Becoming A Safe Church
How churches can become safe spaces for victims of domestic abuse.
Most Christian churches today want to be known as safe spaces for victims of domestic abuse. Ask almost any pastor if they think abuse is horrific and whether or not they want to care well for victims of domestic abuse and you’ll get a resounding, “Of course we do!” almost every single time. And yet, time and time again, churches are failing to actually be safe spaces for survivors and are instead known for traumatizing victims further. So, what exactly do churches need to do in order to actually become safe spaces for survivors?
Current Approaches
Many churches are currently seeking training and creating programs for victims of domestic abuse. These programs often become group studies for female victims or betrayed partners of sex addicts. However, there is a very unfortunate trend right now inside Christian advocacy circles for advocates, trainers, therapists, and coaches to embrace models that are considered outdated in the broader domestic violence field. These outdated models include codependency theory, learned helplessness theory, the cycle of violence theory, and family systems theory (1). When churches want to get educated, they typically reach out to Christian trainers who are talking about domestic abuse. Since many of these trainers are currently teaching outdated models, this means that these outdated models trickle down to churches who embrace them wholeheartedly. I believe churches often find these materials attractive because churches love to blame victims. Blaming victims and focusing on fixing victims absolves churches of the need to take any responsibility whatsoever for the domestic abuse problem themselves. It allows churches to feel like they are “doing something” while simultaneously doing absolutely nothing. It also allows churches to continue scapegoating victims.
We now know in the broader domestic violence field that women are not victimized by their intimate partners because of any psychological reasons but rather because they are facing social entrapment barriers. (I use “she” in this post to refer to victims and “he” to refer to abusers because this is the most common scenario.) To quote Jess Hill, author of See What You Made Me Do, “The obstacles . . . women had to overcome in order to leave weren’t psychological: they were social” (2). Unfortunately, almost every single Christian program for Christian victims of domestic abuse currently focuses on fixing a woman’s psychological state, thereby implying that if she were more psychologically healthy she wouldn’t have been abused.
The Problem
These models are just not accurate. Victims typically do not stay with abusers because something is psychologically wrong with them. Victims usually stay with abusers because they face entrapment barriers that prevent them from leaving. Victims are not masochists who love being abused. Victims are brilliant strategists who resist abuse (3). This means that if churches want to actually address the domestic abuse problem, they must shift their understanding of abuse from a victim’s perceived psychological issues to entrapment barriers. The Mother Justice Network’s “Maze of Coercive Control” gives us a snapshot of the entrapment barriers victims face when trying to escape from abuse (4).
What does this all mean for churches? If abuse is actually a social problem, and if churches want to actually become safe spaces for victims, then they need to ask the question: What entrapment barriers am I creating or perpetuating that prevent women from being able to escape from their abusers? This is a much harder question and one I am convinced most churches will not ask because it shifts the focus of blame from victims to themselves. It asks, “What role do I play in this?” This is a courageous question, and it is one that churches must ask in order to become safe spaces for victims. Churches must evaluate the entrapment barriers they create and perpetuate that keep victims entrapped in abuse.
Theological Entrapment Barriers
The first area of entrapment barriers that churches create are typically theological entrapment barriers. These are beliefs churches teach women, usually from birth, backed by the fear of God himself and potentially even the threat of hell, that keep women trapped in abuse. Examples of theological entrapment barriers include:
Complementarian theology where women are told they must be submissive to their husbands and cannot lead or teach their husbands or other men. Complementarian theology is covert patriarchy. Men and women are not equal under complementarian theology. Women are subservient.
Theology that promotes traditional gender roles as “God’s design.”
Theology that tells women they should not work outside the home.
Theology that requires women to be submissive.
Theology that prohibits divorce (“divorce is a sin”).
Theology that only allows for divorce in cases of adultery.
Theology that allows for divorce in cases of abuse but that defines abuse as solely physical abuse.
Theology that does not allow women to divorce men who use pornography.
Theology that pressures women to “forgive and forget.”
Theology that focuses on grace for abusers at the expense of safety for victims.
Theology that tells women to “focus on their own sin problem” (this is why churches love outdated domestic abuse materials—these materials allow them to keep focusing on “her sin problem”).
Theology that forces women to have unwanted sex with their abusers.
Theology that labels women “rebellious” for speaking their minds and for standing up for themselves.
Theology that minimizes and denies emotions.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Theological entrapment barriers are plentiful. They communicate to women, “I cannot leave him because, if I do, I will be disobeying God.”
The number one thing churches must do in order to become safe spaces for victims is to fix their own theology. It is impossible for a church to hold onto any of these false theological beliefs and simultaneously support survivors because the church itself is a roadblock to survivor safety. Christian victims typically have to spend years untangling theological entrapment barriers in order to get to safety, and, in the process, they often lose their faith communities. As we will see later, this loss of faith community is yet another entrapment barrier. If churches want to be safe for victims, they will have do some major theological house cleaning so that victims no longer have to face these entrapment barriers with the literal threat of hell hanging over their heads.
Church Community
Church communities are both essential for victims and can also be huge entrapment barriers. If a church community believes and teaches many theological entrapment barriers, that church community itself becomes an entrapment barrier. Victims do not live in social vacuums. They live in social communities like everyone else, and when the vast majority of their social community believes in entrapment barriers like these, going against the grain typically means losing almost your entire social support system. This is a scenario no human being deserves to be put in and is something few people have the strength even to attempt. Humans are made for community and connection, and victims are often faced with the prospect of losing their entire church community if they go against any theological entrapment barriers. It’s an entrapment barrier either way: The fear of losing your entire social support system and not knowing how to make it on your own vs. the reality of having to make it on your own without any social support system all the while enduring ongoing horrific abuse from your abuser.
