Washington Post: The sin of silence - The epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church

cross the United States, evangelical churches are failing to protect victims of sexual abuse among their members. As the #MeToo movement has swept into communities of faith, several high-profile leaders have fallen: Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced into early retirement this month after reports that he’d told a rape victim to forgive her assailant rather than call the police. Illinois megachurch pastor Bill Hybels similarly retired early after several women said he’d dispensed lewd comments, unwanted kisses and invitations to hotel rooms.

So many Christian churches in the United States do so much good — nourishing the soul, comforting the sick, providing services, counseling congregants, teaching Jesus’s example, and even working to fight sexual abuse and harassment. But like in any community of faith, there is also sin — often silenced, ignored and denied — and it is much more common than many want to believe. It has often led to failures by evangelicals to report sexual abuse, respond appropriately to victims and change the institutional cultures that enabled the abuse in the first place.

Without a centralized theological body, evangelical policies and cultures vary radically, and while some church leaders have worked to prevent abuse and harassment, many have not. The causes are manifold: authoritarian leadership, twisted theology, institutional protection, obliviousness about the problem and, perhaps most shocking, a diminishment of the trauma sexual abuse creates — especially surprising in a church culture that believes strongly in the sanctity of sex. “Sexual abuse is the most underreported thing — both in and outside the church — that exists,” says Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham and a former Florida assistant state attorney.

…

Diagnosing the scope of the problem isn’t easy, because there’s no hard data. The most commonly referenced study shows how difficult it is to find accurate statistics. In that 2007 report, the three largest insurers of churches and Christian nonprofits said they received about 260 claims of sexual abuse against a minor each year. Those figures, though, exclude groups covered by other insurers, victims older than 18, people whose cases weren’t disclosed to insurance companies and the many who, like Denhollander, never came forward. In other words, the research doesn’t include what is certainly the vast majority of sexual abuse. The sex advice columnist and LGBT rights advocate Dan Savage, tired of what he called the hypocrisy of conservatives who believe that gays molest children, compiled his own list that documents more than 100 instances of youth pastors around the country who, between 2008 and 2016, were accused of, arrested for or convicted of sexually abusing minors in a religious setting.

The problem in collecting data stems, in part, from the loose or nonexistent hierarchy in evangelicalism. Catholic Church abusers benefited from an institutional cover-up, but that same bureaucracy enabled reporters to document a systemic scandal. In contrast, most evangelical groups prize the autonomy of local congregations, with major institutions like the Southern Baptist Convention having no authority to enforce a standard operating procedure among member churches. This means researchers attempting to study this issue have to comb through publicly available documents….

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Why are so many evangelicals (who also devote resources to fighting sex trafficking or funding shelters for battered women) so dismissive of the women in their own pews? Roger Canaff, a former New York state prosecutor who specialized in child sexual abuse, tells me that many worshipers he encountered felt persecuted by the secular culture around them — and disinclined to reach out to their persecutors for help in solving problems. This is the same dynamic that drove a cover-up culture among ultra-Orthodox communities in New York, where rabbis insisted on dealing with child abusers internally, according to several analysts.

But among evangelicals, there is an added eschatological component: According to a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center, 41 percent of Americans believe that the end times will occur before 2050. In some evangelical teachings, a severe moral decay among unbelievers precedes the rapture of the faithful. Because of this, many evangelicals see the outside world as both a place in need of God’s love and a corrupt, fallen place at odds with the church. (“New Secularism is an attempt to undermine and destroy Christianity,” warned a headline in Christian Today a few years ago.)

About the use of the word “epidemic”. It’s twice in the article:

• It’s in the title: “The sin of silence: The epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical church”
• And later: “Sexual sin is talked about constantly, and extramarital sex is considered a heinous moral lapse. (A student at Patterson’s seminary who told him she’d been date-raped was disciplined for being in the man’s room) It stands to reason that churches don’t want to air an epidemic of wickedness among their flocks.”

I rarely read the Washington Post for two reasons:

• It’s a subscription that I don’t want to pay for (one typically gets x free reads a month. Eg the NYTimes is 10). My [whatever x is for them goes quickly] and then I am locked out
• It’s about as a left learning as I can’t stand
• On the other hand it is very influential. There’s little to argue about here!

Is sex abuse an epidemic in fundydom? Evangelical circles? An epidemic is a “a widespread occurrence”. I don’t see it as widespread! Are we in denial that it exists? Doubt that to.

By the way - BJU gets unjustly (my view) slammed by the article.

