Violence against women and girls remains one of the most pervasive and underaddressed issues in British society — and, as the Evangelical Alliance's Claudine Roberts argues in a powerful new essay, it is also one that the Church has too often failed to name from the pulpit.

Roberts writes from personal experience. She is a survivor of sexual violence, and she brings to her argument both the authority of lived experience and the conviction that the Church's silence on this subject has caused real harm. When churches never preach on the biblical accounts of violence against women — and there are many, from Tamar to the unnamed woman of Judges 19 — they inadvertently communicate that these stories do not matter, that victims of such violence have no place in the congregation's shared narrative.

The result, Roberts argues, is that survivors sit in pews week after week, carrying wounds that are never acknowledged, wondering whether their experience disqualifies them from belonging. Meanwhile, perpetrators — who are also present in congregations — receive no challenge from Scripture or community.

The Evangelical Alliance's call is not for churches to become counselling centres or to wade into political debates about policy. It is something more fundamental: to let the Bible speak. To preach on the passages that deal with violence and abuse. To create the kind of culture where survivors feel safe enough to speak and where the community is equipped to respond with wisdom and care.

This is not comfortable territory. But Roberts makes a compelling case that it is holy ground — that the God who sees and names the suffering of women in Scripture is the same God who calls his Church to do the same.