Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence: Would Mary Fisher and children still be alive if their church taught equality rather than male headship?

Three years before April 10, 2001, when Mary Fisher's throat was slashed and a bullet shot through the back of her head (followed by the murders of her two children who also had their throats slashed) by Robert Fisher, her husband and the natural father of the children, she and her husband had sought marital counseling from their complementarian pastor, who told authorities that the couple wasn't having any one particular problem. He claimed they were just "wondering how could they be closer given their schedules?"

Given what ultimately happened, I don't buy that. And neither should any thinking person.

On this 15th anniversary of the murders, Robert Fisher is still at large and listed on the FBI Top Ten Wanted Fugitive list. Law enforcement and the courts will hopefully bring legal justice for the murders of his wife and children. But in order that Mary, Brittney, and Bobby Fisher's deaths not be in vain, Christians are compelled to take a closer look at the situation Mary Fisher found herself in during the years leading up to their deaths and what options she thought she might have had for her and her children.

Mary was an active member of Scottsdale Baptist Church (renamed New Life Community Church) at the time of the murders, though a few months before she was murdered, church members noticed that she had been withdrawing from church involvement. Also, until a few months before he brutally slashed his wife and children's throats, Robert Fisher had been involved in the men's ministry there. So, it was completely natural for the couple to turn to their pastor for help with marital problems. The same pastor who denied that they actually had any real problems. Tragically, their pastor was the only person they turned to. And this is not unusual among Christians.

Robert's issues with control were no secret to those who knew them. But that wouldn't seem a problem to a pastor who served in leadership under John MacArthur. According to Robert Fisher's mother, she, herself, had been what she called a "Yes Sir" wife. And she disclosed that she had observed similar dynamics in her son's marriage.

Mary Fisher's mother-in law said that Mary had also been a "Yes Sir," very submissive, wife. This would have been just fine with the leadership of the couple's complementarian church, where Robert was considered a good Christian and was involved in the men's group whose primary focus was male governance.

Hindsight makes it easy to see that a recipe for disaster was brewing.

As this is being written, 15 years later (in 2016), the website for that church describes the men's ministry as a place where men are trained, "to become strong, confident leaders...encouraging each other to be servant leaders to our families."

Among complementarians, the term "servant leader" is code for "being in charge." It means, "Be the boss. But be a nice one." But everyone knows that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely...and, according to Robert Fisher's own mother, Robert was the absolute power in the Fisher home.

2023 UPDATE: I have left the above-link [to the men's ministry] intact, but it no longer references the men's ministry. Sometime after this article was posted in 2016, the church deleted all reference to men's ministries from their website (though I will venture a guess that the church still has a men's ministry...that still teaches "servant leadership"). The link still works but only references the women's Bible study (women teaching women) and a few other Bible studies.

Christian counselor, Barrington Brennan, has been warning the church for years that when teachings about strictly defined gender roles are coupled with male entitlement and control issues, a scenario for domestic violence is created. Men are set up to become abusive or violent, and women are set up to take it.

So, what we are looking back on, in this 15th year after Mary and her children's brutal murders, is a woman who was experiencing marital abuse all the while attending a complementarian church on a weekly basis, where she and her husband were taught that the husband is the head of the wife and that, in order to be a good Christian, the wife must submit to his authority.

We know this, because Mary Fisher's pastor, "As a college student...served in leadership at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA." It was under the tutelage of male headship zealot, Dr. John MacArthur. Cantelmo was well-trained in the complementarian, patriarchal, approach to marriage and family counseling.

John MacArthur is a patriarchalist who has been involved with complementarianism from its inception, endorsing the anti-woman Danvers Statement and serving on CBMW's Board of Reference. The Danver's Statement defines complementarianism as the position that all women are subject to male authority. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) is dedicated to world-wide female subjugation.

The current bio (as of this writing) of Fisher's pastor, reveals that after graduating from seminary, but before becoming pastor at Scottsdale Baptist Church, he "served on the Elders’ Marriage Council and spoke at a number of "Shepherd’s Conferences" at MacArthur's Church."

MacArthur's Shepherds Conferences are leadership conferences for men which stress female subordination to male governance.

Christian response to domestic violence is generally in need of improvement. In particular, complementarian pastors have a woeful record of looking out for the safety of abused wives and children. In 2009--eight years after Mary Fisher's murder--Rick Warren's Saddle Back Church advised battered wives not to leave violent husbands until after they had been beaten "regularly." Pastoral counsel stemming from MacArthur's and CBMW's male-leadership-at-all-cost-theology could only have left Mary Fisher feeling that in order to be a good Christian, she had few options available other than continuing her miserable and frightening existence as a "Yes Sir" wife.

Her Assistant Pastor, Steve Daniels, said, "She [Mary Fisher] never complained, never let on there was a problem, but that was how she was. She never really opened up to anyone."

Of course she rarely opened up to anyone. There are reasons Christian abused wives "never really" open up to anyone. 1.) It can be physically dangerous for wives to rat on abusive husbands to pastors they know will likely side with their abusers. 2.) It is humiliating for abused women to admit what goes on in their homes. They are often blamed for the abuse by either not leaving, marrying him in the first place, or by not "submitting" enough. 3.) In many churches wives are brainwashed into believing they are being disloyal to both God and their husbands if they tell anyone about the abuse. Part of complementarian Nancy Leigh Demoss's 30-Day Husband challenge (to wives) was to say "nothing negative" about their husbands (to him or anyone else)...for 30 days. Telling someone about the abuse would be considered "negative."

So, when and if an abused wife finally does seek pastoral counseling, I can assure you, she is very desperate indeed.

When the Fishers went for counseling, in 1998, 11 years before the infamous Saddle Back Church "beaten regularly" advice was published, and three years before the murders occurred, the complementarian movement (founded in 1987) had already been in full swing for 11 years.

The Baptist Faith & Message 2000, which stressed male only leadership, had been adopted en mass by the Southern Baptist Convention and many other denominations, including Baptist churches that were not a part of the SBC. With vast financial resources at their disposal, the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood had been busy for just over a decade, flooding the Christian community with their venomous dogma.

Their male headship creed quickly breached denominational lines, and those who had been doctrinal adversaries on other issues gladly linked arms, finding common ground at the nexus of female subordination to male governance.

This was the climate within complementarian churches in 2001. Mary Fisher was literally drowning in the flood waters of male control.

She never stood a chance.

So, when we remember the horror of what happened to one Christian mother and her children in 2001, we must ask ourselves, what has changed, today. What is the climate today, for women in general and abused wives in particular within complementarian Christian churches?

There is correlation between gender-based authority and submission teachings and marital abuse. The doctrine is not biblical. Complementarianism and domestic abuse are two sides of the same coin.

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