Is Breaking the Cycle governed by secular feminist ideology rather than Scripture?
- 2 days ago
- 9 min read
Since 2017, Rod Dawson has repeatedly challenged Andrew and Julie Weller’s work on domestic violence as an intrusion of secular feminist ideology into Scriptural teaching. This article examines that foundational allegation against the actual structure and content of Breaking the Cycle. It asks whether the book allows the Duluth Model, professional research and contemporary terminology to govern its moral judgments, or whether these resources are used more modestly to describe conduct that Scripture itself condemns as oppression, violence, deceit and abuse of power. It also considers the danger of issuing sweeping theological judgments without sustained engagement with domestic-violence practice, survivor experience or the relevant professional literature.
“Breaking the Cycle is a fable crafted for itching ears. It replaces sound doctrine with emotionally charged ideology, built not on the Word of God but on the feminist-driven Duluth Model — a framework that rejects biblical headship, forgiveness, and reconciliation. It trades God’s truth for cultural fads.”
“Breaking the Cycle strongly embraces the Duluth Model, making it the philosophical and structural backbone of its analysis and recommendations.”
“By importing this secular feminist ideology into the ecclesial sphere, Breaking the Cycle undermines its own stated intention to offer a Scripturally informed approach.”
Rod Dawson
The charge being made
Rod Dawson’s first and most comprehensive charge is not that Breaking the Cycle occasionally relies on secular research or uses a non-biblical diagram. His argument is that the book’s governing framework is secular feminism and that Scripture has been pressed into service after the fact. That is why his language is so absolute: “Trojan horse,” “fable,” “false teaching,” “laced with poison,” and “darkness pretending to be light.” Such language does more than disagree with an interpretation. It alleges that the book is deceptive in character and spiritually corrupt in effect.
A further difficulty is the standpoint from which the charge is made. Rod has not identified any professional, pastoral or sustained case experience in domestic violence, coercive control, trauma, risk assessment or perpetrator accountability, nor any substantial period of study in those fields. Lack of experience does not disqualify anyone from testing teaching by Scripture, but it should produce caution rather than certainty. Proverbs commends the person who listens before answering and warns that “the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 18:13; 20:5). James likewise describes wisdom from above as “open to reason” (James 3:17). Genuine biblical wisdom therefore does not consist merely in confidently applying familiar texts; it listens, seeks understanding, learns from those who know the subject, and tests conclusions against both Scripture and the realities to which Scripture is being applied.
That allegation should therefore be tested with care. The decisive question is not whether the book cites research, legislation, professional practice or the Power and Control Wheel. Scripture itself records observations drawn from ordinary life, law, government, medicine, agriculture and human conduct. The question is whether those sources govern the book’s moral judgments, or whether they help describe conduct that Scripture independently identifies as violent, oppressive, treacherous and contrary to love.
What the book says its foundation is
Breaking the Cycle begins by defining domestic violence as “a pattern of behaviour based on the use of power and control by one person over another in family relationships” and then states its purpose: “to expose the nature and characteristics of family and domestic violence, to shine the light of Scripture on it, and to use that Scripture to inform our response” (p. 1). That is not a claim that secular definitions replace Scripture. It is a claim that observable behaviour must be brought under Scriptural judgment.
The Foreword is equally explicit. The authors write that they seek “to promote better understanding of domestic violence in the context of sound Scriptural teaching on the subject” and that the work should flow from “our Lord’s teaching” (p. x). Its repeated governing texts concern oppression, violence, mercy, justice, repentance, the fruits of conduct, sacrificial love, care for the weak and the responsibilities of shepherds. Its moral categories are biblical: wickedness, treachery, oppression, lies, selfishness, failure of love, hard-heartedness and unrepented sin.
Rod’s criticism depends upon treating the use of professional knowledge as displacement of Scripture. But the book does not ask professionals to decide what righteousness is. It uses professional knowledge to identify risk, patterns, trauma, escalation and practical means of protection. Scripture tells believers to defend the weak and relieve oppression; professional knowledge can help them recognise when oppression is occurring and avoid making it worse. That is no more a surrender of biblical authority than using medical knowledge to understand an illness before applying the Scriptural obligation to care for the sick.
