THE SUNDAY AFTER: After being arrested for allegedly beating his teen daughter, megachurch pastor Creflo Dollar appeared before his Atlanta congregation to deny the charges. "Raising children in our culture of disrespect is a challenge," he said.
Pastor Creflo Dollar did the expected during his first sermon after being booked on charges of simple battery, family violence, and cruelty to children. He repeated his denial of his daughter’s accusations that he choked, punched, and slammed her down during an argument.
You can view the address here, but in short, Dollar read from a prepared statement that was likely signed off on by his legal defense team. Dollar said:
• He is the true victim, not his 15-year-old daughter.
• He should not have been arrested.
• The police are irresponsible for photographing an eczema mark on his daughter’s neck.
• The news media and other accusers are evil and blowing things out of proportion.
• “The enemy” is trying to discredit him in order to block his message of grace.
Dollar concluded by quoting Psalms 35 to explain his situation and the likely result: “Malicious witnesses testify against me. They accuse me of crimes I know nothing about…Take up my case my God and my Lord…”
The most revealing part of his address was when he seemed to go off script a bit.
“I’m a human being and, you know, I’ve had to do a lot of praying and my family has been very supportive,” he said. “Because when I feel like an injustice has been done, I get angry. And yet I respect the law.
On some levels, I can surely appreciate where Pastor Dollar is coming from. As I’ve written previously, rearing teens can be very difficult. Depending on their personalities, they often have a sense of entitlement, they think they know everything, and with hormones raging they can be outright nasty. My wife and I have been there with our three children, of which the youngest is our 19-year-old daughter. As a dedicated father, I know rearing a daughter can be particularly challenging. You worry about them being harmed even more than you do your sons. You have to be more careful and sensitive when correcting them.
Even when correcting my sons physically, my point was to calm them down and show them that if I really wanted to hurt them I could. Being an athletic 6-foot-1 inches and more than 200 pounds, I often needed to think twice before dispensing any sort of physical punishment. And if one of the kids deserved physical correction, it was often safer for them — and better for the parent-child relationship — for their mother to do it, especially if it was our daughter. Still, regardless of their gender, your teens can make you snap, but as a parent you MUST maintain control, lest you cross the line.
What set most people off in this Pastor Dollar case is the accusation that he choked punched and slammed his daughter. Child abuse is “any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.”
Only the Dollar family knows if this situation rises to the level of abuse. However, watching his well-meaning congregation give him a standing ovation, and reading the many comments here on UrbanFaith misinterpreting the scripture “spare the rod, spoil the child,” I wonder about a dangerous message being sent to people who are truly victims of domestic abuse: The church isn’t much of a sanctuary for help.
Domestic child abuse is a serious problem in America. According to the Administration for Children and Families, there were 3.3 million child abuse referrals involving 5.9 million children in 2010.
Some published reports estimate 25 percent of churchgoers have experienced domestic abuse. This means that among those clapping vigorously in support of Pastor Dollar, there were sufferers of domestic violence. There are people suffering in my church and your church. YOU may be suffering in silence.
I know personally teen girls who have suffered domestic abuse at the hands of men in their homes. One in particular attended church religiously, but felt no one in the church would believe her because her stepfather was respected in the community. So she suffered in silence. Girls in these types of situations often become women who enter abusive relationships. Even when married to men who are not abusers, these women have wounds that scar their marriages. They need counseling.
As this situation with Pastor Dollar unfolds, what message are true victims of domestic abuse hearing?
Perhaps this unfortunate incident will provide Pastor Dollar and other church leaders around the country the opportunity to offer a word of grace to the silent sufferers in their midst.
Wil LaVeist will discuss this article and the topic of domestic abuse on his radio show tomorrow, Wednesday June 13, from 12 to 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Listen to the live stream on Hampton University’s WHOV here: www.whov.org.
