wife. The overwhelming majority of domestic violence occurs between unmarried partners, but the press lumps it all together.
According to a 2010 national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Department of Justice, in the last 12 months more men than women were victims of intimate partner physical violence and over 40% of severe physical violence was directed at men. Men were also more often the victim of psychological aggression and control over sexual or reproductive health. Despite this, few services are available to male victims of intimate partner violence
(http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victimsof-partner-abuse/).
The end result of this evangelical feminism is a dramatic increase of unmarried young people because young men are afraid of the consequences of marriage and young women are pursuing careers outside the home, a dramatic increase in casual sex, and a dramatic increase of homosexuality. The position these brethren are espousing is a greater threat to the church than the positions of brethren Hailey, Freeman, et al. It is based on the “Situation Ethics” philosophy of Joseph Fletcher that is the basis for the moral quagmire in which American society wallows!
The Real Victims
The truly innocent victims of divorce are the children. Research has verified that the effects of divorce on children is worse than the effects of a violent marriage. Divorce for any cause other than fornication is an act of hatred toward the innocent children. Those who advocate divorce for any cause other than fornication share the blame for the inestimable harm done to the children of divorce.
“The homicide rate for children in stepfamilies is seventy times higher than it is for those living with both biological parents. The old family legends about evil stepparents were literary expressions of a grim fact: people care about their own children more than they care for those of others” (James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem. 3)
“Children in one-parent families, compared to those in two-parent ones, are twice as likely to drop out of school. Boys in one-parent families are much more likely than those in two-parent ones to be both out of school and out of work. Girls in one-parent families are twice as likely as those in one-parent ones to have an out-of-wedlock birth…. Children in one-parent families are much worse off than those in two-parent families even when both families have the same earnings” (Ibid. 7)
“The children of single moms are more likely than those of two-parent families, to be abused, to drop out of or be expelled from school, to become juvenile deliquents, to take drugs, and to commit adult crimes…. holding income constant, young people in father-absent families were twice as likely to be incarcerated as those in two-parent families” (Ibid. 8).
“Even the health of children is at greater risk if they are raised by a single mother” (Ibid. 9).
Baskerville adds:
“What is ironic about these witch-hunts is the fact that it is easily demonstrable that the child abuse epidemic—which is very real—is almost entirely the creation of feminism and the welfare bureaucracies themselves. It is well established by scholars that an intact family is the safest place for women and children and that very little abuse takes place in married families. Child abuse overwhelmingly occurs in single-parent homes, homes from which the father has been removed. Domestic violence, too, is far more likely during or after the breakup of a marriage than among married couples.
“According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), “Children of single parents had a 77% greater risk of being harmed by physical abuse, an 87% greater risk of being harmed by physical neglect, and an 80% greater risk of suffering serious injury or harm from abuse or neglect than children living with both parents.” Britain’s Family Education Trust reports that children are up to 33 times more likely to be abused in a single-parent home than in an intact family.
“The principal impediment to child abuse is thus precisely the figure whom the welfare and divorce bureaucracies are intent on removing: the father. ‘The presence of the father . . . placed the child at lesser risk for child sexual abuse,’ concludes a 2000 study published in Adolescent and Family Health. ‘The protective effect from the father’s presence in most households was sufficiently strong to offset the risk incurred by the few paternal perpetrators.’ In fact, the risk of ‘paternal perpetrators’ is miniscule, since a tiny proportion of sexual abuse (which is far less common than physical abuse) is committed by natural fathers, though government statistics lump them in with boyfriends and stepfathers to make it appear that incest is widespread” (Ibid).
Conclusion
The home is the bedrock institution on which society is built. As soon as the Lord God created mankind He instituted the family. Christians should be the salt that preserves our society (Matthew 5:13). We live in a society desperately in need of godly, moral influence. Dear brethren, I plead, don’t be part of the problem. Don’t succumb to the influence of the world. Be lights for the Lord in a dark and sinful world.
