I feel anxious every time I write about sexual abuse in the church. I wonder if I talk about it too much or if I’m living in some endless victim narrative when I share my story. Instead of a great cloud of witnesses, I have a great cloud of judges with condescending voices telling me to leave the past in the past. To get over it. To stop belaboring a decades-old trauma.
So I dissect my motives and get honest about why it seems important to write about… again. Am I trying to punish anyone? No. Am I full of resentment? I don’t think so. Have I forgiven? Yes, although this is a choice I have to make every day. Am I trying to heal my child self by advocating for abuse victims in a way I wish someone advocated for me? A little. Do I feel grief about yet another wave of abuse being swept under the rug? Yes. Do I feel angry when I see hundreds of pastors and elders on social media disbelieving victims and protecting abusers? Absolutely. Has that anger morphed into rage? Not today.
My motives are a mixed bag.
I looked at my niece the other day and it occurred to me that she is the same age I was when I was being sexually abused.
It was disorienting. When I experience flashbacks of the abuse, I picture myself being much smaller than her. I can’t imagine myself speaking in those memories. I can’t imagine my voice. I can’t imagine a personality. Then I look at her and recognize that developmentally, she’s a person— a whole, big person with a brilliant personality and sense of humor and ambition and opinions. At her age, I’m sure I was those things, too, but being sexually abused numbed me out. It sedated the preciousness and bigness of who I was and left me with a glitched system.
When I was abused, I was not protected.
Exposing the abuse would have been too disruptive to my church. In this moment, I want to stop myself and say, “It’s more complicated than that!” And in one sense, it is. Being part of the church industry comes with a lot of pressure. Pressure for leadership to be perfect. Pressure for a pastor's life to be bulletproof. Pressure to look perfect so the rest of the world sees a perfect church and knows God is real. And then there are power dynamics which endow a single pastor with all the power, which quickly corrupts even the most well-meaning souls. And then there are family dynamics. And generational trauma. There is a lack of self-awareness. Absence of mutual, vulnerable community. Obsession with growth. A hunger for money.
All these complicated dynamics feed into The Machine we call church. And when an 8-year old girl says she was abused by one of the pastor’s sons, The Machine spits her out because her story disrupts the powers that be.
The American church has a pattern of scapegoating victims of sexual abuse so we don’t have to deal with The Machine. We say it’s not that bad or there’s not enough evidence. We de-center victims and focus on the pastors’ wonderful theological contributions, insisting we cannot cancel a pastor with the testimony of an unreliable woman. We insist stricter patriarchy and complimentarianism would fix the problem even though the data says otherwise.1 We shrug because we’re tired of hearing bad news and the music on Sunday mornings makes us feel warm inside.
When The Machine is working for us, we will exile any disruptors. Even when they’re young. Even when the pastor tells a woman to submit to her physically abusive husband because the Bible says so.2 Even when patterns of abuse at the hands of a pastor and his elder board have been exposed.3 Even when ample evidence shows he manipulated young women into sexual favors.4
We exile disruptors because of what it would cost us to repent and change our ways.
In this pivotal, historical moment, the church actually could be a shining witness! Not by acting like everything is OK, but by repenting and repairing. By taking ownership over The Machine we worship. We could bear witness to the heart of God for the oppressed by addressing the extreme power dynamics at play in most church buildings. We could demonstrate the justice of God by dismantling oppressive systems, holding pastors accountable, and centering victims. We could practice the healing of God by providing resources to victims. We could worship God by renouncing our idolatry of celebrity pastors.
But instead, we choose The Machine over and over and over again. And the victims keep piling up. And The Machine keeps running. And the same people stay in power. And the PR gets better. And the excuses get louder. And the pattern continues.
Yet we’re still here. Spat out and invalidated and disbelieved, but here. Climbing through a cloud of judges, we keep singing our songs with hope, knowing El Roi sees and looks after us even when his people do not.
-Savannah
https://www.amazon.com/Headship-Men-Abuse-Women-Related/dp/1725261383/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=kevin+giles&qid=1593869105&sr=8-7&linkCode=sl1&tag=jesuscreed20-20&linkId=613203fc6bfee1ad1b7fd8f52d1bc0f2&language=en_US
https://baremarriage.com/2022/06/john-piper-tells-women-with-harsh-husbands-to-basically-do-nothing/
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/february/grace-community-church-elder-biblical-counseling-abuse.html
https://www.charismanews.com/us/78703-john-crist-cancels-2019-tour-dates-after-reports-of-sexting-harassment-manipulation
Thank you for your brave voice savannah. I'm so glad you are here with your wisdom and anger challenging all of us to embody the love and integrity we are called to as the church.
I really wish Substack had a DM the creator option so that I could share a little more openly (not here though, too much vulnerability that I’m not okay with 🙅🏼♀️), but this whole post is 🔥🔥🔥🔥.