Dear Eric:

I use to be an Evangelical, a Southern Baptist and for a while in the Evangelical Free Church. What you have described here is not what Evangelicals teach. They teach that the husband is the head of the house and that the wife is to honor that leadership (Catholic Church teaches the same thing).

It is true, however, that some Evangelicals, and particularly some Fundamentalists, interpret this a little too harshly as if the husband can boss around the wife as if she is a child, but few Evangelicals accept that misinterpretation anymore.

What you have described goes well beyond that and is, rather, psychological, physical, and religious abuse.

I do not know what websites you were looking at but "spanking" wives is NOT a teaching of Evangelicals or Fundamentalists.

A clue here is that this group you are describing worships on Saturday and gets involved in Old Testament style dietary laws (Evangelicals and Fundamentalists celebrate and worship on Sundays and do not practice Old Testament style dietary laws).

Thus, I suspect your co-worker was a member of some fringe aberrant sect with which the Evangelicals would want no part.

As for allowing such groups to exist and flourish, unless they are breaking the law, what are we suppose to do?

If the women are confined to their homes, it may be possible to pursue the men on charges of unlawful detainment or imprisonment I suppose.

There are all sorts of aberrant behavior out there. Unless it oversteps the boundaries of law, there is little anyone can do about it.

As for God allowing it, God has created man in His image out of love. One of the things that means is that He created us with the ability to freely choose (free will). Since He loves us, He wanted to give us a part of Himself (who is Love) and that was the ability to Love. Love cannot be forced. Love can only be freely chosen.

The problem is that if we are to have the freedom to choose love, we also have the freedom to choose evil. One does not exist without the other.

Thus, out of Love, God took the risk that some of us would choose evil in order to give all of us the opportunity to choose love.

One cannot have 99% free will. This is like pregnancy, either you is, or you ain't. There is no such thing as a "little bit" pregnant. The same goes for free will. Either we have it or we don't. If God limited our free will to only those decisions that are good ones, then we would not be free.

We must pray for this aberrant sect that the people involved will be enlightened to the Love of God and thereby change their ways. We can also pray that those women being abused, if there is no other solution, find a way of escape.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary