Archers’ abuse plot

I’m not a fan of The Archers.

But Britain’s longest running radio soap opera, formerly ‘an everyday story of country folk’, made headlines in April when its plot of domestic abuse came to a dramatic climax as Helen Titchener, at the end of her tether, stabbed her emotionally manipulative husband Rob. Even I sat down and listened! It brought to public attention the sorts of shocking family situations which domestic abuse charities, social workers and sometimes pastors, have to address.

The dominator

This kind of abuse is generally different from domestic violence. Usually perpetrated by men on women (but vice versa does occur) it is about undermining the other person and their self-confidence. This takes place through continually questioning their competency, or making them feel guilty, or inadequate. I came upon one situation in which when a beautiful woman appeared on TV the husband would comment ‘there’s a real woman, not like you!’ It might take the more subtle form of feigning care but saying: ‘I’d better do that, dear – you’re not very good at things, are you?’

Pat Craven, a former prison officer, has been writing and running workshops on this subject since the 1990s. She distinguishes different types of ‘dominators’. There is the bully, smiling with his mouth but glaring with his eyes. The ‘jailer’ may appear romantic, but will want to isolate his partner from friends and with a pretence of protection ring fence their life, monopolise their time under the guise of wishing to be ‘together always’. The ‘persuader’ makes you feel sorry for him but loves to coerce you into doing things you really don’t want to do, but you do it just to please him. There are other types too, but its all about control, manipulation and denigration. Craven’s book Living with the Dominator, which I read a few years ago, is helpful, but with a secular, apparently anti-man, ‘women are better off without men’ agenda: it is about getting women out of marriages, not healing them.

The Christian husband

The problem for biblical Christianity is that the NT teaching concerning male head-ship in the home can easily be portrayed as being supportive of such domestic abuse. And sometimes wrong-headed, forceful ‘Christian’ men do pursue this kind of suffocating control over wives (and sometimes daughters too. ‘You mustn’t leave home until you get married – I’m your father!’). We were with a pastor recently who took a call concerning a situation similar to The Archers plot, in which the wife had been provoked into hitting out. ‘But to see them in church’, he said, ‘we thought for years they were the perfect Christian couple.’ If reports are correct, then even a man suffering as a Christian in jail in Iran has dominated his wife from prison in this way.

We need to be very clear. The headship of the Christian husband in the home is to be Christ-like, a loving, serving leadership – not a cover for oppression.

While the aim of the dominator is to undermine his partner, the aim of the Christian husband is to build up his wife. Whereas the dominator wishes to enslave and disparage, a truly Christian husband seeks to provide a marital environment in which his wife feels loved, cherished and liberated to blossom as a woman. We follow Jesus, who not only died for the good of his ‘wife’ the church, but works to make her ‘radiant’ and without ‘stain or wrinkle’ (Ephesians 5.27).

Confronting an abusive husband is no easy job. But, pastor, you must do it for the sake of the name of Christ.