Does the Bible Approve of the Sexual Violence in The Handmaid’s Tale?

The Handmaid’s Tale shows how societies can twist God’s intent in order to serve their own wicked ends, demeaning all involved. While the wives of the men in the story comply with the whole setup, their own pain is clear. Like Rachel, they long to bear children. Like Leah, they long for their husband’s pure love. The men are unhappy too; sex is turned into a clinical act of procreation, stripped of love and intimacy. And the handmaids have it worst of all; like Bilhah and Zilpah, they have no agency, no ability to say no. They are resented by the wives and abused by the husbands.

What Christians Can Glean from The Handmaid’s Tale

Writing in The Federalist, Gracy Olmstead engages book and series, arguing that it aims to critique not conservatives but fundamentalists. She argues compellingly that it ought to be a wake-up call to everyone, liberal and conservative, to avoid the slide into oppression. She says,

Atwood saw the dangers of religious fundamentalism, and wrote a stinging rebuke to it, much like Aldous Huxley used “Brave New World” to address the dangers of progressivism in his time. …

I have seen religious conservatives in more authoritarian, fundamentalist circles fall prey to a similar Gnosticism. I’ve seen families reduce womanhood and “femininity” to roles that limited their humanity, the complexity of their characters and minds. I’ve seen how that reduces the depth and complexity of male belief and vocation. I’ve seen the abuse that could often result.

To deny these dangers would be to give the Left the strongest rebuke of conservatism they could conjure up: that we look upon our own vices and susceptibilities without concern, without alarm. To counter this stereotype, we must see what the stereotype can teach us—and then make certain to fight it, however we can.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a difficult watch; the scenes of sexual violence while filmed without nudity (thus far, anyway) are viscerally horrifying. There is a pro-choice thread running through it that, obviously, I disagree with (although it would be compelling to analyze the comparisons one could draw between the control of children and the evils of abortion). The view of a dystopian religious world might be hard for religious people to watch, raising questions that are challenging or frightening to some. But as the stories of the patriarchs remind us, this kind of dysfunction is not what God intends for humanity. We need only hold it up to the created order in the garden of Eden or to a vision of the new heavens and new earth in Revelation to see the striking contrast. We need only compare it to the mercy of Jesus, standing by the woman caught in adultery and saying, “Woman, where are your accusers?” or to the image of the Son of God stretched out and dying on the cross, offering his life, not taking from the vulnerable, to see that broken, oppressive systems are not God’s intent.

This dysfunction may not be God’s intent, but I agree with Olmstead that the series (and book) can be excellent warnings against religious fanaticism, which I would argue can cause us to veer away from the core of our faith and lead us to oppress those we are called to love and serve. When oppression is cloaked in religious words and scriptural texts taken out of context, it sounds smooth and convincing. Religious people are particularly susceptible to this. In the end, The Handmaid’s Tale should be a warning to us all to know the whole of the Scripture and the depth of God’s love for a broken world.

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Image source: IMDB.com, (c) 2016 Hulu.