Don’t try to rush abuse victims through their natural emotions of anger

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

The Anger Clock
David Hayward presents a cartoon and commentary, showing how Christians so often try to hurry people through their honest, natural feelings of anger over being abused—whether the abuse has come from a pastor, or church, or family member, or anyone else.  Hayward writes the Naked Pastor blog on Patheos, describing himself as a “graffiti artist on the walls of religion.”  In this “anger clock” post, he writes: “Give [anger] all the time it needs. Don’t let people turn it around to make it your fault or a symptom of your weakness. Don’t allow people to guilt you into thinking you’re sinning when you’re angry. They are just spiritualizing their discomfort and protecting the perpetrator and blaming the victim.”  Women who have been abused in marriages often feel they have no right to feel anger. The same is true of people who have been abused by their churches, a topic Hayward writes about often.  Related.  To see spiritual abuse in action (specifically, abuse by a religious leader), watch this video that Tom Breen has posted on the Hot Dogma blog.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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