Domestic violence is a significant threat to women’s survival. But Christian understandings of marriage often prevent women from resisting abusive relationships. Can the Church’s teaching on marriage be reshaped so that it helps women to survive, rather than encourage them to submit to their husband, bear their cross, or sacrifice themselves for the sake of their marriage? Focusing on everyday practices of marriage in two very different contexts: Argentina and England, Reimagining Theologies of Marriage in Contexts of Domestic Violence considers how Christian understandings of marriage as a covenant or sacrament relate to the lived experience of marriage. Drawing on Augustine’s notion of the goods of marriage, and on belief in the saving power of marriage, this book suggests that only when the wellbeing of bodies is central to a marriage can it have the power to save.

With contributions from a diverse team of scholars, Feminist Trauma Theologies is an essential resource for all thinkers and practitioners who are trying to navigate the current conversations around theology, suffering, and feminism.

Vile Bodies are bodies that have been vilified by Christian thought, often with catastrophic consequences. The bodies of women, Jews, Muslims, slaves, Blacks, LGBT people, children, wives have all been harmed by negative Christian teaching about bodies. This book sidesteps the endless controversies in the churches about sexuality and gender and goes deeper – unmasking instead the abusive theology that ensures these controversies and their harmful outcomes persist. Drawing extensively from scripture, and from two millennia of church history and theology, Vile Bodies slowly exposes how churches have preferred doctrine to compassion, orthodoxy to justice, and legalism to love, culminating in the global abuse crises in the churches that have largely destroyed their moral credibility.

Drawing on both biblical studies scholarship and practitioner experience, this book explores the disjuncture between complementarian accounts of biblical marriage and intersections of marriage and violence in texts from Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This volume challenges authoritative complementarian claims to the Bible’s allegedly clear and unequivocal directions on marriage. It refutes these claims with analysis of the muddled and often violent depictions of marriage in the Bible itself. Regular reminders show why such an exploration matters: that is, because recourse to the authority and ‘plain meaning’ of the Bible has had and continues to have impact on real people’s lives. Sometimes, this impact is violent and traumatic, notably when the Bible is weaponised to justify intimate partner violence. This book explores a wide range of biblical texts and interpretations. Particular focus is placed on the influential pronouncements on ‘biblical marriage’ by the US Family Research Council and Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Textual analysis includes close focus on Genesis 1–3, Malachi 2, and Ephesians 5. This book will appeal to students of biblical studies and theology, as well as anyone interested in research-based activism and in how sacred texts are directed towards modern day-to-day life. It investigates ‘marriage’, ‘the Bible’ and ‘violence’, all of which play significant roles in public discourses and popular culture.

Gender, Violence, and Justice is a volume of collected essays by an expert in the field of violence against women and pastoral theology. It represents over three decades of research, advocacy, and pastoral theological reflection on the subject of sexual and domestic violence. Topics include intimate partner violence, sexual abuse and trauma, and clergy sexual misconduct; controversial theological issues such as forgiveness; and, as well, positive frameworks for fostering well-being in families, church, and society. Framed by a foreword and an introduction that place this work in the context of new and contemporary challenges in theory and practice, these essays show an evolution of issues and frameworks for theology, care, and activism arising over time from the movement to end violence against women (both within and beyond religious communities)—while at the same time demonstrating an unchanging core commitment to gender justice.

This book takes a global approach to violence between husbands and wives in faith contexts. Focusing primarily on Christians, the book uses anthropological, theological and historical methods, which intersect with, and are challenged by, lay and ordained women and men from sixteen countries. Focusing on marital violence, the book explores ways to understand how various churches, their priests, preachers, theologians and members, approach the topic, interpret the texts, and, with often thoughtless complicity, hide from the sin. Drawing on over a decade researching marital violence in Christian contexts across five continents, Elizabeth Koepping, an anthropologist and priest, presents testimonies from abused women, as well as theological and cultural justifications for spousal abuse employed by perpetrators and bystanders. She argues that if violence against the (female) spouse is understood as proper behaviour by manly men towards unruly wives, Christians may set aside the core text 'Men and women are made in the Image of God', enabling and silently colluding in abuse. The book shows that spousal abuse is an ecumenical phenomenon present all over the inhabited world, and therefore in all Christian churches and indeed other faith traditions.

What happens when ‘go, make disciples’ meets ‘Black Lives Matter’? Arising from the Council for World Mission’s “Legacies of Slavery” project, this book offers an unapologetic exploration of Christian Mission and its history, and the ways in which this legacy has unleashed notions of White supremacy, systemic racism and global capitalism on the world. Contributors reflect on the past and consider the future of world mission in an age of renewed understandings of empire and its impact. Contributors include Mike Higton, David Clough, Eve Parker, James Butler, Cathy Ross, Jione Havea, Peniel Rajkumar, Victoria Turner, Carol Troupe, Michael Jagessar, Paul Weller, Jill Marsh, Kevin Ellis, Rachel Starr, Kevin Snyman, Al Barrett and Ruth Harley.