By The Ven. Dr C. Lucy Morris
It was a packed conference, filled with women and men from across Australia and overseas. The discussion in this session concerned the impact of patriarchy reaching into all aspects of our culture, with its recognisably deep roots in the ancient Roman culture and Greek philosophy. Both enabled and reinforced the patriarchal domination of 2,000 years of Christian theology in its mainstream church practice to the present-day, encompassing continuous domination, bullying, violence, coercion and privilege as a closed male-only club sitting awkwardly alongside its life-giving gospel message of love, hope, equality and faith.
Writer bell hooks speaks of patriarchy affecting both men and women to our profound detriment, as it breaks our loving relationships with one another and God. It distorts our sexual relationships and understanding of sex both culturally and theologically; and, its characteristic intersectionality in all aspects of life, is comprehensive. Patriarchy is entrenched in our welfare systems, education, health, economics, business, politics, justice and our religious structures and systems and our very basic understanding of what constitutes family, work and leisure. The power of patriarchy has been to make men feel it is better to be feared than loved.
Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak especially females and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence. (hooks 2004:18)
It has spiritually, emotionally and physically broken countless generations of people in the way we encounter violence in the home, in community and nationally and has made our responses to such violence in all its forms, including coercive control, meaningless and self-perpetuating.
Into the conference Q&A session with the speaker, a woman quietly asked, in a discussion on domestic and family violence, was not patriarchy an active enabler of coercive control, which is now illegal in Queensland? The room fell silent and everyone drew a deep breath. A second voice asked, is not patriarchy possibly a church and faith heresy, particularly from where we were standing as women of faith and of the church?
This won’t have been be the first time these questions were asked. So where were we standing in relation to ‘heresy’, patriarchy, violence and coercive control on that particular morning?
Heresy is any belief or theory strongly at variance with established customs and beliefs, particularly accepted beliefs or religious law, the orthodoxy of a religious doctrine and organisation.
Heresy is the act of having an opinion or belief that is the opposite of, or against what is, the official or popular opinion, or an action that shows you have no respect for the official opinion. (Cambridge English Dictionary Online 4Feb25)
This means in the conference room at that point, where we were assessing our standpoint, and realising who was in agreement and why, we wondered out loud, if perhaps, just maybe on occasion, it is the perceived majority who was promulgating heresy. It was this which was suddenly so visible to the minority who had the courage to speak it out loud that morning.
The possible heresy of the many became clearer at that point; and the definition of heresy inherently reflected the perspective of those with power, those in the majority, who set the standard, the orthodoxy, now scandalously offered the possibility of a heresy being defined by the few without power – always depending on your standpoint.
Certainly, being without worldly power was where Jesus was mostly found, which should at least make us more vigilant. The definition of this particular heresy of patriarchy and its enduring sin of coercive control now has to be challenged in terms of moral, legal, theological perspectives as we question 2,000 years of church practice and belief.
We need to decide whether we have the courage to raise the issue of coercive control within our cultural behaviours in the church when it has been spoken about with increasing regularity and concern in the secular world. We need to upend our faith-filled world as once again we ask what might reflect more truly and righteously, the teaching of the Christ in the issue of patriarchy and its embedded DNA of continuing sexual abuse, gender-based violence and coercive control.
Patriarchy requires male dominance of all things, people, systems, structures and the created world by any means necessary, so patriarchy supports, promotes and condones all sexist, gender-based violence as evidence of power over, control over the ‘other’. Patriarchy works in conjunction with, through and in other systems of oppression, such as racism, classism, heterosexism, sexual dominance and abuse, economics, justice and politics to maintain inequalities and injustices.
bell hooks believed patriarchy is a system of oppression for both men and women. She also believed it can be challenged through collective resistance, critical examination and the creation of alternative models of living and this applies to our churches and faith lives. I think we’re at this point, beyond it even, as we examine our faith and church practice and see more clearly how comprehensively it is broken and has been so for nearly 2,000 years.
Women who are trapped within the patriarchal system frequently refuse to let men change as they take their identity from the male expressions of power and are unable to see or recognise the cage in which they live. Like Renee Girard’s critique of the human instinct always to scapegoat, so patriarchy also provides an endless loop of pain and suffering for all whom it touches, all the while bending and distorting God’s gospel of love.
A friend recently told me she was unable to offer to serve in the church as her husband will not let her. This proscription is emphasised with threats of violence to himself and implications of violence on herself, if she leaves him alone, being absent from home without his permission, while present in the church community. A Christian marriage counsellor advised her to submit as it was her duty to do as her husband asked.
Today, countries around the world are dealing with patriarchal cultures of gender-based violence and coercive control, predominantly men on women. One recent article in the ABC news asked if we now had decriminalised rape, it was so rarely reported, prosecuted or punished.
