Partnered with a Survivor: David Mandel and Ruth Reymundo Mandel

Season 5 Episode 12: Challenging the Gospel of Sacrifice: Faith, Domestic Abuse, and Institutional Transformation

• Ruth Reymundo Mandel & David Mandel • Season 5 • Episode 12

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What if the institutions we turn to for solace are also be the ones trapping us in cycles of harm? That's the challenging reality we confront in our latest episode featuring Reverend Geneece Goertzen, affectionately known as Rev. Gen. A survivor of domestic violence herself, Rev. Gen brings a deeply personal perspective to the table, sharing insights from her book "Taking it Seriously: A Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence." Her story is not just one of survival but also of transformation, as she navigates the complex role of religious institutions in both supporting and, at times, failing their communities.

The episode takes a hard look at the concept of institutional betrayal within faith communities. Often, religious institutions prioritize their preservation over the well-being of individuals, inadvertently perpetuating abuse. We explore the cultural dynamics that contribute to this betrayal and the severe impact it has on survivors' mental health and faith. By addressing these systemic issues, we aim to uncover how these institutions can evolve to offer genuine support and protection to those in need, rather than acting as barriers to justice and healing.

Finally, Ruth, David and Rev. Gen discuss how to challenge traditional gender roles and societal norms that can exacerbate domestic violence. Together we explore what a new reality might look like: What if these same institutions could shift their focus to how a domestic abuse perpetrators' behaviors threaten their own spiritual health, the spiritual health of the family, and their religious community?

Rev. Gen provides practical advice for faith leaders on how they can be allies to victims, highlighting the importance of comprehensive education and the integration of licensed therapists into faith communities. Through this episode, we envision a path toward transformation, where love, acceptance, and support genuinely resonate within religious frameworks.

Check out these resources from Rev. Gen
Read her book "Taking it Seriously: A Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence."
Vist Rev. Gen's website

Check out these related resources
The Safe & Together Institute Friends and Family Ally Guide 
Choose to Change Toolkit 

Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real

Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."

Visit the Safe & Together Institute website

Start taking Safe & Together Institute courses

Check out Safe & Together Institute upcoming events

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

and we're back and we're back. Hello there, hi. How are you?

David Mandel :

I'm good, here we are again, and it's only a week since we recorded the last show, which is-. I am super impressed with this I am too, so you're listening to Partner with a Survivor, and I'm David Mandel, the CEO of the Safe and Together Institute.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And I'm Ruth Ramundo Mandel and I'm the co-owner and chief business development officer, and we are coming to you today from Misako Tunxis land and I want to do a little land acknowledgement and honor the traditional custodians of the land, both past, present and emerging, and send our love and respect to them for caring for these living territories, for these living territories, including the bodies which are formed on this land, and the Tungsis Misako people were part of the greater Algonquin language nation. And here we are. We're in full-on winter, the trees are completely bare and it's very brown and cold and we've had our first snow and that first snow has melted.

David Mandel :

So here we are, yeah, and today's episode. We're going to be talking in a moment about religious institutions, faith leaders and the role they can play in helping survivors, but also part of the role, unfortunately, in being part of entrapment of survivors.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I love this topic.

David Mandel :

You love this topic.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I love going at this topic because I understand very personally, but also from having been raised in a religious institution, the really wide-reaching impacts of that form of abuse and the failures to address it. Both from a very personal standpoint, but also from an institutional, social, financial, physical well-being, health of society standpoint, it's a really big question.

David Mandel :

So that's what we're going to be diving into, but just want to take just one minute to say great job on our course. Control and children conference I know uk and north america. We just did it, but it's your team that put it on they were great your team put it on.

David Mandel :

We had almost 200 people there at this virtual conference from north america and mostly, you know, kingdom, and we had all these great presentations and um lots of energy, lots of energy and we will be doing another, a course control and children conference in the asia pacific region for those who are listening in march, uh 2025 yes, we will, and so we're really excited about this new approach to our conferences, which really kind of emphasizes that. Next is, of course, controlling children.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

So anyway, so good job. Thank you All right.

David Mandel :

So let's get right to our guest, and so we are happy to introduce Janice Gertzen, or Reverend Jen as she is known on social media. She has just, so we're really lucky. She's uber educated, uber experienced, uber kind of thoughtful about this issue and author. She's recently earned a Master of Divinity and Master of Social Work. She's working on her PhD.

