Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Evangelical Organizations’ Responses to Domestic Violence: How the Cultural Production of Religious Beliefs Challenges or Enshrines Patriarchy

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Review of Religious Research

Abstract

Background

A significant body of research has established the central role of religion in creating and preserving cultural beliefs about gender. But existing studies have tended to focus more on the multiplicity and flexibility of religious beliefs about gender, and less on the ways in which the cultural production of varying religious beliefs about gender can involve active conflict. Attending to the institutional processes that shape the production of competing beliefs is important for considering how religion can challenge or enshrine patriarchy.

Purpose

This paper examines how religiously formed beliefs about gender are produced through organizational conflict to shape varying public responses to survivors of domestic violence.

Methods

The paper employs a qualitative, comparative research design to analyze the public discourse of two evangelical organizations that were founded to produce and promote two competing gender ideologies in the contemporary evangelical movement: complementarianism and egalitarianism. Analyzing the public discourse of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Christians for Biblical Equality from 1987 to 2018, I coded for the ways in which both their beliefs about creation, sin, and submission and their references to one another’s ideologies shape their different attention to abused women’s experiences.

Results

Christians for Biblical Equality both presents domestic violence as a distortion of God-ordained equality and critiques patriarchal theology for contributing to domestic violence. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood both presents domestic violence as a distortion of God-ordained male authority and defends their ideology against criticisms that it promotes abuse. This intersection of beliefs and organizational conflict results in either centering or pivoting away from abused women’s experiences.

Conclusions and Implications

This study illustrates the importance of examining how the institutional processes that produce hegemonic and alternative religious belief systems about gender are marked by the negotiation of both organizational and gendered power. In making this argument, the paper contributes to our understanding of how religiously formed cultural belief systems can challenge or reinforce patriarchy.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. CBE’s decision not to publish the joint statement because of their understanding of the role of theology in abuse was also confirmed in an interview I conducted with one of the founders of CBE in 2009.

  2. It is important to note that the paper focuses specifically on the negotiation of organizational and gendered power within cultural production processes of key evangelical institutions. The focus of this analysis is not on the ways in which these processes shape everyday evangelical beliefs and behavior, nor should such a relationship be assumed.

  3. I am grateful to one of the reviewers for this language of “second-order hegemony.”

  4. Julie Ingersoll’s (2003) study represents an important exception in the vast array of studies of gender and religion that have analyzed multiplicity, flexibility, and contingency. Her analysis of CBE and the Southern Baptist Convention illuminates some of the consequences of the gender debate for evangelical women’s everyday experiences in various institutions. I shift our focus to the public discourse of two organizations that have been the flagship para-church organizations representing the two key ideologies. Focusing on these two organizations’ discourse allows us to bring the conflict, itself, more centrally into view.

  5. There are deeper, historically rooted patterns regarding gender in evangelicalism, as such scholars as Barr (2021), DuMez (2020), and Gallagher (2003) have documented. This paper’s focus is on the ways in which the contemporary evangelical movement in the U.S. has been embroiled in a conflict over gender, one that is central to contemporary evangelical identity (Ingersoll 2003).

  6. Unfortunately, there has not been a more recent, national survey that explicitly asks evangelicals about their views of headship and submission since Gallagher’s work (2003; 2004a; 2004b; Gallagher & Smith 1999). As I show throughout this section, we do have some ways to consider the extent to which these ideologies continue to hold symbolic and/or practical value to evangelicals today. But I acknowledge that this lack of current survey data on evangelical beliefs about headship and submission is an important limitation.

  7. The ECFA member profile for CBE can be found here: https://www.ecfa.org/MemberProfile.aspx?ID=7313. CBMW’s can be found here: https://www.ecfa.org/MemberProfile.aspx?ID=12088.

  8. Asproth refers to Piper’s comments in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OkUPc2NLrM.

  9. This piece is in a CBMW journal issue that is no longer on CBMW’s website. Bayly republished the piece on a personal blog on October 26, 2020: https://warhornmedia.com/2020/10/26/women-who-abuse-feminists-big-lie/.

