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.’ ”
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 multiple 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 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.”
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.