Jenny Richards—A Faithful Response to Domestic Violence Against Christian Women
Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month, our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary.
The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.
Anthony: Hello friends, and welcome to a bonus episode of Gospel Reverb. We like bonus stuff, right? Extra fries at the bottom of a fast food cheeseburger bag. Overtime of a great college sporting event. A bonus episode of your favorite TV show. Or how about a BOGO special at your local grocery store?
Bonus! It is good. So here we are with a completely free bonus episode. As you know, Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights and commentary from a Christ centered and Trinitarian view. I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Jenny Richards.
Jenny, it’s wonderful to have you back. I think this is your third time on Gospel Reverb, which is some kind of record. So, congratulations on the prize. Our audience has gotten to know you a bit, but why not catch us up on any new developments in your life and vocation?
[00:01:33] Jenny: Well, thanks, Anthony. It is lovely to be back, and I appreciate the invitation to join you again.
I didn’t know that it was a record, but I’m happy to hold it if that’s the case. A lot has happened, I think. I think the last time I was with you, it was perhaps in 2022. I can’t recall exactly, but a lot has been happening. On the personal front in March, I became a great aunt for the second time to a beautiful little girl who has got the most adorable brown eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. And of course, I’m not at all biased. So that’s, that’s been an absolute highlight of this year.
And then work wise. I did try to get a short version for you, I promise, but it’s all happening because when we last spoke, I’d just received my PhD, I think, or possibly just submitted it. I’m not sure, but this year has been the first year of my postdoc working life.
And so that always involves hitting the ground running. So, I’ve been involved in some research projects. One’s on domestic and family violence law reform here in Australia. And one on how to ensure that services for older prisoners enable them to age with dignity. I’ve been appointed as a Senior Lecturer now in my college and as a Senior Associate at the St Barnabas Research Centre, which is a research center here that’s affiliated with the University of Divinity, which is a national, collegial university.
And I’ve joined the Domestic and Family Violence Working Group of the Adelaide Anglican Diocese, which I think is roughly equivalent to the Episcopalian Church in North America, but I’m not quite sure because I’m not Anglican, but it’s something like that.
And I’ve also done a couple of conference presentations, which has been wonderful. And I’ve wrapped up a couple of articles based on my thesis, which are being published in upcoming issues of “Participatio,” which is the journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. So, keep an eye out for those.
Oh, and in March next year, I’m heading off to Laidlaw College in Auckland for a conference on hope, which I am really looking forward to. And I’ll be catching up with Myk Habets, who is a guest of yours too here, I think.
[00:04:07] Anthony: He was. And so, what you’re telling us, Jenny, there’s not really been a lot going on in your life.
[00:04:14] Jenny: No, it’s been a pretty slow year, actually. Yeah, pretty slow, pretty slow. I think it’s fair to say that the year has flown. And but it’s been a really rich and a really beautiful time.
[00:04:29] Anthony: Well, it sounds like it, and congratulations on your PhD work. And that’s why you’re back on Gospel Reverb.
I’ve been, for some time, wanting to have this discussion with you about the central focus of your doctoral thesis. And it revolves around domestic and family violence against Christian women. And this is a subject, you know, from my perspective, that hasn’t been discussed enough in the big “C” Church, the global Church.
And so, I wanted to have you on to discuss it. So I want to start at this place: what prompted you to do the enormous research, and write your thesis on this subject?
[00:05:15] Jenny: Quite a few things, to be honest, and I had to go right back really to my interest in justice, which has always been there. Although, I’m not an idealist about it, by any means, and I don’t interpret justice legalistically. But I’ve always been very, very interested in it as a concept.
I think the idea for this thesis, in different contexts, came probably about 20 years or so ago now when I first came across the work of the Torrances, through J.B. Torrance’s article on the difference between a theological covenant and a legal contract, which I know I’ve spoken about before, and also the work of T. F. Torrance on holistic legal method and rejecting forms of dualism, which I’ll say a bit more about in a little while probably.
But among other things, many other things, their work really provides a conceptual framework for integrating things that we’re accustomed to viewing in separate categories, like covenant–contract. And shortly after I started to explore their work, I found myself co-writing a book on how to bring social work and legal practice together.
And for me, I had those concepts of covenant and integration and having that conceptual perspective of integration as very relevant to bringing social work and legal practice together. And because J. B.’s piece had looked specifically at theology and law, I found myself wondering whether there was space to view those in an integrated way as well.
And so that idea then started percolating away in the background. And so, if you fast forward then to closer to now, most people that I know are aware that I’m a legal academic, and I’ve worked as a criminal lawyer. And at one point, I was a church elder, and I’ve got this expertise in social work law, particularly in the Australian context.
And so, I wind up in a lot of conversations about domestic and family violence. And I started noticing that, anecdotally anyway, Christian people would certainly be mindful of the law, but not necessarily know where it would fit in when they were considering what kind of faith response they might make to their situations of domestic and family violence.
One of the things that I teach is legal theory. And one of the things we consider there is sources of law and informal law: the idea of legal pluralism and the fact that religion is a key source of imperatives that govern decision making for people. And I noticed a lot of people pondering as a Christian, how should I respond to this situation? And wanting to choose a Christian response and knowing what that might look like.
And so, I was noticing these faith norms, these faith imperatives looming quite large for them and quite often sort of sitting parallel to what the law might be saying. And people were wondering, well, which one should I go with? And how can I deal with all of these things? And what should I choose? And that kind of thing. And all of that, watching that sort of decision making process for people made me circle back to the issues raised in J.B.’s covenant and contract paper about the importance of integrated approaches. And I wondered whether the fact that we were viewing faith and law as two separate responses was something that was only occurring in conversation or whether maybe there was something deeper there.
So, I decided to explore that for my thesis. And I probably should say, just as a short little caveat here, my thesis looked at violence by married Christian men against their wives. And in our conversation that will be how I’m speaking of it, but that’s absolutely not to say that it doesn’t occur between unmarried people or in same sex relationships. And it also does occur from Christian women against their Christian husbands too. But it’s just that the bulk of the research to date has related to ways in which Christian teachings on heterosexual marriage have been weaponized to justify and condone abusive behaviours. And so that was my focus.
But having said that, there’s a lot which can hopefully be applied to domestic and family violence in other contexts as well. And some of that will need to feature in future research. But what I’ve tried to do is chip in some suggestions that will hopefully enable that to be picked up by others. And violence against women and domestic and family violence, in particular, does tend to be a gendered experience. So, that’s the position that I’m coming from in relation to my thesis.
[00:10:17] Anthony: I’m fascinated because you’re talking about an integrated faith–law response to domestic and family violence against Christian women.
