For the Joy of the Journey

A Stained Beauty – Sexual Abuse and the Church- Opportunity

George May 25, 2022 A Stained Beauty 0 Comments

This week media has been flooded with news about Guidepost’s report of their investigation into Southern Baptist Convention’s response to allegation of sexual abuse, corruption and cover-up. Commissioned by the SBC, it was shocking. The full report can be read HERE. There were many articles in response, I found two particularly insightful. Russell Moore and David French.

At this point, I ask, were you aware of the Guidepost’s SBC report? If not, perhaps your attention was on other matters. This would be a good time to catch up. Hopefully, previous posts sensitized you to the subject and you have heard or read about it.

…there are more allegations of child sexual abuse in Protestant congregations than there are in Catholic ones…

The report is a defining event, not only for SBC, but all churches. Whether or not the SBC report has the attention of churches is yet to be determined, but I am certain people outside of the church are acutely aware and curious see how churches respond. We must not stumble like the Catholic Church has. What happens in the aftermath will determine whether observers see the Church as Stained or Beautiful. The credibility of our witness is in the dock.

Churches have no recourse but to respond. Silence is, in itself, a response, and will speak loudly.How we respond will reveal the true character of our institution.

Responding is a minefield. Leaders who choose to grab “the bull by the horns” or initiate a “sky is falling” narrative can create chaos in a church family, producing paranoia and suspicion, to no good end. Any response must begin with prayerful and honest self-examination. Transparency is of utmost importance. Action comes when we are convinced there is a problem.

It is time to abandon the myth that our churches are safe places and confess that we are as vulnerable and wounded as other communities. We must review the lens through which we perceive reality: our theology, language and practice.

For decades now, the church has been trained to believe that the greatest threat to it was external…when the reality is that it is internal…the rot in the SBC is just a picture of most “Christian” denominations and non-denoms…and it’s the tip of the iceberg… (Phoenix Preacher)

“For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News?”??
1 Peter? ?4:17? ?NLT

“I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for pastors, church leaders, and church cultures to become trauma informed. Trauma is not something that happens “out there” to “those” people.” “Trauma is the mission field of our time.’”
@DianeLangberg

What looks like a serious crisis may mark the moment of new life; what looks a sinister threat may in reality be a great opportunity.
Hans Kung —THE CHURCH

The Body of Christ is beautiful; “when the church gets it right, she is beautiful. When the church gets it right—when we fulfill the intentions of our Lord Christ and His character is revealed through us—” (John Stumbo)

“Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in me,
All His wonderful passion and purity,
Oh, Thou Spirit divine, all my nature refine,
Till the beauty of Jesus be seen in me.”

Next: When the church gets it right…

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George May 19, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Mystics
The mystic is not somebody who says, “Look what I’ve experienced. Look what I’ve achieved.” The mystic is the one who says, “Look what love has done to me.”. . . There’s nothing left, but the being of love itself giving itself away as . . . the concreteness of who you simply are.—James Finley, Following the Mystics through the Narrow Gate

Lying
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. (vv. 9–10 NRSV)
Unfortunately, so many people live so much of their lives unaware of these things. Lying to one another does not mean telling untruths to each other; rather, it means projecting an image of yourself to other people that simply is not true. Most people do not intend to do this. They can’t help it. One’s outward image is a direct projection of his or her inward sense of identity and when this identity is built on things that are not true (i.e., anything other than the image of God), that individual’s outward image lies about who he or she most deeply is.
JD Walt

Prayer of Elderly
. . Sometimes I say to myself a little prayer in my advancing years, “God, help me to be the kind of old person young people want old people to be. Help me not just to talk like this, but help me to walk around like this and answer the phone like this and talk to my grandchildren like this.” We’re all trying to do our best here to walk the walk.
James Finley with Kirsten Oates, “Dialogue 1: The Ascent of Mount Carmel,

Reading the Gospels
At every step Jesus seemed to confuse his listeners. I’ve been reading the gospels a lot over the past year. A few chapters at a time. And Jesus is constantly confounding the expectations of everyone. Except those who are desperate for his healing. They expect him to heal them. But those who want him to overthrow Rome seem consistently disappointed and thrown off kilter. Of course, it was never his mission to overthrow Rome. At least not with armies and swords. The American church has never learned this lesson.
. I want you to imagine that Jesus is with you right now. Think about it. Imagine what that would feel like. Would you now think, feel, and talk about “the news” of the day the same way if he was sitting with you now.
Here’s the thing…He is.
So many of us, who identify as Christians are looking for life in the wrong place. We are looking for life in politics, work, money, sex, substances, power, body image, reputation, (kid’s) sports, and even doctrine. And it is making us sad and angry and full of anxiety. But life is only found in one place, the person of Jesus.
Matt Redmond

