The Bible and Rape Culture

The Rape of Tamar, Eustache Le Sueur (1640)

Yesterday morning I was mentioning to a friend that in lieu of all the brave women finally stepping forward to take on what most of us have experienced at least once in our lives, if not multiple times, that I really needed to write an article that explained how the Bible has unfortunately helped foster and "normalize" rape culture.

As if on cue, a few hours later Roy Moore of Alabama was the latest to be accused of sexual misconduct. If that wasn't bad enough, Alabama state officials along with Fox News host Sean Hannity then defended one of his sexual encounters with a 14 year old by... wait for it... using the Bible. (Oh, that was a fun gem, trying to rationalize it by saying Mary was only 14 when she had Jesus with Joseph. The number of holes in that argument are big enough to drive a few semi-trucks through. Let's just set aside for a moment that the ages of Joseph and Mary are never revealed in scripture, they're only assumed based on the culture, or the fact that the whole point of the birth narratives is that Mary and Joseph did not have sex before Jesus' birth. Lousiest. Argument. Ever.)

However, this isn't exactly the first time men behaving badly have turned to the Bible to justify their grotesque actions.

I've heard a lot of people wondering why these women have waited so long to come out of the woodwork. The reasoning is fairly simple: a) powerful men and the systems that protect them make it virtually impossible for your average woman to fight back if she wants to keep her job and still have a career of any sort, and b) as a so-called "Christian" nation, rape culture is imbedded heavily within our sacred scriptures, so bad behavior by men against women has been normalized... even for the women. I know I was conditioned to just try and brush it off, to stop making such a big deal about "harmless" flirtation or comments. In one instance, when I did make some complaints, I had my job threatened by "the powers that be" and told I would never again work in my field if I talked with ANYONE about a superior's bad behavior.

Between Hollywood and the Church, I've had my fair share of both verbal and physical sexual assaults and won't even go into the myriad of micro-aggressions I face every day. Most I never reported, even one that literally involved me being pinned to the floor by a celebrity-type figure and nearly raped. Like so many women, I had no desire to face all the public scrutiny and ridicule that would be involved with reporting a powerful figure. My word against his and guess who was more likely to be believed? Powerful men have been relying on this fact for, well, forever. After all, the men didn't believe the women when they told the disciples about the resurrection of Jesus. Sexual assault complaints? Please.

Instead, we find people, even women, feeling "sorry" for these men who are now having their careers destroyed due to "a few indiscretions." We've been conditioned to feel sorry for them, to excuse them, to say, "oh, well, everyone makes mistakes." This is true - but there are also real-world consequences to mistakes, and we seem to keep forgetting the women's lives who have been threatened, abused, and forever altered by these "mistakes." Or that the Bible outlines some of the horrific consequences of violence against women.

Sadly, the Bible itself is partly to blame for this phenomenon, because it is a product of its culture where women's bodies belonged to any number of men before it was considered her own. They were the property of either their father or their husbands. Whatever was done to them was not considered a violation of the individual woman, but rather a violation of the man's property.

As Christians, we tend to turn to the Bible for lessons on how to behave (or not behave as the case may be). If you've ever taken the time to actually READ the stories of the Old Testament, they're not what you remember from Sunday School. They're pretty awful stories, actually. Sex and violence play prominent roles. Any responsible scholar looks at these stories and recognizes pretty quickly that these are not people to model yourselves after.

Starting with the "Father of the Faith," Abraham. Most Christians will stare at you with mouths gaping when you point out the cold hard fact that Abraham was a rapist. When he and Sarah lost hope that God was going to fulfill his promise to give them a child in their old age, they hatched this brilliant plan where Abraham could sleep with Sarah's Egyptian slave, Hagar. As a slave, Hagar had no say in this matter. She had no option other than to let Abraham have sex with her in the hopes of producing an heir. He was the one in power - she did not own her own body. Oh, and let's not dismiss the fact that Sarah was not only complicit in this... it was her freaking idea!!

Even more troubling is the lack of condemnation for this act beyond the fact that God simply states that Abraham should have been more patient and waited for God to do what he promised through Sarah. God never comes right out and says what a horrific thing this was. Or if he did, the Biblical authors opted to leave that part out. Let's also not forget that Abraham handed his wife over to Pharaoh so he could add her to his harem, passing her off as his sister rather than his wife. Because she was so beautiful, he was afraid Pharaoh would kill him to possess her. Sarah has no voice in this fun little transaction. Which is a shame, because I'd have REALLY liked to have heard her response to this little plan. Their son, Isaac, would later do the exact same thing with his wife, Rebekah. Learned behavior, apparently.

This isn't the only rape story associated with Abraham. When the three men/angels head into Sodom and Gomorrah to see if they can find ten righteous people in order to spare the cities, the townsmen show up at Lot's home (Abraham's nephew) and demand the three men be sent out so they could rape them. Lot's response is to offer his daughters up to be raped instead.

Nice.

Raping men is a horrific idea in the Bible. But raping women? Meh. Preferable to it happening to a man.

Luckily the three men at least step in and stop that from happening...only to of course rain fire and brimstone down upon the two cities.

Unfortunately, a similar story, without the angelic intervention, is repeated in the book of Judges with a Levite and his concubine when they stop for the night in Gibeah of Benjamin. The men of Gibeah go to the host's home and demand the Levite be given to them to rape. Instead, the Levite tosses them his concubine, who the men summarily rape and beat to death. The Levite then cuts her into little pieces and sends her body parts to the other tribal leaders to incite their anger so they can then launch a genocidal attack on the Benjamites.

