These are not in fact rules that Liberty has. It is also notable that Jo says she is a stay-at-home wife, while also saying that she is married and attending college. Some have pointed out that she is not wearing a wedding ring.
The Billy Graham Rule and Christian Friendship
Jo’s TikTok videos, while tongue-in-cheek, touch on a several serious topics. One Twitter user’s comment on Jo’s marriage boundaries video is especially troubling: “I had a boyfriend in college who had these expectations of me. He sat next to me and made sure I only chose female professors…He also would not allow me to make eye contact with other men, wear make up, or do my hair on class days, and called me fat when I was 115 lbs. He was EXTREMELY mentally abusive.”
Many would likely agree that refusing to respond to someone of the opposite sex on a discussion board is extreme, and how such strict requirements relate to abuse is an entire conversation in itself. But should Christians follow the Billy Graham Rule at all?
In a post titled, “The Scandal of Evangelical Christian Friendship,” Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Karen Swallow Prior makes the case that the rule has a number of shortcomings. “Like all matters of Christian life and belief, getting this question right requires achievement of a delicate balance,” says Prior. She notes that it would be foolish to ignore the fact that people are sexual beings, yet the Bible commands “believers who are not married to each other to treat one another as brothers and sisters.”
“Christians more than anyone else ought to have the most robust and healthiest understanding of friendship, including, or especially, those between men and women,” says Prior. Biblical examples of mixed gender friendships among adults include Jesus’ friendships with sisters Mary and Martha, as well as Paul’s friendships with married couple Aquila and Priscilla.
It is important, says Prior, to view friendships among Christians as good and healthy. “When friendships between men and women in the church are discouraged or viewed automatically with suspicion,” she says, “this attitude, paradoxically, creates situations riper for sin and abuse.”
Christian men and women struggle with friendship, Prior believes, not because Christian culture is overly focused on sex, but because believers tend to put too great a burden on marriage to fulfill their need for friendship: “In other words, perhaps because we have overlapped marriage with friendship so much, we don’t know how to have opposite-sex friendships that aren’t inherently sexual.”
Prior also points out that the Billy Graham Rule fails in some key areas. For one, it does nothing to help people who struggle with same-sex attraction. For another, it does not address people who are inclined to view pornography. She does not discount the need for boundaries in opposite-sex friendships, but observes that the need for boundaries “is true of all relationships, of which friendships are just one kind.”
Prior expresses gratitude for her male friends who don’t avoid texting her or meeting with her one-on-one, but respect her “as a fellow human being.” She concludes her article, “One-size-fits-all man-made rules cannot replace biblical wisdom, the common humanity God gave us or the scriptural injunction to treat one another as brothers and sisters.”
