An elder at Grace Community Church believes that Christian women must face abuse by their unbelieving husbands.
John Street, an elder at John MacArthur's Grace Community Church (GCC), shared some controversial views on a marriage between Chrsitian women and unbelieving husbands in a series of lectures from 2012. The chair of the graduate program of biblical counseling at The Master's University and Seminary (TMUS), Street believes that Christian women should endure abuse from their unbelieving husbands just as missionaries face persecution.
According to the Roys Report, Street shared these views in a 10-year old lecture that was posted online by TMUS. The series of lectures from 2012 was about "advanced biblical counseling." In the lectures, Street said that the "abused victim is the key player in reaching and changing the abuser." He believes that Christian women must endure the same struggles as missionaries who risk their life to share the Gospel. Street also criticized secular and "integrationist counseling," which puts together psychology and biblical principles to focus on physical safety of abused individuals.
"If saving the body is the ultimate goal in counseling, to be consistent, we would have to make that the ultimate goal of Christians across the board," Street said in a 10 year old lecture. "So that would mean, a lot of our missionaries who are in locations around the world, where they are under bodily threat, we're going to have to pull them home and put them in a protective situation because husbands, wives, children are under bodily threat."
Street challenged, "What does that say about Christians in countries like China where the church is openly abused and physically harmed?"
Instead of ultimately trying to prevent harm, Street urges to face it instead because the goal of biblical counseling "is to seek to glorify God in order to win the abuser over to righteousness" and "to be God's kind of person, even in the midst of your trial."
In another lecture, Street urges Christian women to stay in marriages despite being abused. He claimed that it is wrong for a Christian wife to separate from her unbelieving husband because of abuse, unless she believes she will be killed. He remarked, "Yes, if her goal and purpose is to just simply get out of the trouble, I think it's wrong."
Instead, Street said that a Christian woman's purpose must "first to please God. and "to win their spouse over to righteousness," which sometimes involves "hardship" and "abuse." His comments are especially relevant after the Grace Community Church elder shamed and excommunicated Eileen Gray for condemning her child-abusing husband, David out of their home.
Diane Langberg, a psychologist and leading trauma expert, opposed Street's views, arguing that his teachings "[do] not look like Jesus Christ." She argued that Jesus regularly focused on caring for the vulnerable and "did all sorts of things to protect them and welcome them."
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence at the hands of their intimate partners. Meanwhile, 1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner. This has even become worse during the COVID pandemic.
UAB News reported that as per the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, domestic violence cases increased by up to 25% to 33% globally in 2020. In the U.S. alone, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner. Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of violent crime in America.