God does not strike people with lightning for misbehavior. God does not force people to believe. Children are to submit not be forced to submit. Jesus is our friend. Why can a parent not be a friend that guides and helps us have self control? We can beat kids with a rod of iron and probably have behaved kids on the outside, but what about the inside. God cares about our hearts and motives, as in LOVE. Do we want to raise children that seek safety in a friend in Jesus or do we want to raise kids that think they can obey their way into heaven? The cross bought our salvation since no one could obey the law enough. Beating kids into submission is legalism. Truth is important and Grace is important. Parents that get no respect when a child is 15 yrs. old, did not show that child respect. Respect in relationships is earned. FEAR is a tool of the enemy. Jesus says to fear not. Do we really want to use the enemy’s tool of fear? It might make good behavior while we are looking, but it does not nor cannot achieve a heart connection of trust in Jesus, in child or adult. As parents we are to teach children about forgiveness yet we punish. To deciple is to teach not beat.
As a single parent raising four children without the love of family was and still is very difficult. For me, I had lost faith a long time ago along with hope. My faith was destroyed by the bible toting family members who were the abusers (and remain that way) in my family. I agree with the article and I don’t think physical punishment should be implemented. I think that he shoud have just simply taken all her worldly possessions and followed her to that party. He then should have allowed the police to shut that party down. But Dollar had a reputation to protect. Now he has to protect his alleged innocence and his reputation in the public eye. Not to mention that he is calling his daughters liars.
My father was a strong man, but because I did not live with him he never laid a hand on me. Now with my stepsister and my half sister (children with his girlfriend), he would really abused them. My father went to church and was repected by the men within those churches. His brothers are deacons and pastors. My father had sexually abused (he called it a relationship) with my stepsister since she was 12 and his girlfriend (not my mother) knew about it and did nothing. They went to church as a family unit and he would appear to be a good guy. She was 12 and I was 8 when I found this out and I could not believe it. But I wasn’t surprised. While my father was abusing in his household, his biological children were being abused in another household (uncles, cousins) . And my father knew it and did not do anything about it. The knowledge of the religious men in my family abusing the children in our family and not being held responsible caused me to be very defensive with raising my own children. I don’t trust. I remember my ex spanked our first child on the bottom. Not hard. I went livid. I ask God for guidance in trusting people but I have yet to forgive the ones in the past. So I am very protective over my kids and no man can lay a finger on them. Domestic abuse is not talked about in church because it is taboo much like everything else. For me I think some Black churches focus on the exterior and not the interior. My family (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles) would attend church looking nice and smelling nice. We would drive up in our nice car and walk into this beautiful church full of other nice families with their nice clothing on. But what was hiding lurked inside of some of us that attended church. My grandmother (who I lived with) would be the nicest person in the church and say the nicest things, yet the week prior some form of abuse went on. I am confused about life. I have lost my faith. I am lost.
Jackie: I’ve added you to my prayer list and I’ve alerted the team at UF of your post. Thank you for being honest enough to share what is too often very real among church goers and non church goers. This is the point of my commentary. God intended the church family to be a place where people can receive help and healing, not harm and despair. Do not lose faith. Fix your hope on Jesus
John 16:33: I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child” can be interepreted any number of ways. I say its time for “Miss grown-girl” to be emancipated and live on her own. While I’m no Creflo Dollar follower, I am a parent who raised 3 daughters and 1 son to adulthood. We all say and do things that, in hindsight, we’d do differently. We should refrain from refering to young hormone driven boys as dogs, yet hormone driven girls are precious little angles. Creflo’s precious little girls cussed him out because he wouldn’t let her go to a party. I don’t condone assaulting anyone. If he had beat up his son, we would applaude him as being a good father. WHAT?! Some of us have or had parents who kept us from going to plenty of parties, which kept us from being seduced by someone’s precious little girl, or son. Question: What is an appropriate response to a child who cusses his or her parent out? Verbal abuse is the gateway to physical abuse of the parent by the child. Then what? BTW, time out doesn’t work for 15 year olds. Teenage rebellion is normal, except when the child vebally abuses the parent. I could “Monday morning quarterback” this issue as well, but my kids never cussed me; even my most rebellious daughter.