What the Power and Control Wheel actually does
The book’s treatment of the Power and Control Wheel is much narrower than Rod alleges. It describes the wheel as a “useful framework” for discussing with survivors what has been happening to them. It can produce a “light-bulb moment” by showing the connections between behaviours that a survivor has been confronting one incident at a time. It may also inform risk assessment and safety planning (p. 33). The wheel is therefore used descriptively and practically. It is not presented as Scripture, a creed, a theory of salvation or a complete explanation of every violent relationship.
The book expressly says that cases differ: “One case may have all or many of them, but universally these same behaviours appear” (p. 34). The wording recognises variation in form and combination while identifying recurring tactics. It does not say that every disagreement is abuse, every man is controlling, every violent relationship has identical causes, or every intervention should be the same.
Rod says the wheel “largely exclud[es] the possibility of reciprocal or bidirectional abuse.” Yet Breaking the Cycle explicitly acknowledges that abusers and victims can be male or female and that abuse can occur in other family relationships (pp. 1–2). It focuses principally on husbands abusing wives because that is the general and gravest pattern reflected in prevalence, fear, injury and the cases encountered by the authors. A focused treatment is not the same as denial of every other case.
Scripture itself names power, control and entitlement
The vocabulary of power and control is not alien to Scripture. Pharaoh used economic, physical and reproductive control to oppress Israel. Jezebel manipulated legal and social power to dispossess Naboth. Powerful men in Micah “covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away” (Micah 2:2). Ezekiel condemns shepherds who rule “with force and harshness” (Ezekiel 34:4). Jesus contrasts Gentile rulers who “lord it over” others with disciples who serve (Mark 10:42–45). Paul condemns those who “devour,” “take advantage,” “put on airs” and “strike” others (2 Corinthians 11:20). These are descriptions of domination, exploitation and entitlement.
The book does not use social explanation to remove personal agency. It repeatedly says the opposite. On p. 13 it argues that an abuser’s selective anger shows choice because it is directed at the victim rather than everyone. Drugs, alcohol, stress and mental illness are not excuses. On p. 54 it describes the abuser’s difficulty accepting “accountability before God” and his lack of fear of “the law of the land or the law of Christ.” In Chapter Eight it develops a long, structured process of confession, accountability, repentance and restoration. The assertion that the book substitutes sociology for sin cannot survive contact with those chapters.
Using knowledge from outside the Bible
Rod’s formula — “Not culture. Not emotions. Not social programs. Just the Word” — sounds devout, but it creates a false choice. Scripture gives the moral norm; it does not supply every empirical fact needed to apply that norm wisely. The Bible commands care for children but does not contain modern child-protection protocols. It commands truthfulness but does not provide forensic interviewing methods. It commands believers to protect life but does not provide lethality-assessment instruments. It recognises government as God’s servant for good (Romans 13:1–4), while also limiting obedience where government commands sin (Acts 5:29). Mature discernment does not confuse these categories.
Breaking the Cycle explicitly thanks governments for legal protections and says believers should work with those supports (p. 42). That is consistent with Romans 13 and Titus 3. It also warns against uncritical reliance on labels, mental-health diagnoses and simplistic explanations (pp. 9–10). Far from swallowing secular thought whole, it repeatedly limits and evaluates it.
The doctrinal test
The right test is not whether a concept first appeared in a secular publication. The test is whether the claim is true, whether its use is consistent with Scripture, and whether its fruit accords with justice, mercy and faithfulness. “Coercive control” describes patterns that create fear and deny liberty and autonomy (p. 8). Scripture condemns fear-inducing domination, theft of liberty, exploitation and oppression even though it does not use the modern term.
Rod invokes Romans 3:23 and “mutual fallenness.” All have sinned, but universal sinfulness does not make every harmful relationship mutually caused. The Good Samaritan was a sinner, the wounded man was a sinner, and the robbers were sinners; yet the particular violence in the story was not a product of “mutual fallenness” between attacker and victim. Nathan did not tell Bathsheba that David’s abuse of power should be understood through mutual sin. Elijah did not treat Naboth’s death as a communication breakdown between equally fallen parties. Scripture can affirm universal sin while assigning particular responsibility.
