Fear and trembling come upon me

And horror overwhelms me.

It is not enemies who taunt me--

I could bear that.

It is not adversaries who deal insolently with

me--

From that I could hide.

But it is you

My equal, my companion, my familiar friend Psalms 55:4-8

In a recent letter to the editor of the Bucknell campus newspaper, The Bucknellian, a female student who had been the victim of domestic abuse spoke out about the nature of her struggle against oppression.

"Women who are abused are not just physically beaten, but are brainwashed to believe that they deserve to be treated as less than human, because they are women," she wrote. "Abuse is about power--the power men have over women in our society."

As the conservative Christian Promise Keepers crowded Washington, D.C. last Saturday for "Standing in the Gap," a national convention aimed to save the souls of errant husbands, attention was diverted from the fact that every six hours a woman dies in the U.S. as a result of domestic violence. The real problem behind marital abuse--women's second-class status--was ignored altogether as men bonded over Bibles, doing their best to suppress women's voices with a mix of secrets and lies.

Promise Keepers president Randy Phillips told The New York Times that, "We are not a political organization. We do not have any political goals." Someone should let Promise Keepers supporters and religious-right politicos from Pat Buchanan to evangelists Dale D. Schlafer and Billy Graham in on that secret.

"God is not calling us to a playground, he is calling us to a battleground," said Graham in a video-message presented at "Standing in the Gap." "This is warfare, and we are at the center of the battle."

How do you combat spousal abuse when, for example, a man grows frustrated by his nagging wife and decides to beat her for being the bread-winner?