I imagine without having a lot of depth of knowledge of the subject that that’s a different approach to research than other responses to domestic and family violence. And so, I’m sure there’s some sort of story there, Jenny.
So why does your research necessitate and where does it sit in relation to the church’s responses to domestic and family violence?
[00:10:53] Jenny: You’re right, there is a story there. I mean, some of it, I guess I’ve mentioned a little bit in the background, but there has been a lot of really helpful research into causes and drivers of religious domestic and family violence over many, many years. And particularly connected to the theological teachings that can condone or reinforce it and can at times also constitute barriers to people being able to escape it and especially theological teachings that constitute barriers to it.
So repressive interpretations of headship, patriarchal structures and assumptions, gender inequality, all kinds of things can operate when Scripture gets weaponized to keep women in a subjugated role in a marriage. And there’s been a great deal of work done on that worldwide on those kinds of teachings, and the importance of countering them.
So, there’s people such as Nason-Clark, and McMullin and their team in the U.S. There’s a team in the U.K. looking at a project called the Restored Project in the U.K. Nason-Clark, and McMullin’s team have the Rave Project in the U.S. There’s been a stack of work, and that’s just some of it.
And at the same time, there’s also been a large body of research done into best practice responses by domestic and family violence services. So, on the one hand, you’ve got the work being done on pastoral responses and theological issues. And then on the other hand, you’ve got research being done into best practice in the social work sector, so to speak, for the domestic and family violence services.
And one of the key features that’s come out of that research is that in situations of religious domestic and family violence, it’s really important that pastors refer victim-survivors to these DV (Domestic Violence) support services and that the religious drivers and sustainers of violent behavior by religious people are addressed by their religious leaders.
And so, there’s a clear awareness that religious leaders need to be part of a collaborative solution and not just try to manage everything. Because the domestic and family violence services are specialized, and they’ve got the training on the relevant safety issues and all of that. But what I noticed, anecdotally, is there’s less understanding of where the criminal justice system responses fit, so to speak, in that grand scheme of things.
So, there’s a sense of a need, or an awareness of a need for collaboration in relation to the pastoral issues. But there’s less conversation around what does this mean for criminal justice system responses. And I was coming across people, as I said before, who were reluctant to involve police for reasons connected to their faith.
So, unless it was in really extreme circumstances, they seemed to be unsure about whether involving the criminal justice system was an acceptable thing for a Christian to do. And of course, beliefs on that vary. Some pastors would absolutely be saying, yes, definitely do it. Others would say, no, no, you can’t, and anywhere in between. So, beliefs, you know, varied. Teachings varied. But there was this question mark and this uncertainty. And at the same time, I was coming across church leaders who were deeply committed to supporting their congregants who experienced domestic and family violence and weren’t entirely sure how to best engage with support services or how to address some of those issues.
So, where I think I was wanting to go in relation to this thesis, was to work out how I could locate some research, conceptually, that would sit between what was already happening and try to look at some of the big picture issues that might help to inform what was already starting to occur on the ground in terms of integration and collaboration.
[00:15:09] Anthony: Jenny, in considering the collaboration of criminal justice being part of the engagement for Christian women as part of a response to domestic and family violence, in your research, what did you find?
[00:15:24] Jenny: I found quite a number of things that I wasn’t actually expecting. I mean, I had a hunch based on various conversations that I’d had, and so on, that there would be some kind of conceptual element and that there would be some barriers to criminal justice system engagement, just like there were barriers to pastoral support.
But the first thing that I found was that the faith teachings and barriers to seeking pastoral assistance overlap with the barriers to seeking assistance from the criminal justice system. That was the first thing, and I didn’t expect that. And the second was that all of the barriers are actually conceptual.
To start with, the first barrier was a conceptualization of domestic and family violence as a spiritual matter. When it’s characterized that way, that means that there’s an emphasis on faith sanctioned responses to the violence within the marriage, such as forgiveness, prayer for a husband to change, things like that.
And because of the centrality of faith norms to people who are of faith, women are more likely to choose a response that they consider is appropriate within their faith and to therefore only go to the police as a last resort and potentially view that as a concession rather than an appropriate and important option.
One thing I would say pretty early on in this conversation is that there are a lot of reasons that people might choose not to go to the police and not to involve the criminal justice system, and that’s absolutely fine. And I didn’t actually deal with that in my thesis. My focus was to try to ensure that a belief that Christians aren’t really allowed to go to the police should not be one of those reasons that they choose not to.
So that characterization of domestic and family violence as a spiritual matter and the corresponding emphasis on responses that themselves are spiritual responses was the first [barrier].
The second was a characterization of both the family and religion as private rather than public matters. And that underscores that the first barrier, which was that sacred–secular divide. Because if domestic and family violence is seen as a spiritual matter rather than a secular one, and the criminal justice system is located in the secular, then that constitutes a particular divide that is then complicated by also characterizing family and religion itself as being private rather than public, because the criminal justice system sits in the public realm and not the private realm.
And that public–private divide has been around for a long time in Western nations, particularly historically, where the criminal law was seen to not extend into someone’s home. But it governed public life — and often still today, but certainly historically. So, men would be the ones who were in the public sphere. They’re out there working, and they’re involved in politics, and they were voting, and making the decisions, and running things, and all of that. And women were the keepers of the home. And men were at charge in it. Men were in charge at home.
That’s where we got the phrase, “a man’s home is his castle.” Because the law didn’t regulate someone’s home, the law regulated the public sphere. Women, because they’re the keepers of the home, they’re responsible for maintaining the family unit. And that kind of conceptualization — and I mean it is shifting today, but certainly historically, that kind of conceptualization does two things. Firstly, it brings shame to the woman if her marriage is not a good one, and she can’t keep her husband happy. And secondly, it means that the overarching responsibility for fixing the problem of domestic and family violence, just like anything else in the marriage, falls to the woman by default.
And the law used to operate this way. There was very little regulation of family life by the criminal law because of that public and private divide. Rape in marriage, for example, was not recognized as a crime for a long time, and neither was domestic and family violence. And that was partly because at law, the bodies of wives were seen to belong to their husbands. And a lot of that was due to Christian influences. So, while some of this has moved quite a long way forward — and thankfully so — a lot of these influences are still quite pervasive in terms of what we understand about the role of a husband and a wife in a marriage, and that sense of responsibility for keeping the husband happy and making sure that problems can get fixed. And that overarching sense of responsibility, potentially shame, all of those kinds of things, are still very much pervasive, in some ways, even though the law no longer operates in this way. And so, the influence of those kinds of belief systems are still felt. And in these systems, it’s the maintenance of the marriage that gets emphasized. And with the wife — whose twin duty it is to submit, and to maintain the household and family life — the wife is inevitably bearing responsibility for keeping the family together.