Being Moral
Morality is a very low bar, and if that’s what we are aiming for, our lives will hover back and forth just above and below this threshold. Virtue is simply good morals on steroids. Love, on the other hand, is the holy presence of Jesus Christ filling human beings together to the measure of all the fullness of God. This is the secret long hidden and now revealed. It’s not about aspiring to better behavior but becoming abandoned to Jesus.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (v. 14)
J D Walt

Healthy religion is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time—when the truth is the exact opposite. Anybody who really knows also knows that they don’t know at all.
Richard Rohr

what might a more healthy relationship with the state look like?
One answer comes from “A Letter to Diognetus,” a piece of early Christian apologetics from the second century. In the letter, the author describes how Christians relate to the nation states in which they dwell:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country.
Richard Beck

The Storyteller
Sometimes the storyteller’s impact is minimal. He [Elie Wiesel]tells the story of a rabbi who before Passover sought to persuade his people to be generous for the poor. When he got home his wife said, “Nu, how was it?” “Did you accomplish anything?” He said, “Only half.” Thus, “I did not succeed in convincing the rich to give, but I managed to convince the poor to receive.” Quite a story there. Scot McKnight

View from the front porch
In a Jewish legend Solomon “knew the songs of birds and could interpret them.” A later Hasidic master was asked by a student how that could be, and he said, “When you know what your own soul is singing, you will also understand the songs of the bird.” Are those birds – ach, the warblers above all – singing something inherent, too, to who we are?
Although, I’ve always appreciated birds, in recent weeks my interest has increased. I discovered an amazing bird app which identifies bird calls. Of course the next step is bird feeders… two at the end of the porch. I am still awaiting my first feeder… 18 hours and counting. I suspect I have a lot to learn about bird feeders.
Furthermore, I apparently I do not understand what my own soul is singing… working on it.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

A Stained Beauty – Sexual Abuse – The Invisible Gorilla

George May 17, 2022 Sexual Abuse in the Church 0 Comments

My previous post presented information on the presence and prevalence of sexual abuse in churches. It is well documented factual information is not very effective in countering opposing views. I am confident that most readers, like myself, have a positive bias for the church. Information contrary to any bias is most often rejected and perhaps that happened when you read the post. One intuitive defense when hearing factual negative information is : “That may be true, but I have never known of or witnessed anything like that in our church.”
In 1991 a controversy erupted over accusations of sexual abuse in fundamentalist churches reported in the Nashville Tennessean .

Predictably, the article created a firestorm of reactions. Serving as an elder and aware of the presence of sexual abuse in my own church, I was encouraged that someone was speaking out. My optimism was quickly extinguished when I read a guest editorial in “The Gospel Advocate” written by a prominent and respected evangelist in the Church of Christ. Rather than considering any possibility of misconduct he wrote:

Guy N Woods in his guest editorial, responding to: “The more conservative the church, the more more incest you have in families”. wrote:
“I have preached, I think, in more places and for more congregations than any man living in the churches of Christ today. .. In no instance— not one— in all the meetings I have heard so much as a rumor of any active member of the church being accused of incest. The “family life minister’s” statements though distasteful and offensive, are so ludicrous and patently false that most thoughtful people on reading them will smile, shake their heads and dismiss the matter as unworthy of further consideration.”
The Gospel Advocate – 1991

Numerous others echoed Wood’s sentiments. Participants cited in the article were excoriated, receiving personal and professional scorn. I was angry. What an idiot, did Woods think his casual interactions would reveal incest? How could an, otherwise, intelligent person be so blind? Time and experience have tempered me. I have come to better understand how Woods and others, including myself can be blind to the “obvious”.

Which brings me to “The Dancing Gorilla”. a famous study from 1975.

It will be helpful if you take the test HERE. Follow the instructions carefully.

