John Piper defended patriarchy publicly while privately hedging on when abuse justifies disobedience.

Evidence

John Piper also decided that evangelicalism’s #MeToo movement was a good time to defend patriarchy. In a Desiring God podcast recorded in March 2018, he blamed egalitarianism for leaving women vulnerable. Complementarianism charged men “to care for and protect and honor women,” but Christian and non-Christian egalitarians had stripped women of that protection. He remained convinced that “manly valor” would restrain male vice. Yet Piper himself had a less-than-stellar record when it came to dealing with abuse. In 2009, when asked whether a woman should submit to abuse, he hedged. It depended on “what kind of abuse.” Was a woman’s life in danger, or was this merely “verbal unkindness”? If her husband was asking her to engage in “group sex or something really weird, bizarre, harmful,” then she might very gently refuse to submit, but if the abuse was just hurting her and not requiring her to sin, then she should endure “verbal abuse for a season”—and “perhaps being smacked one night.” Only then should she seek help … from the church. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 659

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘perhaps being smacked one night’ quote is a stark, concrete example for an essay on how theological abstraction licenses practical cruelty.
• XREF: Directly evidences the book’s central claim that evangelical credibility was mortgaged to male authority figures even at the cost of victims.