And when we factor in theological beliefs that can be twisted to imply that there’s some kind of hierarchy rather than two equal partners in a marriage, it can get very difficult. Because asserting agency against an abusive husband sits uneasily alongside a theological imperative to submit to him. And within these kinds of teachings, divorce, even from a violent spouse, is endorsed rarely, if at all, depending on where one sits on the spectrum of beliefs.
So, problems that occur within the marriage are maybe meant to be resolved “in-house” literally. Because again of that public–private divide, the secular services involvement are seen as maybe inappropriate, maybe unnecessary. So, you’ve got both of those characterizations: the sacred–secular and the public–private operating to constitute quite a significant barrier.
So, even if a husband did concede that he was in any way mistreating his wife (and quite often it’s quite rare that husbands will own up to that), the pastor would be the one who would admonish the husband, or maybe get the couple to attend Christian marriage counselling, or something like that. And all of those features complicate the visibility of domestic and family violence. They complicate the help-seeking process for women, and they complicate the efficacy of faith-based responses in preventing and addressing domestic and family violence in a way that does justice to the personhood of the women.
Honestly, I think that’s actually an overarching theme that came up again and again in my research. The ways in which the subjugation and dehumanization of religious domestic and family violence affect women’s bodies, not just by injuring them, but by systematically devaluing them over and against the needs of the husband for power and control in the first place, and at the same time, denying personhood and affecting sense of self.
So, a combination of that sacred–secular divide and that public–private dichotomy are operating in tandem to disincentivize women from seeking help from the criminal justice system. Because, after all, spiritual problems are seen to require spiritual solutions. And religious domestic and family violence fits into the “private” category twice over, because religion is private as well as families being private. So, because these barriers are conceptual, we wind up having the criminal justice system being viewed, or at least risking being viewed, as separate and distinct from faith responses.
And as a lesser alternative, [viewed] like a last resort, you know, maybe not necessarily completely off the table, [but] as something that runs parallel, and that we will look to if we have to or if things are serious enough or whatever. There was certainly research supporting women to engage with the justice system, but often it was positioned as being reserved for the “most serious” cases, whatever that means.
And of course, if the secrecy around it and teachings which minimise the violence are involved, then there’s a risk that women will think that whatever it is they’re experiencing is not actually serious enough to be worth calling the police for. Particularly if there’s an underlying belief system operating in which women’s bodies and agency are always valued as less than men’s, either implicitly or overtly. And in those kinds of characterizations, the maintenance of the marriage can easily be prioritized over the wellbeing and safety of the people in it. Particularly if there’s messaging — and this came out in some studies — [that] if children are involved, then it’s okay to call the police, but not if it’s “just” the wife being hurt.
And so, there’s really, a lot of damaging implicit undercurrents about what we’re saying about personhood and dignity and worth and bodily integrity that just come up again and again and again in a lot of the research.
[00:26:02] Anthony: And did you find, Jenny, that religious systems or beliefs, theological teachings (and I think you touched on that) that are opposed to involving the criminal justice system because, you called it, a last resort, so there seems to be a real reluctance to get a comprehensive and collaborative approach.
[00:26:24] Jenny: There can be. It does depend on the individual teachings, and there is absolutely a spectrum on it. And even in the conversations that I mentioned at the start, I’ve had conversations with pastors, not as part of this thesis, but in years previous, where there’ll be a pastor who’ll say, “absolutely, you can call the police, absolutely.” And others would say, “no, no, definitely not.” So, there is certainly a spectrum. Very often there’s at least an uncertainty of how they fit together. And that’s particularly because of differences in relation to theological teachings. Because there are various theological teachings that can be interpreted (or explicitly preached, I might add) to mitigate against the justice system engagement.
And the biggest there is teachings about forgiveness. Because in a nutshell, again depending on individual beliefs around it, but in a nutshell, involving police can be seen to be as inconsistent with the Christian imperative to forgive. And so, justice takes a back seat to that. And this is partly because if the justice system is positioned as secular rather than sacred, then it becomes even harder to bring it into the toolbox of options as anything other than a last resort.
So, you know, go to the justice system if everything else fails, that kind of thing. And that links in with the third barrier.
[00:28:02] Anthony: And before you get to that, Jenny, I had this thought because one of the things I had to learn early on in pastoral ministry is to understand my limitations as a pastor.
And I think that has been difficult for some. In other words, refer people to the experts and understand that whatever the situation is, I may not be the expert. Yes, I can provide guidance from a spiritual perspective. I can listen. I can pray. I can give some hopefully wisdom to the process, but there are people who have specifically dedicated their lives to training and expertise in a way that I can’t provide it as a pastor.
And so, if we see these agencies, these social agencies as being secular and not part of the overall comprehensive response, then yeah, I can see why pastors are reluctant to point their congregants to social services, because that’s an in-house thing. And that’s what you’re speaking against, that these services actually can be a holistic response, which I think might in some way lead to, you know, the other barriers that you want to talk about.
But anyway, I just wanted to say that I think it’s really important for pastors to understand: know your limitations and have people on speed dial in your community that can be really helpful to the process.
[00:29:27] Jenny: Well, I mean, it’s so needed, and that is absolutely a crucial point because much as we don’t want to believe it, much as we can’t necessarily understand it, because, you know, surely the Christian, the overarching Christian message is love, right? And that would be, I imagine, regardless of denomination. And so, in that sense, violence seems to be the opposite of that. And so, it can be difficult to understand why it might be that this occurs among Christians, why this might actually be happening.
But the fact of the matter is that it is. Certainly, the research and stats (I don’t have the American stats to hand), but certainly it would be absolutely fair to say that in any society, that domestic and family violence happens at roughly equivalent, the same rate among Christian couples as it does couples who are not Christian.
And so, it is going to be a situation — and sometimes more so — and particularly in, if it’s denominations that have some of these restrictive kinds of teachings that can form barriers and that and that do, for example, preach an inequality in relation to and a hierarchy in relation to the genders and so on. So, it can sometimes be more but it’s certainly roughly equivalent. And so, pastors will come across it. And the fact of the matter is, at least in Australia (and I suspect elsewhere), that the most dangerous time is when couples separate.
And so, involving support services is really important from a safety point of view, if the couple is separating (and they might not be), and there are all kinds of things to work through and to do which will address that need for safety. So, it’s definitely not [something that can be done without the required training and most pastors of course know they don’t have that skill set, and this must be borne in mind] when pastors try to navigate through that space [of dealing with a woman who is experiencing emotional, physical or sexual violence from her husband]. So, referral to social services, that’s why it’s seen as best practice. Going through social services, [pastors] referring to social services is actually the safest thing to do, quite apart from anything else.