…the Invisible Gorilla Test, This study, a revised version of earlier studies conducted by Neisser and Becklen in 1975, asked subjects to watch a short video of two groups of people (wearing black and white T-shirts) passing a basketball around. The subjects are told either to count the passes made by one of the teams or to keep count of bounce passes vs. aerial passes. In different versions of the video a person walks through the scene carrying an umbrella (as discussed above) or wearing a full gorilla suit. After watching the video, the subjects are asked whether they noticed anything out of the ordinary taking place. In most groups, 50% of the subjects did not report seeing the gorilla (or the person with the umbrella). Failure to perceive the anomalies is attributed to failure to attend to it while engaged in the difficult task of counting passes of the ball. These results indicate that the relationship between what is in one’s visual field and perception is based much more on attention than was previously thought. –Wikipedia

Attention Blindness – where we can become so focused on an individual task that we become blinded to other important variables in our midst.

Bias, prejudice and other factors can mask the presence of sexual abuse, but I am suggesting that attention blindness is a significant reason for rejecting any suggestion of sexual abuse in the church. Watching the Invisible Gorilla video multiple times, I found that the gorilla was always invisible when I strictly adhered to instructions to count passes by the white shirted participants; otherwise the gorilla was always visible.

The opposite side of the attention blindness coin is inattention blindness.

I see the challenge of recognizing the presence and prevalence sexual abuse in the church as two-fold : 1) attention blindness and 2) inattention blindness.

Research on a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness suggests that unless we pay close attention, we can miss even the most conspicuous events.

This post primarily addresses inattention blindness, pointing out a reality to which attention needs to be drawn. My hope is that attention to the subject will produce conversations and concerns resulting in meaningful actions. Attention blindness is its own “stain” and will be the subject of subsequent posts.

In churches across this nation, children have said, “Someone touched me,” not even understanding what was done to them, and in response, law-abiding citizens of heaven have said, “This doesn’t happen in our church. It cannot be true because the accused person is so nice, and teaches Sunday school, and would never do anything like that.” Instead of facing the truth, they discredit and ignore. Why? Because acknowledging the truth will completely disrupt the system.
We often confuse the system of Christianity (Christendom) with Christ. But no so-called Christian system is truly God’s work unless it is full of truth and love. To tolerate sin, pretense, disease, crookedness, or deviation from the truth is to do something other than the work of God, no matter the words used to describe it.So how should we respond to systemic abuse? It begins with facing the truth. Consider what a healthy response to a physical symptom looks like. A person discovers a lump on their body; they can choose to ignore the lump or to take action to protect their physical system. When a response is driven by fear of what the lump might indicate and how disruptive or painful treatment might be, the person may hide the facts from themselves, denying the presence of the lump even though it could cost them their health or even their life. But if they face the truth and do what is necessary to address the symptoms, they can bring healing to their body.
Diane Langberg – Redeeming Power – Understanding Power and Abuse in the Church

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

So Much To Think About

George May 11, 2022 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Spiritual Person
The mark of a spiritual person, in the tradition of Jesus, is not in some kind of super-spirituality but the holiness of his or her humanity. Jesus did not become a human being so that we could become something other than or more than human beings. He became a human being so that we could embody the holiness of humanity.
The hallmark of real Christianity is not elevation but descent. It is not revealed through people who venture higher up, aspiring for more spiritual experiences, but those who journey downward, ever increasing their experience of loving and serving others.
J D Walt

Words You Should Never Say to Your Pastor
The full sentence could say, “People are saying that you don’t visit enough.” Another example is: “People are saying that our student ministry is not doing well.” Or one more example is: “People are saying that you don’t have good office hours.”
The sentence might specify a group while maintaining anonymity for the individuals: “Some elders are not happy with you,” or, “A lot of the staff are unhappy.”
You get the point. It could be phrased a number of ways, but the meaning is still similar. “People” is never defined. The true complainer is never identified. It is one of the most frustrating and demoralizing sentences pastors and staff will hear. Here are some reasons for the frustration:
The complainer lacks the courage to speak for himself or herself. So he or she hides behind the deceitful veil of “people are saying.” Leaders in churches know that when complainers lack courage to speak for themselves, or when they have to hide behind anonymous complainers, they are trouble in the making.
The leader has no recourse or action to take. These complainers never identify the source or sources. So the pastor or staff person cannot follow up and speak directly to the dissidents. He or she is left with a complaint that cannot be resolved due to anonymity.
The leader immediately questions the motive of the complainer. The moment the ministry leader hears those words, “People are saying,” he or she doubts the credibility and the heart of the complainer. The approach is cowardly; it thus is always seen through the lens of doubt and frustration.
This approach is a double frustration for the ministry leader. First, he or she has heard yet another criticism. Most ministry leaders have to deal with criticisms too often. Second, the ambiguity of the complaint and the source of the complaint can leave a leader wondering if the problem is really bigger than reality. He or she can waste a lot of emotional energy on something that really may not be such a big deal.
Indirect criticisms can be the most painful criticisms. Most ministry leaders deal better with someone who is direct and precise in his or her concerns. But indirect criticisms such as “People are saying…” or “I love you pastor, but…” hurt more because cowardly actions and duplicitous behavior are added to the criticism itself.
https://churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/266017-the-one-sentence-pastors-hate-to-hear.html?fbclid=IwAR1au7_1wJFFAeqSrBQaDWPMQg_nNxxJ3SpRddrqji0cS8M1OL5L012WUOI

