Last month pastor John Samuel shared some observations. The discussion continues with two more here:
John Samuel’s article was very helpful at dealing with the spiritual side of recent scandals. At the same time I felt it left some important holes in terms of practical lessons we must learn. ‘Never waste a crisis’ is a golden rule.
The most glaring hole is class. The scandals were driven by rampant snobbery. This is as plain as day. The biggest issue in the evangelical church in the UK, in my opinion, is the massive resources allocated to middle-class areas compared to working-class ones. Not only that we pour resources into the well-resourced areas but, equally, that many working-class people feel unwelcome in our churches because our culture is so middle class.
Crucially, to say ‘snobbery works both ways: what makes ministries aimed at public schools questionable, but ministries aimed at council estates ok?’ is, I’m afraid, to miss the point, given the nature of the scandals we have just experienced. We need to call out these deeply rooted class issues, not say what inadvertently may come across as ‘nothing to see here for evangelicals in terms of class, move along’. The book of James has much to teach us today.
Listening to victims
Another hole was the victims. The word wasn’t used in the article, but surely almost more than anything we need to listen to the victims of this abuse, who have much to teach us. We also need to lament the damage they have suffered. It might have been helpful to recommend a book like Diane Landberg’s Redeeming Power which can help us see things from the victim’s side.
Next, social media. Samuel wrote: ‘It seems to be a place where some Christians set themselves up as judge, jury and executioner with much selectivity of material, often out of context’. That’s absolutely true. But there is the other side: which is that social media played an important role in exposing these scandals in the first place. For example, it was the Friendly Banjo Atheist, not the vast US Christian media, who for many years had been writing on social media about Ravi Zacharias.
Social media does have its downsides, and we need to conduct ourselves, as Samuel says, with graciousness and kindness. Some things are said that aren’t true and people engage in cruel personal vendettas. But the upside also needs stressing: it empowers the powerless to tell the truth. Victims can draw attention to the crimes committed against them. As has happened, people can publish detailed rebuttals of untrue things said about them. Social media has completely changed the power dynamic in Christian circles. Victims with no ‘pulpit’ can now call the powerful to account.
Another hole is checks and balances. All of the scandals were typified by a powerful and manipulative figure who rode roughshod over any attempts to control them. Elders, church wardens and charity trustees didn’t do what they were meant to do. The Bible is clear (e.g. Titus) about the principle of collective leadership. Do we have proper robust collective leadership in all our churches and charities, where challenge power without fear of being sidelined?
This is also linked to another ‘hole’. The key issue wasn’t only, as Samuel says, that people had suspicions and didn’t push them hard enough. It was much more that some people knew with absolute clarity what was happening (as they had written reports detailing what had been going on for years!) and did nothing about it. There were systematic cover-ups: but, as the Bible reminds us, ‘be sure your sins will find you out’. Attempts such as King David’s to cover things up resulted in one sin leading to another. Often, then and now, cover-ups were driven by a terribly misguided feeling that it would be shameful for the cause of Christ to make them public. Yet the Bible is full of such scandals, written for all time, that we may learn lessons, however painful.
It’s good to think, in a Biblical way, ‘what do we need to repent of and do differently?’. This must include exposing scandals, listening to the victims and addressing the aspects of our evangelical culture and practice which are wrong.
When there is such awful pain and anger and people feeling deeply hurt with the reaction of their brothers and sisters to what has happened, where can we go? We can only go on our hands and knees to Christ and beg him: ‘Lord, help us, we plead, we are in deep distress, lead us to repentance, a just resolution, unity, and a binding up of our wounds’ (Ps.147:3). imbalance in independent men and women can
Jeremy Marshall
Last month John Samuel’s article made good points and represented a commendable desire to keep learning from the horrific abuse coming to light in the church. In that spirit, let me suggest ways the learning must continue. In particular, we must get beyond the language of 'fall from grace'.
The headline from en (which was not supplied by John Samuel) framed things in terms of 'the last 12 months'. When I first read the article, I understood John to be reflecting on the scandals that have included sadists, sociopaths and serial abusers. He assures me, and I believe him, that he was not. I think, therefore, to bring his reflections to bear on the current situation we need a bigger vision for the scale of the problem revealed in the last 12 months: abusers have not merely been moving in our midst, they have been protected, celebrated, and facilitated. Addressing that reality requires so much more than the redoubled efforts of leaders to maintain their own integrity.
Imagine a shepherd who has graduated from agricultural college with stern warnings ringing in his ears: Do not bring shame on the profession. Soon, though, he hears of savage wolves and brutalised flocks. These vicious attacks have been occurring for decades, and in the 'safest' sheep enclosures. How does our guy respond?
We know how he should respond: he should urgently attend to the cries of the wounded sheep; he should open his eyes to the brutality and tactics of the wolves; he should scrutinize the 'safety' which he had imagined protected those enclosures; and he should fundamentally rethink his task as shepherd. He had considered his job to be guarding a reputation. Now he must understand: his job is to guard the sheep. When predators are devouring the flock, no one should consider themselves a good shepherd simply because they’ve refrained from running off with the milk maid. Pastoral care requires something more and something different from high principles, it demands expert care for the wounded and steely vigilance against the wolves.
I emerged from Bible college like that fictional shepherd. I thought I had a Biblical paradigm for pastoral ministry. I really didn’t. In the last year I have been helped to have a much more Scriptural outlook (and I encountered many of my greatest teachers via the same social media which John Samuel warns against—the same social media which gave voice to the victims in the first place). Through experts like Diane Langberg, Rachael Denhollander and Duncan Forbes I have come to see that abuse is not so much the result of individuals 'falling from grace' as the toxic interplay of vicious wolves, vulnerable sheep and negligent shepherds.
It would be unfair to say that 'fall from grace' was the only or main paradigm used by John Samuel. Obviously these matters require book-level treatment, not just articles. But for anyone tempted to view these scandals mainly through the 'fall from grace' lens, three problems result:
1. It minimises the evil.
The abuse coming to light recently involves decades-long sadistic, sexualised violence, trafficking women for sex, and worse. It’s not simply about leaders who 'are economical with the truth... flirt… are greedy', etc.
2. It sidelines victims.
If we centre on leaders’ falls, we miss the actual harm done to victims. In the cases revealed in the last 12 months, these mean much more than the flock copying sinful leaders, it means genuine and horrific damage. There was a sentence on this in the article, but there could and should have been much more.
3. It prioritises reputation.
If the problem is abuse, then solutions must involve prevention of harm and care for the wounded. But if anyone were to define the problem in terms of 'a fall from grace' then one solution might be to minimise and manage the scandal. Certainly John Samuel is not so narrow in his analysis and does not condone any such reputation management. But if anyone were to centre their thinking on reputational damage (even if it’s the 'reputation of Jesus' (which in fact is unimpeachable)), exposure to the light becomes that much harder.
Anyone paying attention to the last 12 months recognises these dynamics: the minimisation of evil; the sidelining of victims; the managing of reputations. Last month’s article keeps us thinking about these issues, and we must take up that challenge. In that spirit we should go well beyond the 'fall from grace' framework.
Glen Scrivener
This is a revised and updated version of the article in the print edition of December's en, which was sent to us after the print deadline had passed. It was amended by Glen Scrivener after he contacted John Samuel, the author of the original piece.
