Indian churches are persecuting women who are victims of domestic violence

Preface by Barbara Roberts

This post has also been published at Substack. (That’s been my practice since mid-2024.) There’s more discussion at Substack than at this blog, so you might like to check out my Substack and get involved in the discussion there.

In this post, a Christian woman from India describes how Indian churches are harassing and abusing Christian women who are victims of domestic violence.

The woman’s husband was/is her primary abuser, but her family and church have also abused her. Her observations are from her personal experience and the experiences of Indian Christian women who shared in a safe chat group for victims of domestic abuse. She’s writing anonymously to protect her safety.

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Her observations and experience into what is happening in Indian Christianity today:

Christian victims of domestic violence have almost no church communities where they are welcome.

In short, I can state that 99% of contemporary churches (irrespective of denomination) no longer serve the Lord Jesus Christ in reality but use His Name.

The severely patriarchal society of India makes it more difficult for Christian victims of domestic violence to walk away, to live separately, etc. To avoid being condemned by the pulpit and the pew, they are forced to attend church incognito and to avoid all interactions with the church. (They might have to face dire consequences from the church elders/community if they speak up about abuse in Christian families/church.)

The abusive spouse receives sympathy and all types of support for the victim’s silent walking away.

The Christian community condemns the victims for leaving their abusive spouses. They also chase after victims, urging and coercing them to return to their abusive spouses.

Victims become vulnerable to suspicion/condemnation if they volunteer for church ministry activities, if they participate in fellowship gatherings/social gatherings of the church community like marriage, house-warming, etc.

The situation could become a little better if the victims have a career to financially contribute towards the church.

The children receive zero moral/emotional support from the church as victims/eye-witnesses of domestic violence.

If the adult children become financial contributors to the church and they adhere to the church’s perspective on the family breakdown, they will be appreciated and supported by the church community.

If the victims choose to stay with abusive spouses and if their mental health worsens, the entire blame is shifted upon the victims as though they had some inner problems which led them to get mental health issues.

Conclusion: Christian domestic violence victims and their children can find some relief/support outside the Christian community rather than from the church.

My personal story

I had no awareness of domestic psychological abuse although I got to identify red flags of unreasonable suspicion from the day my marriage was fixed.

I wish to underline that I had prayed for three signs from God to know His plan or will concerning who to get married to. I got my prayer answered. My spouse’s and his mother’s statements in the hearing of both of our relatives and others on the day of fixing the marriage were that they were guided by God that I was the person to get married to my then-to-be spouse. After the marriage, they began to show their suspicions and began to isolate me. (I wish to add that the people-group of my parental family is famous for the custom of giving lots of gold, land or other gifts as dowry to bridegrooms, besides many of the brides with good looks compared to my spouse’s people-group.)

I was taken by my spouse to a three-days married couples seminar conducted by Christians. I absorbed every patriarchal manipulative teaching and began to implement everything. I had never shared the details of abuse/ill-treatment from my spouse and family to my parents/relatives and I kept on projecting my spouse as a good Christian, as taught in that seminar.

As my spouse had taken baptism, I trusted him to be a normal born-again Christian and expected him to have normal affections and feelings towards his wife and his children. But he used to emotionally abuse me when no one was around.

About ten years ago, after an emergency situation in which I had to obey God to take suitable action for my children, he began to play toxic games and say hurtful things in the living room in such a way that no one else would be able to hear it. My teenage children used to be in their rooms close by and with the doors open. But when my stress buttons were pressed by my spouse, I replied briefly and honestly with my emotions of stress/anxiety/shock/fear. My children could not know why I became stressed or anxious. I got to know in 2021 that their father used to complain/explain secretly without my knowledge that I was the problem.

In the past twenty-five years of married life, there was only one occasion when I sought help from the pastor who had solemnised my marriage ceremony. I asked him to speak to my spouse about one incident, and my spouse’s bad behaviour consequent to that incident. The pastor condemned me as a bad Christian woman for talking about my spouse.

In 2021, I approached the local church pastor to visit the family to give moral and emotional support to my younger adult son who was psychologically abused and oppressed by his father. I did not dare to share details with the pastor about how my husband was psychologically abusing and oppressing this son. When the pastor replied to me that he would pray instead, I returned home and began to weep day and night unto the Lord in my bedroom. That was when the Lord visited me through Zoom meetings run by a ministry initiated by a Christian woman survivor of domestic violence which was trying to raise awareness of domestic violence in India. Further prayerful research helped me identify, analyse and join the dots to recognise the abuse all through twenty-five years of married life. By that time, my four adult children were undergoing different mental health issues due to growing up in an abusive environment.

My children left the faith by the time they entered teenage and had stopped attending church.

For a year, I followed the Lord’s counsel to me to give my husband one last chance to repent as per Matthew 18:16-17. But in vain.