Churches can become safe communities for survivors first by removing theological entrapment barriers and then by becoming staunch allies who will never leave a victim’s side. It is significantly easier to escape from an abuser when you have a friend by your side. When you have an entire community by your side, freedom becomes that much easier.
Tangible Support
A third entrapment barrier victims often face is tangible, physical support. Victims have a plethora of needs. From housing, to childcare, to finances, to a job, to attorney fees, to maintenance on their home or car, to transporting children to and from school, to support in family court, and the list goes on. Each one of these individual, tangible needs are unique to each survivor and can be entrapment barriers. If a victim doesn’t have money for a down payment on her own apartment, she cannot move away from her abuser. If she doesn’t have childcare, she cannot get a job. If she doesn’t have money, she cannot hire an attorney to divorce her abuser. Churches often do absolutely nothing tangible for victims. Because they have deemed victims “sinful and rebellious” for going against their own false theology (theological entrapment barriers), they not only socially withdraw completely, but they often pull all tangible support as well. This leaves Christian victims not only almost completely socially isolated, but it also leaves them without any tangible support whatsoever at a time when they desperately need that support the most.
If churches want to become safe for victims, they will first fix their false theology, then they will provide safe, loyal community for victims backed by tangible support.
Emotional Support
Survivors often lack emotional support. This entrapment barrier goes hand-in-hand with theological entrapment barriers, lack of social community, and lack of tangible help. Emotionally, the absence of adequate support in all of these other areas absolutely guts a survivor. It’s like throwing a victim, who is already in so much pain because of the abuse her abuser is already inflicting upon her on a daily basis, all alone out into the desert without any food or water and then blaming her when can’t get up and walk.
Churches must learn to show up emotionally for survivors. Churches need to become trauma-informed and violence-informed spaces where it is understood that it is normal for victims to have many big, heavy, complex, and difficult emotions about their experiences of abuse. Churches need to be able to hold and sit with these emotions without trying to fix them or shut them down.
If churches want to become safe spaces for survivors, they must not only remove all entrapment barriers they can, but they must also become sacred holders and validators of the complex emotions and feelings victims experience. Churches must become a safe, embracing emotional oasis rather than a harsh, isolating desert.
Creating a Safe Space
Abusers themselves are a victim’s greatest entrapment barrier. Abusers know that victims resist abuse, so they anticipate that resistance and attempt to destroy it so they don’t lose control (5). If your church believes any theology that serves as an entrapment barrier, abusers will magnify those theological entrapment barriers ten-fold to their victims, blaming them and filling them with shame, guilt, and fear for their alleged failures before God. If your church will discard a victim for resisting bad theology, abusers will make sure victims understand the social and emotional toll this isolation will cause them. If your community is considering being supportive of victims, an abuser will manipulate and triangulate members of your community into believing that he is actually just a misunderstood “good” guy and that she is just being bitter, overly-picky, and controlling. This creates further entrapment barriers for victims who are then perceived to be “the problem” by their church communities. This usually results in less tangible and emotional support for her.
As long as an abuser is around, his victim cannot be safe in that space.
So many churches believe that they can minister to both victims and their abusers in the same space. They cannot. Not only is this a foolish goal because keeping abusers around puts other members of the church congregation at risk, but it is also an impossible goal. The only safe space for a victim is a space without her abuser. Victims cannot heal in the same space as their abusers.
If churches want to become safe spaces for victims, they must prioritize victim needs, safety, and healing and follow a victim’s lead as to whether or not she wants her abuser in that space and communicate clearly to her that they are willing to remove him from the congregation as soon as she says so, followed by concrete action.
A Safe Church
A safe church is one that stops trying to fix victims and starts changing itself. A safe church will scrutinize and clean up any and all theology it holds that creates entrapment barriers for victims. A safe church will provide a safe, supportive, loyal community for victims that shows up both in word and deed with tangible and emotional support. A safe church will remove abusers from their congregation following a victim’s lead. A safe church has the potential to genuinely be the literal hands and feet of Jesus to some of the most hurting people in our world.
Is your church ready to become a safe church?
Resources:
(1) https://stoprelationshipabuse.org/educated/what-causes-relationship-abuse/
(2) Hill, Jess, See What You Made Me Do, Sourcebooks 2020, 55-56
(3) Stark, Evan Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life, Oxford University Press 2007, 2971 Kindle ed
(4) www.motherjusticenetwork.org
(5) Stark, Evan Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life, Oxford University Press 2007, 3309 Kindle ed
finally finally, the truth is out there. So sick of the lies about victims and the posts that say we are just weak people. They refused to remove him unless I had an order of protection. The courts refuse to give you an OP unless you are brutalized, I lost my entire church family, it stinks
I am an erased mom of six. My abuser holds a position of power within the church with that huge pedophile problem. I wrote to my bishop outlining and documenting the abuse of me (haven’t seen my 6 kids in 7 years and am broke and was homeless) and my children by the cfo in 2020. He told me to ask Catholic charities for help. I am a college graduate, former professional, who now has PTSD (the trauma/abuse is ongoing every second of every day that I can’t hug or talk to my kids.) and was recently homeless and is deemed disabled as a result of the ongoing abuse For a church that values motherhood and the sanctity of life, it hurts doubly that this man is allowed to abuse unfettered.