David Mandel :

She has an interest in the intersection of faith and practice as it relates to the church's response to domestic violence and she's looked through her research and publications and her speaking and experience of survivors disclosing their abuse to the church, pastoral education regarding abuse, how churches can be more prepared to create a safe space for victim survivors, for victim survivors. And she's often, when she's not writing, she's doing other domestic violence-related advocacy. She's serving on the board of a local family violence shelter and on her state's public policy committee, and she's authored a book, "'taking it Seriously", which obviously will be a topic of the podcast today. And I just wanna say that this is our sweet spot, which is, you know that hashtag Fixed Systems, Not Survivors. And I just want to say that this is our sweet spot, which is you know that hashtag fix systems, not survivors, yeah, and so I really am very excited to kind of dive into this. So so, janice Arev, jen, welcome.

Rev. Gen :

Welcome. Thank you so much and I love that hashtag.

David Mandel :

Yeah, and I think that you know we think a lot about individuals and course control, behaviors of individuals. But you know, once you move beyond physical violence, the thing about domestic violence is physical violence to patterns, of course control, this idea of understanding the role of institutions and professionals within those and outside those institutions and community and friends. And you know, and I think you're going to talk about not only the institution of the church but the church community, but entrapment, if we think through the lens of entrapment just not physical violence we think of deprivation of rights it immediately takes you to the doorstep of these major institutions and cultural frameworks like the church, like religion of different faiths and denominations and, unfortunately, what we're going to talk about, you're going to talk primarily about Christianity. Unfortunately, this is a problem that we could see across many other faiths.

David Mandel :

So while we're focusing on Christianity, we're actually not singling it out. This is just your area of expertise, so let's jump into it. So you recently published a book called Taking it Seriously A Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence. Can you just tell us about your journey towards writing that book, why you wrote it, how you? Got there what's in it?

Rev. Gen :

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of this is born out of my own victim-survivor story. I think a lot of this is born out of my own victim-survivor story and then it connects to hundreds of survivors that I've talked with as well. I was in two abusive marriages. The first one wasn't really faith-based, but the second one, even though he didn't really proclaim to be like a great theological person, I guess you would say he used the mechanism of religion and the fact that I had grown up in conservative religion against me.

Rev. Gen :

And then you know people have faith systems, internal belief systems, and that you cling to those in the abuses as a way to lessen the pain or to provide some sort of comfort. Right, it's maybe a mechanism of hope that even on the darkest days, that maybe things will be okay, you think that the divine systems out there will somehow honor your belief in that this marriage will be healed, or that this person who is constantly antagonizing you in many ways I experienced every form of abuse you can articulate that somehow this person will be healed if you just pray enough or believe enough, and unfortunately it doesn't work that way. That's really kind of a prosperity gospel view of you know, if you do enough, that somehow everything will be all right.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And it unfortunately doesn't work that way our own anxiety or our own fears or our own lack of control by lashing out at other people and using tools like faith to to justify doing it. Um, you know, that's my experience of of those people who use religion as a weapon to cover over their control. I am really curious to hear a little bit more about your analysis of the who are not aware of how these faith-based communities are responding, what their temperature is, what their attitudes are towards survivors and what their attitudes are towards perpetrators.

Rev. Gen :

Yeah, and redirect me if I go too far in one direction and you want me to come back another way. I want to start with the fact that I think institutional religion grooms women to be a certain way. We're supposed to be calm and quiet and submissive to the power of whether it's religion or the husband and the family. So I think women are groomed to be a certain way and it's really easy to be this subservient, obedient child and then fall into an abusive marriage. That just makes that even worse. And then we have churches saying that if there's a problem in the marriage it's up to the wife to fix it. She holds the keys to happiness in the relationship.

Rev. Gen :

Well, there's a problem that if there's two people in a relationship and only one is doing all the work and the other is constantly using the tools of oppression in this case religious tools of oppression to hold over the other person in so many ways, we're not going to get a solved problem, we're not going to have balance in that relationship. Right, and churches don't want to talk about domestic violence. They might want to talk about women doing the emotional lifting and the hard work in the relationship to cure the problems, but they don't want to call out the oppression of the perpetrator and saying you know what about the scripture verses that say you know, don't harm others with your words? Or you know, if you don't provide for your family thinking of neglect and some emotional issues here or financial abuse If you don't provide for your family, you're worse than an infidel. I mean, we have some scriptural backing to say we should not be perpetrating harm on those in our homes.