  10. Tracy had written an article for CBMW in 2003 which explained why complementarians should care about abuse and suggested a biblical model for understanding how wives’ submission and husbands’ authority should be rightly enacted to prevent abuse. But he then wrote two pieces for CBE in 2007 and 2009. Lambert critiques an article that Tracy published in 2008 in an evangelical theology journal not sponsored by either organization.

  11. I am grateful to one of the reviewers for suggesting this point.

References

Secondary Source Materials

  • Acker, Joan. 1992. From sex roles to gendered institutions. Contemporary Sociology 21 (5): 565–569.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Acker, Joan. 2006. Introduction: The missing feminist revolution. Social Problems 53 (4): 444–447.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ammerman, Nancy. 1987. Bible believers: Fundamentalists in the modern world. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Avishai, Orit. 2008. Doing religion in a secular world: Women in conservative religions and the question of agency. Gender & Society 22 (4): 409–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avishai, Orit, Afshan Jafar, and Rachel Rinaldo. 2015. A gender lens on religion. Gender & Society 29 (1): 5–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avishai, Orit and Courtney Irby. 2017. Bifurcated conversations in sociological studies of religion and gender. Gender & Society 31 (5): 647–676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barna Group. 2017. What Americans think of women in power. Available at https://www.barna.com/research/americans-think-women-power/.

  • Barr, Beth Allison. 2021. The making of biblical womanhood: How the subjugation of women became gospel truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartkowski, John P. 1997. Debating patriarchy: Discursive disputes over spousal authority among evangelical family commentators. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36 (3): 393–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bartkowski, John P. 2001. Remaking the godly marriage: Gender negotiation in evangelical families. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartkowski, John P. 2004. The Promise Keepers: Servants, soldiers, and godly men. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baugh, S. M. 1994. “The apostle among the Amazons.” Available at: www.cbmw.org/Resources/Book-Reviews/I-Suffer-Not-a-Woman.

  • Brusco, Elizabeth E. 1995. The reformation of machismo: Evangelical conversion and gender in Colombia. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • CBE. 2022. Mission and values. Available at: https://www.cbeinternational.org/content/cbes-mission.

  • CBMW. 2022. Mission and vision. Available at: https://cbmw.org/about/mission-vision/.

  • CBMW Council. 1997. Patriarchy and abuse: No direct link. CBMW News 2 (2): 10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chappell, Louise. 2006. Comparing political institutions: Revealing the gendered 'logic of appropriateness.' Politics & Gender 2 (2): 223–235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charlton, Joy. 2015. Revisiting gender and religion. Review of Religious Research 57 (3): 331–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chaves, Mark. 1997. Ordaining women: Culture and conflict in religious organizations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chong, Kelly. 2008. Deliverance and submission: Evangelical women and the negotiation of patriarchy in South Korea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cochran, Pamela. 2005. Evangelical feminism: A history. New York: NYU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R. W. 2002. On hegemonic masculinity and violence: Response to Jefferson and Hall. Theoretical Crimonology 6 (1): 89–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R. W., and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender & Society 19 (6): 829–859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Creegan, Nicola Hoggard and Christine D. Pohl. 2006. Living on the boundaries: Evangelical women, feminism, and the theological academy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunradi, Carol B., Raul Caetano, and John Schafer. 2002. Religious affiliation, denomination homogamy, and intimate partner violence among U.S. couples. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41 (1): 139–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darwin, Helana. 2018. Redoing gender, redoing religion. Gender & Society 32 (3): 348–370.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidman, Lynn. 1991. Tradition in a rootless world: Women turn to Orthodox Judaism. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, John Jefferson. 2009. First Timothy 2:12, the ordination of women, and Paul’s use of creation narratives. Priscilla Papers 23 (2): 5–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • DuMez, Kristin Kobes. 2020. Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellison, Christopher. G, P. John, Bartkowski, and Kristin. L Anderson. 1999. Are there religious variations in domestic violence? Journal of Family Issues 20 (1): 87–113.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ellison, Christopher G., and Kristin L. Anderson. 2001. Religious involvement and domestic violence among U.S. couples. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (2): 269–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • England, Paula. 2010. The gender revolution: Uneven and stalled. Gender & Society 24 (2): 149–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fry, Nina. 2009. Raising girls to be godly women in a confused and conflicted culture. Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Fall, 24–36.

