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Tag: survivors

  • Safeguarding: Still Not Trauma-Informed

    by Helen King, member of General Synod, 2021-2026; vice-chair of Together for the Church of England; President, Modern Church

    I have commented many times on the seeming inability of the Church of England to learn from its safeguarding failures. More and more ‘lessons learned’ reviews are published: but, despite promises of some work to connect them all and find common ground, nothing seems to happen. Lessons Learned Reviews are now called Safeguarding Practice Reviews but that does not detract from the point that they are not an end in themselves: we are supposed to learn something from their findings. As I have noted in relation to the abuse of the Read sisters, there is inconsistency in which reviews are considered ‘national’ and needing to be shared, and which are kept confidential to the diocese and the survivors. The recent Independent Safeguarding Audit of the National Safeguarding Team recommended that the C of E’s National Safeguarding Team, “in collaboration with the Audit and Information Technology departments, should immediately commission and establish a Centralised Safeguarding Learning Repository for all completed Lessons Learned Reviews (LLRs) and Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPRs)”. And that’s what we need; something to join up the dots.

    Reviewing reviews

    This recommendation from the Independent Safeguarding Audit is of considerable interest for those of us on General Synod for the 2021-2026 quinquennium who have been asking questions about how the ‘learning’ is supposed to be connected across reviews. We were led to believe that those dots were already being joined up. In February 2026 the Lead Safeguarding Bishop reported (Q80) that a thematic review of the LLRs and SPRs over a five-year period would be completed that month.

    There is still no sign of it. Responding to a follow-up question on this in July (Q130) the Lead Safeguarding Bishop said that the National Safeguarding Steering Group had received the report on these themes across reviews in May and were working on it to connect its findings with existing work on improving safeguarding, and after they consider it again later this year “publication arrangements will be considered”. That is rather less definite than what he said in February which was that “the findings will be published as part of the Church’s ‘From the Ground Up’ workstream within the ‘Turning the Page’ safeguarding programme”. I had never heard of the DARE Unit – that stands for data analysis, research and evaluation – until I was following up that February response, but this seems to be what was meant by “Turning the Page”; some information is here and if you click on the FAQs you can find out more about how it is supposed to turn safeguarding “lessons into action without delay”.

    So how is this going to join up with the Centralised Safeguarding Learning Repository, and who will have access to that repository?

    LLRs and SPRs are not the only sort of review probing our safeguarding practice, and here I want to say something about another sort of review: an Independent Review. One of these was published on 15 July. It relates to a survivor whose experience with the C of E was on the list of cases needing attention at the point when the Independent Safeguarding Board was abruptly terminated in 2023. The ‘ISB 11’, victims and survivors of C of E abuse and misconduct whose cases had been referred to this group, were left in limbo. The subject of this Independent Review, Jane Chevous, identified in it only as ‘TT’ but waiving her anonymity on publication, has noted that “Mine is the first new review to be published from the legacy of the ISB work, and I hope it gives some hope to others that they will see some resolution soon”. That’s encouraging. Other than a news story in the Church Times and an interview on BBC Woman’s Hour, this new review by safeguarding specialist Helen M. Gilbert seems to have had little publicity, but it deserves to be very widely read.

    What have we learned?

    Much of what is highlighted in the Review is not new, and makes it clear that we are yet to take on board the most basic lessons of earlier reviews; Jane Chevous reported what had happened to her more than once, and we read of missing documents, long delays in responding to letters, unacknowledged power imbalances, and a generation of bishops described as being used to “being the boss”. This Review uncovers two appalling examples of bishops who did not pass on allegations of abuse because they were said to be “aggressively committed to protecting clergy and would bat complaints away”. One of these bishops did not bother with doing the statutory safeguarding training; after several years of this, he was given bespoke training, and then let that lapse as well. Safeguarding is everybody’s business? Apparently not.

    This case, which spanned three dioceses, yet again showed up inconsistencies across the C of E in culture and practice, not helped by high staff turnover in safeguarding. As with the Smyth abuse case, one of the clergy involved – in this case, one of the bishops – moved overseas, which revealed the lack of connection between parts of the wider church and the implications of this in a safeguarding case.

    The detailed and very clear Review also shows where there was good practice. Both my own diocese, Oxford, and Southwark, in recent years come out as places “where bishops worked closely with their safeguarding teams, taking their advice and supporting the development of strong survivor centred safeguarding cultures”. In particular, Oxford Diocese is praised when it went beyond what the NST had recommended.