Suffering and Evil
Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward Him. But if personal suffering gives sufficient evidence that God doesn’t exist, then surely I shouldn’t wait until I suffer to conclude He’s a myth. If my suffering would one day justify denying God, then I should deny Him now in light of other people’s suffering.
Believing that God exists is not the same as trusting the God who exists. A nominal Christian often discovers in suffering that his faith has been in his church, family, career, or social network, but not Christ. As he faces evil and suffering, he may find his beliefs shaken or even destroyed. But genuine faith—trusting God even when we don’t understand—will be made stronger and purer.
If your faith is based on lack of affliction, it’s on the brink of extinction and is only a frightening diagnosis or a shattering phone call away from collapse. Token faith will not survive suffering. Nor should it.
https://www.epm.org/blog/2022/May/4/honest-faith?fbclid=IwAR0m-syB1GSiL2ns9nhi7_XsV8ay4PEiRB–WDVxPSfHjO1qYsJR8KT22jA

Progress
“In 1942,” Marian Tupy, who runs the invaluable HumanProgress.org, wrote a few years ago, “some 68 percent of white Americans surveyed thought that blacks and whites should go to separate schools. By 1995, only 4 percent held that view. In 1958, 45 percent of white Americans would ‘maybe’ or ‘definitely’ move if a black family moved in next door. By 1997, that fell to 2 percent.” In surveys asking whether you would be opposed to a neighbor of a different race moving next door, America doesn’t come out as the least racist country in the world, but we do far better than many countries. We beat Germany and France (3.7 percent), Spain (12), Italy (11.7), Mexico (11.4), Russia (14.7), China (18), Turkey (41.21!), and even Finland (6.8).
Jonah Goldberg

Spending More Time With God
A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.
After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:“I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God.”
I responded, “Why would you want to do that?”
Startled she says, “What do you mean?”
“Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?
“Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you’ve wronged?”
She thinks and answers, “Yes.”
“Well, why don’t you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God.”
Richard Beck

Going backwards
The Taliban’s Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue issued a decree over the weekend mandating women in Afghanistan wear either a burqa or abaya that covers their body from head to toe. The rule—which comes with escalating punishments if violated, culminating in a woman’s “male guardian” being jailed—is a return to a similar Taliban policy from the 1990s

What We Need Most
What we need most
in order to make progress
is to be silent
before this great God
with our appetite
and with our tongue,
for the language
he best hears
is silent love.
—John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love

View from the front porch
Thinking about being 80 years old.
This week I will celebrate my 80th birthday. It difficult to grasp that reality, except when I attempt arduous tasks.
I came across this quote recently:

People want to stay alive as long as possible and for as much of the time as possible in good physical condition. And it is equally natural for them to want to know that one day they will be freed from the necessity of work. … [But] it is generally assumed—probably even by the aged themselves—that the trouble lies here: in the humiliation, the sense of futility, that result from being shunted aside. Psychologists tell us that one of the main disabilities suffered in the life of retirement is a loss of self-esteem.” Midge Decter

For many, those troubles are real in their life of retirement. I am deeply grateful for family and friends that have made and continue to make my life an exception.
Still on the Journey

A Stained Beauty – Sexual Abuse – Epidemic or Misinformation?

George May 6, 2022 A Stained Beauty 0 Comments

The previous post introduced what I believe is a stain on the beauty of the church —sexual abuse. I characterized sexual abuse as present and prevalent in the church. Understanding how that assertion is, at the very least, debatable and for many unacceptable disinformation; this post provides some information to support my conclusion.