  • Gallagher, Sally. 2003. Evangelical identity and gendered family life. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, Sally. 2004a. Where are the antifeminist evangelicals? Evangelical identity, subcultural location, and attitudes toward feminism. Gender & Society 18 (5): 451–472.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, Sally. 2004b. The marginalization of evangelical feminism. Sociology of Religion 65 (3): 215–237.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gallagher, Sally, and Christian Smith. 1999. Symbolic traditionalism and pragmatic egalitarianism: Contemporary evangelicals, families, and gender. Gender & Society 13 (2): 211–233.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamson, Joshua. 1997. Messages of exclusion: Gender, movements, and symbolic boundaries. Gender & Society 11 (2): 178–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gerber, Lynne. 2015. Grit, guts, and vanilla beans: Godly masculinity in the ex-gay movement. Gender & Society 29 (1): 26–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giles, Kevin. 2018. Complementarian theology in crisis. In Eyes to see and ears to hear women. Minneapolis, MN: CBE International.

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffith, R., and Marie. 2000. God’s daughters: Evangelical women and the power of submission. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grudem, Wayne and John Piper. 1991. Recovering biblical manhood and womanhood: A response to evangelical feminism. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath, Melanie. 2003. Soft-boiled masculinity: Renegotiating gender and racial ideologies in the promise keepers movement. Gender & Society 17 (3): 423–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ingersoll, Julie. 2003. Evangelical Christian women: War stories in the gender battles. New York: NYU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irby, Courtney. 2013. 'We didn’t call it dating:' The disrupted landscape of relationship advice for evangelical Protestant youth. Critical Research on Religion 1 (2): 177–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Irby, Courtney. 2014. Dating in light of Christ: Young evangelicals negotiating gender in the context of religious and secular American culture. Sociology of Religion 75 (2): 260–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jankowski, Peter J, Steven J 2018. Sandage, Miriam Whitney Cornell, Cheryl Bissonette, Andy J. Johnson, Sarah A Crabtree, and Mary L. Jensen. Religious beliefs and domestic violence myths. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 10(4):386–397.

  • Katzenstein, Mary Fainsod. 1999. Faithful and fearless: Moving feminist protest inside the church and military. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kohlenberger, John R. 2002. What about the ‘Gender Accurate’ TNIV? Priscilla Papers 16 (2): 3–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kroeger, Richard Clark and Catherine Clark Kroeger. 1992. I suffer not a woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11–15 in light of ancient evidence. Baker Academic.

  • Leamaster, Reid J., and Rachel L. Einwohner. 2018. ‘I’m not your stereotypical Mormon girl’: Mormon women’s gendered resistance. Review of Religious Research 60: 161–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitt, Heidi M., and Kimberly N. Ware. 2006. Religious leaders’ perspectives on marriage, divorce, and intimate partner violence. Psychology of Women Quarterly 30 (2): 212–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindsay, D. Michael. 2010. Organizational liminality and interstitial creativity: The fellowship of power. Social Forces 89 (1): 163–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Messerschmidt, James. 2018. Multiple masculinities. In Handbook of Sociology of Gender, eds. Barbara J. Risman, Carissa M. Froyum, and William J. Scarborough, 143–153. New York: SpringerLink.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Miles, Todd. 2013. A review of Ronald W. Pierce, Partners in marriage and ministry. Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood 18 (1): 30–33.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nason-Clark, Nancy. 1997. The battered wife: How Christians confront family violence. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nason-Clark, Nancy, Barbara Fisher-Townsend, and Catherine Holtmann and Stephen McMullin. 2018. Religion and intimate partner violence: Understanding the challenges and proposing solutions. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nesper, Kathy. Undated. Parenting as Partners. Available at: http://www.cbeinternational.org/?q=content/parenting-partners.

