The world has moved on quite a bit from the days when it was permissible, even commendable to chastise one's wife and ‘put her in place'. We have also stopped, at least in public, poking fun at the learning disabled or pulling dangerous pranks on them. Indeed, it is now the practice when struggling to make a case for the invasion of exotic Middle Eastern lands, the plight of women and children is often used, especially to paint the regimes and societies we are promising to emancipate them from, as barbaric and unapologetically backward. 

In part these changes were brought about by a humanist determination that society's most vulnerable are not subjected to harm while we stand idly by, that we instead  are burdened with a duty to protect them. For these same reasons we decided to ignore such religious writings and teachings as would encourage or permit such action, and sought instead to focus on those elements of scripture that urged us to care for one another, affording special attention to the lowly and the weak. No longer can a wife-beater seek succour in religious texts that pronounce him head of his wife and her master. Our rendering of such verses in the modern context, place instead a burden on the Christian husband to provide her relief and love every day of her life. 

So it is odd, that the world's largest retailer of books, Amazon and one of the strongest religious movements in the Western Hemisphere, American Evangelicals of a conservative bent, should support the distribution and sale of a book that not only teaches but also preaches the physical disciplining of children. Euphemistically termed spanking, but nonetheless properly named beating, caning and thrashing as the case may be. This book deceptively enounced Shepherding a Child's Heart is a true instruction manual for the child beater, and the fact that the name child-beater does not quite bring out the revulsion that wife-beater does is emblematic of the power of such arguments as it proposes.

Why do we still tolerate a situation where the smallest, most vulnerable and dependent in society are the only ones without protection from assault under the law?

The apple they say, does not fall far from the tree, and so it is that just like was the case with the subjugation of womankind, Divine Wisdom is pronounced to justify violence on the weak, the weapon of choice being "He that spares his rod hates his son: but he that loves him chastises him sometimes" (Proverbs 13:24). Such is the self-righteousness behind some of the defenders of this practice that they even insist that all good Christians must beat their children to set them straight  in the path of the true faith.

Kenyan children still suffer similar treatment, similarly justified. That such abuse of children, in Kenya and around the world often survives legislation as is clear from these reports here from Human Rights Watch, is proof that concerted political leadership is needed to fight this cruelty just as was the case in the emancipation of women.

Many reading this will no doubt contend that there is a difference between spanking and beating, and that they perhaps have enjoyed the benefits of such physical counsel in the past. There was a time when sections of  the female society also held such beliefs, and we did not listen, with good reason. Assault is illegal, it matters not who the violent action comes from. 

We have grown as a society to accept that violent action against our weaker members is barbaric, now we must work to protect the very weakest of all. Those invoking God's name in their ill-treatment of children would do well to heed another admonition of the Christ's for those doing harm to children, "It would be better for them if a millstone was hanged about their neck, and that they were drowned in the depth of the sea."