The numbers tell the story – Australia’s criminal justice system is failing victim-survivors of sexual assault. While one in five women over the age of 15 has been sexually assaulted in their lifetime, almost 90% will not report to police. Of the women who do make a report, only a quarter will see their perpetrator charged. And even fewer will see their perpetrator plead guilty or be convicted. From decade to decade, the numbers don’t shift. According to Victoria’s Sentencing Advisory Council, there were 23,000 reports of rape to police between 2010 and 2019 but only 1,000 sentencings for rape offences. More recent data from New South Wales shows there were 9,138 sexual assaults reported to police in 2022 but only 1,016 convictions.
Morally, the question of violence, rape and psychological, economic, financial and religious coercion and control and the recognition of the continuing home-based terrorism with so many femicides in this country and around the world, by men known to the victims, and perpetrated by intimate partners is frightening, egregious and obscene. If we were fighting a war with this much loss of life of our soldiers, we would be marching in the streets to end the war. God’s message of peace is being disappeared through the cracks of our patriarchal reality.
We know what is right and wrong – most of the time. However, Hannah Arendt talked about our profound capacity to resist the temptation to do the right, in her ground breaking book: Eichman in Jerusalem. The Report on The Banality of Evil, where ordinary German men and women looked the other way as their Jewish neighbours were murdered and they robbed and killed their neighbours, while claiming to be practising Christians.
We are living with the ongoing dissonance of knowing what needs to be done, but its our husbands, father, brothers, sons and grandfathers who are trapped in the story of patriarchy and its core manifestation of oppression, and in our support for them, we ensure the suffering continues. The dreadful family violence and child abuse we see and read about each day, the incidence of coercive control in ordinary lives on a daily basis is overwhelming. And the recent story of the French grandmother Gisele Pelicot opens up the moral dilemma in horrifying reality. It’s a story straight out of the Bible in many aspects. (Gen.19.8)
Legally, there are now laws in place across Australia which bring coercive control into the legal system and education is being provided to young people in schools and universities, as a consequence of work done by brave women such as Chanel Contos, Grace Tame, and other strong, determined women’s legal organisations and individuals.
Coercive control involves perpetrators using patterns of abusive behaviour over time in a way that creates fear and denies liberty and autonomy. It is a pattern of controlling and manipulative behaviours within a relationship. People who use coercive control may use physical or non-physical abusive behaviours or a combination of both. All are serious. Relationships Australia lists 12 signs of coercive control:
Isolating someone from support systems; monitoring their daily activities; denying freedom and autonomy; gaslighting; name calling and severe criticism; limiting access to money and controlling finances; coercing someone to take care and be responsible for domestic duties; turning children against their parent; controlling aspects of health and body; making jealous claims about time spent with family, friends and elsewhere; regulating the sexual relationship; and threatening children and pets as an extreme form of intimidation.
It seems to me much of our patriarchal culture has such behaviour embedded and inextricably woven into our cultural thinking and church practice to ensure they provide ongoing active support for this paradigm. This is done in the way it expects ‘appropriate’ constructs for relationships between the church and individuals, and between husband and wife and in the family. It seems to me there is a case to answer.
Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed points to another critical piece of thinking for this reflection. He describes our fear of the freedom of having agency and equality, which results in our collusion in the oppression, because critical thinking is frequently thought to be anarchical, so leading to disorder which is seen as unacceptable. I wonder if we might here insert the word ‘heresy’ here as defined by the majority instead of ‘disorder’. He highlights the belief which gives rise to such a conclusion: that it is better for victims of injustice not to recognise themselves as such.
Freire goes onto argue men and women rarely admit their fear of freedom openly, rather hiding it, often unconsciously, by presenting themselves as defenders of freedom. They confuse freedom with their preference to maintain the status quo. Freire argues it is only those who truly enter the reality of oppression to know it better, who are then better able to transform it. Such people don’t seek to become owners of the truth, or its history, or to be the liberator of the oppressed, but because they have listened and engaged, they commit to fighting at the side of those who are struggling to become part of the visible and acknowledged history; and in our faith, equally part of God’s kingdom.
The struggle for humanisation, for recognition as being created equally in God’s creation and for the ability to live our true lives in The Christ, for overcoming alienation and de-moralisation, this is only possible because de-humanisation is an historical fact. It is the result of an unjust order generating violence in the oppressors which in turn, de-humanises and de-moralises the oppressed. This, then, is the great human and divine task for the oppressed alongside Jesus: to liberate not only themselves but also the oppressors as well. It is our task to live the lives God desires for us in the Christ, not the lives prescribed by the powers and principalities of the world and the church.