    What are we not learning?

    The key lesson, and it’s not the first time we’ve heard it, is that safeguarding must be survivor-centred and trauma-informed, and a real sense of best practice here comes across throughout the Review. What the survivor most wanted from all of this was to be believed and heard, to be given an apology, “and to be able to engage in some form of restorative justice. The process denied her all of these.” When, in 2021, a letter of apology was produced, it was not written by the person over whose name it appeared: and then it was not sent for 8 months. In her conclusions Helen Gilbert comments “One must question why there has been such a reluctance to provide apologies and during this case review the opinion was expressed to the Reviewer that there is little doubt that part of this is to avoid liability.”

    One aspect which receives attention throughout the Review is what happens to a member of the clergy when they retire and keep Permission to Officiate (PtO). In 2022, the “Diocese of Oxford had considered their moral response regarding Rev B [one of the two clergy abusers]. On 30.3.22 the Bishop’s Chaplain and Rev B’s area Bishop visited Rev B. Following their conversation Rev B relinquished his PtO. He maintained he intended to do this on health grounds”. In the light of the detailed timeline given, with many earlier discussions of whether or not he should keep PtO, this appears to be a case of jumping before you are pushed. That meant that Rev B was allowed to take control of the story. This becomes explicit later in the report where we read that “Rev B wanted TT to be told he was relinquishing PtO on health grounds” [my italics]. Why the reluctance to remove PtO, and how does that look to the survivor?

    The national church needs to do far more to appreciate how important a survivor-centred and trauma-informed approach is. For example, in February 2026 I asked at General Synod about the trauma-informed training which we had been told in 2023 was ideally to be given to all members of Synod (Question 81). I was told that bite-size modules for this would go live in May. They didn’t. A question following this up in July (Question 129) received the answer “Competing priorities in the development of the National Safeguarding Training Portal have delayed the progress with the bitesize modules for trauma-informed practice training. The modules are in development and will be released as soon as possible.” No date was mentioned. I don’t think this is good enough. Such training was a recommendation of the Wilkinson Review and it should not take three years to set it up.

    A further example of not acting on previous reviews – in other words, not learning lessons – that comes out in Helen Gilbert’s Review is that “Both the Makin Review and the report by Professor Alexis Jay CBE on the Future of Church Safeguarding in the Church of England recommend the establishment of a separate, wholly independent body who would be responsible for providing scrutiny and oversight of safeguarding, free from the influence of any senior church officers. This is also a finding of this review.” But such independence has still not happened.

    As for that reference to the potentially malign influence of senior church officers, it recalls another recent safeguarding document, INEQE’s 2025 annual report, where the lead auditor shifted the blame away from (most) senior clergy on to senior diocesan officers and some national church staff. He wrote, “Crucially, the primary inhibitors of progress do not stem from senior clergy, most of whom demonstrate a genuine desire for change. Instead, they are structural and, in certain cases, institutional. They arise from a small group of influential senior officers at the diocesan level and certain individuals within the national Church.” This needs investigation, and action.

    That was then and this is now?

    A theme of this Independent Review, as of many others, is the claim of those who did not report abuse that such a (lack of) response was appropriate to the time when they heard about it. The Reviewer will have none of that. When Jane Chevous first reported her abuse by the two clergymen, it was in the period 2001-2002. The two clergy tried to claim that here that they could not be blamed for their actions; in the words of the review,

    “However, they qualified their statements and their responses in 2001/2 by saying ‘but there were no policies then’. As stated, during the course of this review, the theme that in 2001-2 there were no policies and procedures has been expressed repeatedly both in some of the NST documentation and in some of the interviews. Furthermore, it has been stated by some members of the NST that the diocesan bishop acted ‘appropriately for the time’. The Reviewer does not accept this view.”

    The Review contains not only a highly detailed and evidenced timeline but also a list of discussions and reports which predate 2001, with the Reviewer identifying a clash between NST views and other views on past abuse when she notes that “It is therefore a real concern that members of the NST still consider Bishop X acted appropriately for the time despite the evidence set out in this report.”

    Moving forward?

    The Reviewer comments that “it is not possible in this case review to comment on whether there has been any significant learning from the investigation into TT’s case. The church’s response to investigations and reviews is a wider issue across the Church of England.” She is right. Read the Review for yourself to learn how trauma-informed responses are essential if we are to move forwards on safeguarding.