So, what I wanted to do was to look at trying to make sure, that when pastors do refer to domestic and family violence support services, they don’t then outsource all of the conversations about justice system involvement to [those] social services. That they [the pastors] should have conversations about justice system involvement with the woman, rather than viewing justice system questions as being something that should only be dealt with by support services. Because for support services, it’ll depend on the training of the individuals, as to whether or not they’re in a place to provide that kind of content. Social workers have to be very, very careful as to their professional mandate. And so, they wouldn’t be likely to be speaking about theological issues with the women, even if they did actually share the same faith. And so, then you can have a gap, because you’ve got women trying to make decisions about the criminal justice system, potentially feeling as though it’s against their faith to do so, and not having input on those faith-based questions, because it’s all been outsourced to the social services, potentially.
[00:33:19] Anthony: Yeah, I think that’s important, Jenny, that we realize social services can be part of the comprehensive response, at the disposal of pastoral leadership. However, not to allow the process to be co-opted because the pastor and the leaders of the church still have something really important to say into the situation to support the woman, the wife, and the marriage.
And so yeah. And also hearing the statistics that, across the board, domestic and family violence is pretty much at the same level, that it happens in or outside the church, it’s not surprising. But it’s really disappointing, that’s the case.
[00:34:14] Jenny: It really is horrible. It’s a very, very confronting, a very confronting fact. But it’s one of those things that we dare not look away from. Both within and outside of the church and — I’m talking about dichotomies again — but within and outside of the church, it’s absolutely something that we need to just be able to look square in the face.
And there certainly are some workers in social services, who are able to look at the justice issues and the theological justice issues, as well as the practicalities and so on, in that social work space. But it really does depend on the individual training of the workers and the individual structure of that particular service.
And so what I was hoping to do was to say, okay, well, how can we try to find a way to view all of this conceptually so that we can start to undergird things and make that much more normalized, rather than just hinging on the individual workers who may or may not be able to do it? Because if it’s normalized it changes the whole conversation, right? But positioning the criminal justice system as being something that is not sitting in the secular basket and the faith response as not being something that is sitting in this sacred basket, but doing away with that whole divide, I think, is incredibly important.
And particularly and even things like I mentioned before, one of the things that can happen if everything just stays in the sort of — is conceptualized as a spiritual thing, then movements towards counseling and all of that can be viewed as needing to occur just in a spiritual context. And counseling is absolutely important, but it needs to be a very particular type of counseling. You know, marriage counseling is not appropriate in a situation of domestic and family violence, where you have power imbalance, and you have all of these other dynamics. It’s not a marriage dispute. It’s something completely different. And so, the kinds of intervention need to be targeted towards that kind of behavior and taking those dynamics into account. And the ordinary kind of pastoral counselling, (and I’m no expert in it, I don’t do it) but it’s targeted in a very different way. And so particular need and particular expertise is really, really important to consider in that frame. And it’s difficult to do that if we’re stuck in these binaries of what’s a faith thing and what’s a law thing, or what’s a social work thing.
And if we could just break those down and just look at everything in that integrated way, it would be much easier, I think, to approach things comprehensively, to approach them consistently, and to approach them in a nuanced way, to take all of the variables into account. Because every situation will be quite different, and what might be possible in terms of personal recovery, and all of those kinds of things, will be different for every situation.
And it would give us, I think, a much more rigorous way and careful way to approach the issues that are involved.
[00:37:57] Anthony: And I would imagine, you know, in thinking about an integrated response, a comprehensive response (and you’ve touched on this in our previous conversations and already here today), that the theological work of the brothers T.F. and J. B. Torrance, I imagine were pretty extensive in terms of informing your research. Would you be willing to talk about how their work has informed your work?
[00:38:25] Jenny: I would love to. And I guess I would say that there are several key ways in which their work informed the research. And the short version — I’m struggling to give you a short version — but the short version is that I drew on their work for the theological content of what a faith response might look like, but also for the approach that’s needed to bring that conceptual integration. And because the conceptual barriers all involved forms of dualism: so we’ve got the sacred–secular divide; the public–private dichotomy; and the third conceptual barrier was a tendency to separate out various teachings from one another and elevate them and give primacy to some.
And I think I mentioned before, forgiveness is the perfect example of that. If forgiveness is sort of seen as encapsulating the key way in which spiritually somebody should be responding to violence then that can actually be weaponized in itself and complicate it and can cause a barrier to be built.
The classic would be, you know, a wife saying, “Well, how am I supposed to be calling the police on my husband? I should be forgiving him. I can’t get him thrown in jail,” and seeing those things as inconsistent and not knowing how to navigate through that space.
So, I used the work of T.F. and J.B. for all three of those barriers. That’s because the theological method of the Torrances, that is, their teachings on the mediation of Christ and the Incarnation and their teachings on other specific issues such as theological covenants, personhood, forgiveness, repentance, and justice, all of those are highly relevant.
So, employing their theological method to inform what a Christian worldview looks like, [doing] that actually enables us to view legal issues and faith issues as being held together rather than separated. So that assists in not just overcoming, but rejecting the sacred–spiritual divide or the, sorry, the sacred–secular divide, and that public–private dichotomy, and any tendency to separate out teachings and apply them transactionally.
So, because if you overemphasize forgiveness and start demanding it from somebody, it can be applied in a very transactional and quite contractual kind of way. So, their work and their theological method involve a rejection of dualist frames of thinking about God, about reality, about humanity and human relating.
Dividing reality into categories such as public–private, sacred–secular, and also separating out doctrines from one another, all of those can be challenged using their theological method. And T. F. Torrance has written on that quite explicitly. And that’s based on their understanding of the Trinity, especially, as I said before, the Incarnation and the mediation of Christ, and what the humanity and divinity of Christ means for human dignity and worth.
And so, the Torrances’ work on holistic theological method demonstrates that this kind of dualistic worldview is not actually Christian. So, it provides a mechanism not just for bridging the divides but actually rethinking how we conceptualize these issues and therefore the solutions.
So, they provide quite a rich source of work in relation to what Christian hope itself might look like in these contexts. Because all of the dichotomies — the sacred–secular, the public–private, and that perceived disconnection of teachings — all of those are false. It’s not actually unchristian, or any kind of failing of faith, or second-class option to involve the law, including the justice system.
And we have at my university, they have this thing called the “three-minute thesis competition” where you have to try to sum up your thesis in three minutes, and people somehow managed to do it. I have no idea, because you might have worked out by now that I’m a little verbose. But I said to them, “I can’t do it in three minutes. I have no idea.” If I was going to encapsulate my thesis in anything, it wouldn’t be three minutes. It would just be one sentence, which would be: “it is not unchristian to involve the law and to involve the justice system; a Christian worldview is an integrated worldview.” This is what we learned from the Torrances: a Christian worldview is an integrated worldview. So, a Christian response to violence is a faith-law response to violence. Or a faith-law-social work response to violence. That is actually a Christian worldview; that’s thoroughly Christian. It’s Western philosophy that separates out into categories. That’s not actually the Christian worldview, according to the Torrances. So, they use a lens in relation to all theological issues which is Christological, and which rejects all forms of dualism as being inconsistent with fundamental Christian teachings about the nature of the Trinity.
