Last week my girl drew my attention to an article on Jezebel that was kicking up a storm about CDD. That is Christian Domestic Discipline to you and me.
This is a rather controversial lifestyle that not only advocates the Head-of-Household approach to TTTWD, but claims that it is sanctioned by God as written in the Bible.
Now this is not the only article doing the rounds on this. The Daily Beast and the Huffington Post have both carried article on this subject in the last week.
The Beast interviewed Chelsea who said:
First, he uses his hands for “warm-up” slaps. Then comes a combination of tools based on the specific infraction. The wooden spoon is the least severe; for the worst rule-breaking—like texting while driving (“It could kill me,” Chelsea admits) or moving money between accounts without his permission—she’ll be hit with something else: a hairbrush, a paddle, or a leather strap.
But this isn’t domestic abuse, Chelsea says. This is for Jesus.
Naturally they also found examples of abused women where the abuse was justified by this ‘Christian’ doctrine where women had left their husbands.
The Huffington Post cites Jim Alsdurf, a forensic psychologist who is described as an expert on Christian abuse. He is quoted as saying: “No fool in his right mind would buy this as a legitimate way to have a relationship. A relationship that infantilizes a woman is one that clearly draws a more pathological group of people.”
Dr Alsdurf’s comments put one in mind of the stance once taken by the American Psychiatric Association that did not declassify homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973. Indeed the UN did not entirely abandon this stance until 1990.
No one wants to ignore the very real issue of domestic violence; certainly one would have to be naïve to think that DD relationships are immune from this. But it is hard to separate DD from CDD once one goes down this road.
However, most of the anger here seems to be directed at the Christian element in all this. Some tending to view this is another example of Christian extremism while others, Christians themselves, resenting what they see as the misreading reading or even perversion of their faith.
Some are more measured.
They point out that it is a sexual fetish that is not incompatible with being a Christian, but that some Christians cannot come to terms with this and have to cloak it in religion to justify ‘kinky sex.’
The Beast cites Sue making this very point on a CCD blog.
This last point seems perhaps the most rational to non-Christians, but let us not overlook the central point of this. Either we have religious toleration or we do not. If someone wants to interpret their religion in this way then as long as it is between consenting adults who is to say they are wrong?
Can it be abused? Sure it can, as can any DD or vanilla relationship. But can we really respond in such a broad-based way?
Of all the misreading, misunderstandings and down-right self-serving distortions of the Christian Bible in the world, surely attacking consenting DD comes a long way down the list.