    The last words must rest with Jane Chevous herself. She writes:

    “The review reveals my experience that, as a woman, the misogynistic attitudes in the church both made it easier for the priests to rape me, and meant that my complaint was often not taken seriously. Too often I hear of other women victims’ abuse dismissed as ‘affairs’.

    It shows that while safeguarding processes have developed, the too narrow focus on risk doesn’t offer survivors justice or healing. This makes it almost impossible for the church to deal with all the damage caused by non-recent abuse. 

    … In the end, it’s about love for a fellow human being who is suffering. And if the church can’t manage that, then it has truly lost its way.”

  • There’s Another Church Abuse Crisis That’s in Every Congregation, and Very Much Closer to Home

    by Sally Hope, a writer with a specialism in faith, feminism and domestic abuse. Sally is the creator of the Always Hopeful Programme, and her latest book No Visible Scars is a recovery journal for Christian women who have experienced domestic abuse

    “I don’t believe in God anymore” I angrily declared, two weeks after I’d left my husband.

    It was a lie. I’ve known God as a real, tangible presence since I was a small child. I remember feeling comforted by God at night when I was five years old and scared of the dark, and when I was a lonely young teenager away from my family for the first time. I had stories of answered prayer, of God’s intervention in my life. I could no more stop believing in God than I could stop believing that the sky is blue. The problem was, I hadn’t been aware of God’s presence lately, and while I believed God existed, I felt abandoned and angry. I didn’t want to believe in God.

    What I really meant was, “I believe in God, but I have lost faith in God.”

    Hanging on the wall of my lounge was a collage of family photographs, made for me by my sister. Nestled among the pictures of my husband and my children were words from Psalm 37, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It was ironic that these words were woven through my nearest and dearest, because the only desire of my heart was quite simple: a happy, peaceful family. I had “delighted myself in the Lord”, but I did not have the happy family I desired. I was bitter. Looking around church, I saw happy normal family after happy normal family. I didn’t feel like I was asking for the earth. Why then, had God given my friends at church the only thing I really desired, but not me? Why had I been given a husband who would spend our 13-year marriage abusing me and my children?

    God, I had decided, was a God who makes promises, but does not keep them.

    My experience is not unique. Christians experience domestic abuse at the same, if not higher levels than the rest of society.[1] One in four of us will be abused by an intimate partner at some point in our adult lives. How many women are in your church? Try to picture those women. For every 20 women quietly sitting in your pews, five of them will be experiencing domestic abuse, mostly secretly, silently, feeling stigma and shame. Hiding it, like I did for thirteen years. Many of them will eventually walk away from their faith altogether as a result.

    I didn’t lose my faith. I don’t know why but I know it was certainly not because of anything I did. Over the next three or four years I experienced the God who shows up, and won’t go away no matter how much you rail and spew your anger. The God who leaves behind the ninety-nine to pursue the one. The God who loves relentlessly, outrageously, who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. In that time I questioned everything I had ever believed, my religion fell apart, but my God clung onto me as I rebuilt both my life, and my faith.

    Christian domestic abuse victims face unique challenges. In the majority of cases their faith and the abuse they experience are inextricably linked. Abusers will use spiritual abuse as a means of controlling their victims, making the victim feel as though a challenge to the abuser is a challenge to God. Abusers shoehorn themselves into God’s place in the lives of their victims, and often use biblical texts and Christian doctrines to justify their abuse. All victims of abuse find it difficult to leave an abuser but the added element of spiritual abuse, along with negative attitudes to divorce and the importance placed on two-parent families within Christian culture, can create another barrier for Christians. When we do leave, the way our faith has been weaponised against us invariably leads to a full-blown deconstruction of our beliefs, and if our abusers have managed to drive a wedge between us and God we can be resistant to God’s voice and tender care.

    As a Christian woman I found the strenuous journey of recovery lonely. I received excellent support from secular support agencies, found some levels of connection with other survivors in peer support groups, but always felt that none of them had the answers to the burning questions I was left with in relation to my faith: “Why did God allow it to happen to me?” “Is it okay for me to get divorced?” “Do I have to forgive my ex-husband? And if so, what if I can’t?” Worse, they saw my faith as part of the problem, not as part of the solution.