And one of the consequences of all of those barriers, and particularly the weaponized teachings that flow from them, is to compound and magnify the physical and sexual devaluation of women’s agency and bodies; that is inherent in being subjugated within their violent relationships. That’s what happens in that kind of violent relationship.
And that’s one of the consequences, particularly of these weaponized teachings, is to worsen all of those consequences of the violence. It’s imperative that a view of justice that recognizes and accounts for the value of the woman’s person can be brought to bear in response. And so, the incorporation of theological teachings that speak to those issues into the process is really critical.
So, that’s the snapshot of how I use the Torrances. But apart from for the framework, one of the other things that I used them for was to provide a way for us to account for and respond to those additional layers of damage that occur in religious, domestic, and family violence, and particularly against Christian women. Because violence impacts someone’s sense of self and, and their being. And it depersonalizes, and it impacts what a person knows and believes about themselves and others. And an integrated or holistic conceptualization would hold those impacts together and view them as interrelated. That’s part of T.F.’s theological method as well. So, because they are holistic and non-dualist in their Christology and their Trinitarian focus, they bring a model of integration in which those various doctrines can be held together, rather than separated out.
And they provide a built-in safeguard and a litmus test, a theological litmus test, if you like, against particular teachings being weaponized by an abusive spouse, particularly teachings about forgiveness, or suffering being normalized as part of the Christian experience, or patriarchal interpretations of headship and mutual submission in marriage and things like that.
And T.F. Torrance uses the concept of “onto-relations” in which the relationships between things are constitutive of what they truly are, and holds ontology and epistemology together. And there’s a lot in all of that which I didn’t go into in the thesis, and I won’t go into now. But it’s a different way of understanding being and reality and what people understand about themselves and how they’re known, than what is commonly seen in Western philosophical dualisms. And it assists in holding together the conceptual and practical issues involved in domestic and family violence. And to me, that’s because violence affects people’s bodies. It’s one of the reasons that part of my title was “Embodied Justice.” Because violence affects people’s bodies, their being, and how they are able to be in the world.
And it also affects their sense of self, what they believe and know about themselves. Because there’s that physical and sexual devaluing of a person in domestic and family violence, and that speaks a word of implicit lesser worth. There is that depersonalization that’s inherent in the violence has an ontological and epistemological effect, and those can best be addressed if they’re held together.
The Torrances’ holistic theological method and that concept of onto-relations is helpful here as well. And as I said, there’s a lot more to onto-relations than that. And it bears exploring further, but as a starting point for us at least, the profound union and integration that undergirds it speaks volumes on a range of levels that are useful as we unpack the effects of interpersonal violence, and particularly domestic and family violence.
Because in a Trinitarian and a Christological understanding, the Incarnation and the priesthood of Christ radically affect what Christians understand about human being and human dignity and reality itself. And there are far-reaching implications that have profound restorative potential, especially in an area where for so long the problem just seems to be intractable and very difficult to address conceptually.
So, I will say TF’s concept of onto-relations does a lot more work theologically than simply to suggest that we theorize reality in a holistic way. There are certainly legal and other theories which do that. And that’s another reason why a rejection of dualism is helpful here.
But the Torrance’s commitment to a holistic theological method and the concept of onto-relations itself is not at large. It’s a Trinitarian and Christological concept, and so it keeps bringing the theological discussion back to what is understood in a Trinitarian perspective in the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus, because those things are not separated, for the Torrances.
That has relevance for the theological concept of covenant and for a Trinitarian understanding of the various doctrines too. You know, they’re not to be separated or disconnected from the person of Christ. They’re not to be applied in a transactional way, which would empty them of their restorative and personalizing content and would let them be weaponized. They’re not to be used that way.
So, for example J.B. ‘s understanding of theological covenant is that it involves unconditional love, right? Well, some people could easily interpret that to mean that a wife must never divorce her husband no matter how he treats her, because she’s supposed to just keep loving him unconditionally. Or, to interpret forgiveness as meaning permissiveness, and so that would actually have her trapped, if this unconditional covenantal love means now she’s stuck in this violent relationship. People could try to weaponize it that way, but that would be a contractual understanding of the relationship and not a covenantal one at all.
So, it’s really important in this conversation. And one of the strengths of the work of the Torrances is that it’s not actually, it’s never just about doctrines or just about teachings. They are always grounded as Trinitarian and Christological concepts.
[00:51:20] Anthony: Yeah, I’m thinking about what you’re saying on the level of theology and its ability, especially the theological method of the Torrance brothers, to speak into this situation. There’s several things at play here, Jenny, at least what I’m hearing. It’s the Church and the couple involved in the violent relationship being able to have the discussion in the first place, not to hide it, not to ignore it and act as if it’s not there. So, it’s actually having a conversation that brings to light what’s been otherwise in the darkness.
Then there is, okay, what do we do as a church? How do we respond to this? How do we involve others in the process to stop the violence? Because good news to somebody who is being beaten is the stop of that violence, right? So there’s got to be that part of it, but it doesn’t just stop there, just stopping the violence.
Because then the response is okay, how do we care well, for not only the person who is being abused, but the abuser? There’s a spiritual element to how do we help both of these parties involved. Because both have been hurt, as we often say here in the States, hurt people, hurt people. So, it is helping the person who is abused, but it’s also helping the abuser.
And then I think there’s also the part of, okay, how we respond, what is that communicating to the other congregants in the church? So, there’s a lot of dynamics in play. And so, what I hear you saying is — I’m trying to summarize it in my own head and think about practical responses here.
There’s all of these dynamics that are held together, that are held together by the theological work of the Torrances because it’s just a reflection of who we see God as a triune God, fully integrated in their personhood, Father, Son, and Spirit. And so, I think there’s a really practical element to this.
And so, I’m not going to ask you to do the three minute summary of your thesis because we’ve already found that’s unfair. However, I think it is important that you summarize your findings, what all of this has led to and how it can be brought to bear in the church. So, could you do that for us?
Could you summarize what you have found in your research?
[00:53:51] Jenny: Sure. J.B. talks about the responsibility. You know how you were saying, we need to have a conversation with the two and how do we care for both and that kind of thing?
I mean, some of that needs to be done very carefully because it would be massively unsafe to — you don’t confront the husband. You just, you don’t. Because then they will just take that out on the wife, in most circumstances. And I mean, a husband who’s repentant, you can work with, but many aren’t. So, there’s a whole process there.
