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A design reference

When Scripture is used to harm

Some words of Scripture have been used to keep people quiet, to keep them in danger or to shut them out. Products now put verses in front of people at their most exposed moments, so knowing that history is part of handling the word with care.

Why it belongs in a design reference

Paul asks Timothy to be “an unashamed workman who accurately handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Every Bible product shares in that work, and it is a joy to do it well. It also carries weight. A verse of the day, an AI answer with tidy citations, a reply under someone’s prayer request: each puts a few words of Scripture in front of a person, often when they are tired, frightened or hurt.

A product cannot settle centuries of interpretation, and it does not have to. But it can know where particular verses have been used against people, and make sure it does not repeat that use with the authority of a clean citation. Survivors of abuse, Jewish readers, disabled people, LGBTQ+ people and others have heard some of these verses as weapons. Designing as if that had never happened is not neutral.

How this page is written

Each section names how a passage has been used, what harm followed, and who in the churches has since named or repudiated that use. It does not rule on how the passage should be read. Where Christian traditions hold different views, as they do on sexual ethics, the page says so and keeps to the documented harm. References are given rather than quoted at length; quotations follow the Berean Standard Bible.

Abuse and silence

Matthew 18:15–17 (“go and confront him privately”) has been used to insist that concerns about a leader go through a private, internal process first, even where one side holds far more power or the act is a crime. Forgiveness (Matthew 18:21–22) has been used to press victims to forgive quickly, or as if forgiving meant returning to the person who caused harm. Ephesians 5:22 and 1 Peter 3:1 on submission have been used to keep women in abusive marriages or to keep them silent. Psalm 105:15 (“Do not touch My anointed ones”) has been used to shield leaders from any question at all.

The churches’ own inquiries describe the pattern. The UK Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, in its 2021 report on 38 religious organisations, found that “the concept of forgiveness can be misused, both to put pressure on victims not to report their abuse and to justify failures by religious leaders to take appropriate action where allegations have been made”, and that fear for an organisation’s reputation discouraged reporting. The German Protestant ForuM study (2024) found that the institution’s protection was often put before the needs of those affected; reporting on its findings named a pressure to keep the peace in congregations (“Harmoniezwang”), pressure on victims to forgive quickly, and the belief that “it couldn’t happen here”. The Southern Baptist Convention’s independent review (2022) found that leaders were “singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations”, while survivors who reported abuse were ignored or disbelieved.

Churches have also written against these uses. The Church of England’s Responding Well to Domestic Abuse (2017) is its policy and practice guidance for parishes. Helen Paynter, at a Bible, Gender and Church seminar, argued that forgiveness does not require the abused person to become vulnerable again and does not exclude due process. Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphreys name “control through misuse of scripture” among the marks of spiritual abuse. In a 2014 survey of US Protestant pastors, 42% said they rarely or never speak about domestic violence.

Jewish people

Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us and on our children”) was used for centuries to charge all Jews with Jesus’ death, and passages such as John 8:44 to cast Jewish people as enemies of God. Readings that God had rejected Israel in favour of the church (supersessionism) fed contempt and persecution, and the late Luther’s writings against Jews were taken up by National Socialist antisemitism.

The Second Vatican Council’s Nostra Aetate (1965) states that what happened in Christ’s passion “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction”, that Jews “should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures”, and that the Church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone”. The Protestant Church in the Rhineland’s synod resolution of 1980 began a renewal of Christian–Jewish relations that most German Protestant churches followed. In 2015 the EKD synod stated that the far-reaching failure of the Protestant church towards the Jewish people fills it with grief and shame.

Slavery and race

Ephesians 6:5 (“Slaves, obey your earthly masters”) was the verse defenders of slavery cited most. In 1807 a Bible for enslaved people in the British West Indies was printed with most of the Old Testament and much of the New removed, including the Exodus story, while passages urging obedience were kept. The Museum of the Bible, which displays a copy, describes it as an attempt to appease the planter class.

State power

Romans 13:1–7 has been read as giving any government unconditional divine authority. In apartheid South Africa, the Kairos Document, written by a group of mainly Black South African theologians and first published in September 1985 with over 150 signatures, named this “State Theology”: a use of Romans 13 to give “an absolute and ‘divine’ authority to the State”. It argued that Paul was writing to a particular community in its own situation, not giving a timeless doctrine of every state.