    Whilst secular support workers didn’t “get” my faith, my Christian peers didn’t “get” my experience of domestic abuse. I was told to repent of my own part in the abuse, urged to drop the charges against my husband, and made to feel less like an equal and valuable member of my church, and more like a project, a failure, and someone to be pitied, or worse: judged. I walked the path to recovery with Jesus by my side, but I longed to walk it with other Christian women who understood and connected with my pain.

    It’s now 12 years since I left my husband. My faith is stronger than it’s ever been, my relationship with God more loving and beautiful than I ever could have imagined. As I grew in strength I began to support other survivors of abuse; I volunteered at my local women’s refuge, and after a while I got a job there, running peer support groups for survivors both in the refuge and in the community. In the course of my professional life, I met other Christian survivors, listened to them ask the same questions I asked, saw them experience the damaging disconnect from God that I once felt, saw some of them leave their faith behind altogether and others struggle to rebuild, all the time deeply hurt and often broken all over again by the poor response from their churches.

    I do not know why God broke through my anger, hurt and broken-ness to help me rebuild my faith, when other victims don’t seem to experience that same divine healing. But I know that when I ask God, God’s reply is, “what are you doing now to bring my outrageous love to those women? Where are you in their journey of recovery?” I am grateful that God walked that journey with me but, more than anything, I wish other Christians had.

    So, I took the lessons I learned during my own recovery, along with my professional knowledge and experience of running support groups to create a peer support programme for Christian women. Never again should a Christian woman have to recover from domestic abuse on her own. My Always Hopeful Programme is now run online, via Zoom by Restored, a charity dedicated to supporting survivors of abuse and equipping churches to do the same. It’s also being run as a face-to-face peer support programme in a slowly growing number of churches in the U.K. Participants tell me it’s been a key part in their journey to wholeness. There is no substitute for face-to-face peer support and I would love it if every survivor was able to find an Always Hopeful Programme running in a church near them.

    I also realised, from my own experience working with survivors, that not everyone will find the courage to join a support group. There can be lots of reasons why women won’t join an Always Hopeful Programme, from fear or social anxiety to simple logistics of childcare or not being able to find a programme near to them. So, for those women who cannot attend an Always Hopeful Programme, I wrote No Visible Scars, which will be published on 17 July 2025. ‘No Visible Scars’ is an individual recovery guide for Christian women that seeks to help the reader work through those questions in order to “work out their own salvation” (Philippians 2:12) in the light of their experience of abuse.

    The Church has so much to offer to victims of abuse. It is often part of the problem but it could, and should, be part of the solution. We are called to care for the hurting, to defend the oppressed and to seek justice. Always Hopeful [2] and No Visible Scars are there to help the church accompany the women in every congregation who are victims of domestic abuse.

     

    Notes:

    [1] A 2018 study by Restored in partnership with the University of Leicester and Coventry University found that 25% of Churchgoers (across all denominations)  reported experiencing domestic abuse in their CURRENT relationship, and 42.2% reported experiencing at least one abusive behaviour in any intimate relationship (past of present) during their adult life. There have previously been studies by both the Evangelical Alliance and the Methodist Church that have found that rates of domestic abuse in churches is similar to that of the national average. Nationally 1 in 4 women will experience Domestic Abuse.

    [2] To run an Always Hopeful Programme at your church:
    online information here and     with free webinars at 12 noon, Monday 14 July [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finding-hope-when-everything-seems-hopeless-tickets-1306878471689] or 7 pm Thursday 21 August [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/finding-hope-when-everything-seems-hopeless-tickets-1306883225909]

  • Makin – 1600 Days Late: Will it be Worth the Wait?

    by ‘Graham’

    I have asked if a letter I wrote in 2019 might be reproduced in full, and here it is, below. Victims and General Synod have been told time and time again that the Makin Review has had a lot of work to do, that new information keeps coming to light. However, it was clear to victims from the beginning that this would be a long and complex task, requiring far more than two part-time Reviewers. There were over 100 victims, over four decades, in three countries. Was it not obvious that this was a serious piece of work?

    And the letter shows that simple building blocks for a good Review were just not in place (leaving aside that the Review started two months late). There was no GDPR provision (that was not put in place until Autumn 2020); no ability to record or scan; no encryption; no reference group; no oversight; no timetable; no urgency. It is interesting rereading it today: there never was a Reference or Oversight Group despite my demands: no one to ensure the Review was delivered competently, and on time.