One of the things that I did do was look at J.B.’s model of socio-political reconciliation and on how a husband is required to exercise unconditional repentance. For my findings, the first thing I tried to do was come up with a framework for approach, a different conceptual framework for approaching domestic and family violence against Christians. And the first was to take that integrated faith law understanding of domestic and family violence and its effects and then using holistic, covenantal understandings of the relevant faith teachings.
The third point was to recognize the congruence that exists between the relevant faith concepts and the legal concepts. Because the criminal justice system, for example, is not just about punishment, even though that’s one of the things that a lot of people associate it with. So, these elements in the criminal justice system are not actually inconsistent with Christian teachings. So, they don’t have to be polarized at all. And then to normalize integrated responses. So, and in terms of the congruence of the law and faith teachings: the law denounces domestic and family violence and provides a vindication and a very clear word that that kind of behavior is completely unacceptable. And it also holds space for restoration and relational considerations, expressions of remorse, all of those kinds of things. It’s not just centred on punishment. And so, partly for all of those reasons, but especially in an integrated faith law approach, it’s not unchristian to involve the criminal justice system, as I said before: the justice system is a potential part of a faith response. They’re not alternatives. And so, it doesn’t have to be reserved as a last resort.
And taking that holistic understanding of domestic and family violence can then be used as a way to set a foundation for integrated responses that include church, domestic violence, and criminal justice services. And all of that gives us a capacity to deal with these incredibly damaging faith beliefs that effectively sacrifice women’s wellbeing in order to try to just maintain marriages or to preference keeping the peace or keeping the family together or whatever it might be.
And so, one of the things I think that is most key in all of that, in terms of, as you said, “what are your findings? What does this mean for us on the ground?” One of the key things there that I tried to do was look at a model of socio-political reconciliation that J. B. Torrance developed dealing with post-apartheid South Africa for reconciliation, for ways that the church could engage in the broader community to try to assist in rebuilding. In that model — and that model didn’t deal with domestic and family violence, I tried to modify it. But one of the things that he does in that model is look at what theological justice looks like and how forgiveness and repentance operate and those kinds of things.
And in that model, he looks at that interrelationship of repentance, love, justice, freedom, and reconciliation. And rather than teachings that would locate the active response on the person who’s been harmed — so here it would be on the women — rather than have teachings that locate the active response to violence on women, in which because she’s responsible for the home life, she’d have to be the one praying, trying to change her husband’s behavior, trying to be a “better wife,” quote unquote, or even just bearing all the emotional load of it. The flip side of unconditional love of covenant is unconditional repentance. And so, a person who has wronged another, and here it would be in a domestic and family violence context, that person would be required to unconditionally repent and see that justice is done for the person that they’ve harmed. That’s their responsibility in a covenantal relationship. And so, there’d be no room for a perfunctory apology in order to put pressure on a wife to forgive and just resume the marriage. It would be the husband’s responsibility to make that situation right, including making whatever reparation might be needed.
And for myself, I think there’s room there to say that if a wife had called police and was involving the criminal justice system, then a repentant husband who is responsible to act justly towards his wife should be agreeing to an intervention order, should be making sure that she’s the one who remains in the home and has that stability. And if criminal charges do wind up being brought against him down the track, he should be pleading guilty — after getting legal advice, of course. And in any event, sparing his wife from going through the ordeal of a trial: those kinds of things might actually form part of his repentance.
So one of the really, I think, striking things about J.B.’s model there, is that it shifts the locus of responsibility for bearing all of this and solving all of this and being the one who tries to sort it all out and deal with the load of it, in addition to the harm of it. It moves all of that off the person who’s been harmed. And instead, the responsibility to see justice done is actually located on the person who has done the harm. In this model, it would be on the husband. It’s his responsibility to make sure that justice is done for his wife.
Now, all of that, of course, requires someone who is prepared to be repentant, and that, unfortunately, can be quite rare. And that would be a caveat, I think, you know, in terms of how the church can care for the wife and also pastorally care for the husband. That’s going to be very dependent on whether or not the husband is prepared to take responsibility and be accountable and own that behavior, and many won’t.
And so, it would be very, very dangerous potentially, to — any intervention there would need to be done very, very carefully depending on the willingness of the husband to own their violence. Otherwise, it could actually create an unsafe situation. Which is why, just as you said before, involvement of social services and doing that in conjunction with them would be really important.
But the best way [for church leaders] to love a husband who is attempting to face up to their own abusive behavior, is to ensure that they can be held accountable and not in a way that will deny their worth or their value as a human being or any of those things, but tough love, and accountability and requiring them to own that. You know, in some research you’ll see churches will show up with character references for husbands in court and things like that, rather than just holding them to accountability programs and anger management and all of those sorts of things and walking with them on that journey. Because that is actually their journey to restoration as a human being who’s not devaluing their spouse. And it’s easy not to see those layers to it, if all we’re looking at is, “okay, has this person been forgiven?” But the forgiveness of the husband is not more important than the safety of the wife. And we need to hold all of these things together.
And a husband can be forgiven, and that does not mean the marriage needs to continue. A lot of those things will be contingent on many other factors. And so, we need a way of dealing with all of these issues that lets us hold them together and doesn’t wind up by default leaving wives at ongoing risk.
So, for me, that model of sociopolitical reconciliation, which — and as I said, I’ve adapted it, right? But the thing that really stuck out to me in that model, apart from a quote of J.B.’s where he said, “Love without justice is sentimentality.” The other thing that struck me in that model was that he located the responsibility for bringing justice and making reparation very squarely in the corner of the person who had done the harm. That’s actually part of their pathway back. That’s actually part of what they can bring. And part of enacting their own restoration is to ensure that they make that situation right.
And that’s partly because concepts like righteousness, for example, in the Old Testament — this is the other thing that J.B. Torrance talks about a lot, is the language slippage that occurs around words like “law” and “justice.” And the way in which those things have been translated in a transactional way, in a very dry and legalistic way, rather than a relational way. For example, righteousness in the Hebrew. The framework of law and therefore of justice theologically is a restorative one that requires and incorporates forgiveness, repentance, reparation, and it paves the way for relational reconciliation if it’s safe to do so, and if it’s desired. But in contrast, the Latin understanding of justice is only referring to justice by itself, disconnected from these other contexts and externally imposed as this wholly legalistic and punitive concept.
So, understanding that broader view of theological justice that’s much more aligned with other features of the justice system is a real key to, I think, dealing with the layers that are actually going on, not just in terms of the harm and safety considerations, but what’s needed for restoration.
