Ruth Krall's Risking the Collective: Commitment of Religious Institutions to Dominant Male Privilege at Root of Abuse of Women and Children

Theologian Ruth Krall has just published a new monograph at her website. It's called Risking the Collective. I'm reading it now, and will be sharing excerpts as I read. 

Ruth's work in the field of sexual violence, and her combined background as a nurse-therapist and theologian, make what she has to say extremely important for those seeking ways to respond to endemic sexual abuse of women and children in our society and its institutions. This book could not be more timely, in light of the Philadelphia grand jury report.

Here's the first excerpt I want to share from Ruth's new book: 

Somewhere along the line, it seems to me, churches, synagogues and mosques have behaviorally committed themselves to supporting and extending patriarchal rule. In many places inside institutional discourse, they have abdicated all moral and ethical teaching about justice, principled accountability and, in situations of human violence, what Christians call righteousness or right-living. It is patriarchal dominion that enables the abuse of women and their children as a God-given male right. As I have noted elsewhere the essential marriage of orthodoxy (right thinking) to orthopraxis (right acting) has been divorced inside America’s religious institutions. 

Preaching and teaching a theology of dominant male privilege as a divinely given right, religious institutions guarantee that the endemic culture of male violence and its ideological pilings will never change (p. 18).

Ruth has generously made her book available for downloading at her site, as you'll see when you click the link above.

The photo of Ruth is from her website Enduring Space, linked at the head of the posting.