This “sermon” is chapter 16 in the book The Judas Effect: How Evangelicals Betrayed Jesus for Power (2024), by Amy Hawk. My review of this book can be found here.
The religious leaders dragged ashamed, frightened, partially dressed woman through the streets of Jerusalem. When they found Jesus preaching at the temple, they thrust her out in front of the crowd and asked, “What should we do with her?” She had been caught in an adulterous affair. Lawfully, she should be stoned. Jesus knew the law full well, they just wanted to hear him say it.
The bullies stood in a circle around her with their fists raised and rocks ready, waiting for his answer. They expected Jesus to take their side. She was guilty, and it was the law. But he didn’t. He was not about to let them hurt her. Standing up, he looked at each of them pointedly. “Let any one of you who is without sin throw the first stone at her.” One by one they dropped their stones, turned around and walked away.
Later, at a party, a grateful woman approached Jesus and poured a year’s supply of expensive oil on his feet, in a symbolic gesture of gratitude and love. Judas stood to scold her, but Jesus rebuked him before he got very far. “Leave her alone,” Jesus told him. And so he sat back down and shut back up.
Just pause and reflect on those three little words for a moment. “Leave. her. alone.” Strung together, they are three of the most beautiful words in all of scripture. Try to imagine the scene. How happy she must have been to share her oil with the one she loved most. And how a gruff man, bigger in size, bigger in clout, tried to diminish her. But Jesus wasn’t having it. He simply was not having it. Try to imagine the tone of Christ’s voice when he said it: “Leave her alone.” For women—those three words are a gorgeous revelation of Jesus’ heart towards them. For men—they should be taken as a warning.
Men, you need to know this: Jesus is paying attention. Every time a woman (or a child) is bullied, he knows about it. Every time she is abused, he sees. Every time she is touched without her express permission, he’s watching. Every time she is called a name, or belittled in any way, he’s taking note. He knows. He knows. And if you think you are getting away with something, you aren’t. There is no greater defender or protector of women than Jesus Christ. If you have mistreated a woman, and you have not repented both to the Lord and to her, I urge you to do it quickly. There absolutely will be a day of reckoning with Jesus, and I promise you this: you don’t want that misconduct hanging over your head.
God does not forgive abuse that has not been repented of. In fact, I’m not sure there is anything that makes him angrier than one person misusing another. “But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.” (Matthew 18:6) Every time and in every scriptural example, God sides with the ill-treated, the mishandled and the bullied. And a church that is accurately representing God will be angry about bullying, too.
Donald Trump’s hatefulness toward women continued throughout his campaign and into his presidency and went largely ignored by the evangelical church. Megyn Kelly was a “bimbo” who had “blood coming out of her wherever,” Rosie O’Donnell was assaulted as a “fat loser,” Carly Fiorina shouldn’t get votes, “because of her face,” Alicia Machado, “Miss Piggy,” columnist Gail Collins, “the face of a dog!” Arianna Huffington, “extremely unattractive.” Mika Brzezinski was deemed, “low I.Q., crazy, bleeding badly from a facelift.” Carmen Yulin Cruz, the Mayor of Puerto Rico desperate to get help on behalf of her suffering citizens, was accused of being “nasty,” and wanting “everything done for (her).”
His abuse became so commonplace no one was shocked anymore. And really, why should any of us have been surprised that even from his high seat in the Oval Office, he was living by his own, “women—you have to treat ‘em like shit” mantra? No, what was shocking was the church’s dismissal of it. When a man in a high position, elected largely by evangelicals, spews forth hatred and abuse toward women: that spirit of bullying gains momentum. Unchecked and uncorrected, the abuse gains force and multiplies. A church that is not actively, vocally speaking out against lewd and aggressive behavior toward women, is partnering with it. And our silence could not be a more erroneous representation of the Lord we say we serve.
Even before we heard Trump’s own confession of sexual criminality on the Access Hollywood tapes, he didn’t seem too concerned about sexual assault, if a conviction might inconvenience him. In 1992, heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was convicted of raping an eighteen-year-old woman. It happened to be inopportune timing for Trump. Tyson’s next fight at Trump Plaza was slated to bring in millions. Trump had a personal interest in seeing Mike Tyson go free, so he held a press conference in an effort to strike a deal: if the prosecutors would let Mike Tyson go free, he would donate some of the proceeds from his fight to benefit victims of sex crimes. His ludicrous offer was widely condemned and Mike Tyson was sentenced to prison.
In the year prior to his election, Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, grabbed a reporter by the arm and pulled her out of a press line. She had the bruises to show for it, but Lewandowski vehemently denied her claim. So did his boss. Without even bothering to ask her for her account, Trump heard Corey’s denial and said the accusation could not be true because Lewandowski was a “very good person.” He refused to consider it. But a camera on the property had captured the moment. The video footage showed the assault happened exactly as she had said. Charges were filed. Lewandowski, who was later charged with sexual assault in another case, finally apologized, but Trump never did.
Alexis Jones was a candidate on the television reality show Survivor. She is now a TV host and film producer, and the founder of I AM THAT GIRL, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the eradication of sexual assault and domestic violence. Alexis runs a program that reminds male athletes about what true manliness is, and how they have a mandate to protect women. Alexis travels to campuses all over the United States to visit locker rooms and share her message. Encouraged by men who have come forward to apologize to her, or have even started crying when she speaks, Alexis shares stories about real-life sisters and girlfriends and moms whose lives have been forever impacted by sexual assault. But occasionally her message is thwarted before she even has a chance to share it. Shortly after Trump took office, as she rounded the corner to speak to a room full of athletes, she was crushed to overhear the coach tell them, “We can grab women by the p***y now, because this is America.” For men like Trump, his election gave them permission.
