In Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife, Tucker shares her painful story of domestic abuse.  Any reader will sympathize with her struggle and I found myself filled with compassion for her as she shared her story. One of the most insightful moments occurs when she recounts an incident of being scolded by a colleague for walking home alone at night. Years later she revisited the conversation with him, explaining, “I chided him for assuming I would be safe behind locked doors. I told him I had walked that long block hundreds of times and that I had never even once been attacked in the neighborhood. It was inside that house, not outside, where I was assaulted.”

I recently picked up a copy of Ruth Tucker’s Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife.  From other reviews, I anticipated that she and I would differ theologically, but I hoped to gain some helpful insight on caring for women in abusive situations from listening to her story.

In Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife, Tucker shares her painful story of domestic abuse.  Any reader will sympathize with her struggle and I found myself filled with compassion for her as she shared her story. One of the most insightful moments occurs when she recounts an incident of being scolded by a colleague for walking home alone at night. Years later she revisited the conversation with him, explaining, “I chided him for assuming I would be safe behind locked doors. I told him I had walked that long block hundreds of times and that I had never even once been attacked in the neighborhood. It was inside that house, not outside, where I was assaulted.”

Tucker’s story reminds us that we often have no idea what is truly happening in the lives of others. Tucker is a highly educated woman and her ex-husband was a pastor. Many people might have concluded she enjoyed a healthy, loving marriage.  And, most of us would have assumed she had the resources and knowledge to get help.

So, as a reminder that domestic abuse is happening (even in unlikely places), Tucker’s account has value.  Unfortunately, I found her book lacking in certain ways that makes this a book I wouldn’t recommend on the topic of domestic abuse.

It Lacks Statistical Analysis

Tucker’s main premise seems to be the notion that complementarian theology leads to domestic abuse. She bases this thesis on her experience:

During his violent rages, my ex-husband often hurled biblical texts at me, as though the principal tenet of Scripture was, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands.’  He spit the words out, repeatedly beating me over the head, at least figuratively, with his black-and-white Bible.

Tucker does what so many do in our day in age. She presents a thesis and offers no statistical evidence to back it up.  Her story is one data point. And, while her story is one that we need to hear, to extrapolate that complementarian theology is the root of her husband’s abuse is simply unfounded. She also shares that her ex-husband was expelled for cheating in college, arrested as a peeping Tom, caught stealing money, molested a thirteen-year old girl, and eventually abandoned his son. Are we to conclude that all of these abuses are the result of complementarian thinking?

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