Religious Culture of Abuse of Females in Right-wing Christianity: a Current Case Study

By William D. Lindsey
Teh Bilgrimage
May 28, 2015

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2015/05/religious-culture-of-abuse-of-females.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FOPqpQ+%28Bilgrimage%29

In my posting on the Duggar family earlier today, I cited Jenny Kutner to note that what shouldn't be overlooked in the Duggar story is how Josh Duggar's abuse, his parents' cover-up, and the excuses being made by the religious and political right are rooted in a religious culture of abuse of females. As I indicated, the religious ideology defended by the Duggars and their friends calls on women and girls to submit to men and boys. It routinely excuses even outright abuse, sexual or otherwise, perpetrated on females by males as just how boys behave.

And it does all this by invoking God, as if God is one of the old boys chuckling at the way real men knock women around — or take advantage of them sexually.

Lest you think I'm making all this stuff up or exaggerating, a case in point from yesterday's news: as Mark Woods reports for Christian Today, the Village Church in Dallas, Texas, has forgiven Jordan Root, a former missionary of the church in East Asia, after he was discovered to have been viewing child pornography online. Root has also admitted having abused children for whom he was a babysitter.

After all of this information came out, Root's wife Karen, who was on the East Asian mission along with him, asked for their marriage to be annulled. The church has disciplined Karen Root.

He with the history of child molestation and use of child pornography: forgiven.

She who asks to be unyoked from him, the child abuser, in marriage: not forgiven.

Can the picture be any clearer than this?

(I'm grateful to NSAC for pointing me to this story in a link in its latest newsletter emailed to NSAC supporters.)