Rev. Gen :

And yet that's not what women tell me. They're hearing from the pulpit. They're hearing women, you need to be submissive. And then they go home and the men are like you know, the house is a mess, it's your fault. You know he throws his clothes on the floor and then a Christian marriage book says well, it's your job, wife, to pick up the clothes he leaves on the floor. They're turning these men into man babies, these men into man babies. I just don't understand that.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

You know, I am struck by the. It's almost very objectifying of both men and women to place them in this way, where a woman is responsible for perceived male violence, for men's lack of ability to communicate their emotions in responsible ways which don't harm other people, which don't threaten other people. All of these things men are capable of, by the way. So it is very infantilizing to men to look at them and say you're fundamentally violent, dude, and God made you that way. Also, god might be very fundamentally violent because he did some stuff in that Old Testament that we talk about, but we're going to forgive you because God is violent. Therefore you're violent.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And women, women are wonderful, they're sweet, except for that one thing they did in the Garden of Eden. You know we're going to blame them for that and they should take your stuff. And they've got to nurture the next generation and they've got to bring the faith forward and they've got to contain the men in their family. Their violence, their sexual violence, their temptation and harmed the psyche, the spirit, the bodies, the health, the well-being, the relationships of men. It is not a benefit to them to be viewed as innately violent and incapable of communicating in responsible, nurturing ways. So it's kind of crazy to me, but not crazy to me that that's the system that we've set up, right.

David Mandel :

I love you going right at the and use the word grooming. I think you know, when I hear you say that, where my mind goes to is how much well-meaning professionals even will want to look at survivors through this deficit lens. What's wrong with me, what's wrong with her? The survivors themselves look that way, but the mental health professors, other professors, will be like well, it's got to be her trauma history, it's got to be this. There's got to be something wrong with her that made her vulnerable to abuse. And I've always understood this through a social lens, that this isn't about the problems or the history or the background of the survivor Anybody can be a survivor, as you talk about in your book but that the language of grooming, understanding the role of institutions, understanding the role of culture, and so grooming is such a good word because it says what lays the groundwork for this individual abuser to take advantage of this person and it moves it out of the realm of some psychological deficit to a much more kind of.

David Mandel :

No, this is a social problem and we can name the mechanisms, you know. We can name the messages. We can name the sort of. You know wives be submissive, women should be the keepers other religions, and Christiana talks about this as well You're responsible for the sanctity and the peace in the home Right and so, therefore, so that anything that goes wrong in this home, it's your job, at minimum, to fix Right.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Including your chaotic, violent husband Right.

David Mandel :

And that's the on-level playing field of expectations. Can you take this a little further? Your dissertation is you're exploring the concept of institutional betrayal, so you've kind of talked about grooming institute, the concept of institutional betrayal, so kind of you've kind of talked about grooming but. But in the concept of institutional betrayal there's there's the concept of that a trust the institution's breaking your trust right can you?

David Mandel :

you know, just like when somebody individually is abusive in the context of a, you want to use a religious framework, the covenant of marriage. I think plenty of people say that choosing to be abusive is that's the break in the covenant of marriage. I think plenty of people say that choosing to be abusive is that's the break in the covenant of marriage, not the leaving. But can you talk about the concept of institutional betrayal and what you've learned through your research and just educate our audience about that?

Rev. Gen :

Sure, the term institutional betrayal was coined by Jennifer Fried and she says it's the wrongdoings that institutions perpetuate upon the individuals who depend on them and it's also the failure to prevent those wrongdoings and the lack of a supportive environment. So it's kind of cultural like baked in to the cultural aspect there, cultural like baked in to the cultural aspect there. So you have kind of the two sides. You have the failure to prevent wrong and then you have the lack of supportive environment in responding to that wrongdoing, yeah, yeah and extremely prevalent, unfortunately, in many of our institutions.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

You know I'm not just going to target religious institutions for that.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We have institutional betrayal across the board.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We have a level of I'm going to try to say this in a non-cranky survivor way of infantilism in professionals and institutions where they cannot handle any type of criticism which they feel threatens them.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And in the religious context, often that manifests as them calling survivors demonic or demonically motivated attacking the church by reporting domestic abuse, institutional abuse, pastor abuse, priest abuse, religious leader abuse, you know. So I think of that institutional betrayal as a much more active thing than just religion, but as an environment of control which locks people in abuse, in harm, in trauma, and really I feel relieved that religious leaders like you are starting to have a conversation about our roles and responsibilities in assisting people who are experiencing harm, trauma, violence, coercion, in being able to be free of those, because in all reality, if you really truly believe that faith is something that you have to freely choose, coercing people into faith is antithetical to faith itself. It does not produce faith, it does not produce fidelity, it does not produce strength, it does not produce long-term love and adherence to your principles. It does not do any of those things. So can you talk a little bit more about sort of those active ways that particularly religious institutions are failing survivors, but not just failing, locking them actively in these dynamics of abuse?

