Father Knows Best: Is coercive sex rape?

Rape culture is absolutely a social problem and a legal problem. But it is also a problem of faith. God who is feminine, God who is a victim, God who stands with the least of these, God who hangs on the cross. This is the God who demands that we bring rape to an end.

Photo from Shutterstock.com: http://shutr.bz/YfanjZ

Hey Rev!

Is coercive sex rape?

– Lost and Found


Dear L&F:

Yes.

Sex without informed consent given by a competent adult is rape. A rapist may deprive someone of her agency via physical violence or via threats. Or a rapist may choose to prey upon someone who is incapable of meaningfully assenting to sex, such as a child or someone who is inebriated. Regardless of the precise circumstances, it is the absence of a freely given affirmation to sex which defines rape. To put that thought another way, the gold standard for consent to sex is not “not saying no.” It is an enthusiastic “yes!”

If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, L&F, it has been lit up this past week with commentary on the convictions of the two young rapists in Steubenville, Ohio. A lot of folks are righteously angry at those news outlets which have framed the court’s guilty verdict as a tragedy for the perpetrators while remaining silent about the violence done to the survivor. (Laurie Penny’s article on the New Statesman and Kim Simon’s piece at Huffington Post, for instance, are both excellent.)

Part of me is hesitant to attempt to add anything to this conversation; what Penny, Simon, and writers like them have already said is both passionate and prophetic. However, I’m going to push through my reluctance for two reasons. First, it matters that men speak up against rape culture (i.e., the culture in which a blasé or permissive attitude towards rape is allowed or even celebrated). And, second, I’d like to suggest that part of what makes rape culture possible is bad theology.

A host of factors are operative in the psyche of someone who chooses to inflict sexual violence on another. While we cannot see into anyone else’s head, I agree with those folks who guess that the foundation for the rape in Steubenville was poured out of a mixture of male privilege, of the casual misogyny of jock culture, and of the frightening tendency of crowds to be stupid, impulsive, and cruel. A fourth element belongs in this poisonous recipe, however: rape is abetted by our collective reluctance to see God as feminine and God as victim.

First, God as feminine. We live in a time and place in which we picture the divine in overwhelmingly male terms: notwithstanding Paul’s insistence that male and female are one in Christ Jesus, God remains “he” in most dialogue, in most prayer, and in most liturgy. Feminist theologians (among whom I count many of my colleagues here at Spokane Faith and Values — see the excellent series of recent posts on the female aspect of God) have been helpful in pushing our boundaries. However, comparatively little of feminist theology has made its way into mainstream conversation. I remember, for example, being startled by the big laugh than the master of ceremonies at a music event got when he referred to God as “she.”

As Sallie McFague puts it, “many Christians use ‘God’ and ‘Father’ interchangeably as if ‘Father’ were a literal description of God.” That’s a big problem. For so long as the notion of God as mother or sister strikes us as silly or scandalous — for so long as God is invariably the old guy with the beard — we will continue to struggle to honor the full humanity of women. And, as a consequence, the balance of our empathy after a rape will continue to drift toward the male perpetrators.

Photo from Shutterstock.com: http://shutr.bz/YfanjZ

Photo from Shutterstock.com: http://shutr.bz/YfanjZ

Second, I’d like to underline the important of encountering God as victim. There is a lot of complex theology around what happened as Jesus’ hung on the cross. However, the most basic element of the crucifixion is the one that we talk about least: the witness of the cross is that Jesus absolutely shares in our loss, our grief, and our pain. On the cross, Jesus embodied his teaching that, just as we have done to the least of these, our brothers and sisters, so we have done to him.

The cross testifies that God is always found with the suffering. The cross testifies that, in Steubenville, God was dragged unconscious from one party to another and raped repeatedly. For so long as we forget or deny this — for so long as we imagine God as the initiator of violence rather than its victim — the balance of our empathy after a rape will continue to drift toward the male perpetrators.

Now, none of this is to say that we may not have compassion upon the perpetrators in Steubenville: much as the tragedy of murder is not only that it makes someone dead but, also, that it makes someone into a murderer, part of the tragedy of Steubenville is that two young men have made themselves into rapists. Both have been diminished by their actions and both are in need of healing and of rehabilitation.


However, theirs is not the primary tragedy here. The principal injustice of the cross is not that the soldiers who crucified Jesus were traumatized by doing so: the principal injustice is that those soldiers murdered a man. The principal injustice of Steubenville is not that the perpetrators will never be the same after their conviction: the principal injustice is they raped a woman.

Rape culture is absolutely a social problem and a legal problem. But it is also a problem of faith. God who is feminine, God who is a victim, God who stands with the least of these, God who hangs on the cross. This is the God who demands that we bring rape to an end.

Do you have a question about ethical decision making, living a faithful life or theology? Leave a comment below or send your question for Martin Elfert to [email protected].

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!