Churches often silence domestic abuse victims by prioritizing doctrine over safety, the hosts argue. Even powerful women, including national first ladies, suffer in silence due to religious and social pressure. The institution can't heal a broken nation while ignoring its own failures.
Do you feel there's something the church can do to also stop some of these things?
What makes the church? It's the people. It's not the building. Yeah. Can a broken church help broken people?
Ah, if the people inside are broken, can they help a broken nation? Wow. They can't. True.
So we hide it. I don't even think there are structures in the church to help people. What we do is when the issue— if the woman or even men can be abused, because some togolese women can be powerful. But there are no structures or safe place for these victims to even voice it out. If they are bold enough to voice it out, what they will do is pray. The first advice is, "Keep it to yourself. Let's keep praying." How can someone that is being beaten, abused, be praying when the simple fix is for you to help them fix it or shield them from the trouble, from the violence? So the church does not even think— well, we say God hates divorce and all those things. So here we are, the people are suffering, but to protect our doctrine, And we believe that's holiness. We keep our women suffering. These are the same women that are serving in the church. These are the same women that are doing everything, including the first ladies.
Everybody feels some first ladies are going through abuse.
First lady of a nation, first lady of a nation, whether in a government, whether in state state, they suffer more than any other woman. Emotional abuse, emotional abuse, domestic abuse, domestic abuse, call it. You may think they dress nice, they empower position of power and all that, but you don't know the abuse because there will always be problem when you have broken men.
Declassified Podcast is now streaming on YouTube and Spotify.
