LAKE FOREST, Calif. (ABP) — A senior staff member of Rick Warren’s
Saddleback Church, quoted earlier this year as teaching the Bible does
not permit a woman to divorce an abusive husband, has said the audio
clip containing the comment gave the wrong impression about his views
and has been removed from the church website.
In January Associated Baptist Press and several blogs quoted audio clips from a “Bible Questions & Answers” section of Saddleback’s website in which Tom Holladay, the church’s teaching pastor, said the Bible condones divorce for only two reasons: infidelity and abandonment.
“I wish there were a third [reason for divorce] in Scripture, having been involved as a pastor with situations of abuse,” Holladay said. “There is something in me that wishes there were a Bible verse that says, ‘If they abuse you in this-and-such kind of way, then you have a right to leave them.'”
Tom Holladay, teaching pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., says widely quoted remarks by him about domestic violence and divorce were posted out of context on the church website and have been removed.
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What the clip didn’t make clear, Holladay said recently, is the question he was answering had to do with abusive language and not physical abuse. The way it was edited, Holladay said, gave the impression that a chronically violent and abusive situation is the only just cause for separation.
“We believe that one violent incident is obviously more than enough to demand the need for a separation,” Holladay said in a statement to church members. “This has always been the advice that we give.”
Holladay said “in an attempt to explain the difference between an angry exchange between spouses and domestic violence, I used words that seemed — especially when taken out of context — that I believe a long term multiply violent situation is the only cause for a separation.”
“That is not what I and we believe or advise,” he said. “Instead, we advise that in a domestic violence situation the first step is to get immediately to safety. I apologize for a poor choice of words that made it seem in any way that we do not advise this.”
Holladay said Saddleback believes that God can restore a marriage in which abuse has occurred, but if an abusive spouse refuses to repent and try to change, there eventually comes a point at which he or she has abandoned the marriage and it cannot be saved.
Danni Moss, a pseudonymous blogger who transcribed and commented about Holladay’s original comment in January, said many evangelical ministries counsel victims of domestic violence in ways that are unbiblical and dangerous. For example, she she noted, some pastors teach that a woman should stay with an unbelieving and abusive husband in hopes that it might help lead him to Christ.
She pointed to FamilyLife, an organization led by Southern Baptist Dennis Rainey, which recently published an article that extolled “suffering in marriage for the sake of righteousness.”
Diana Garland, dean of the Baylor University School of Social Work, said church leaders should not attempt to deal alone with family violence, but immediately seek assistance from family professionals and call police if anyone has been hurt or seems to be in danger of being hurt.
Garland urged pastors to provide a framework for all families to understand family violence.
“Church leaders can help by preaching and teaching about the sin of violence which breaks out in family homes and the abuse of power from which it springs,” Garland wrote in her 1999 book Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide. “Because abusers often convince abused family members that they have a duty to forgive, teaching about forgiveness, repentance and restoration often can be enormously helpful to hidden victims of family violence in a congregation.”
Garland said restoring a marriage broken by abuse involves not only forgiveness but also repentance.
“Many women stay and suffer abuse silently and unbeknownst to church leaders, precisely because they take their commitment seriously,” she said. “Seldom does it occur to them that the covenant has already been broken by the violence itself.”
She said any chance for restoration depends on “serious repentance” by the abuser, along with “consistent participation” in an abuser-treatment program.
Garland said the second half of Malachi 2:16, which quotes God as saying “I hate divorce,” sometimes gets overlooked in evangelical domestic-abuse conseling. The verse also adds, “and covering one’s garment with violence.”
“An abused mate who continues to be abused cannot forgive the abuser, because she is herself as imprisoned by the abuse as he is,” Garland said. “She can only forgive him when she is free herself. She can only forgive him when she has the option of holding him accountable.”
“That is why God is ultimately the source of forgiveness,” she said, “because only God has the power to hold us ultimately accountable.”
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.