Rachael Denhollander Twists the Evidence to Smear MacArthur and Biblical Counseling
In the wake of The Gospel Coalition memory-holing Josh Butler’s article sexualizing Christ and the Church, Abuse Incorporated and its “expert” figurehead Rachael Denhollander jumped on the opportunity to blame Butler’s icky article on – you guessed it – John MacArthur and biblical counseling.
Denhollander reminded her Twitter followers that MacArthur continues to stubbornly look to the plain text of scripture for how husbands are to care for their wives:
First of all, the quote in Rachel’s graphic edits out key context, with the question specifically about when to get married. As one commenter points out: “MacArthur’s point is “women are as lonely and unfulfilled as you are, so step up and marry someone, protect her, and have kids.”
She ties MacArthur’s “like a savior” remark (pulled from Ephesians 5:25-28) to an out-of-context page from The Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation’s Journal of Pastoral Practice (Volume 7, number 3, published in 1984), and includes her laughably false analysis of what Jay Adams had instructed 39 years ago.
The journal contained Adams’ instructions to a biblical counselor in response to a hypothetical case from the 1974 Christian Counselor’s Handbook. The particular case in question involves a husband who molested his 16-year-old daughter and blames it on his wife refusing sex for three months. The training is designed to help a biblical counselor know how to approach the situation, what questions to ask, and what elements are important from a biblical perspective with the goal of reconciliation, safety, and repentance. Adams provided his answer for how to approach the following situation:
Yet Denhollander presents only one of Adams’ three pages of instruction and proceeds to make manifestly false claims about what Adams wrote.
She claimed:
Yet Adams wrote “in some [states] this is a felony involving imprisonment for more than a year,” not that it was not a felony in all states.
Yet Adams was clearly advising counselors on the non-legal aspects of their counseling (“…apart from the legal ramifications…there are several issues that should be addressed”). He was making it clear that he was not talking about whether or not to report abuse to the authorities. It should go without saying that every citizen should be aware of the laws of the jurisdictions they are under, shouldn’t it?
Adams writes specifically (in the context of putting the family back together):
[The counselor] will take care to bring Brad home only under the most carefully worked out conditions. Perhaps the daughter could spend a week or two at a relative’s home while Brad and Shirley begin to work out some of their difficulties. But when the daughter moves back in, security and scheduling that prohibits the private accessibility of the one to the other should be assured for some time, until full trust is rebuilt as a part of the radical amputation process, in which prevention must be uppermost in the thinking of all.
Clearly, the framework of the instruction is one in which the father and daughter have already been separated for her safety, and in the case that the family is on the road to reconciliation, safety is a top concern.
“Trauma” is simply a person’s emotional response to a distressing experience. It is a given reality. Yet in the modern conversation (i.e. “trauma-informed care”), trauma has moved from being a consequence of sin to being the sin itself. In other words, a person’s culpability and consequences for sins they’ve committed are now defined by and adjudicated according to the subjective, expressed emotional response of the person they’ve sinned against. This is nowhere to be found in the Bible, yet is foundational to the judicial framework for the #churchtoo movement.
Denhollander continues by pointing out that Adams recommends beginning the counseling inquiry by targeting the wife:
Yet Adams does not present the issues to be addressed as a step-by-step process but as a comprehensive list of things that should be addressed. He does not instruct condemnation, but investigation, noting that either husband or wife having a problem that keeps them out of the marital bed (1 Cor. 7:2-9) must be addressed under the principles of Matthew 18:15. In other words, it is a sin to deny your spouse sexual intimacy and not tell them why. Adams makes it clear (in the sentence Denhollander cut off between the page she shared and the ones she didn’t) that the counselor must “[take] care not to allow either to blame his or her sinful behavior on the failure of the other.” Denhollander purposefully claims something patently false about what Adams wrote, and follows by recommending the Christo-feminist manifesto The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Gregoire to reemphasize her complete dismissal of the Bible’s principles for marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.
It is one thing for a Twitter-incontinent abuse advocate to twist cited material to push a point. It is another thing for a trained lawyer to be transparently unable to comprehend the documents she is citing in making her case. It is a good thing Rachael Denhollander is a regular on the Abuse Incorporated Speaking Circuit and not an actual litigator. God help anyone who hires her for anything other than PR.
Note: In what is bound to be a prescient remark, Denhollander remarked in later Twitter conversation that she is “encouraged by the direction of SEBTS (Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary)” on the issue of biblical counseling. Given SEBTS’s abysmal track record of dealing with abuse survivors and cases, her endorsement seems particularly apropos.
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Interesting how these rabid feminists always give the wife a pass for not first reporting criminal abuse when it happened. Apparently they all need a man to report it for them. Can’t figure out how to use a phone without a man’s help? I don’t know.
“you report child abuse, period!” (unless you’re female – then you don’t report it and you blame John McArthur instead)
This woman comes off as more of a greasy personal injury lawyer than biblically sound arbiter. Not impressed.