  • Perry, Samuel L. 2013. She works hard(er) for the money: Gender, fundraising, and employment in evangelical parachurch organizations. Sociology of Religion 74 (3): 392–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perry, Samuel L. 2020. The Bible as a product of cultural power: The case of gender ideology in the English standard version. Sociology of Religion 81 (1): 68–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pew Research Center. 2020. A century after women gained the right to vote, majority of Americans see work to do on gender equality. Available at https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/07/a-century-after-women-gained-the-right-to-vote-majority-of-americans-see-work-to-do-on-gender-equality/.

  • Pierce, Ronald W., and Groothius Rebecca Merrill. 2004. Discovering biblical equality: Complementarity without hierarchy. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rao, Aliya Hamid. 2015. Gender and cultivating the moral self in Islam: Muslim converts in an American mosque. Sociology of Religion 76 (4): 413–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Read, Jen’nan Ghazal and John P. Bartkowski. 2000. To veil or not to veil?: A case study of identity negotiation among Muslim women in Austin, Texas. Gender & Society 14(3):395–417.

  • Ridgeway, Cecilia L., and J. Correll Shelley. 2004. Unpacking the gender system: A theoretical perspective on gender and social relations. Gender & Society 18 (4): 510–531.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 2011. Framed by gender: How gender inequality persists in the modern world. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rinaldo, Rachel. 2019. Obedience and authority among Muslim couples: Negotiating gendered religious scripts in contemporary Indonesia. Sociology of Religion 80 (3): 323–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Risman, Barbara J. 2004. Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism. Gender & Society 18 (40): 429–450.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharp, Shane. 2009. Escaping symbolic entrapment, maintaining social identities. Social Problems 56 (2): 267–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stacey, Judith and Barrie Thorne. 1985. The missing feminist revolution in sociology. Social Problems 32 (4): 301–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stacey, Judith and Barrie Thorne. 1996. Is sociology still missing its feminist revolution? Perspectives: ASA Theory Section Newsletter 18: 1–3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Verta and Nancy Whittier. 1992. Collective identity in social movement communities: Lesbian feminist mobilization. In Frontiers in social movement theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol M. Mueller. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  • Thomas, Jeremy N., and Daniel V.A. Olson. 2012. Evangelical elites’ changing responses to homosexuality 1960–2009. Sociology of Religion 73 (3): 239–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Jeremy N., and Andrew L. Whitehead. 2015. Evangelical elites’ anti-homosexuality narratives as a resistance strategy against attribution effects. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54 (2): 345–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilcox, W. Bradford. 2004. Soft patriarchs, new men: How Christianity shapes fathers and husbands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

Primary Source Materials

Download references

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Mary Ellen Konieczny (in memoriam), Abigail Ocobock, Felicia Song, Lisa Weaver-Swartz, and the members of the Gender Studies writing group at Westmont College for their helpful comments on various iterations of this article. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their instructive feedback. Thanks to Magnolia Smith and Mackinzie Warne-McGraw for their able research assistance. The author gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame and the Provost’s Office at Westmont College.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road, 93108, Santa Barbara, CA, United States

    Meredith Whitnah PhD

Authors
  1. Meredith Whitnah PhD
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Meredith Whitnah PhD.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Whitnah, M. Evangelical Organizations’ Responses to Domestic Violence: How the Cultural Production of Religious Beliefs Challenges or Enshrines Patriarchy. Rev Relig Res 64, 427–450 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-022-00493-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-022-00493-2

Search

Navigation