Rod’s ideological charge is therefore overstated. Breaking the Cycle does use the Power and Control Wheel, professional research, law and contemporary terminology. It does so openly, not deceptively. Those sources help identify patterns, risks and effects; they do not define righteousness or replace Scripture. The book’s moral conclusions arise from the biblical condemnation of violence, oppression, treachery, deceit, domination and failure of love, and from the biblical duties to protect the weak, rebuke sin, seek repentance and restore where genuine change is evident.
To call that a “Trojan horse” avoids the harder work of demonstrating where the book’s actual moral teaching contradicts Scripture. A Scriptural approach is not one that refuses all knowledge outside the Bible. It is one that judges all knowledge by Scripture and then uses what is true in the service of love, justice, mercy and faithfulness.
Scripture’s “weightier matters” govern application
Rod repeatedly contrasts “the Word” with compassion, emotion and social knowledge, yet Jesus’ own method refuses that separation. He rebuked interpreters who were exact about formal requirements while neglecting “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23). The problem was not that they quoted Scripture, but that their use of Scripture detached individual texts from God’s character and moral priorities.
A biblical response to domestic violence must therefore ask not only whether a verse about marriage, submission or forgiveness can be quoted, but how the interpretation serves justice, mercy, truth and protection of the vulnerable. An interpretation that predictably returns a frightened wife to coercion, rewards superficial repentance or preserves a respected man’s reputation at the expense of truth has failed an important Scriptural test.
The book’s appeal to Luke 4:18 is not an attempt to convert every dissatisfaction into oppression. Its chapters define the conduct at issue in concrete terms: intimidation, sexual violence, economic deprivation, threats, isolation, humiliation and repeated control. Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor and liberty to the oppressed does not supply a technical definition of domestic violence, but it unquestionably reveals the direction of his mission and the character expected of his followers.
The same is true of the prophets. Isaiah 1 joins worship with the command to seek justice and correct oppression. Ezekiel 34 condemns shepherds who fail to strengthen the weak and instead rule with force. These are not decorative texts placed around a secular theory. They explain why ignorance, neutrality and preservation of institutional comfort are not adequate ecclesial responses.
Rod is entitled to challenge particular applications, evidence or wording. But the sweeping conclusion that there is “no light” in the book is incompatible with its sustained appeal to Scriptural duties that his review largely leaves unaddressed. A serious Scriptural critique would need to engage those duties, not merely label the practical knowledge used to fulfil them as feminist.
A further Scriptural problem with the ideological accusation
Rod’s review also risks a form of circular reasoning. The book identifies repeated behaviours of intimidation, isolation, economic restriction and misuse of male privilege. Rod then treats the very naming of those behaviours as proof that a feminist theory governs the book. But the fact that feminists, governments or domestic-violence practitioners also describe a behaviour does not determine whether the description is true. If the conduct is real, if it creates fear and dependence, and if Scripture condemns the moral substance of it, then refusing to name it because of who else has named it would be intellectually and pastorally irresponsible.
The Scriptural writers were not afraid to use the available language of their world. Paul quoted pagan poets, used Roman citizenship, appealed to legal process and drew on athletic, military and commercial images. None of this made his gospel pagan, Roman or commercial. The source of an observation and the authority by which it is morally judged are different questions. Breaking the Cycle does not ask the Duluth program to decide what God loves or hates. It asks whether a practical diagram helps people recognise conduct Scripture already condemns.
The review also understates the extent to which the book challenges the culture surrounding abuse rather than merely the individual act. Scripture itself addresses culture. The prophets condemn rulers, priests, judges, merchants and communities whose customs normalise exploitation. Jesus condemns traditions that make void the word of God. Paul warns that bad company corrupts good morals and instructs ecclesias to correct collective practices. It is therefore entirely Scriptural to ask whether inherited teachings, informal expectations or institutional habits make it easier for a powerful person to conceal abuse.
A sound response should avoid two errors. The first is to baptise every contemporary theory as truth. The second is to reject every contemporary insight as ideological contamination. Breaking the Cycle does neither. Its proper claim is modest: professional knowledge can help believers see conduct that ignorance, familiarity or misplaced loyalty has concealed. Scripture then supplies the moral judgment, the call to repentance and the duty of care.
Read the other blog articles in this series:
Comments