Guild Takes Steps To Tackle Domestic Violence

The Church of Scotland Guild is probably the most radical part of the Kirk. No, don’t laugh. Despite the caricatures of harmless old ladies knitting and gossiping, records show the Guild has boycotted food from the old apartheid-ridden South Africa, supported people afflicted by Aids, paid for a worker with prostitutes in Edinburgh, helped with a refugee centre in Cairo and attacked the sex industry booths at the last football World Cup.

At this week’s assembly, most of the focus was on the guild’s work in raising awareness about a new form of slavery – human trafficking; but another part of its work slipped through on the nod – its contribution to ecumenical discussion on domestic violence.

This has been a complicated area for churches, because of the theological insistence on the inviolability of marriage. Many women who are church members have stayed in utterly abusive relationships because of their marriage commitment “for better or for worse”. This has been strengthened within the Catholic tradition by the sacramental nature of the marriage service.

Revolt, thankfully, is in the Christian air. An ecumenical group representing a variety of traditions, formed at a conference under the auspices of the National Commission of Social Care of the Roman Catholic Church, has drawn up a statement which seeks to release women from the guilt of leaving a marriage which is abusive and violent.

The statement says: “Women in particular need to know that where there is no safety in a marriage, there is no sanctity, and the marriage vows have been broken by the abuser.”

Too often victims have endured the guilt as well as the beatings. Radical Christian women are now gossiping subversive Christian values as they knit justice into new and more life-giving patterns.