Our team recently published a paper in the Scientific Study of Religion journal based on our dataset for our book She Deserves Better showing that boys who attend churches that teach modesty messages are more likely to sexually assault and harass their peers in high school.
Those boys would likely not have done so had they not been taught that it was a girl’s responsibility to dress so that she wouldn’t entice him. If he hadn’t been taught that God made him to lust, and that it was up to girls to be the sin management tools, they likely wouldn’t have done what they did.
We also know from an Institute for Family Studies 2019 report based on surveys of 60,000 people that religious men who believe in male hierarchy are the second likeliest to abuse their wives, while men who attend religious services and believe in equality are the least likely.
And other studies have found that conservative Christian women are more likely to stay in abusive relationships. Quite simply, abuse is a problem in evangelicalism.
But today I want to talk about a particular phenomenon that we’ve identified in our datasets: marital rape that may not have happened save for evangelical teachings that normalized it.
When we analyzed the top 13 evangelical books for our book The Great Sex Rescue, there was one word that was missing from all of them: Consent. While several books did do a good job at talking about the importance of not raping your spouse (Boundaries in Marriage and The Gift of Sex), no book that we looked at had a robust discussion of what consent and coercion looked like in marriage.
Yet when we asked our survey takers who left their emails if any of them had stories of marital rape to share, a full 20% who answered our query did.
And in our focus groups, we heard horrifying story after story of marital rape.
I’m going to distinguish between two different dynamics that we’ve seen in readers’ stories:
Rape where the husband is exercising control and truly doesn’t care and is abusive.
Coercion where the husband may not have completely realized the dynamics that were present, and actually thinks he is doing what God permitted.
The first instance is illustrated by Tim LaHaye’s story in The Act of Marriage of Aunt Matilda, who is the actual antagonist (the bad person) in the story that he’s telling:
Apparently her aunt, whose marriage was arranged by her parents in the old country, found herself petrified of sex on her wedding night. When her embarrassed and clumsy farmer husband, who was twenty years older, brought her to their wedding bed, he “stripped me naked and raped me in my own bed. I fought and screamed to no avail.” . . . Her conclusion to her niece was, “As far as I’m concerned, marriage is just legalized rape.” As much as one might feel compassion for poor Aunt Matilda and her equally unhappy spouse, we can hardly envision more unhealthy concepts to pump into the impressionable young mind of a bride-to-be.
Please notice that Tim LaHaye called the rapist, who held his wife down while she was kicking and screaming, and did this throughout their marriage, “equally unhappy” as his rape victim.
This anecdote is from the fourth edition of their book. And nobody at Zondervan (the publisher, who still, to this day, has this wording in its book and has not taken it out) thought, “hmmmm….maybe it’s not a good idea to call a rapist equally unhappy as his rape victim!”
No, they thought that was okay. Which is why I dedicated The Great Sex Rescue to Aunt Matilda, and all others like her. The evangelical world has failed women by making marital rape normal. And I’m incensed and so angry.
When writing our book we developed a 12 point rubric of healthy sexuality teaching. And the marker that evangelical books as a whole scored the worst on was the concept of consent, coercion, and obligation. It is absolutely atrocious. There is very scant teaching that women’s autonomy matters, and that men can’t just take what they want. There is lots of teaching, on the other hand, that men own women’s bodies and that men are entitled to them. (And you can read lots of evidence in The Great Sex Rescue!)
When rapes that would obviously fall into the first category above, where there is violence being done and the husband doesn’t care are minimized in our best-sellers, is it any wonder that marital rape is so common?
But the problem goes deeper than that. It is not just that abusive men are enabled.
It is also, I believe, that men who would not otherwise be abusive become that way, perhaps even unwittingly.
This is what happens when consent is not discussed properly. When we talk about sex as something that God commands women to give, then, as one reader commented to me about people who think this, “The wife’s consent is irrelevant to these people because only God’s consent counts.”
It’s like this passage from chapter 10 of The Great Sex Rescue:
We have even had several male commenters on the blog taking issue with the fact that women can say no to sex for the six weeks postpartum or during her period.
Referring to the 1 Corinthians 7 passage, Tony commented, “Consensual is a keyword. If he didn’t consent to going six weeks [after a baby] or even one week a month [during her period], then unilaterally imposing that on him is certainly not consensual.” Another man echoed him, “The period of abstinence after pregnancy and during the wife’s period is not by mutual agreement so that the couple can devote themselves to prayer. It is being forced on us men because we are being told to give our wives a break.” You need mutual consent to say no, these commenters feel—but apparently you don’t need mutual consent to say yes.
Think about this for a moment:
If you honestly believe that GOD is telling you that you need two people’s consent to say no, then consent has been flipped on its head in the evangelical world.
It’s rape that is normalized, not mutual, intimate, and pleasurable sex. Because in this warped interpretation of the Bible, the evil thing is not taking sex from someone; the evil thing is withholding sex.
And if having intercourse in marriage pleases God (which is what we’re also taught), then when someone takes it, this is actually glorifying God, in some weird way.
As Doug Wilson said, wives are the only lawful sexual outlet. This is common teaching in the evangelical world–that the wife is the only proper place to put your lusts. So Every Man’s Battle teaches women that when he quits porn, you need to provide all the sexual release he needs so he doesn’t sin. You become methadone for him.
In this mindset, him using his wife for sex, whether she wants it or not, prevents sin. In fact, the whole reason that God gave marriage is so that men wouldn’t have to sin sexually (as Mark Driscoll said, now his penis has a home).