    Otherwise, the letter stands on its own. The Makin Review is now 1600 days overdue. It has been promised on multiple occasions, since 2021, in statements from Keith Makin or the National Safeguarding Team that proved to be complete fiction. Numerous promises have been made to General Synod, and every one of those remains undelivered. In fact, I gather the Makin Review is still mired in the representations process (usually referred to as “Maxwellisation”) and the stated end date for Maxwellisation of 6 June 2024, was, like everything else, just made up.

     

    This is what I wrote in 2019:

    Dear Keith and Sarah

    As most are aware, for family reasons I am pulling back from the Review until the New Year. I have made every attempt to accelerate the process. I had asked for a full day to brief you, but was told you did not have a single free day together until December 11th. I have tried, but I am now pulling back from the Review.

    It is almost fifteen weeks since the Review was announced:

    • There is still nothing on the CofE website about contact details, methodology or process
    • There are still no public contact details for Keith or Sarah
    • GDPR issues remain
    • There is no agreed timetable for contacting victims
    • No counselling resources are available yet, that I am aware
    • The proposed Reference Group is not yet in place

    Then, the Terms of Reference have been changed, and the revised version “implanted” in the original 13 August statement. There is no indication there that the ToR has been revised and it is unclear whether this has been drawn to the attention of interested parties (two victims I have spoken to did not know). How can that possibly be best practice?

    I note also that the revised ToR states that “work commenced in October 2019”. This has been sneaked into the new ToR. Again, how can this possibly be best practice? I also ask why when I had meetings with Melissa on 19 September, Keith on 4 October and +Peter on 18 October no one had the honesty or integrity to drop the pretence that work had been underway for weeks, and admit the process was two months late in starting.

    I have now spent almost twelve hours with you. And the time has been discursive rather than investigative. Keith, you took less than one page of A4 notes in an entire four hour meeting this Tuesday. Sarah hammers away at her laptop. This produced a summary of just over five pages, but it read like bullet points: points jotted down on the laptop, then regurgitated a few days later.

    So, I asked (again) whether the meeting would be voice recorded. I have previously given my consent to this. I was again told that GDPR and data collection issues had not been agreed and that the meeting could not be recorded on Sarah’s laptop (and there was an aside that she should not actually be taking notes on that laptop: I assume all matters to do with security, confidentiality and encryption). I was told you are waiting for the CofE to provide some kind of box to sit on the table (I believe they are known as tape recorders).

    So, twelve hours of testimony has not actually been comprehensively recorded? I wonder what other, more extensive write up has been done of each meeting as an awful lot more than that was discussed over twelve hours?

    I have bundles and bundles of documents. Many of them are contemporaneous. After the first two meetings with you it was agreed that we would then have a very substantive session, going through my four box files (so probably over 1000 pieces of paper) relevant to the Review. I asked for a photocopier or scanner to be provided. It was not in either meeting. And it appeared you had little interest in looking at, or capturing a record of really important documents. At one stage Sarah did use her phone to photo one document, but I said that was absurd and copied a few on my iPad instead, and subsequently emailed them to you. However, key documents (a 1982 letter detailing who was told, when and by whom) were discussed, but no record taken. This is important evidence surely?

    And I hoped we would go through the raft of correspondence (particularly pertinent to how the CofE has responded in the last eight years) with Lambeth, with Canterbury, with Titus Trust, with Ely, with David Porter, with NST. I had brought all of this to the meeting to pass on but, while discussed, there was no capacity to take copies of any of them. And actually, not much interest shown in seeing them.

    I repeat my earlier comment, the meeting felt like another “scoping” exercise, still, fifteen weeks later, trying to get a grip on the most basic outline chronology and story. In the first meeting I handed over a document I had prepared at the suggestion of Emily Denne. It was called Scope of the Review and comprised approximately 150 questions that the Review might consider. We have not been through that list: it remains substantially untouched. After twelve hours, we have hardly started on what I feel the Review should cover.

    I acknowledge that this is a vast, nine month long exercise. I am being told again and again that this is a complex review, possibly one of the widest and most difficult the CofE has attempted. Then where are the resources? I have not been told that you are getting extra help, or are working more than a few hours each week? I see no urgency, no expertise, no investigation. The output is a few pages of notes after each meeting. It deserves a care, a professionalism, a respect that is not being shown.

