He Calls Me Daughter

Not rated • Angel App

Next month, “Happy Father’s Day!” will ring through phone lines and be scrawled in crayon on handcrafted cards. But that wish won’t be voiced in homes where June’s third Sunday is an annual reminder of hurt. The new documentary He Calls Me Daughter explains why women and girls often carry deep wounds inflicted by an absent or abusive father. The damage is not only physical and psychological, it’s spiritual.

“For women, 80% of what they believe about themselves comes from the message their father is giving them,” researcher Tracey Robinson claims. Many of the women interviewed share stories of how rejection by their fathers led to destructive lifestyles and to projecting their pain onto God. A former sex worker who grew up without her father recalls how even after warming to the gospel, she struggled to worship Jesus because He’s a man.

The film’s lone shortcoming might be in not directly addressing offending fathers. But we do meet one father whose godly example has reverberated far and wide. Rachelle Starr says as a child she “watched my dad live out the gospel” by inviting strangers and AIDS patients to their house. By her late 20s, she had founded Scarlet Hope, a Christian ministry that prepares and delivers home-cooked meals to women in the sex industry—on site! Starr says “virtually all” of the 10,000 women her organization has served “have a broken perspective about their father.”

Author and theologian Michael Reeves opens Scripture to find the perfect Father: “We need to see the revelation of God in Jesus,” Reeves says. A woman suffering a hemorrhage for 12 years, worthless in the world’s eyes, did not escape Jesus’ notice. He called her “daughter.”