Eternity’s Kaley Payne speaks with John Dickson about recent statements by Centre For Public Christianity (CPX) contributing to the growing tide of media attention on domestic violence within the church in some states. CPX believes one way for the church to respond in a positive, non-defensive way is to commission an independent study into the prevalence of domestic abuse in its midst.

It’s not really a change. To clarify, we’re really urgently calling them [the church] to consider some kind of internal review. We don’t have any authority in the church. So it would be presumptuous of us to make that call. But it seems plausible enough for us to ask them to consider offering a review.

Because this is such a major public question in the last few weeks, CPX has watched it unfold… we didn’t know if this was really an internal church matter. But it seemed to pick up a lot of steam. We felt that between unfair statements made about the church and a little bit of defensiveness on the part of the church, that it was a good thing for CPX to offer a piece that really wasn’t about asking people to consider an internal review. The article’s about trying to explain to the general public that Christians have always been at their best when they’ve listened to their critics and realised that there can be a darkness that lies within the church, and respond and become a better version of itself.

Our motivations are entirely about helping sceptics out there see that the church isn’t always defensive and that it has a lot to learn from the world.

We also said several things [in the ABC Drum article] that hadn’t been said yet.

Like, many of Christianity’s ideas are precarious if misinterpreted. So, ‘Love your enemies’, ‘Consider others better than yourself’, ‘Turn the other cheek’. I mean, all of these could, in theory (even outside of the domestic abuse situation), be used for people to become doormats. But we know that these commands – to love your enemies, for example – fit within a context. And so only when you really understand the context is the teaching not a dangerous teaching.

So our point is, whatever the various arguments about headship and submission, everyone really ought to agree that self-sacrifice is at the heart of the gospel and so no interpretation of headship and submission that allows domestic violence can be a correct interpretation.

This seemed to us to be a very important point to make for the general public.

What do you think this type of review should look like?

Well, all we’ve done is ask conservative evangelicals, in particular, to consider a review. We don’t have a review system up our sleeve that we want to impose on the church. But, what kind of review would be possible?

I think a big quantitative study would be implausible, exorbitant and probably irrelevant because there isn’t enough baseline research on domestic violence across the general public yet for it to be a meaningful thing for the church to do within its own communities.

But what could be done on a modest scale is a review of all teaching on the topic of marriage, where perhaps an expert panel – made up of domestic violence experts, psychologists, theologians – review sermons and literature to date on the topic of marriage and provide recommendations back to church leaders about certain ways of expressing a theology of marriage that might encourage an environment where people could misuse this stuff for violence.

In addition, they could offer recommendations for caveats and qualifications and extra details and data that should always be included in sermons and pamphlets and courses on marriage, because it really has dawned on us all that this is a real issue – inside and outside the church. And if we’ve had our eye off the ball in the past, this is the chance to fix it.

To be honest, I think most ministers who’ve been following this controversy over the last few weeks will think far more carefully about how they teach on marriage in the future. That alone is a good thing. But if we had experts telling us how to better fulfil our own role, then honestly that would be wonderful.

The other thing we could do is a qualitative study of our own domestic abuse survivors from within the church, who volunteer to be interviewed in a detailed, qualitative analysis, to find out whether there were particular issues in church life that affected their situation – either positively or negatively.

I mean, the claim at the moment is that teaching about marriage has a potentially detrimental effect on abuse situations; and it will be wonderful to know if that were true so we can do even more. At the same time, we may, in fact, find that biblical teaching about marriage helped someone get out of an abusive situation, because they knew, for example, that the husband was called to sacrifice his life on behalf of his wife. Maybe the wife knew that and saw the husband not acting like that, and that was the trigger to get out. So it’s entirely possible that a real drill-down study could reveal some negative things and some positive things about the church’s teaching.

Is this just an issue among conservative evangelical churches, do you think?

Articles by others have focused on the conservative evangelical view of headship and submission. And, of course, evangelical egalitarians, as they call themselves, don’t teach those views on headship and submission.

But part of me fears that evangelical egalitarians – or any other egalitarians in the church – are finger-pointing at conservatives. I think that would be pretty unfair. I think it’s just as likely, frankly, that the Christian teaching about the permanence of marriage, the sacredness of marriage, could create the environment where people feel guilty about leaving an abusive situation.

That would be important to discover as well.

What should the first response be for the church to accusations that there is a problem with domestic violence?

The first instinct of a Christian in this situation where people are being harmed ought to be not defensiveness, not ducking and weaving, but a genuine compassion for those who have been harmed in our midst, and an acceptance that darkness lies within the church, just as it lies within the wider community.

Our main point is that the church is always the best version of itself when it listens to its critics from outside the church. Sometimes they can be God’s own tool for bringing the church to see itself more clearly and even to see the scriptures more clearly.

What damage is this issue doing to the church a
nd its reputation in the community? Is this the next skeleton in our closet, like child sexual abuse?

Look, it may be. If it is, then discovering the darkness, from a Christian perspective, and one that holds God as sovereign, we shouldn’t freak out about that. It could be something that cleanses us. My hunch is that this isn’t on the scale of the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse. And no one’s claiming that.

Questions have been asked. Individual stories have come forward that are powerful enough for us to take stock and really look at ourselves. But it would be inappropriate to connect it with that kind of large-scale, horrific abuse.

What about the statistics some have pointed to, from an article in Violence Against Women journal, that suggest that men and women who go to church are less likely to be involved in domestic violence?

There’s no data relevant to Australia. And whose data? You know, it’s really hard. I’m aware of an article in Violence Against Women journal, but it’s all for the American context. And look, it’s interesting. But how do we know what is real in America is real here?

I think the more important question is not to rush straight to the data but to listen to the stories, which don’t seem to be just one or two. And not just rest in the possibility that domestic abuse is less common in the church. It may well be – I want to think it is. But even if we were a little bit better than the general community, that it happens at all should horrify a Christian. Not just because it’s another kind of sin but because it’s such the antithesis of the gospel, of Jesus’s self-giving, that if there’s anything in our churches that allows that sort of abuse of power to take place, then even if it’s on a small scale, because it contradicts the gospel so much, it’s worth doing something about it.

* This article was updated at 9.40pm, March 13. We originally published John Dickson as saying “and one that holds the body as sovereign”. This has been changed to “and one that holds God as sovereign.” Our apologies for the error.