Forgiveness Is More Than Platitudes: Evangelical Women, Sexual Violence, and Casuistic Tightening

Abstract

This article examines the ways evangelical rhetors Rachael Denhollander and Beth Moore engage in enclave deliberation regarding their community’s responses to sexual violence. Their contextual theological analysis proceeds through “casuistic tightening,” an inventive repurposing of casuistic stretching. Examining Denhollander’s and Moore’s rhetorical activity as a repurposing of casuistic practice helps explain how they productively revise theological abstractions—platitudes about forgiveness—that stymie robust deliberation, thus facilitating enclave deliberation. They confront the theological problem of an implicit-yet-operational antinomianism toward sexual violence, a problem that creates rhetorical difficulties: distinguishing sexual violence from sexual immorality generally and differentiating divine grace from human forgiveness in instances of assault. Negotiating this difficulty, Denhollander and Moore critique forgiveness as instant forgetting and magical healing, and they argue for a reinvigorated understanding of forgiveness.