Both my critique and Stunbo’s, are swimming upstream against an abstract and idealistic image of the church that prevails in western Christianity. An image disconnected from the Body of Christ but none the less sacred; highly resistant to question or critique, and protected at all costs. Understanding how those images differ is critical to addressing tsexual abuse in the church and will be examined in future posts.

I am aware exposing the presence of sexual abuse will not in itself create positive change… change requires examination of the theological and cultural reasons that enable abuse to thrive and victims to be ignored and/or diminished in churches. To begin that process, a painful look at factual information is necessary. That being said, what follows is an attempt to provide some credible evidence that sexual abuse has been and continues to be present and prevalent in the church—all churches.

Oh yeah, that’s the Catholic Church.
Non-Catholic Christians hearing stories of sexual abuse in the church are often inclined to respond with with sympathy assuming sexual abuse is a Catholic Church problem, offering thanks that their church is not like that. Echoing the rich man’s prayer, “Thank God, I’m not like…” we discount the possibility of a beam in our own eye.

I am of the opinion the Catholic Church scandal should have been a red flag for all churches. At the very least, their experience should be an opportunity for understanding the nature of sexual abuse in the church.
The depth an breath of sexual abuse as well as the coverup and corruption that accompanied is staggering.

In 2021, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) reported 4,228 child sexual abuse allegations. These allegations were filed by 3,924 abuse survivors from July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2020. The incidents involved more than 2,700 individual clergy members from across the country.
https://www.abuselawsuit.com/church-sex-abuse/

The Boston Globe’s series on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church was the subject of an award winning film, “Spotlight.” If you have not seen the film, I highly recommend it.

Wikipedia provides an in-depth article that is more comprehensive and reaches worldwide. The information is difficult to read and produces an impulse to say— “that couldn’t happen in our church.”

Some critics have stated that the oversaturation of Church sex abuse stories has led to the perception that the Catholic Church is more rife with pedophilia than in reality. A The Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests “frequently” abused children; however, there is no data that indicates that priests commit abuse more often than the general population of males.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases

That fact is not particularly comforting, but the following is more disturbing:

A report which Christian Ministry Resources (CMR) released in 2002 stated that contrary to popular opinion, there are more allegations of child sexual abuse in Protestant congregations than there are in Catholic ones, and that sexual violence is most often committed by volunteers rather than by priests.

OH, NO! It’s not just the Catholic Church!

Church of Christ
My personal experience with sexual abuse in the church predates the Catholic Church scandal. In the early 90’s I learned a former preacher at our congregation was a sexual predator. In wake of that revelation and some coincidental events, the subject of sexual abuse in Churches of Christ became public. See: https://michaelhanegan.com/blog/silentcofc-its-past-time-to-have-this-conversation?format=amp

Southern Baptist
20 years, 700 victims- Southern Baptist sexual abuse spreads as leaders resist reforms – Houston Chronicle
…since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state.
They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions.
About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school teachers. Deacons. Church volunteers.
Read the entire Houston Chronicle Series HERE

Christian and Missionary Alliance
Ravi Zacharias was best known for the apologetics ministry that bears his name, but he spent his 46-year career licensed as a national evangelist with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA). The denomination has now revoked the ordination of its highest-profile minister after its own limited investigation confirmed a “pattern of predatory behavior.” https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/ravi-zacharias-cma-investigation-revoke-ordination.html
Lori Anne Thompson, a victim of Zacharias has a website devoted to the problem of sexual abuse in the church and is a helpful resource.

ET AL –

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.
The Epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical Church- The Washington Post

I am not aware of any church exempt from the problem of sexual abuse. What is presented is only a small sample of information available about sexual abuse in the church. If you have taken the time to dive deeper, I am sure it has been overwhelming and discouraging, all the more reason the problem must be acknowledged and addressed. What is needed is individual and institutional courage, a courage Lori Anne Thompson describes as as rare as sexual abuse is ubiquitous. Clergy Sexual Abuse as a Betrayal Trauma: Institutional Betrayal & a Call for Courageous Response

“It is isolating and heartbreaking to sit in a church service where sexual abuse is being minimized,” Denhollander says. “The damage done [by abuse] is so deep and so devastating, and a survivor so desperately needs refuge and security. The question an abuse survivor is asking is ‘Am I safe?’ and ‘Do I matter?’ And when those in authority mishandle this conversation, it sends a message of no to both questions.”
The Epidemic of denial about sexual abuse in the evangelical Church- The Washington Post

Yes, there is an epidemic. (No masks required, just remove the blinders)

STILL ON THE JOURNEY