Rev. Gen :

That violation of trust that you mentioned a few minutes ago is a big part of that. You go to your faith community believing that that is going to be a place that is communal. That not only affects the survivor's own mental and physical health because of the traumas, but it affects their view of God. Now, in one of my research projects I did ask survivors this was the one tied to resilience. You know like how much has your view of God been impacted by this? And about 75% were able to tear apart their view of God from the negative response of the church and still had the ability to have a relationship with their deity. However, there is a good contingent of people who have to walk away from the church which has betrayed them in order to save their own faith system, whether that means recreating and deconstructing to the point where their faith looks radically different, or walking away from it entirely because they find nothing redeemable there.

Rev. Gen :

And that should be a beacon to the church, right, If people are having to walk away because they find nothing redeemable in what you're offering? What does that say?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Right, Janice, can you talk a little bit about the church's response in centering removing people's ability to leave the church, removing people's ability to leave a marriage as a solution for that exact problem, instead of pivoting to the persons and the behaviors which are causing that to happen?

Rev. Gen :

Yeah. So if we say okay, I had a survivor who is still in her toxic marriage because she feels that's the best option for the moment. She doesn't feel it's safe to leave. Yet she told me that their pastor said he will not be happy until the divorce rate is zero. That is such an uninformed statement, right when you want to take away possibly the only option for a survivor to escape to safety. He's not even cognizant of the problems. And this is a mega church, so you know there's a lot of survivors sitting in those pews, because the number of domestic violence cases in the church is equal to that outside the church. Research has shown that. So there has to be more victims than this one sitting in his church. And if that's what you hear on a Sunday that you're not even allowed to leave your destructive marriage because your faith leader says it's wrong and the divorce rate needs to be zero, that you just have to suck it up and deal with it.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

There's a lot of perpetrators hearing that too, jenny's.

Rev. Gen :

That's the scary thing, and they and they take it home and they hold it over the the victim's heads yeah and um say you have to try harder because look, this is what our pastor said.

David Mandel :

It really is such a clear statement from that pastor I don't care about the quality of your marriage. I don't care about the health and well-being of each individual in the marriage.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I don't care if you're killing each other.

David Mandel :

I you know my metric of of success is the institution you know is is the preservation of the institution of marriage and and the facade, in that sense, of you stayed together but you could have you, you know, um, you know and, and it's better to leave through death, through homicide, is really really and that person I'm sure would not embrace that as what they're saying.

David Mandel :

But that is one way to understand what they're saying, which is it's better to leave a marriage through homicide than it is to leave through divorce, and that's a terrifying statement and approach and it's I think it sort of speaks to a failure to really understand or really embrace the sanctity I mean I'm going to use the language that gets used a lot in religious concepts the sanctity of life it's, it's an anti-life position because it's saying I don't care about your life, I care about the institution of marriage more.

David Mandel :

And I think there's something. And if I was pressed I would say, say probably, and I'm kind of imagining the thought process and tell me you know this better than I do that I believe that there's some magic invested in this that if we commit deeply to the institution of marriage, that all these other things will magically resolve. Is that a fair sort of kind of character from your experience? Is that kind of the sort of thinking a fair sort of kind of character from your experience? Is that kind of the sort of thinking that's sort of around?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

this. Fake it till you, make it.

Rev. Gen :

Yeah, I would say that on the faith leader side that that's probably true and maybe they're approaching this innocently if I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, right, that if you just commit yourself to this marriage, that everything will be okay, and that's again kind of this prosperity gospel idea.

Rev. Gen :

But back to your point about possibly death being the only way out in these cases of harmful, toxic marriages. I had a faith leader's wife tell me well, to back up just a second. The reason I left was repeated death threats when the kids and I escaped a decade ago, and I had a faith leader's wife tell me that at least I would have died for a righteous cause. Oh, my goodness, Wow. What do you even do with that?

David Mandel :

When you said that I felt this like, literally, this stabbing in my heart. I really feel this sort of like, this sort of this sort of I don't know what it felt like to you, but this attack on your very existence is sort of like you, and so this is not this, is a this is just I, just cranky survivor coming out.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Here she comes. What is? It's not, it's rolling up heavy.

