The PCA has a wonderful habit of asking questions nobody asked. As someone who has only recently started to dig through the history of this denomination, I have found myself viewing reports and statements on questions I would never have dreamed to ask. Today, I will be briefly looking at the Ad Interim Study Committee Report on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault. If this is not as helpful to you as it may seem, we may be in the same boat.
First, a warning. I am currently in a wonderful relationship with my wife. I have children that are growing fast, and abuse is usually the furthest thing from my mind. However, I had honestly opened the report hoping to gain something of value, and was fairly disappointed. I am not of the opinion that you need to have skin in the game in order to be able speak of, or learn from the subject. If I am not personally an abuser, and have not been abused, I still have a vested interest in the theological aspects of this subject. So often, culture tells us that we must have personally struggled with something in order to speak about it, which is just another way of claiming a victim card. In the words of a pastor:
“We have come to believe that experience in sin qualifies us to speak authoritatively. Christians should know better.”
Douglas Wilson
The Committee Members
The first test I have recently started doing is called TTT (The Twitter Test). I have no idea if that’s a thing, but what you do is take all the author names you can find in the resources given, and make a twitter feed out of them. The names I found for my test are listed here1https://dasacommittee.org/dasa-members and here.2https://dasacommittee.org/resources There is quite a bit of overlap, but plenty to work with.
The first name of note is the author Shira Berkovits. A quick google search reveals the author may not be the best choice for a Christian analysis. Berkovits’ semitism is an unavoidable issue. Can you really be trusted to instruct church policies without acknowledging Christ as King?
After making a Twitter list with the rest of the names, and viewing the feed for a while, it was clear that there was not much to gain. Most of the people on the committee have made domestic abuse their life work. This is very much reflected on their twitter feed. I did see some jarring pro-Ukraine propoganda, and a random woman’s day feminism post, but the rest was actually very uneventful. There was not much more to be gained from this test.
The Report
The report itself can be found here.3https://dasacommittee.org/committee-report Like most reports, it’s long, dry, and only moderately helpful at it’s best. The biggest gripe I have with this report is ill-defined socially charged terms that are used without consistent definitions.
The very first definition of abuse already appears to deviate considerably from the common cultural definition of the word. The majority of people of reading this are likely to use the word abuse in a way that connotes misuse, or maltreatment. Instead, the report decides to opt for the word oppression, likely because there is many more cases of this word in Scripture. Oddly enough, Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary opted for the verse in 1 Corinthians 7:31 while attempting to define abuse.4https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/abuse The fact that these committee members would feel the need to deviate from historical definitions is suspect, to say the least.
The second, VERY big deal is when the report attempts to state that:
“all forms of physical and non-physical (emotional, psychological, spiritual) abuse will be considered equally sinful.”
This is a very bold claim. It was my understanding that this report was meant to help readers as a sort of reference, yet it lumps every form abuse into an equally sinful category. This is further confused by the claims made just two pages later.
With such glaring contradictions, how am I expected to proceed through the rest of this report? Should I interpret each sin on it’s own merit? How can I even do that, when the word abuse is used in such a generic way? If this was a report meant to help people in need, perhaps this committee would have been better off leaving the money in the offering plate.
#metoo in Deuteronomy?
I will present this section of the report as-is, and with no introduction.
I honestly am not really sure where to start. Reading sections like this make me doubt the true intentions of the committee members. Anyway, let’s try to decipher some of the points.
The biggest takeaway of the Deuteronomy passage appears to be the equivocation of rape and murder. If a man “seizes” a woman and rapes her, the man is guilty of a very heinous offense that requires the death penalty. This point would have been more obvious to a committee that was able to remember which sins were more egregious than others, but I digress.
The second takeaway involves the “open country” referenced in verse 25. This is to be understood as an area where no one is present, no one to help protect the woman from violation.
“The obvious point is that out in the open, beyond the town, there is no one else present to hear the woman’s cry for help. But “the field,” beyond the perimeters of safe, communal existence, often figures in biblical language as a dangerous zone where marauders, wild animals, even demons prey on people.”
