A lot of pastors are getting abused by their wives, and they are suffering in silence as a result of this, but because they are men and have been programmed to bear pain and abuse in silence, there is no record of this abuse online, and it is not a subject of any form of research or even opinion pieces globally.
I find this quite disturbing. All the topics on domestic abuse are focused on the Pastor’s wives being the victims, and all the people telling their personal stories were women and wives who had been battered and abused by pastors or ministers of the gospel.
The men are visibly voiceless.
I know pastors whose wives beat, starve, and abuse in the most damning way. They tell their stories, and we share their burdens, and yet it goes unseen, unnoticed, unappreciated, unnoted, and undocumented.
I have seen police reports of pastors’ wives stabbing their husbands and getting arrested, of husbands running out of their own houses in the middle of the night out of fear and concern for their lives.
I have seen pastors whose wives denied access to their children after separation, and pastors whose wives cheat on them unrepentantly because they know he would lose his pastoral calling and position in the church if he dared to contemplate the idea of a divorce.
I remember a pastor who got married to a 28-year-old abusive woman when he was 30 years old. I remember his tears and sufferings as his wife capitalized on his calling as a pastor to physically assault him several times, knowing he dared not respond to her violence with violence.
I remember how he went through this hell with the knowledge of the senior pastor of his church and the leadership of the church, who kept encouraging him to trust the Lord and carry his cross in silence.
He eventually figured out the fact that the only reason he stayed in the clutches of his abusive wife was not for the sake of Christ or eternal life but for the sake of his pastoral title and the doctrine of the church where he was serving as a pastor.
He realised that if he were to be free of the marriage, he must sacrifice his pastoral calling within that denomination and condemn all his certificates to a waste bin.
It was a difficult decision, but he did it.
His wife watched him as he dropped the pastoral collar and traded his job as a pastor for a secular vocation.
His wife didn’t see the correlation between her abuse and his decisions until one day, and all the trappings she had used for years to keep a chokehold on him were gone.
“And you call yourself a pastor…” Didn’t apply to him anymore
“I will stand up in church when you are preaching and disrupt the sermon” was not a threat she could make anymore
“You are worse than an infidel if you don’t obey your wife’s bidding” didn’t work on him anymore
“I will report you to the senior pastor didn’t work on him anymore.”
“They will suspend you and embarrass you before the church. by the time I am done with you,” did not work on him anymore
He threw away the yoke of the collar and bought himself a well-deserved freedom from a woman who subjected him and the children to physical, mental, and emotional abuse for years.
The marriage died a natural death barely two years after he dropped the pastoral calling because it turned out to be a chain the wife yanked in order to emasculate him and rob him of his manhood.
I have seen other pastors whose wives flagrantly cheat on them because they dare not leave the union. Being a pastor is all they truly know and have been called to do, and in order to do this one thing, it is required that the man of God must be a husband of one wife, and he must have his house in order.
To some wives, this is a get-out-of-jail card for every form of misbehaviour.
The husband has no option but to swallow it and forgive.
The public image of the husband and public perception by their members compels them to bear whatever their wives throw at them as part of their crosses to bear.
Marital abuse is one of the reasons we have so many denominations in Christendom. The church doctrines shackle the pastors to their abusive wives, and in a bid to be free, some get a divorce, or the wife leaves them.
Once it has been established that reconciliation will not work, the pastor is derobed and stripped of his office and ministerial duties.
Knowing he is called of God and not by mere men, he breaks off to start his own church.
This has been the case for many ministries since the 1980s.
Desperate women target pastors, thinking they are a fair game.
Functional but mentally deranged women also target pastors, believing that because they are anointed, they will marry them and have to cope with their excesses because they are pastors.
Emotionally unstable women also target pastors because they were told that there is a balm of Gilead in pastor’s body, which they need to be made whole
Pastors need to be protected from abusive women who target and marry them just so they can take advantage of their office to abuse them.
-GSW-