    I have waited eight years to tell my story, and over a tortuous last three years my life is shattered, my marriage is effectively ended, I am more stressed than I have been for months. I would like access immediately to counselling services for my wife, marriage counselling for us both, and individual support for myself. Why am I the one lying awake all night?

    I am withdrawing from the Review until the New Year. I have also advised the victims with whom I am in touch, not to participate. They will not contact you.

    I hope that, by the New Year, great strides will have been made. Come back to me when you can tell me that:

    • the Review is properly resourced
    • That interviews can be appropriately recorded
    • That documents can be properly collected
    • That all GDPR issues have been addressed
    • That Counselling services are in place
    • That the Reference Group is in place

    In the New Year, if you can reassure me of these then I may reengage. And I will make a judgement call as to whether to contact other victims.

    Please do not contact me. I need to take some time off, immediately to support my family, but primarily for my well being. I will take emails, but not calls, from Emily. Any contact with me should be through Emily. However, I am going to try to put this aside completely for a few weeks. Damn the lot of you.

    Graham 22/11/19

    Cc Bishop Peter Hancock, Emily Denne, Melissa Carslake

    Richard Scorer, Slater & Gordon

     

  • Toxic Theology, the Bible and LLF (Living in Love and Faith)*

    by Johanna Stiebert, Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Leeds; co-director of The Shiloh Project, which explores topics of rape culture, religion and the Bible; co-investigator of the Abuse in Religious Contexts project

    My research focuses on topics of gender and gender-based violence, and on how these intersect with lived religion and the Bible. Much of the abuse variously called spiritual abuse, abusive theology, religious abuse, or abuse in religious contexts, has gender-based dimensions. Adrian Thatcher aptly speaks of “authoritarian masculinism” behind church abuse crises. Child sexual abuse by clergy has been shown to be of colossal dimensions, but while the 2020 publication of LLF contains a highlighted box, or infographic, on the Church of England (CofE) and IICSA (the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse), it recommends that theological reflection on IICSA should be carried out “separately” from LLF, “after the full published findings of IICSA have been carefully assessed” (p. 87). This does not really cut it, given how woefully inadequate CofE response to disclosures of abuse has been and continues to be.

    As for gender-based abuse, the likelihood is that the number of women abused by clergy is considerably higher still than that of children. Spiritual abuse is very frequently linked to gender-based abuse; and cases of religiously-based gender discrimination amount to spiritual abuse, whether or not that label is used.

    What LLF says about gender-based abuse is bound up with its approach to the Bible, identified as the ultimate source of the Church’s inspiration and authority, because “The life of the Church is soaked in the Bible”. Yet it notes that “every word of the Bible has a human history” shaped by “the contexts in which it was first produced and received”. The section “Power and pain” reviews abuse in scripture, identifying Samson and David as both heroes and abusers of their power, while “The sons of Eli abuse their position as priests and sleep with women serving in the tent of meeting (1 Samuel 2.22), in a chilling echo of abuse scandals in the church today”. Narratives of the rape of women and of the threatened rape of men are mentioned: “These stories matter deeply: they speak the truth about a violent world”. This, in turn, “invite[s] us to tell the truth … about the world in which we live and about our experiences within it, about the things we do and the things that are done to us”.

    This sounds like a positive intention – but does it go far enough? I don’t think so. When the Bible is brought into discussions on human sexuality or marriage, LLF ignores the problems of toxic theologies that come with reading some biblical texts at face value.

    Actually, the Bible has curiously little to say on marriage, and what is there is murky. There is no word for “marriage” in the Hebrew Bible; Hebrew does not distinguish between “woman” and “wife,” or “man” and “husband.” There are few clues in the Bible regarding marriage rites, and nothing on such matters as the age at which someone can or should be married. Despite this, a great deal has been said and asserted about “biblical marriage” – that it is monogamous, for life, aimed at procreation, between one man and one woman, and so forth.

    Numbers 5:11-31 is one of a few sustained biblical texts about a married couple and it is a prescriptive text of Torah, or Pentateuch. It sets out what to do when “a spirit of jealousy” (5:14) overcomes a man concerning his wife who may, or may not, have “gone astray” (5:12), which is expanded on as involving another man lying with her for “the lying of seed” (the expression for penetrative sexual intercourse and seminal emission) and this being kept secret, with no witnesses present (5:13). The husband is to take his wife to the priest, bringing offerings. The priest then performs an elaborate ritual to which, seemingly, the woman can only submit. All she says throughout the lengthy description is, “Amen. Amen” (5:22).