David Mandel :

It's, it's again. I'm not this is not my, but it feels like a sacrifice. Gospel All Abrahamic traditions are rooted in a common element.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

In part, that common element is that women serve a function and men serve a function, and the function is to replicate the culture and the religion. That's their job, which is dehumanizing in and of itself. We're not here on this earth simply to be things to replicate a religion. Sorry, some people may think that's truly the way that we're supposed to exist in this world and those people are probably pretty violent. Actually, I'm just going to name it. The people who believe that are violent and dehumanizing. We are women, are not things for reproduction and for cultural advancement. We do have children and help to replicate our children, our beliefs, our values. Right, we do serve that function and that is very powerful. And some people want to use that and pin us down and say that's all that we are.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

But that is very dehumanizing. It makes women into objects. It tells women that our only value is in marriage, in containing men's sexual violence, in containing their violence and having children and working for the church. Those are the things that women in faith-based spaces, whether evangelical or Catholic or even in some forms of Judaism, are told that they are and they can only be those things and if they deviate from that, they have no value. In fact, they're deemed a threat and therefore violence is perpetrated upon them. So at the base of this, there really is a problem with the view of men and women. The view that men are innately violent and cannot control themselves is a repeated thing throughout many faiths. That enables, that is a tool, that is a justification, that is something that allows for people to perpetuate violence, and I don't know if you want to comment about how you've seen that show up in the spaces that you're in, but I think that would be really good. Concrete examples would be amazing.

Rev. Gen :

I think there's some sin leveling, just kind of a concept of well, she certainly has done something wrong. So if whatever he does to her is of no consequence because she's done something wrong somewhere, right, not taking into account that, you know, maybe burning the dinner is not the same, as you know, sexual assault and physical violence in a marriage, right? That doesn't make any sense Asking what she did to cause the abuse well, what?

Rev. Gen :

did you do to make him hit you right? Trying to keep everything in-house in the church, right? So some faith systems have this built-in distrust of everything outside the church, outside that particular church right, they're the only ones with the real truth. So wanting to keep things in-house because you know somebody outside the church is going to do us harm, and so we need to build in this distrust for everybody outside of our particular faith system or situation here.

David Mandel :

I just learned a phrase sin leveling, you know, but it's such a common concept around domestic abuse that isn't just religious but just sort of that's very social.

David Mandel :

Very social. You know, she must have done something, or or she didn't, she didn't comply. And again, this is where the baked in sort of different expectations of men and women as parents which I, which I talk about a lot of my work, you know becomes this thing where people want to claim equity, but they want to claim equity on an unequal playing field, if that makes sense, which is of sort of like. So I'm just wondering if, if we can talk a little bit about your experience around you said something about institutional betrayal and being about not preventing the harm and not responding to harm when it happens, and you could wave a magic wand over one of these institutions or all of them. Maybe let's go for it and change the way they relate to perpetrators and I know there's a lot of ways we want them to do better, partnering with survivors and be there. But let's go all the way, let's go to the beginning. And what would you want that to look like differently from a faith perspective, to prevent that harm from happening in the first place?

Rev. Gen :

work, owning up to the shortcomings, not putting everything on the spouse contributing to the marriage, so that it's not the wife doing all the physical and emotional labor. You know, if the wife works she comes home and engages in that second shift of unpaid household duties and child care. I think the church has such an opportunity to build up men and be so they can be what God designed them to be right, strong but sensitive. Right, contributing to the household and to the marriage is a part of partnership and collaboration, not a weakness because you're a man doing a woman's work. Talking about the verbal and emotional aggression that happens right, like you might have someone say well, I never hit her. Well, how many victims tell you that sometimes it's the emotional and verbal abuse that feels so much deeper. The wounds are so much deeper than the physical assault.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Yeah, I find that really ironic that a lot of faith leaders cannot move to the place of the intention and the energy that's coming at a person because we're supposed to be really good at understanding intention.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We're supposed to be really good at understanding intention. We're supposed to be really good at understanding that internal space. Right, we talk about how our thoughts matter and how they can be sinful, quote unquote. Well, if thoughts can be sinful, why is it that intention energy? And harming other people? No-transcript. It's harming our bonds with each other. It is depleting the nurturance in this space.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We should be concerned about that, because the fact is is that relationships are a two-way street, whether or not the church wants to acknowledge it or not, that men are actually capable of nurturance, of care, of protection, in ways that are not liberty removing, that are not violent towards their own family right, that can discern what is a threat to and what is not. If God didn't give men those abilities, then we have a conversation that's a little bit different about why men are so very different in creation than women, why their capacity to take care of our relationships is so broken, and what that means in regard to sin and sin leveling. So that's that's. I don't know if you want to dive into that little gender knot there, because I know you talk a lot about gender roles and that's really where this is coming from. You know that, that sort of implicit agreement that men are just violent and women just need to take it, it's coming right from those gender roles.