Jacob, like his grandfather Abraham, rapes Bilah and Zilpah, his wives' handmaidens, in order to produce some of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Jacob's daughter Dinah is also raped, and an entire tribe is wiped off the planet when her brothers enact vengeance. Dinah never speaks. She has no voice in this story, but is merely a "plot tool" it would seem. Jacob - well he's upset with his son's for enacting vengeance because now they have to move for killing all those people. While ultimately the story is about the futility of the cycle of violence, it also highlights what happens when the person in power, Jacob, fails to act justly on behalf of his raped daughter. Others opt to take matters into their own hands.

A similar story of inaction leading to sons taking matters into their own hands can be found in King David's family. David's daughter, Tamar, is raped by her half-brother, Amnon. David's reaction?

He does absolutely nothing.

Tamar is sent off in disgrace and like Dinah before her, disappears from the narrative forever. However, David's inaction leads to a fostering of anger between Amnon and his brother Absalom. Absalom is livid that his sister receives no justice, so he takes it into his own hands. He kills his brother then launches a rebellion against his father and eventually dies himself by getting caught by low-lying tree branch. The point being - David's unwillingness to seek the proper form of justice leads to others taking extreme actions that lead to more violence, death and heartache.

Of course, if you're wondering where his sons learned this violent behavior from, they needed only look to their father. It was David who likely raped Bathsheba given he was the powerful king who happened to see a married woman bathing late one afternoon in her own home (voyeuristic much?) and determined he simply had to have her. As the powerful king, he felt he could sleep with anyone he desired, and even wound up killing off her husband in order to cover up the fact that he'd gotten her pregnant. This is at least in part why I scoff at the people who say "why would a celebrity rape someone? They can have anyone they want?" They rape because... they can. And then they go to great lengths to cover it up. It's the Biblical way, after all.

Then there's the book of Esther, that drips with the abuses of male dominance. The book opens with Queen Vashti refusing to parade around naked in front of her husband's drunken friends. Such a refusal is, of course, the woman's fault and therefore she needs to be deposed of immediately.
(You can read an old blog post of mine analyzing how offensive the entire book really is toward women) The solution? Round up a bunch of virgins for the King to sleep with so he can pick his new Queen.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

So is it really any wonder that two thousand years later,  men who tout the Bible as their "moral compass" and "guidebook for life" would find anything abhorrent or wrong in their behavior towards women? After all, if the Bible didn't outright and explicitly condemn it, it clearly was, and therefore still is, acceptable.

This doesn't even touch on the New Testament scriptures that your conservative Biblical literalists will yank out of context, such as "wives, submit to your husbands" and "I do not permit a woman to speak," as excuses to continue to oppress and abuse women. Never mind all the other places in scripture where women not only speak, but lead. Or that the submission text is in the context of how husbands and wives are to submit to ONE ANOTHER out of reverence for Christ and spends a lot more time and energy talking about how men are supposed to love and respect their wives.

Pesky details.

This may make many wonder how on earth any woman could be a Christian. It's a fair question. Many of us who were educated in the more historical-critical interpretations of scripture recognize these stories as being complicated narratives and many times examples of what NOT to do. We recognize that these characters are messy and wallow in the ugliness that is human sin, only highlighting humanity's desperate need for redemption that has to come from somewhere other than themselves. Jerry Springer's got nothing on the family dysfunction you find in the Bible.

We also recognize Jesus as having been one of the few Biblical figures that stood up for women. The woman who was going to be stoned for adultery he stopped because the leaders were not holding the man equally accountable. When Mary sits at Jesus' feet and Martha complains that Mary is not helping her with her "women's duties," Jesus' response is that Mary is doing the better thing - behaving like a man and sitting at his feet like the rest of the male disciples. Women are the first that he appears to when he is resurrected and the first he instructs to preach the good news. Jesus also addresses the injustice of how divorce harmed the women in their society because of how their society did not provide recourse for the women and divorcing them would likely force them into prostitution. Or how "mere" objectification of women by simply LOOKING at them with lust was a violation of the commandment regarding adultery.

[After posting this initially, a friend of mine pointed out the following that I thought was worth noting as well: "In contrast to other Biblical texts, I’ll add that it is only women who get to rebuke or make demands of Jesus: Mary telling Jesus to make wine at the Wedding in Cana, the woman who rebukes Jesus for withholding “table scraps,” Martha who chastises Jesus for not being there. There’s also, of course, the lengthy theological conversation Jesus has with the woman at the well, despite his followers protestations. Jesus offers a powerful correction to female oppression exemplified throughout the old testament." - Jeff Paschke-Johannes]

I'll take the liberty of saying Jesus was something of a feminist. Given Jesus is the heart of God, many of us Christian women find a lot of hope in this, even if human culture has not yet caught up to God's vision of equality and equanimity between the sexes.

Yet despite that hope, we still fall prey to the reality that we have been conditioned for literally thousands of years to just accept male harassment as normative and simply a part of daily life. After all, if we complained about every instance of sexual inappropriateness by men - we'd never get anything done because we'd spend all our time filing reports. We recognize it as a seemingly futile endeavor.

Or at least, we did.

So while we are standing up and finally finding the voice that has been silenced like Dinah and Tamar, we have thousands of years worth of abuse that has never been properly addressed scripturally to contend with. Some of us recognize the scriptures are a product of their time and culture, but that doesn't mean that the silence on these issues isn't just as deafening or problematic.

It's time we, as Christians, stop looking at the Bible's characters as any sort of moral compass... with the exception of course of Jesus. It's time to condemn the behaviors that are glossed over and normalized as "cultural realities of the day" as no longer being acceptable in any world that strives to live out God's Kingdom of justice and equality. Jesus came into this world to upend power structures.

It's time we, as his followers, do just that. Including the power structures that the Bible itself helped propagate.