Blaming Family and Faith

by John Lofton
"Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive
it far from him" - Proverbs 22:15.
I;;f.=''''"<Wf n a recent "Donahue" TV
m:
,,,,,,,,,,, __,,,,,,,. Secredy taped by parents
who suspected her of beating their baby
(who appeared to be about six or eight
months old), a baby-sitter was shown
slapping this tiny child very hard be-
cause the baby was crying while being
fed. And I mean this baby was slapped
hard -- three times and then something
was held over its mouth to trY to quiet
it
Coming out of this sickening ftlm
clip, Phil Donahue says: "I bet you
$100 this woman was struck as a kid."
He says, smugly: "I betcha," as a cam-
era shows a woman in the audience nod-
ding in agreement
And then Mr. Donahue says that
what we just saw is "a legacy we pass
from generation to generation," that
"we use the Bible to justify this." And,
he says, incredulously, that if spanking
were put to a national vote it would
win because we believe in "spare the
rod."
Now, the implication here that God,
somehow, is responsible for the assault
we had just witnessed because of what
He, supposedly, teaches--and because of
what some people use the Bible to
"justify" --is a damnable lie. The kind of
horrendous child abuse we saw in this
ftlm is, in no way, sanctioned by God,
regardless of what some people may, in-
deed. attempt to justify.
And if someone had had the guts to
take Mr. Donahue up on his bet, they
would have won. Because the odds are
against what he said.
An article in The New York Times
of Jan. 24 reports that studies now
indicate "that about one-third of people
who are abused in childhood will be-
come abusers themselves ... a lower
percentage than many experts had ex-
pected." Or, to put it another way, two-
thirds of those abused as children do not
become abusers themselves.
Indeed, this article quotes Dr. Richard
Krugman, a professor of pediatrics at
the University of Colorado Medical
School and director of that school's
Center for Prevention and Treatment of
Child Abuse and Neglect, as saying:
MThere are substantial numbers of men
and women who were abused as chil-
dren, but who are not themselves child
abusers, drug abusers, criminals or men-
tally disturbed."
This article reports on a study in the
1986 issue of the journal Child Abuse
and Neglect, which found that the
strongest predictor from childhood of be-
coming an abusive parent was not hav-
ing been abused, but rather having felt
as a child that one was unloved and un-
wanted by one's parents.
And this article reports on a study of
child abuse studies, by two Yale psycho-
logists, which concluded that 30 percent
is the best estimate of the rate at which
abuse of one genration is repeated in the
next
So, I accept your bet, Mr. Donahue.
And you can mail me my money, care
of this paper.
Now, let's get to Mr. Donahue's not-
so-subtle denigration of God's Holy
Word, the Bible.
Ironically, and it is a sad and heart-
breaking irony, child abuse, sex crimes
and family violence occurred much less
frequently -- indeed were almost non-
existent -- in early America when the
overwhelming majority of our people
believed the Bible, literally, and lived
by it
This assertion is documented in detail
in three important books: "Past, Pre-
sent and Personal: The Family and the
Life Course in American History"
(Oxford University Press, 1986) by
John Demos, professor of history at
Yale University and member of the
Carnegie Council on Children; "Sex in
Middlesex: Popular Mores in a Massa-
chusetts County, 1649-1699" (Univer-
sity of Massachusetts Press, 1986) by
Roger Thompson, a university reader in
the school of English and American
studies at the University of East Anlia
in Norwich, England; and "Domestic
Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy
Kgainst Family Violence from Colo-
nial Times to the Present" (Oxford.
1987) by Elizabeth Pleck, a research
associate at the Center for Research on
Women at Wellesley College.
To summarize, Mr. Demos finds
child abuse far more prevalent in mo-
dem times than in Colonial America,
when the average family had many
more children. Why? Because, he says,
now "We have no clear equivalent to
the 'providential' world view of our
forebears -- their belief that all things,
no matter how surprising and in-
scrutable, must be attributed to God's
overarching will."
Indeed. Colonial Americans, for the
most part, treated their children ac-
cording to God's will, God's law. The
Bible says children are a gift from God,
a heritage of the Lord Thus, children,
back then were almost never abused, as
they are today.
In his book, Mr. Thompson finds
almost no sex crimes in Puritan
Massiicbusetts. During the 50-year
period he studied, there were no reported
rapes -- none -- within the legal
definition of that crime. Why? The
people then, virtually all of them, be-
lieved in God and lived by His Law.
And in her book, Ms. Pleck says that
even though the domestic murder rate in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the
lowest ever reported in our history. the
Puritans, nonetheless, were the first t(>
pass laws against domestic violence,
passing the "Body of Liberties" law in
(Continued on page 24)
The Counsel of Chalcedon July, 1989 page 11
Blaming Family and Faith
Continued from page 11
164 L But, she points out, "as a re-
ligious community gave way to a more
pluralistic one, the state gradually relin-
quished its commitment to enforcing
'morality. Thus, the campaign to eradi-
cate wicked behavior . yielded to tole-
:i'pnce and indifference."
So, there's your culprit, Mr. Dona-
hue --tolerance of disobedience to God's
law, the Bible, and indifference to His
to obey His law.
That's why we're in the mess we're in.
I betcha.
ffieprinted from The Washington Times;
Apiill4, 1989.] .
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The Counsel of Chalcedon July, 1989 page 24