Are evangelical men really more likely to beat their wives?
The Australian Broadcasting Commission (our BBC) is reporting that evangelical Christian men are most likely to commit domestic violence. It's demonstrably untrue.
Unfortunately, some Christians are seizing on the report uncritically and using it to attack evangelical Christians. They have an ax to grind.
Here's the reality — the more men go to church, the LESS likely they are to commit domestic violence.
Here's a post I wrote back in 2009 on an academic study on the power of the gospel to transform men and heal families.
The conventional wisdom is that evangelical Christianity reinforces the oppression of women.
Elizabeth Brusco, a feminist Marxist scholar conducted fieldwork in Columbia from 1982-1983, and found that pentecostal conversion transformed traditional gender relations by giving women a moral authority in the home to challenge their husbands’ drinking, gambling, or adultery.
She wrote up her findings in "The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Columbia" (1995).
