Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse

This is a richly researched, acutely unsettling study of corporal punishment in the United States. It focuses on the "Christian" use of Biblical texts to justify corporal punishment and its destructive legacy in our culture. Greven's insightful scholarship traces rationales for parental brutality through generations of religious apocalyptic thinking. His forceful argument takes the issue of physical discipline from the realm of parental rights and tradition and makes finding an alternative a moral responsibility.