Rev. Gen :

I think gender roles have done a huge disservice and I think that the gender role ideology that was really pulled out in some faith systems, like in the 80s and the 90s we could bring up purity culture there that has harmed a good portion of people who are now adults.

Rev. Gen :

Those gender roles have done a disservice in our marriages because, rather than both people being loving and contributing, we have like, oh well, she needs to be this and he needs to be that, and that's baked in to the social and cultural norms of so many faith systems. So you know that it can change, right, we could change these definitions, we could change the trajectory, we could start telling men that manhood should look different, and can you imagine how our families would change? And this is a multi-generational effect, right, because it's not just the spouse that is harmed. We know that in cases of domestic violence, the children are often harmed, whether it's through second hand hearing, seeing, feeling, experiencing something in the other room, or maybe they're directly harmed in some way. And then you have the patterns that they're observing and internalizing, that they grow up with. And if we don't break the cycle, if we don't somehow say this is not working, if we want to save families. We need to address some of these cultural, structural aspects of society.

David Mandel :

Yeah, have you seen a church or a religious institution that you feel like does this well in the direction that you're talking about, and it may not do it perfectly, but whether through their fellowship work or through their pastoral premarital counseling, or you've seen the sermon that you'd love to hear from the pulpit? Do you have any examples? Because a lot of times I think we can talk about the problem, but sometimes it's good to hold up. It's what you just said. It's possible to do this better and differently. What have you seen?

Rev. Gen :

Some of this is going to be on my wish list that you referred to a few minutes ago, but some of it I've actually seen.

Rev. Gen :

I have seen male colleagues at seminary who understood and embraced this and told me because you spoke up in class about your experiences with domestic violence, it will affect how I handle this in my church in the future the future.

Rev. Gen :

I have had people comment on my book.

Rev. Gen :

I like to say that women in leadership view this differently, probably because women have fought cultural norms in systemic ways themselves in so many situations.

Rev. Gen :

But female pastors are often a little more open and I'm not saying all of them, because I did have one person tell me that a female pastor is very harmful to her.

Rev. Gen :

But I do hear from a lot of women in pastoral or ministry roles that they seem to understand this concept better and they talk about it more.

Rev. Gen :

They're maybe a little more proactive in training staff and leadership and I would love to see churches do at least training for the leadership staff of the church on what domestic violence is and how to recognize it and how to respond. But I would love to see the whole church trained, because maybe you're in a church that only men are in leadership and you don't feel comfortable talking about the sexual assault you're experiencing with the male leader of your church. But maybe you'll talk to a friend and if your friend has had some exposure to what domestic violence is and looks like and how to respond, that could be very helpful as opposed to only having that indoctrination that well, you're just not trying hard enough or maybe you're not having sex enough or some of those harmful messages. I think churches need to have those connections in the community connection to the family violence shelter, connection to trained, licensed therapists, mm-hmm connection to the family violence shelter connection to trained licensed therapists.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

There's a little bit of a conflict there and I know that culturally in the church there's a little bit of self-protection when it comes to therapists, almost as if a suspicion that they've taken over their pastorly role and they're giving them worldly advice rather than giving them divinely inspired advice. And I love all of the different pieces that you're pulling out about actions that pastors and institutions can adopt, attitudes, things that they can reflect upon. Is my practice, is my sermon supporting or is it informing people that violence, coercion in the home is a breaking of their vows Right? Am I focusing on the real problem?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

So a lot of people when they pull out that great biblical sermon once a year wives, or when somebody is getting married, wives be submissive to your husbands. Husbands love your wives as you love the church. Very rarely does anyone follow up with talking about what that means from a behavioral standpoint. They may speak of it from a spiritual standpoint and a gender role standpoint, but a behavioral standpoint. So I would love to hear some of your religious leader advice, your sermon-based talking points, about exactly that about abuse and coercion as being a fundamental breaking of the vows of promises in that covenant of marriage.