NYTimes … $ 8.99 per month

It’s a starter rate. Always something to read

I really think that your address to Don above was uncalled for

Thanks

Thanks

[G. N. Barkman]

I don’t understand why BJU gets lumped together with ABWE (and similar cases).

My view as well

The ABWE case was egregious (like the New Tribes)

The following is a statement given by the Pastors of Immanuel Baptist Church to the Washington Post.

We Were Rachael’s Church

In January of this year, Rachael Denhollander’s victim impact statement went viral. Her face-to-face confrontation of her convicted abuser, Larry Nassar, was marked by tremendous courage and grace. As Bible-believing pastors, we delighted to hear Rachael’s clear proclamation of biblical justice and forgiveness. In Rachael’s words, these twin themes were presented with the same balance with which God presents them in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. At the cross, God’s justice is satisfied, and His forgiveness is extended. To this day, we delight in the impact that Rachael’s statement and subsequent public witness have had in the cause of protecting the sexually abused.

However, delight was not our only reaction. During Rachael’s impact statement she lamented, “My advocacy for sexual assault victims, something I cherished, cost me my church.” As the pastors of Immanuel Baptist Church, we knew that we were that church. After years of membership at Immanuel, Rachael and her husband Jacob had left our church voluntarily just weeks before the Nassar trial began. This departure is why ‘delight’ was not our only reaction to Rachael’s testimony. Instead, we felt confusion, sadness, frustration, introspection, fear, and had a host of other thoughts and emotions. Fortunately, because of Rachael’s decision not to name our church publicly, we were able to enter into a season of deep self-examination without the scrutiny of the outside world.

From Questions to Confession

The weeks that followed produced a flurry of questions, conversations, and clarifications. We read every article, talked to hundreds of our church members, solicited advice from multiple church leaders, met with the Denhollanders personally, spent hours meeting as pastors, and, finally, met with our entire church family. By the time we met with our church family, we saw we had sin to confess. We had come to see that there were ways we had failed to serve the church we love, and we had failed to care adequately for the Denhollanders in a time of deep need.

Our particular failures did not stem from discouraging the Denhollanders to pursue justice in the Larry Nassar case. We did not discourage them in their pursuit of justice; in fact, we applaud those efforts. Rather, our failures stemmed from not listening to and properly understanding Rachael’s concerns about our invitation to have Sovereign Grace Church leaders preach to our church. We simply did not have the categories to fully discern what Rachael was saying at the time. This misunderstanding then played a role in our seeing the Denhollanders’ articulation of these concerns as divisive instead of informative. Finally, the poor pastoral care that resulted from these assumptions led the Denhollanders (understandably) to choose a new church.

As we interacted with the Denhollanders over their departure from Immanuel, we expressed things which we now deeply regret. In hindsight, we see we were sinfully unloving. We have since thoroughly repented to the Denhollanders and to the church we serve, seeking to confess every known sin. In return, the Denhollanders and our church family have been very gracious and forgiving. The Denhollanders have assured us that there is no longer any breach in our relationship and that all of our wrongs against them are forgiven. It is a deep joy to us that the gospel can restore our relationships when we fail.

Don’t Misunderstand

Sadly, many will view our listening to Rachael (and the concerns of other abuse victims within our own congregation) as a condemnation of Sovereign Grace Churches (SGCs). It is not meant to be any such thing. While we lament the victims who have experienced abuse while attending SGCs, we do not have any information that would lead us to the definitive conviction that SGC leaders have broken any laws. Instead, we have seen that by partnering so closely with them while accusations against them were unanswered, we unknowingly communicated to those who have experienced abuse that we were not concerned to hear their voices. While charges against SGCs remain unanswered, we have thought it best to discontinue inviting their leaders to minister to our church. This change is in no way a pronouncement of guilt on SGCs. Rather, it is part of our attempt to repent of our failure to listen to the victims of abuse within our congregation.

The Gift of Reproof

During a long, hard pastors’ meeting in which we were beginning to see some of our faults, one of our pastors said, “We have been given a gift.” After months of reflection, we believe this statement more than ever. Being made to see our blind spots has been a gift to us. In the last few months, God has increased our sensitivity to the concerns of the abused. He has called us to look at our own shortcomings as pastors. He has allowed us to seek and receive forgiveness from those we have failed. He has motivated us to ensure that Immanuel Baptist Church is a place where the abused are cared for and abusers are vigilantly protected against. He has renewed our sense of the importance of being held accountable to one another, to our congregation, and to the watching world. We pray that God would continue to write these lessons deeply on our hearts so that the gospel can continue to be clearly proclaimed in and through our lives.