So, a conceptualization of theological justice that aligns with legal concepts of justice enables a much more nuanced experience of justice to be brought forward for women, because it enables an experience of vindication, a restoration of dignity, and a sense of their personhood and the value of their personhood to be brought forward to comprehensively and carefully redress the injustice of depersonalization and that weaponization of theology that has so often enabled it to be perpetuated.
Because there are layered pastoral and personal issues that need to be worked through. And I’m very thankful that it’s people like yourself, Anthony, that have to deal with those and not me. And every situation is unique, but this kind of approach will hopefully open space for that. So, you know, in terms of, I suppose, more specific findings, I think I’ve jumped into a segue.
But the Christian gospel condemns domestic and family violence comprehensively, that’s clear. You know, a man’s wife is not the one person he can get away with brutality towards just because he’s married to her. She’s a beloved child of God whose humanity has been profoundly affirmed and dignified in the humanity of Christ. And that’s why someone’s dignity is never actually lost, just because it is assailed or denied or despised by another. And that kind of affirmation — this was the other finding that I came to. This kind of affirmation is reflected in the law. And one of the most powerful aspects of the criminal law’s structure is the way in which it’s designed to denounce violence and that inherent vindication that lies within it.
And so, realising that, particularly when so often theological beliefs can be used to minimize and dismiss and condone violence, it is powerful to see that written into the law is a prohibition on all forms of domestic and family violence, and measures to ensure protection. Now it’s a really flawed system. I know it’s a flawed system. But its design, its standpoint, or its orientation is for the women.
And all of that then leaves more space for restoration, and we see other elements that are built into sentencing aims and processes and the structure of the law itself. All kinds of aspects of the justice system are actually to do with all of these other things and not actually just punishment. And so, viewing faith as being about forgiveness, and justice as being about punishment is a very, very unhelpful and reductionist kind of way of looking at it, I think. So, as I said before, the criminal justice system is very flawed and many people may well not want to engage, particularly because of safety considerations and just the relational dynamics that are present. I’m aware of that. I think probably everyone is. But what we dare not perpetuate is any kind of explicit or even implicit messaging that a faith response is distinct from the broader justice system, and it’s one that Christians are required to choose between. They’re not inconsistent, and they’re not even separate.
It is possible to take a faith-law approach, and that is actually a Christian understanding and worldview. So, that’s really what a conceptual shift towards integrated approaches that include the justice system can open up space for.
[01:10:13] Anthony: Yeah, and that’s a huge shift, is it not? I mean, it’s often we — like, even in Scripture, you can read sections where Christians are taking other Christians to court, and frivolous things become problematic within the faith community.
So, I think there has been this default, Jenny, where it is a last resort. But what you’re saying is there is an integrated approach where the justice system and its support system can be brought to bear. And actually, that can bring about restoration for both parties.
[01:10:54] Jenny: Yeah, I think there is potentially a way of approaching this issue, and as I said, there’s of course, a lot more to it than this, and I mean, there’s so much that still needs to be worked through. This is one little slice, right? It’s just a different way of viewing this. My hope is that a conceptual shift towards integrated approaches, which include the justice system, can open up some space. And this kind of reconceptualization can illuminate — particularly for Christians — can illuminate the power of the Christian gospel to kind of provide freedom and restoration and so on more clearly and then assist in undergirding and furthering the existing collaborative work that’s taking place to enable those nuanced conversations about justice considerations. So that we can start having conversations that have deep restorative potential to bring an experience of justice for women.
[01:12:03] Anthony: Yeah, it’s something I hope for as well. And so, let’s think about it this way, Jenny. Why don’t you give us your takeaway, our takeaway? What it should be as Christians, particularly as church leaders and future leaders? And help us understand how churches can take an integrated faith-law response.
What would that practically look like?
[01:12:26] Jenny: You posed that question for me quite a while ago, I think we were talking about this months ago and I have been mulling it over. And there’s a lot in that that I can’t answer, and that you would be, and other pastors would be, far better to answer. But for me, I do think that that kind of faith-law lens shows that the Christian gospel is profoundly with and for women in the face of brutality and denial and personhood and injustice that is inherent in DV [domestic violence]. So, I think, you know, the first standpoint is for the women. But what that means particularly would be that that call from the law and from faith to respond rightly to their violence is on the violent husbands. They’re the ones who need to bear the load of that, and respond to that. So Christian women don’t have to bear up under violence and just pray more. And they’re not the ones who are responsible to bring the change and end the violence. That’s the responsibility of the husband, and hopefully pastoral care can help with that if it’s safe for that work to happen.
But on a practical level on the ground beyond that — because a lot of that work needs to be done in conjunction with social services — but beyond that, in churches, for me, I think there’s space for us to challenge a whole congregation, for example, to question the stereotypes that we have about everything to do with gender roles, what we value in people, how we view their humanity, how we understand all of that.
One of the key things that the Torrances speak about, is participation and discipleship, and engaging in that. Participating in the life of Christ, and all of those sorts of things are really key, important concepts for Christians on the ground. So, how could a church congregation, for example, challenge itself to question those sorts of stereotypes, to call out violence, to create a culture where it’s very clear that it’s not actually accepted? How are we enacting justice as a core expectation of our congregations, for example? What would be required as repentance, [for] someone who had been violent, what would that look like? How are we building a trauma informed place of safety in our congregations? How are we indicating explicitly and implicitly that we won’t tolerate any forms of domestic and family violence?
Out of this rigorous commitment to recognizing the image of God that’s expressed in each human being, regardless of gender, those kinds of almost cultural questions, I think, are also really important particularly in prevention; and just what kind of Christian community does any particular church want to be?
So conceptualizing domestic and family violence and its effects, and its responses holistically, and viewing justice responses and DV service responses as part of a Christian response to DV will hopefully be a positioning that can actually be quite, quite freeing and open up more opportunity, not just for women in their decision-making, but for the whole church community. Because there’s enough to wrestle with, when faced with an issue that is this pervasive and this serious and that affects someone’s life and personhood in such a profound way.
So, I think it’s taking those kinds of approaches. And that is a way, too, that lets us focus on the positive, and build the community up in relation to how the members interact and create church communities, for example, as a place of safety, where it is normalized that everyone is treated well and that these things are not actually tolerated; rather than assuming that they don’t happen here, they happen out there. But instead changing that conversation and the way in which we view what is and isn’t acceptable for how we — I say we, but how people in churches treat each other as children of God.
So, some of it, I think, goes a lot further than just: “what can we practically do when we encounter violence in a couple between a couple in the church? And “between” is the wrong word there, by the way. But it’s not just about how do we respond in a situation where we know that there is violence that’s being perpetrated against someone in a relationship. I think, there’s a lot that we need to change culturally, in terms of what we see around how people are valued and whether or not we really are taking seriously and living out what we know about the dignity and value and personhood and worth of every single person made in the image of God, that we see in the Incarnation, and the life of God that is mediated in and through Jesus. Those kinds of things, all of that, informs the way that churches can be looking at this issue.
