Study Links Calvinist Beliefs to Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance

Steven Sandage, Professor of Psychology of Religion and Theology at Boston University, recently released research on the impact of seminary students’ theology on their beliefs about domestic violence. He found a correlation between Calvinist beliefs and troubling beliefs about domestic violence. Sandage’s research was prompted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to deny asylum to women fleeing domestic violence, and Trump’s defense of Rob Porter. What role, he wondered, did religious beliefs play in an individuals ideas about domestic violence?

Sandage was particularly interested in the potential relationship between Calvinism and what he calls “domestic violence myth acceptance,” or a system of beliefs that lead to rationalizing violence against women. Sandage conducted a survey of 238 seminary students at a theologically diverse evangelical seminary in the Midwest. He found evidence of what he had surmised—a link between Calvinism and justification of domestic violence.

As described in an article in BU Today:

John Calvin (1509-64) taught that people lost their free will because of original sin, leaving it to God to determine everything in life, including who suffers and from what. Calvin specifically suggested that the Almighty programmed humanity for spouse battering, writing that a wife must “bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her.” He taught, Sandage says, that wives “were not allowed to leave their husbands when beaten.”

Here is more:

Sandage summarizes the upshot of his research: “Many Christian theologies emphasize the possibility of finding meaning in suffering, but the New Calvinism seems to promote a rather stoic and un-empathic attitude that valorizes suffering, particularly among women.… Calvinist beliefs were related to higher levels of domestic violence myth acceptance and lower levels of social justice commitment.”

In the Calvinist view, “God causes all things, including hierarchical social structures and all suffering,” he says. “Domination by the powerful,” be it God or men, “is just and appropriate, and submission to suffering by the less powerful is virtuous and redemptive.”

He doesn’t contend that all people embracing Calvinism endorse domestic violence myths: “There are many contemporary Calvinists who hold progressive views of gender and other social issues. But our research does offer some data suggesting the ‘New Calvinism’ that combines Calvinistic beliefs and very conservative, binary views of gender may be a kind of theological risk factor for the acceptance of domestic violence myths and other socially regressive attitudes.”

This all should be somewhat familiar to regular readers of this blog. John Piper, an influential evangelical theologian who argued that women should endure abuse “for a time” is a Calvinist; so is Doug Wilson, a white supremacist pastor in Moscow, Idaho, who views himself as an edgy contrarian and has an alarmingly large following among young evangelical men (and an alarmingly large platform in mainstream evangelicalism).

There was a time in many European countries when it was believed that the King is set in his place by God, and peasants are set in their place by God, and that to try to change one’s lot in life was to go against God. Some were chosen by God to suffer; others were chosen by God to have wealth and to rule. That was simply the way of life.

Sandage’s discussion of Calvinism reminds me of that time.

A brief discussion of Sandage’s research in Relevant Magazine helpfully included a particularly glaring quote from John Calvin:

We have a special sympathy for poor women who are evilly and roughly treated by their husbands, because of the roughness and cruelty of the tyranny and captivity which is their lot. We do not find ourselves permitted by the Word of God, however, to advise a woman to leave her husband, except by the force of necessity, and we do not understand this force to be operative when a husband behaves roughly and uses threats to his wife, nor even when he beats her, but only when there is imminent peril to her life … We exhort her to bear with patience the cross which God has seen fit to place upon her.

Note that last line especially, with its assumption that God has placed each person where they are intentionally—for a reason—and that that should not be changed. A woman is abused by her husband? God has seen fit to place her there. Why should man intervene? It is the will of God.

All of this matters—a lot. Beliefs matter. Beliefs affect action. Theology is incredibly relevant. Per the BU Today article:

Scot McKnight, a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Illinois, lauds Sandage’s research for drawing “accurate and helpful correlations that ought to awaken more theologians and pastors to the implications” of their theology.

Theology has implications. 

I grew up in an evangelical home. As a homeschooled evangelical teen, I took apologetics and participated in apologetics competitions through a Christian homeschool debate league. I attended several camps attended primarily by other homeschooled evangelical teens. I remember the heady rush of debating theological points with my peers. But these dissuasions, these debates, these ideas—they are not simply theoretical. They aren’t just interesting points of debate or disagreement. Theological beliefs have real world implications.

An entire generation of young evangelical white guys is experimenting with “New Calvinism,” which they see as “hip” and “edgy.” Someone is going to get hurt—and it won’t be them.

As the BU Today article also notes:

Studying the attitudes of seminary students, the church leaders of the future, is especially important, Sandage says, because clergy are the most sought-out professionals for marriage and family counseling—even though many lack appropriate training. He recalls a pastor in one of his classes at another seminary who refused to counsel wives without their husbands present, having “never considered whether that might limit their freedom to report domestic violence.”

This comment makes me want to tear my hair out. Even short of domestic violence, this pastor actually thought it made sense to refuse to counsel a married woman without her husband present? On anything? Did he have the same requirement for married men? I’m guessing not!

I can already hear his explanations—men are to be the heads of their households, and a woman is to go to her husband for advice, or with theological questions. If he started counseling married women without their husbands present, he would be inserting himself into their marriage—he would risk being the one leading the wife, in the place of her husband. He would get in the way of her husband’s leadership.

The problems here go way beyond women being able to report domestic violence. They go to the very root of whether women are considered people in their own right, or mere appendages of their husbands and fathers.

Theology has implications indeed.

It’s worth noting that Sandage’s study may be complicated by the general muddiness of American evangelicalism today. For example, my parents were not Calvinists. We called ourselves Arminian—a term that always felt somewhat archaic. However, my parents received Doug Wilson’s magazine, Credenda Agenda, and used other materials written by Calvinists, both in our homeschool and in their personal Bible study.

There may have been a time, several hundred years ago, when it was fairly clear who was a Calvinist and who was not. We’re not there anymore. Now yes, there is that movement of hip young evangelical men who are being all edgy and calling themselves “New Calvinists.” But in general, evangelicalism is awash with beliefs from both Calvinism and Arminianism, which overlap and interact and sometimes coexist in contradictory ways.

Sandage says he was prompted to do this study by remarks made by Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump. Sessions is a member of the United Methodist Church. That denomination is not Calvinist. Trump says he’s a Presbyterian. Some Presbyterian churches are staunchly Calvinist while others (of the more mainline variety) have moved away from strict Calvinism. Regardless, how influenced Trump is by a church he likely does not attend is questionable.

I also wish Sandage’s full study—which I found and read—had included a copy of the survey he uses. He chose which students were Calvinist based on their adherence to specific belief statements, rather than self identification, while he does reference using certain scales for determining adherence to hierarchal beliefs about gender and “domestic violence myth acceptance,” without his survey the reader is left to go searching through others’ studies for these scales.

Furthermore, it appears that Sandage primarily drew connections not between Calvinism and domestic violence myth acceptance but between Calvinism and hierarchical expectations, and between hierarchical expectations and domestic violence myth acceptance. In other words, those with Calvinist beliefs are more likely to endorse strong hierarchy, and those who are more likely to endorse strong hierarchy are more likely to hold beliefs justifying domestic violence. This is fine, except that it leaves open another question—what about those who aren’t Calvinists, but do endorse hierarchy?

All this aside, it’s unsurprising that certain Calvinist beliefs—beliefs about hierarchy, beliefs about God’s will—would correlate with problematic ideas about domestic violence. Sandage’s study merely confirms what those of us who have been writing about these issues for years already knew. How unique these beliefs are to Calvinism—and the extent to which Calvinist beliefs have bled over into other forums—is perhaps an area for further research.

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