(RNS) — Last week, an Alabama second-grade Christian school “teacher of the year” was allegedly shown in a viral video hitting her son with a belt. She also allegedly verbally abused him, pulled his hair and berated him for failing to complete his chores, according to news reports. A family member secretly filmed the incident, and the teacher was arrested, charged with willful abuse of a child and fired.
The video is upsetting — the sight and sounds of a belt on human flesh, a child’s cries and distress, and the mother’s persistent rage triggered many people. But online comment sections revealed people, often Christians, defending the mother, blaming the child, making jokes or referencing their own childhood mistreatment and spanking as normal. “The rod” Proverbs made their predictable appearance, alongside Christians quibbling that even if the mother’s execution was extreme, the concept itself was biblical.
It reveals that many people think the imaginary line drawn between spanking and abuse is, first, determined by the parent, second, completely subjective and, third, based on parental intent rather than considerations of ethics or impact. “Spanking” and “discipline” are euphemisms for a practice that happens behind closed doors, often with no witnesses present. Add in a parent’s overwhelm, isolation, anger or dysregulation, and you have a recipe for escalation.
Earlier this month, 2819 Church, an Atlanta megachurch, fired one of its staff pastors, Kenneth McFarland, after he was arrested and charged with second-degree cruelty to children. McFarland allegedly beat his 15-year-old stepson with an electric cord from a video game system, leaving bruises and blood that seeped through the boy’s pants at school. The church’s leadership rightly denounced the alleged violence, yet staff pastors have given multiple sermons describing their own childhood beatings and advocating for parents to vigorously employ “the rod” of discipline, one of them even going so far as to feign unstrapping his belt during a sermon to indicate what he meant.
The difficult truth is that this is far from rare. After reviewing over 100 popular Christian parenting resources, I can say without question that Christian teaching from pulpits, bookstores, conferences and streaming channels has enabled all kinds of abuse. And our accepted community norms around “spanking” has further enabled it.
Over the past three years, I have read more about Christian spanking practices than I ever could have believed possible. I’ve come across Christian parenting leaders advocating “reigns of terror,” Gen Z influencers doubling down on spanking, teachers blurring lines between spanking and child sexual abuse, engraved paddles referencing Scripture and recurrent made-up rules that somehow magically transform the hitting of children into a liturgy of good and godly discipline. I’ve seen pastors say they’d rather go to jail than give up spanking and critically analyzed books with instructions for how to spank infants. And, I’ve listened to countless adults who recall being spanked well into their teen years or reflect back on the destructive impact childhood spankings have had on them — from sexual dysfunction to PTSD to the beginning of self-harm practices to grooming them for abusive intimate relationships and more.
What will it take for us fellow Christians to open our eyes and admit that the fruit is rotten? Even if you believe there is a very specific, careful way that spanking can be done that is acceptable (I don’t), at what point will you give that up? At what point will you acknowledge that the abuse done by all the people spanking the “wrong” way is enough of a reason for us to stop commending the practice? How many children must suffer humiliation and domination before we say that we can find better ways?
Perhaps some parents simply don’t know what else to do. But the alternatives aren’t liturgies of spanking or nothing. The choice isn’t permissive parenting or pulling out the belts and electric cords. There are plenty of Christian parenting coaches, classes, books and methodologies that offer ethical, nonviolent methods of what is commonly known as authoritative parenting. These approaches include holding boundaries, teaching and correction. (Here’s one I recommend to people in my parish.)
Generational cycles are difficult to break. Some people who beat their children were also beaten as children. Parents who are triggered by a child’s meltdown, defiance or disobedience likely learned firsthand that such things were intolerable and dangerous. Rejecting spanking might mean dethroning one’s own parents, a difficult and terrifying thing to do, no matter your age, if you’ve grown up in a home that relied on violent force.
Rejecting spanking also may mean revisiting the vulnerability and powerlessness of childhood. Being spanked as a child is a ritual of humiliation and dominance, wrapped up with physical pain and the dependency and attachment needs of childhood. Spanking puts child and parent into a state of heightened arousal, triggering fight-or-flight and impacting the body and the brain. And the echoes of this mechanism are perhaps what’s at the heart of many of the thought-stopping cliches found in the online comments defending child abuse and abusive parents, or the uncontrollable shaking or weeping that show up in adults watching that clip and experiencing an inexplicable somatic response. Perhaps the very fact that we continue to perpetuate this cycle of violence is evidence enough that if we were spanked, we didn’t turn out fine.
I’ve written and spoken at length on this topic because I think there is a robust Christian case against corporal punishment. I want Christian parents to know that spanking is not particularly biblical (don’t come at me with the Proverbs or Hebrews 12), ethical or effective. We have 50 years of good data correlating it to long-term problems. This rotten practice has robbed so many families of the joy and connection that could be theirs, and I am tired of seeing the same old regurgitated defenses served up for a new generation. Christians, we can be done with spanking.
Children are our smallest and newest neighbors, our siblings in Christ for whom all the one-another verses apply. Those of us who follow Jesus — who himself had the strongest of words for any who harm children or cause them to lose faith — should be the loudest voices decrying this unethical and harmful parenting practice.
And if you need a Bible verse to change your mind, I’ve got one for you, repeated twice for emphasis. In fact, this is the only explicit parenting advice given to Christian parents in the New Testament: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4, NIV), and “Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged” (Colossians 3:21, NIV).
Who decides the line between spanking and abuse? We do, and it’s long past time to be done with defending “spanking.”
(Marissa Franks Burt is a novelist, editor, pastor’s wife, mother to six and co-author of the book “The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families.” Her website is marissaburt.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)