The thing that must be avoided is lusting after someone else or masturbating or sexual sin in any way; and the way to avoid these things is to have sex with your wife.
Thus, using your wife for sexual release is seen as a righteous act to avoid sin.
In fact, as Every Man’s Battle says, she should be grateful for this! She should understand that he is honoring her by doing this.
My contention is that the evangelical world enables the first type of rapist by not calling it all out. But then it creates the second type of rapist. It pushes men who would otherwise treat their wives well to using their wives, because they think this is what God wants and that this is righteous.
Yes, it’s twisted. It’s absolutely bizarre and hideous and evil. But over and over again we heard stories like this one, that we included in the book (and trigger warning, it’s especially bad):
My husband and I have sex every day. Every other day we have it twice a day, and often 3 times a day! When I’m on my period, tired, we still do. When I had our babies, he googled and told me it’s okay after four weeks, we don’t have to wait for six. When I feel like it’s too much, [1 Cor. 7:3–5] is thrown at me. He also explains to me why he needs it and how he feels when I deny him (like if I’m exhausted and fall asleep before it happens). I actually feel abused. I curl up in a ball on my side and let him do it. I’m detached emotionally (not always, but almost always during my period) and this hurts him.
I love my husband. He’s my best friend, but sometimes I want out! I feel like I’ll either lose my best friend or continue to feel abused. I tell him it hurts me when we have sex too often or when I’m on my period, but he says, then why would God say to NEVER deny each other?
Let’s notice a few things about this story, which is typical of so many that I’ve heard:
The wife feels abused (and is being abused)
The husband ignores the wife’s obvious distress
The relationship is otherwise good (she says)
The husband thinks that this is what God wants
Now, I know some may argue that the third and fourth point likely aren’t true, and that this guy is just abusing his wife and knows it.
But here’s the thing–I’ve had so many heartfelt emails from guys saying, “I didn’t realize I was coercing my wife. I thought this was what God wanted. I thought, by not wanting sex, that she was the one in sin. I used her and I never realized it”, that I’ve come to believe this dynamic is far more common than we think.
Should they have realized it? Yes.
Was it still abusive and coercive? Yes.
Did it cause trauma? Yes.
Did he realize it? In many cases, I think he (and even she) may have convinced themselves this was normal, and identified HER reluctance as the problem.
I have simply heard too many stories from women saying, “he is such a great guy in every other way; he doesn’t belittle me, he’s a great dad, he helps around the house, but he’s so selfish in bed and I feel so used.” And I have had too many messages from men wanting to know how to make this right that I think this is a very real phenomenon.
When you believe that you need mutual consent to say no, but not mutual consent to say yes (because God’s consent is all that counts);
when you believe that she is the lawful sexual outlet, and God gave her to you specifically to use so that you don’t sin;
when you believe that God wants sex to be frequent in marriage, and is upset when it doesn’t happen–
then it is easy to see how they both may not understand coercion and marital rape.
Quite frankly, we’ve created a lot of rapists, some of whom are absolutely devastated and heartbroken when they later realize what they’ve done (I hear from men like this everyday).
Now, many are not, and that when a husband doesn’t understand that he’s raped his wife even after it has been clearly spelled out, that can’t be fixed. They abused because they wanted to abuse, and the only solution is to get out.
So let’s be clear about what coercion is.
Someone you know needs to understand coercion better. Share this so they’ll see it!
We tend to think of marital rape as the Aunt Matilda situation, where she is held down, kicking and screaming. But rape is any time there is no consent. And you cannot properly give consent if you feel as if something bad will happen if you don’t, or if you are being pressured into it in some way other than physically (as the second woman was with spiritual abuse).
So, for instance, these things are all instances of marital coercion:
If sex happens because he lectures her about not depriving him and uses 1 Corinthians 7 as an excuse to do what he is doing.
If he becomes angry, gives her the silent treatment, or treats her badly if they don’t have sex (Roughly 16% of our respondents said that their primary motivation for sex was to avoid something unpleasant, and 7% said it was to avoid him treating her badly).
If he embarrasses her in public less if she has sex with him
If he is nicer to the children and doesn’t yell at them as much if she has sex with him
If he gives her access to money, groceries, or other things only if she has sex with him
If he tells her that without sex he will lust at church, or at work, or use porn (Alyssa Wakefield told us in her podcast that she had to have sex every Sunday before church or her husband would lust).
This is not an exhaustive list, but I hope you get the picture: If she has to have sex to avoid something bad happening to her, or has sex under physical, emotional, or spiritual pressure, then that is not consent.
And this dynamic is toxic for the marriage; it is poison for the sex life; and it can easily lead to PTSD, chronic health problems, mental health issues, and more in her. We know that long-term victims of abuse are more likely to develop certain chronic health problems. The body keeps the score.
They may think they know Jesus, but they don’t.
Because Jesus would never think it’s good and okay for a man to “have sex” with his wife while she’s curled up in a ball.
Jesus would never call a rapist equally unhappy as his rape victim.
Jesus would never tell a man that it’s okay to just use a woman to satisfy your lusts. In fact, Jesus didn’t.
And Jesus understands intimacy. He created sex to be mutual, intimate, and pleasurable for both, not as a lust management tool and entitlement for men.
We have got this so wrong. We have done so much damage. It is time to repent and make this right.
Our Rubric rating 13 of the best-selling evangelical sex and marriage books
Our podcast on the pressures put on women to perform sexually in the postpartum phase
How evangelical books and pastors obscure sexual assault:
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.