Conquest and colonised peoples

Fifteenth-century papal bulls were used to justify seizing Indigenous peoples’ lands, the basis of what became the legal “doctrine of discovery”. On 30 March 2023 two Vatican dicasteries stated that the Catholic Church “repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples”, that the doctrine “is not a part of the teaching of the Catholic Church”, and that the bulls’ contents “were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers”.

Sickness, disability and mental health

Disability and illness have been read as the result of sin or a lack of faith, against the grain of passages such as John 9:1–3, and healing that did not come has been blamed on the sick person. In a 2013 Lifeway Research telephone survey of 1,001 Americans, 48% of evangelical, fundamentalist or born-again Christians agreed that with Bible study and prayer alone, people with serious mental illness such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia could overcome it. A task force of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (2025) notes that through many centuries Christians have associated disability with “a mark of sin, a failure of faith”, and points to Nancy Eiesland’s The Disabled God (1994) as a turning point in disability theology.

LGBTQ+ people

A small number of passages, often called the “clobber passages” (among them Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26–27, 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and 1 Timothy 1:10), have been quoted at LGBTQ+ people to reject them, to push them out of families and churches, and to justify attempts to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. Christian traditions hold different views on sexual ethics; this page does not settle that question. It records the documented harm of using these passages against people’s safety and dignity.

In the UK’s 2018 National Faith & Sexuality Survey (Ozanne Foundation, 4,613 responses, mostly from people with a Christian background), 458 respondents had tried to change their sexual orientation. Of those who then reported mental-health problems (281), 91 had attempted suicide and 193 had had suicidal thoughts. Religious leaders were the people most often named as having advised or forced the attempt, more often than parents, and over half of the 458 had first tried while 18 or under. Germany has prohibited conversion treatments for minors, and for adults whose consent is flawed, since June 2020.

Children

Proverbs 13:24 (“He who spares the rod hates his son”) is often cited for physical punishment of children. In the United States, conservative Protestant parents are more likely to support and use it; a study of 1,214 families found that physical punishment was associated with more behaviour problems in children, partly moderated in conservative Protestant homes. Children and families will have their own deep dive.

One example: Aperto

Aperto, an author-associated project, builds this into both its translation and its AI. Its prompt asks the assistant to be “honest about harm”: “If this passage has a history of being weaponized (against women, the poor, foreigners, the sick, the doubting, a people, a group), name it briefly and open-handedly. Not defensive, not a lecture.” Its study notes do the same at the verse: Luke 17 notes how forgiveness teaching has been used against abuse survivors; Luke 13 and 19 name supersessionist readings; Luke 14 recalls Augustine’s use of “compel them to come in” to justify coercing dissidents. Aperto is ours, so it is an example, not independent evidence; its notes take positions on readings that this page leaves open.

What this means for design

  • AI answers. Expect questions such as “Do I have to forgive him?”, “Should I submit to my husband?” or “Is it wrong to go to the police about a pastor?”. A neat answer citing Matthew 18 or Ephesians 5 can repeat this harm with apparent authority. Put safety and real help first, say briefly where a passage has been used against people, and offer the range of readings rather than a verdict. See Citations in AI answers.
  • Retrieval and suggestions. A verse of the day, “related verses” or a search ranked by popularity can surface a passage at exactly the wrong moment. Test what appears beside disclosures of abuse, illness, grief or identity.
  • Study notes and footnotes. A short, open-handed note at the verse, saying how it has been used and by whom it has since been rejected, reaches people where the passage does. Attribute it and keep it distinct from the text.
  • Groups and replies. In community features, other people quote verses too. Let people report a reply that uses Scripture to pressure them, and make sure the report reaches someone who is not the person being reported.
  • Tests. Add these passages and questions to evaluation, alongside the people most likely to have heard them as weapons. Include reviewers from those communities.
  • Bezalel asks about this in its pre-mortem.

Limits of this page

This is a draft, waiting for review. It is not complete: other passages and other harms belong here, including against women in leadership, the poor and people of other faiths. Several sources are reports and surveys with self-selected samples, and some are summaries of longer documents; each limit is listed below. It describes how passages have been used, not what they mean, and it gives no theological, legal or safeguarding advice.

Sources and their limits