Rev. Gen :

Absolutely, and that's one of the first things I talk about when I am speaking with faith leaders, because I think for so long it's been the idea that divorce breaks the covenant of marriage and we have to take a step back and say it's not divorce that breaks the covenant of marriage, it's abuse that breaks the covenant of marriage. So what if, instead of saying we want the divorce rate to be zero, we said we said we want the abuse rate to be zero? That would be a very different conversation in the church, right? We'd be hearing messages that say don't scream at your spouse and your kids. Don't use emotional manipulation and coercion to control them. Don't control them financially. Don't make your new wife drop out of school and stay home to cook and clean. There could be so many things we look at differently if we started shifting our mindset around divorce as being the problem to abuse being the problem.

David Mandel :

I, you know, I would love you know, I'd love that and I would love it to go even further. You know which is, you know, and somebody to say and again this is not my context, but you know, so don't make sense but to say I'm really concerned for the if you use that language the soul or the spiritual relationship of anybody in this congregation who's using violence, congregation who's using violence. It's not only in my concern for the covenant and the health of marriages, and marriages and families are the building blocks of this church and the building block of our society. So therefore, I'm really speaking to if I'm up there as a pastor to the health of families, the church and the community. So there's nothing more important I could be speaking about. And I wanted to speak directly to anybody in this congregation who's using violence or using authority, misusing their authority, misusing their role, to harm others in the family, because that is not only a concern for the health and well-being of families, but I'm concerned about your alignment, your spiritual relationship with God and I want you to seek out pastoral counseling and I want you to come to me and to open the door wide and say come and speak to me, because this is about.

David Mandel :

If you're now, there are going to be people who are feigning faith. There are people who really don't care that people are not going to admit. But I believe and I'm wondering you know, denise, if you think this that you would get people knocking on the pastor's door maybe you know or pulling them aside someplace if they heard that from the pulpit. But I don't know what you think. Is that too unrealistic? Is that too dreamy?

Rev. Gen :

It's dreamy, but it's a good dream.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

It is a fabulous dream. We're all going to join you in that dream.

Rev. Gen :

Yes, because I have never heard anyone say that from a pulpit and I have been in religious spaces, you know, since I was a baby and of course the ex didn't want me or didn't allow us to attend church for many years, but I still found ways to connect with my faith and I never heard anything like that. I have, in the last decade or so, heard people very few talk against abuse, but I've never heard anyone put it quite like you did, where they're reaching out to the perpetrator sitting in the pew saying I'm concerned with the soul of those using violence.

Rev. Gen :

This is a misuse of your authority.

Rev. Gen :

What an amazing statement, and I think you'd have a line of people knocking on the pastor's door to address that Because, especially if we do this early in marriage or early in life, when I'm speaking to survivors and this might be true for you too at the beginning, they don't want the marriage to end. They married someone because they love this person. They dream of spending a happily ever after with this person. They just want the abuse to stop. But if you let it go for two plus decades, that person is done. They just need out.

Rev. Gen :

They need to be able to maintain their sanity, get a break, step away, and the only way they can heal after decades of abuse is to literally get away from it. But at the beginning that's not what they want. They want the marriage to work.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

It's very interesting to me when I hear faith-based communities talk about the divorce rate and watch faith-based communities try to shut down easy access to divorce in the name of preserving the institution of a marriage and preserving families, that there is no conversation about what safe families look like. There is no conversation about the responsibility of the persons within that marriage both of them to maintain the health, the wellbeing, the trust, the stability, the nurturance. And it's not shocking to me that that's not a conversation, because the reality is is that perpetrators will use any expedient tool they can. And when we often hear faith-based leaders repeat narratives that the problem is that women are leaving marriages and that people are not committed, rather than diving down into the behavioral realities that destroy our connections, our trust, our relationships and focusing on impeding people's choices and abilities, that just appears to be a bunch of perpetrators who have gotten hold of religion and they love using it as a bludgeon.

David Mandel :

And that's a real phenomenon's real, you know and I think that, uh, uh, I, I think that we can set the bar high. I know it was dreamy what I was saying earlier and I I know it's I want to be in that world, but it is related to my work with.

David Mandel :

When I did perpetrator intervention work was I was always thinking about how do you speak to men those men I was working with their higher sense of self this is a version of that and also how do you kind of exacerbate their internal contradictions about their own behavior? I think there's external consequences that motivate change. I'm going to lose my partner. I'm going to get arrested, I'm going to lose my job, I'm going to lose my partner, I'm going to get arrested, I'm going to lose my job and lose my kids. But there's also, ultimately, for any long term sustainable change, it's got to be an internal transition, transformation, and to do that you've got to really both increase the internal pain and I don't mean that in a constructive way which is this hurts. I hurt because I do this and I want to change my behavior and then give them a path forward. You know so for me it's not it's actually in general to try to intrude pathway, but to see it in a religious environment, and I have faith I'm going to move us to kind of wrapping up soon, but I have faith in you know that these organizations.

