Corporal Punishment, the Church, and Me

My defining moment in the Amazon documentary miniseries Shiny Happy People happens about midway through the second episode. An invited speaker at an Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP) seminar invites a child volunteer onstage to demonstrate the speaker’s precepts of Biblically appropriate spanking. The child was volunteered by his parents, not of his own volition, and never speaks or is even identified by name onstage.

The speaker (who shall remain nameless here) takes the child volunteer over his knee and pantomimes the spanking incident, backed with a monologue about how the misbehaving child simply needs discipline to grow with God. Because the speaker mimes the spanking so gently, the effect appears downright predatory. This appearance isn’t helped when, upon letting the child rise, the speaker demands a hug from the kid he just finished disciplining.

Back in the 1990s, I attended a United Methodist congregation in a small Nebraska town. For those unfamiliar with Protestant denominationalism, the Methodist tradition doesn’t have even a shirt-tail theological relationship with most American Evangelical or Fundamentalist churches. Most such churches are theologically Five-Point Calvinist, while Methodism descends from Arminianism, a deliberate rejection of Calvinist absolutism. Methodism shouldn’t be compatible with Evangelicalism.

Yet much of White American Christianity in the 1980s and 1990s trended toward Calvinist conservatism. Pushed by the ideological bloc of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell, many White Christians yearned for the doctrinal certainty which Evangelicals seemingly enjoyed. Congregations which had no theological truck with Five-Point Calvinism snapped up books by Tim LaHaye, Charles Swindoll, and Francis Schaeffer. Their theology soon bled into regular worship and teaching.

As the pro-spanking speaker finishes his ganked, almost fetishistic mock spanking, he demands a hug from his volunteer. But he immediately rejects the hug he receives, declaring it insufficiently enthusiastic. He replaces the kid across his knee and resumes the spanking. This repeats a pattern, perhaps unknowingly, visible in Christian thinkers since at least Augustine: that if you’re sufficiently righteous, you can threaten children into loving God, and you too.

My small Nebraska congregation brought a local pastor aboard who, as part of his ministry, demanded the congregational council hire his son as youth and young adult minister. The son was highly charismatic, and quickly gained acclaim among his intended young parishioners. He introduced a rock concert-influenced evening worship service, and accordingly, local Christians treated him like a rock star. Eventually, he seemed to start believing it himself.

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar became the celebrity face of Bill Gothard's IBLP

I wanted to believe it, too. In my early twenties, I was considerably more conservative and doctrinaire than I am now, both politically and theologically. This father-and-son team verified that my primarily emotional spirituality was justified. But before long, I realized they didn’t treat everyone equally. They wanted congregants who were extroverted, but submissive. Those who conformed received preferential treatment; everyone else watched from outside, confused and scared.

Don’t misunderstand, my desire to separate wasn’t a Daniel-like stand on morality. I was simply lonely. The ministry focused on highly demonstrative episodes, “mountaintop moments,” and gregariousness; it left no opportunity for thoughtful contemplation, much less deep discussion performed in our “indoor voices.” I attempted to peel myself off simply because I needed time to catch my breath, while their ministry was breathless, breakneck, and quick.

My only mistake came in trying to announce my separation. Instead of just quietly not showing up—as an increasing number of the congregation’s introverted members started doing—I attempted to make my polite apologies before going. The youth minister responded by angrily deploying a laundry list of “sacrifices” he’d made to support his “ministry.” The list rambled on, voluble and extensive, until I finally relented just to escape the situation.

I’ve seldom faced literal violence in my life. I realize how privileged I am to even say that, but I haven’t faced state repression, violent crime, or relationship abuse. Even given my frequently adversarial relationship with my father, he seldom spanked me; he reserved corporal punishment for extreme circumstances, and discontinued it early. Therefore, until I saw a self-righteous spanking enacted onscreen, I didn’t make the connection to what happened that day.

But on a key level, when leaders believe themselves appointed by God, they start demanding love. They demand obedience and adherence from those beneath them. Some enforce those demands through violence, while others enforce them through guilt and shame. But in both cases, they believe they have God-given authority to make demands. Listening, learning, and adapting are for lesser people. Leaders make demands, and the first demand is for love.