It was while sitting in an evangelical church that I learned of the devil’s timeless aggression toward women. It goes way back to the beginning.
“The Lord God said to the serpent,
‘Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all the wild beasts
and all the living creatures of the field!
On your belly you will crawl
and dust you will eat all the days of your life.
And I will put hostility between you and the woman
and between your offspring and her offspring;
her offspring will attack your head,
and you will attack her offspring’s heel.” (Genesis 3:14-15, The NET Bible)
Prostituted for a Platform
When a man belittles and mocks a woman, I get angry. Not just because I’m a woman, but because I have the spirit of the living Christ inside of me. So, when Trump tweeted out, for the one-hundredth time, yet another round of disparaging, ugly words about a woman, it was like he was saying them to me. I saw red. I already knew how Jesus felt about the bullying, because I’ve read the scriptures. So I waited for the male evangelical leaders to speak. Too many times I waited for an across-the-board, evangelical response that never came. Too many times I felt like one of Lot’s daughters. Unworthy of defending. Prostituted for a political platform.
Physical and sexual abuse, and the bullying of women, doesn’t seem to bother Donald Trump much, it doesn’t seem to bother the coach in the locker room much, and in Trump’s America, the world was left to wonder if it bothered evangelicals much. Every pastor who has ever read the Bible should have recognized that the misogyny and abuse coming out of the White House was originating from an antiChrist spirit (see Genesis 3, above). When the church, who is supposed to be representing Jesus Christ, puts an abuser in the White House, and then goes dead silent and does not speak out when he actually abuses someone, the church is complicit. The Holy Spirit and the antiChrist move in opposition to each other. By not opposing his words, pastor, you gave those words permission to keep going, grow, and cause harm. (see Proverbs 18:21).
For me, the most damaging, depressing thing about the evangelical church falling in line behind Trump was not that we elected a bully. I can deal with that. Those men are everywhere, in leadership positions in government, corporations, educational and religious institutions, entertainment, sports, news, etc. Women are, unfortunately, used to navigating around creepy men. That doesn’t hurt half as bad as learning that the men you did look up to—your fathers and brothers in the faith—are more like the coach in the locker room. Many of the men who should have done for us what Jesus did in the scene with the adulterous woman, did not take the role of Jesus at all. They weren’t the active stone-throwers, but they didn’t come to our defense, either. Too cowardly to step forward and stop it. Too “we must show respect to a man in a position of leadership” to confront the abuse. Just standing there, watching the rocks fly by.
Beth Moore echoed my thoughts on the deafening silence from the men:
[EXT]“Wake up, Sleepers, to what women have dealt with all along in environments of gross entitlement & power. Are we sickened? Yes. Surprised? NO! Try to absorb how acceptable the disesteem and objectifying of women has been when some Christian leaders don’t think it’s that big a deal. . . I’m one among many women sexually abused, misused, stared down, heckled, talked naughty to. Like we liked it. We didn’t. We’re tired of it.. . .
“Keep your mouth shut or something worse will happen.” Yes. I’m familiar with the concept. Sometimes it’s terrifyingly true. Still, we speak.”
Julie Roys, evangelical journalist, podcaster and radio talk show host who leads a ministry devoted to reporting the truth and restoring the church, had this to say: “I honestly don’t know what makes me more sick. Listening to Trump brag about groping women or listening to my fellow evangelicals defend him.”
So here is the admonishment I offer to the male pastors and evangelical leaders who couldn’t be bothered to rebuke our foul-mouthed president: I’ve spent twenty years in your churches, listening to you preach about how precious I am to God. A temple for the Holy Spirit. A new creation, radiant in Christ, transformed by the renewing of my mind. Special. Priceless. Worth a Son to him. And then all of a sudden someone attacks that priceless body, belittles that transformed mind, mocks that radiance—and that someone happens to be the President of the United States, the man you put on the throne of America for a political platform. And you go dead silent. Apparently my dignity isn’t worth what I thought it was. My Jesus would have rebuked him. And if yours wouldn’t, well, then I guess we are not following the same Christ. Mine can’t be bought.
Meanwhile, the age-old war between Eve and the serpent wages on. And Eve’s daughters are awake. You might even say they are infuriated. The continual bullying, the misogyny, the physical abuse, the sexual molestation, the fact that it’s gone on largely uncontested by some leaders in the church—has awakened something powerful. A female army, empowered by the Holy Spirit, is rising up against the serpent, who has long made the abuse of women his favorite pastime. All this intercession on behalf of ourselves, and our sisters, has made our swords nice and sharp and polished. We are armed, we are ready, and we are dangerous to darkness. If there is one thing God’s daughters learned the hard way with Trump’s election, it’s that if the snake is going to speak through a misogynistic bully in the White House, we are mostly going to have to defend ourselves. Gentlemen who rebuked Trump’s abuse publicly, who effectively told him to, “leave us alone,” like my husband, my brother, pastors like Carlos Rodriguez and Jonathan Martin, Carlos Whittaker, Max Lucado, Eugene Cho, Napp Nazworth, Russell Moore, Bart Barber and Rick Warren, we thank you. We see you, and we appreciate your Christlikeness. Evangelical leaders who didn’t see this battle for what it was, don’t bother getting up and dusting off your swords now. Woe to the Shepherds who care more about protecting the bully than the bullied.
We’ll take it from here.
“The women . . . are a great army” Psalm 68:11 (NASB)
copywrite, @2024, Amy Hawk (www.amyhawk.com)