If we use the word ‘oppressors’ in our discussion as meaning ‘patriarchal, androcentric, privileged men and women’ in our Church, who oppress, exploit, and abuse by virtue of their power; eventually such oppressors discover they cannot find in this oppressive power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power springing from the weakness of the oppressed, will be sufficiently strong to free both.
The story of my friend is a clear example of coercive control through threats of violence supported and enabled by a patriarchal interpretation of Christian theology and the bible.
In 2019, the Anglican Church of Australia carried out ground breaking research into the evidence of domestic and family violence in church communities. It revealed there was a higher incidence of such violence in the church than in the general population. It drew a direct causal link to the teaching of patriarchal male headship and the lack of women in positions of leadership and authority. It established 10 Commitments to which the Anglican Church committed to try and end domestic and family violence generated by the patriarchal system, ending coercive control and committing to changing its view of patriarchy and its teachings.
Theologically, just as women have had to struggle to be ordained as priests and bishops, the numbers show the struggle is not over (see the recent Canberra- Goldburn report and its referencing in the ABC) and the heresy of patriarchy still lurks hidden in plain sight. The scandals of churches who covered up child abuse and abuse, bullying and the endemic use of coercive control with women has not yet slowed down. The sadness of the abrupt resignations of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Liverpool, the failure of the Church of England establishment to choose a strong independent investigative response on allegations of sexual abuse by its church members and leaders; together with our own dreadful, horrific stories which emerged in the Royal Commission into the institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, shows the lessons are still to be learned and the power of patriarchy, entitlement and privilege remain well entrenched, and will not be let go without resistance.
Jesus squatted in the dust, as he listened to those urging punishment of a women caught in adultery. When challenged, her accusers slipped away. No co-accused was brought with her. She didn’t commit adultery alone. The faithful Jewish men, rabid in urging punishment on the feckless, sinful woman, were not surprisingly absent when called out by Jesus as her co-accused.
Jesus pushed back at the money changers and the business leaders, the teachers and lawyers of the religious elite, those who patrolled boundaries of purity laws, Sabbath laws, dietary laws, race and ethnicity laws, gender and age, wealth and housing laws, all designed to keep patriarchy in place through the use of power over, manipulation, privileging entitlement in patriarchy, and coercive control. This is to name just some of what Jesus regularly challenged and is still doing so today.
Jesus focussed on healing, forgiving, loving, restoring, weeping, praying, breaking, trusting, dealing justly, transforming, hoping and offering peace.
It feels like that is still a work in progress today.
It feels like we’ve not yet grasped what the Christ was offering and showing us as the Light in the world.
It feels like the darkness is pushing back always, relentlessly, aided and abetted by faithful men and women who have not heard what the Christ has said, and who have not followed Jesus, just simply idolised and worshipped him instead as a male leader – a much easier solution than being a Christ follower of the Way.
It feels like the issue of patriarchy, our understanding of heresy, the recognition of coercive control in our churches and families is real and no-one is disturbing our comfortable peace over it.
It feels like the real transforming peace of God isn’t going to make sense until we name this heresy, call it out, gather greater energy to teach about it, work at it, change our words, language, stories and pull it out of our faith altogether, root and branch. Then as sisters and brothers, in the name of Christ we will be free from oppression, no longer blind, lame, deaf or imprisoned. We will be free to live as God desires, in God’s new Creation.
The Lord be with you!
References
Anglican Church of Australia, www.Anglican.org.au/our-work/family-violence
The Ten Commitments
Arendt, H. 1992. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York, Penguin Books.
Freire P. 1993. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. England, Penguin Books.
Girard, R. 1986. The Scapegoat. The John Hopkins University Press, Maryland, USA.
Hill, Havel, V. 1978. The Power of the Powerless. London, Penguin Random House UK
Havel, V. 1991. Disturbing the Peace. London, Vintage.
Hill, J. 2020. See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse. Black Inc.
hooks, b. 2000. Feminism is for EVERYBODY. Passionate Politics. Southend Press, NY.
hooks, b. 2004. The Will To Change. Men, Masculinity and Love. Washington Square Press, NY.
https://bbc.com/news/articles/cr7vvj8gymyo The Fifty Men accused in mass rape of Gisele Pelicot 18/12/24
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Tame (online 5Feb2025)
- Chanel Contos is an Australian activist widely recognised for her campaign “Teach Us Consent,” which successfully advocated for mandatory consent education in Australian schools, significantly contributing to the fight against sexual violence, particularly among young people. Her work focuses on raising awareness about the importance of consent and dismantling rape culture through education and open discussion about sexual assault experiences.
- Grace Tame is an Australian activist and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. Tame was named 2021 Australian of the Year on 25 January 2021
The Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn Report – presented at the 2024 Synod: Addressing Disparity Report