[01:18:52] Anthony: Yeah, it’s an embodied justice, which I think is part of the title of your thesis, is it not? And it’s one thing to say we’re opposed to domestic and family violence. It’s an entirely different, entirely different thing to embody a response to that. It’s messy. It’s difficult. It’s weighty.
It must be done with great care and dignity. And this is one of the things I appreciate about this approach that you’ve brought to us here today is that it’s for the human personhood. It’s for the agency of the woman and the man who is the abuser, even though that brings its own set of challenges. But it’s not just against violence, which of course we are against, but it’s an approach that is for the people that are involved in such a difficult, painful situation.
And yeah. Boy, this has to be entered into with great care and wisdom. And so, I just want to thank you, Jenny, for the investment of blood, sweat, and tears into your thesis that brings this concept to bear. This is a conversation we need to be having, and this is why I invited you onto this podcast.
We need to have it. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you and the investment that you’ve placed into this. And I’m just curious, and I’m going to ask this — off the top of your head, if people want to do a deeper dive into everything that you’ve brought to bear here, what resources, if any, can you point people to? And maybe if there’s nothing off the top of your head that you want to point people to, maybe we can think about that included in the show notes as well.
But would you have something you’d want to point people to?
[01:20:44] Jenny: One thing I would suggest, and I think, let’s definitely get some links. And we can link some resources. The RAVE project that I mentioned that Nancy Nason-Clark, and McMullin and their team have done. They’ve got some great resources, and they’re in North America. So, they’ve got some great resources.
There’s materials, church resources, put out in the UK by a group called Restored UK. They’ve got a guide for church leaders for how to navigate through situations of DV, including how to support perpetrators in a way that doesn’t make it look as though this is an “equal” situation, and it’s very clear that the church is standing with the woman, but is still assisting the husband in his own journey for taking responsibility. So how to hold those two things together? The Restored U.K. There is an Australian version of that, which is called Renew. So, I’ll link that as well, in case there’s any Aussies who want to have a look at that.
Those would probably be really useful resources off the top of my head. In terms of looking at a bit more information in relation to the Torrance’s theology on this, I do have a book chapter we can link, if you’d like, that I think it came out after I last spoke to you. So, there’d be that.
[01:22:22] Anthony: Please. That’s extremely helpful.
This has been an insightful conversation, Jenny. And as I prayed before we actually went live, my hope in this is that it will start needed conversations around dinner tables and church fellowships because this has been held in the quiet, dark corners of churches for too long. And I just sense that, by the Spirit, there’s a reckoning going on. We need to care well in situations of domestic and family violence.
So again, thank you, thank you, thank you for your labor of love. Congratulations, Dr. Jenny Richards on the good work that you have done. And I know you’re speaking about this at conferences, and I pray that the Lord will open doors for these conversations to continue in needed places. So, thank you.
And I want to thank our team, our podcast team, Elizabeth Mullins, Reuel Enerio, Michelle Hartman for their excellent work that make this podcast possible. And I want to thank our listeners. Thank you for this journey.
This is a bonus episode on a specific topic, and I pray that it’s been helpful to you.
And as is our tradition, we close with prayer. So let me do that as we. Closed down.
Yes, Jenny.
[01:23:40] Jenny: The only other thing I would say is if people want to continue the conversation, they’re very welcome to email me. I’d be very interested in talking to anyone who’s working in this space or interested in this space or whatever.
[01:23:53] Anthony: That would be excellent. Why don’t we put your email in the show notes, and we’ll allow people to connect with you.
Jenny’s awesome! She’s not only is somebody who’s highly gifted and skilled to talk about the subject matter, but she’s just a wonderful human being. So, I think if you reach out to her and interact, you’re going to find what I have found that she’s an exceptional person, made in the image and likeness of God.
So, let’s close with a word of prayer.
Father, Son, and Spirit, it is a joy to know you and be known by you. Lord, there is nothing that we have said or nothing going on the face of this planet that you are unaware of, that you don’t care about. You are intimately involved in the affairs of women and men, and we give thanks for that.
And Lord, as you mediate our relationships, we invite you to enter in, to bring about the restoration that you seek. A return to the goodness and the belonging that was there even from the beginning in the garden, Lord. We ask and seek that, we seek restoration. We seek reconciliation. And Lord, we know that to bring that about often can be painful.
We’re a broken world. We’re broken in our relationships, broken in our sexuality, or just we’re broken people that are seeking you to restore us, to forgive us. And to bring about the wholeness that we all long for, even if we don’t know how to give voice to it.
So, I pray a blessing upon Jenny Richards and her work to help the church bring about restoration in the lives of husbands and wives, Lord, to bring about justice, embodied justice.
We pray for your forgiveness where we have not lived into the ideal of what you have for us, the ideal that we esteem others higher than ourselves. Forgive us, Lord. And I just pray for the pastors who are listening, church leaders, that you would give them wisdom that comes by the discernment of the Spirit, to know when to involve themselves, to speak up, to ask the appropriate questions, because it is such a delicate matter.
Give us wisdom, Lord, that can only come by the Spirit. There is so much we don’t know. Inform us by the indwelling of the Spirit.
And Lord, we pray for those who are being abused in this moment, Lord. We want the abuse to stop. We want the violence to stop. We see that we are a people that are that lust for violence. We see it here where I’m stationed in the United States. We see it in another school shooting this week. We lust for violence and death and destruction. It is not the way.
So, Lord, we ask by your Spirit, you would bring us to the Way. Show us the better way in yourself, which you have done and may we act upon it. Lord, thank you for this conversation. May it be a blessing to the hearers, and we give thanks in Jesus. Amen.
Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating, and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you!
Join us this month as we welcome our guest, Dr. Jenny Richards, for a special bonus episode. Jenny is a Senior Lecturer in law and an academic advisor for the College of Business, Government and Law at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. She is also a Senior Associate at the St Barnabas Research Centre, which is a research center affiliated with the University of Divinity. She is a contributor to the edited volume Thomas F. Torrance and Evangelical Theology: A Critical Analysis.
Tim Sitterley, Elder
Michelle Hartman, Communications Director
Linda Sitterley, Pastor
On this episode of Gospel Reverb, Anthony Mullins, unpacks the April 2025 sermon pericopes with our guest, Catherine McNiel. Catherine is an author, collaborator and speaker at conferences and retreats. Her books include Fearing Bravely, Long Days of Small Things, and All Shall Be Well. She is currently a Master of Divinity student at North Park University in Chicago. You can learn more about Catherine by visiting her website: 