    The woman is said to be brought before God in the sanctuary, her hair dishevelled (5:18), and she is bound by an oath before drinking a potion; waters of bitterness with curses dissolved in them, which will either punish her with physical agonies, possibly a miscarriage, or infertility if she has been – in the terms of this passage – “defiled,” or it will declare her “clean” and able to conceive. Towards the close of the passage the woman is described as “under” her husband’s authority. The account closes with the statement that the husband in any case is clear of iniquity, whereas the wife must bear her iniquity. In other words, his “spirit of jealousy” along with the ritual – elaborate, exposing and highly likely to cause psychological distress – is excused, whether the woman has done anything or not. The woman, on the other hand, “must bear her iniquity” whether she has done anything to legitimate her husband’s jealousy or not.

    This is not a text widely cited in the literature expounding how the Bible can inform on matters of marriage – and yet it is one of the longer passages about a married couple. It seems to indicate a high degree of anxiety around women’s sexual continence. There is no more than passing reference to the adulterous man; no preoccupation with who he might be, or with finding him, and no insistence on either his guilt or punishment. All this, along with the absence of a ritual where roles are reversed, where a woman suspects her husband of infidelity, is very telling.

    The potential of this passage for encouraging and legitimating men’s jealousy and the policing of women, as well as its potential for what we nowadays call coercive control, is glaring. What is missing for me, however, is acknowledgement of and outcry at just how toxic this text is – especially in the midst of skyrocketing rates of domestic and intimate partner violence. And it does not help that the impetus for the man’s violence is a “spirit of jealousy” (ruach-qen’ah, with qen’ah sometimes translated “zeal”). “Spirit” and “zeal” or “jealousy” are widely associated with God. God’s ruach hovers over the deep in the creation story (Gen. 1:2) and God’s evil ruach afflicts Saul (1 Sam. 16:16). God’s zeal, meanwhile, motivates him to protect his people, especially in battle (e.g. Isa. 42:13). Not only is the husband guiltless whether his emotion has basis or not, but he is being associated with the deity, putting his authority and control beyond reproach.

    This text from Numbers is not mentioned in LLF, but it constitutes an unambiguous example of a toxic text. If it were to be utilised as a proof-text (which I am certainly not advocating!) then it could justify wives’ submission to their husbands and husbands’ jealousy, coercive control, and violent punishment of their wives. It could justify wives’ submission far more powerfully than Ephesians 5, mentioned in LLF and highlighted in The Peoples’ Bible with a subject box saying, “Professional social-work literature on women suffering domestic abuse showed that one of the anecdotally established indications that a woman was in imminent danger of suffering physical violence was that the man with whom she lived was quoting Paul’s command that women be subject to their husbands.”

    How must Numbers 5 sound to a survivor of domestic abuse and coercive control, given that the abused woman in this text is publicly exposed, and accused, while rendered passive, whereas the man is exonerated and protected by the religious authorities and God himself?

    Yet LLF does not empower such survivors by calling out and explicitly rejecting such toxic texts as harmful. We cannot shy away from the worst the Bible contains and must resist knee-jerk deference to the Bible. Casting out fear and speaking into the silence must be preceded by conscious effort to include and listen to those who do not feel safe and who find scripture and tradition condemns, hurts or silences them. Paying attention to power demands more sensitivity to the damage done by leaders and hierarchies but also more attention to who is named, or active, or vocal in biblical texts. To recall Phyllis Trible’s call for action from over four decades ago, we need insight, repentance and change, because if a dreadful story is alive then “all is not well.”

     

    *This post focuses on one aspect of a presentation to the annual conference of Modern Church.

     

    References/further reading

    Christy Cobb and Eric Vanden Eykel (eds.) (2020) Sex, Violence, and Early Christian Texts (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books).

    Helen Paynter (2020) Telling Terror in Judges 19: Rape and Reparation for the Levite’s Wife (London, New York: Routledge).

    Phyllis Trible (1984) Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress).

    Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Wilda C. Gafney, Leticia A. Guardiola-Sáenz, George “Tink” Tinker and Frank M. Yamada (eds) (2009) The Peoples’ Bible – NRSV (Minneapolis: Fortress).