David Mandel :

On one level, they talk about difficult subjects like pornography. They talk about difficult subjects like infidelity within their context, within their framework. Why can't we? I mean and I'm not saying this naively why aren't we talking about abuse as being destructive by the perpetrator, not abuse and the survivor? The woman has to fix it because it is an issue, but she's got to fix it. Why don't we talk directly about the person using violence?

Rev. Gen :

Right, and some of those are tied together right. A friend of mine had the pastor tell her I can't read your book on domestic violence because I'm too busy dealing with the problem of pornography in the church. And what a short-sighted statement when you're not even connecting that pornography and abuse can be related or connected in some way. Why not bring those topics together in conversation with the men in the church?

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

topics together in conversation with the men in the church that violent sexuality is actually a part of the violence in the relationship. You know, it's an interesting phenomena that a lot of religious leaders focus on sexual behaviors and preventing sexual behaviors but do not focus at all on violence. And I don't actually think it's accidental. To be honest with you, the way that religion has been used to coerce people into religion in a violent way throughout history is a pattern of humans.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

We have used faith-based beliefs to harm other people and really what a lot of us are asking is that we do a little bit of self-reflection about the use of violence and coercion within faith-based communities and how that fundamentally erodes them, how that actually is a form of harm and violence towards is a form of harm and violence towards any deity which we say has made this beautiful world that we live in and is a fundamental form of impediment to long-term, stable, healthy connection with both a partner in a marriage, but also with your institution of faith.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

If you're perpetrating these things, you're seeding your own demise, you're seeding divorce, you're seeding destruction of relationships, you're the problem. So that's actually one of the things as Cranky Survivor, I'm not at all afraid to say listen, you guys are. You're making your own problems here and we've been doing it for thousands of years. So I think, ending on a big question, not a small question at all what are some of the concrete things that we can do to stop doing that, to stop using religion as a tool of coercion and violence towards other people? What are the fundamental things we need to shift inside of our own hearts, our own souls, our own institutions to stop doing it?

Rev. Gen :

I think, since we're talking about a faith-based lens here, I think we need to connect to the parts of our sacred texts that show that God is on the side of the oppressed, as you said. I don't know, some of those more coercive, violent messages resonate for whatever reason, but that is so harmful to the people, not just the ones experiencing harm, but the children sitting in the pews. I think, as religion trends show, our younger people are not staying connected to the church. They're leaving the church. But if all they hear is these damaging messages, god doesn't like you the way you are. You need to change. God requires that you stay in this abusive marriage. You need to change Rather than. God loves you, god accepts you, god is there for you, god wants to heal your broken heart. I think if our messaging changes, that's a big deal. But we have to change internally in order to promote that kind of messaging right. We can't have angry, violent hearts and speak of God's love. It won't come off as genuine.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

Yeah, yeah, I love that and I think actually that's a great place to sort of wrap up and I just want to say thank you, reverend Janice, for being out there.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

I thank you, reverend Janice, for being out there, for doing what I would consider to be the real spiritual healing work of separating out violence and coercion from our faith-based beliefs and communities so that we can really truly choose to be faithful and to live our faith with great fidelity, with great love, with great freedom, in ways that nurture our own souls, nurture the souls of our partners and our family and the community around us. And Reverend Janice's book is, taking it Seriously, a Faith Leader's Guide to Domestic Violence, and I'm really going to encourage you that, if you are a faith leader, that you do read this book and let you know that also, we do have a webinar called what Faith Leaders Can Do to Be Allies to Domestic Violence Victims. There is some real tangible advice inside of Reverend Janice's book and there's also some tangible advice that we give to faith-based leaders about conversations, sermons, talking points about domestic violence and the covenant of marriage. Do you have anything else you want to follow up with?

David Mandel :

No, I just want to say thank you for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

Rev. Gen :

Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

David Mandel :

Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, that's such an important conversation and we are still here. We are wrapping up again another episode. I always love doing these conversations. I get energized by our guests and by talking with you. So I am David Mandel, CEO of Safety Other Institute.

Ruth Reymundo Mandel:

And I'm Ruth Ramundo Mandel and I am the co-owner and chief business development officer.

David Mandel :

And please follow us on social media. Subscribe to this podcast on any platform you're on. Check us out at safeandtogetherinstitutecom or go to one of our learning opportunities at academysafeandtogetherinstitutecom and we're out.