The Lord clearly guided me not to seek the pastor’s help as per verse 18, by giving me insight that no one could speak to him. That was my experience with my husband; it was also the experience of my sons. My husband used to deny and cleverly change the reality to make it appear that he was innocent or that he did it for a different reason. Asking him, discussing with him, sharing one’s problems, thoughts, views, boomeranged on us as severe psychological abuses that hurt our sense of being a human being and our self-esteem. We have been forced to beg him for days for paying bills or purchasing urgent/vital necessities.

I walked away from my marriage last year, by the lead of my Heavenly Father. I had given nearly 95% of my meager earnings to my spouse and his family whenever I could take up a job in the past. In order to walk away, I needed money. So I requested him for a refund of a small portion of my salary that I had given to his relatives years back. By God’s grace, he returned it.

What I now personally find most painful is to share faith-related content with my young adult children. I can pray for them instead, which gives me hope in spite of it all.

I must testify that after prolonged trauma, I am enjoying a safe home life. This is the Lord’s amazing providence.

I am grateful to the Lord that apart from Him, there is one daughter of His who empathizes with me. I am encouraged.

I can testify that God allowed me to endure afflictions in married life for certain causes, just as how Christ’s crucifixion was for a cause. I feel led to minister to the daughters of Abraham who Satan has long bound from living in safety and serving Him as salt and light in society. (Luke 13:16)

Upon waiting on the Lord, He cleared all my confusion concerning the behaviours of my spouse and abusive Christians: If a person does not choose to be filled and to be led by the Holy Spirit to walk in obedience, their latter behaviour/condition will become worse than how they were as a sinner before getting born-again.

Kindly do share my story for awareness, and thank you for the opportunity.

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Afterword by Barbara Roberts

The author of this post is a sincere Christian. I know this because she’s been very interested in my work on Malachi 2:16.

I am grateful to her for prompting me to make my paper on Malachi 2:16 more widely available. See Malachi 2:16, ancient versions and English translations, and how they apply to domestic abuse — a paper by Barbara Roberts.

She got connected with a WhatsApp chat-group of women who are beneficiaries of a Christian NGO that provides support to victims of domestic violence. Having read the stories from other women in the chat-group, she realised how common it is for Indian churches to treat abused wives in these appalling ways.

Kevin Giles is an Australian Anglican priest who has written a lot about the biblical case for gender equality. He says:

In 2007, [my wife] Lynley and I spent a month in India. I was invited to be the plenary speaker at an Indian Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) conference and to lecture at the South Asian Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, both in Bangalore.

India has possibly the highest incidence of abuse of women in the world. It is estimated that 70% of Indian women have been subject to domestic abuse. In addition, it has the highest incidence of rape and murder of women. 65% of men believe women should accept violence at the hand of their husband to keep the family together and often women deserve to be beaten (see here and here).

In the churches, traditional Indian beliefs about women and marriage tend to be reflected. We were told that most pastors preach the doctrine of male headship: men should be the leader in the home and make all the important decisions and the wife should be submissive and obedient. This was understood to be clear biblical endorsement for the prevailing and traditional hierarchical ordering of the sexes. Not surprisingly, we were told that abuse is very common in Indian Christian homes. We were told that…most of the pastors had been trained by Western evangelical academics who had taught them that male headship and female submission were “what the Bible clearly taught.” In our travels in India we saw much evidence of how badly women were treated as a consequence of their lowly status.
— Kevin Giles, The Headship of Men and the Abuse of Women (Cascade Books, 2020), 47-48. [Paragraph breaks added for ease of reading.]

Indian churches are not the only churches mistreating Christian victims of domestic violence. It’s happening in churches worldwide.

Has your congregation treated an abused wife like this?

If people in your church are hinting at a wife’s “character deficiencies'” (either behind her back, or to her face), it’s not hard to say, “Are we being unfair to this lady?”

If people in your church are giving sympathy and comfort to the husband she has walked away from, it’s not hard to say, “Are we sure we’ve read this situation correctly?”

If you think you’ve mistreated an abused wife, reach out to her, apologise for what you said or did, with specifics, and ask her to forgive you.

Most Christians aren’t yet recognising how subtly domestic abusers have deceived Christians. Abusers (and their allies and unwitting enablers) have spread a web of deception into the churches. This web of deception is tangled deep and wide. It is rooted in and dependent on poor translations of scripture and unbalanced/weaponised interpretations of scripture. The wrong ideas are listed here. So if you want to take up this cause, learn to identify and resist the false ideas which enable abusers to thrive in christian spaces. Learn how to encourage, validate and honour victims.

But I don’t want to make this sound too hard! Everyone has some influence, even if it’s only speaking to a friend, or raising the topic at a dinner table.

Who will take up the cause of domestic abuse victims being mistreated by their churches?

Who will seriously engage with my work on the doctrine of divorce for domestic abuse?

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