Robert Alter – “The Five Books of Moses – A Translation with Commentary”, 2004
I would hope that a woman in a dangerous zone is not out there with expectation of safety from danger. If there is a point to the made about the location in this passage, I am hard pressed to say it is #BelieveAllWomen. Instead, I would say the important points revolve around safety. A woman would be wise to not venture beyond the perimeters of safety without good reason. This heinous crime could have been prevented had she been in ear-shot of someone that could aid.
This text also speaks to the woman that does not cry out while under this sexual assault. In Deuteronomy 22, the passage leading up to the report’s selection makes it clear that a woman that is silent during a rape is assumed to be complicit. This is evidenced by the punishment, death for both the man and the woman. For biblical justice to be upheld, it must be incredibly clear the woman was wronged. If this is not made clear in the most immediate sense, the woman is assumed to be cooperative. This is both a danger, and a protection.
Rape is a very serious offense. I long for the day that justice is found for those that have been so offended. Until there is a biblical justice in place however, I would caution both young women and young men to avoid situations like this at all costs.
More Definitions
I realize now that I have used the word rape without bringing the definition from the report. It’s alright. You will actually be more confused after you read the committee’s notes on the definition of rape.
…in terms of our Confessional Standards and the judicial basis for prosecution of ecclesiastical cases of sexual abuse in the PCA, other forms of sexual abuse fall under the prohibition of rape. In other words, the Standards’ prohibition of rape is broader than the what we would commonly call rape. Without the inclusion of sexual abuse under the confessional category for rape, there is no other clear prohibition of sexual abuse in our confessional standards. Therefore it is necessary to include all forms of sexual assault and abuse under the confessional umbrella of rape.”
Report of the Ad Interim Study Committee on Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault, 2019 – 2022 (Emphasis Added)
In order to justify their own existence, the committee decided that every form of sexual abuse falls under the category of rape, which falls under the seventh commandment. No effort is made to distinguish between a civil definition of rape and the definition given in the Westminster Confession. Why is it necessary to expand this definition of rape to include the term “sexual abuse?”
The report appears to give a definition of sexual assault, but the term sexual abuse seems to be missing from the first attachment definition section. The second attachment appears to fill the gap. This attachment adds many definitions from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. This book is very long, and is meant to be a sort of “field guide” to mental disorders. So, after looking through many pages of report, we finally get the definition of sexual abuse, taken from a book that believes gender does not equal sex.
“Sexual abuse includes any forced or coerced sexual act against a person’s will.”
Perhaps this is why there was so much confusion about definitions at the beginning of this post. Am I to understand that, “all forms of physical and non-physical abuse will be considered equally sinful”, and “any forced or coerced sexual act against a person’s will” is to fall under the definition of rape?
The Realization
I realize now why this report has been so unhelpful to me. It appears to be so heavily influenced by feminism and worldly culture that I can’t even comprehend it. I have long held that the penalty for rape is death, yet the definition of justice, abuse, sexual assault, and oppression has all been so changed that I can no longer comprehend it’s meaning. I cannot hear your message about abuse if you use your own meanings I do not understand. I will never know what your definition oppression means if you do not care to use it consistently.
This contradictory message of basic biblical truths is so bad, I can no longer give the benefit of doubt that I afford to those who mean well. Am I truly expected to assume that this paper full of feminist buzzwords and disingenuous conclusions was intended to help me?
I also found the report’s omission of sexual deviancy and sexual/physical abuse to be suspect. Did the committee not once think to mention that homosexuals, comprising 2% of the total population, commit 33% of all the child sexual abuse?5https://archive.ph/sX8zg Statistically, the church is automatically protecting itself from sexual abuse in children by taking a hard stance on sodomy. This would have been a good opportunity for the PCA to prove it holds to it’s own confessions. Homosexuality has no place in the kingdom of heaven.
This suspect omission once again likely stems from the report’s heavy reliance on terms and talking points found in modern secular psychology. In this world, homosexuality is considered normal, men can be women, and children are not people until their mother decides for them to be. A world that embraces this modern psychology will never admit that homosexual deviancy is incompatible with a Christian lifestyle. For a report that so heavily uses these culturally-charged psychological terms, a strong disclaimer would have been more than appropriate. In fact, it’s exclusion is likely damning.
Sources:
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