Browsing Tag

GRACE

Feminism

Pensacola Christian College and sexual abuse victims

I’ve never named the college I attended for undergrad– not here, not anywhere else online. I have never brought it up here on my blog because I didn’t want it to become about the specific place I went to college. The problems that exist there exist at most other fundamentalist colleges, and I didn’t want anyone pigeonholing me. I was also trying to avoid the harassment I personally know comes with critiquing this college in public.

It’s been sort of obvious anyway– despite my best intentions– that I went to Pensacola Christian College. I even managed to graduate, and I was one of the nauseating people that managed to accrue less than 15 demerits a semester (although I’d completely given up by my senior year and graduated with a whopping 170 my final semester).

The reason why I’ve decided to bring this up now is that I’m going to write an article about PCC, but I need your help.

If you travel in the same sort of online circles that I do, you’ve probably at least heard about what’s been happening at Bob Jones University. I’ve mentioned how BJU fired GRACE recently, and I’ve been aware of the problems at BJU for over a year now. However, yesterday, The New Republic published an article that detailed how the same exact things have been happening at Patrick Henry College.

As I’ve been reading all of these articles, my heart has been heavy because, as a graduate of Pensacola Christian College, I know that what’s been happening at Bob Jones and Patrick Henry have also been happening at Pensacola Christian. I personally experienced a small taste of it– when I tried to explain what my rapist had done to me the staff counselor interrupted me in the middle of a sentence to ask what I had done that I needed to repent of. I also know women who have been expelled because they reported being sexually assaulted.

I am currently outlining an article that I’m hoping will be published in a major online news outlet– like the Times or the Post, who published articles on BJU. In order to do that, however, I have to have more than just my own solitary story.

I need your stories, too.

If you were ever a student at Pensacola Christian College, a sexual abuse or rape victim, and had an encounter with Student Life, floorleaders, residence managers, or the counseling staff concerning your abuse, could you please contact me? I promise that I will keep you anonymous if you would prefer not to be named, and I will only include as many details as you feel comfortable sharing. I will do my honest-to-God best to make sure I tell your story how you would want it to be shared, and that I will treat you with grace, dignity, and respect.

You can e-mail me at forgedimagination@gmail.com

I know how much emotional strength and resilience it take to tell a story like this one, so please don’t feel any pressure. If you contact me and then later change your mind, I will respect that, as well.

Thank you.

—

edit: please read my comment policy before commenting. Victim blaming myself or any of my readers, or engaging in rape apologism will guarantee that I block you without appeal.

February 18, 2014 by SamanthaField

Theology

church statistics and abuse

[trigger warning for child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence]

I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but from the reading I’ve been doing, sometime in the last 30 or so years there’s been a subtle shift in how churches talk about growth. What my reading tells me is that this is at least somewhat connected to the rise of the “mega church,” with it becoming impossible for pastoral staffs to simply look around their churches and understand who their congregation is.

There’s a certain appeal to evaluating church growth by the numbers, especially when church sizes seem to be ballooning. Applying business models that are intended to bring growth can be extremely useful for a variety of organizations, and churches are, really, just organizations. Organizations that are almost totally defined by “growth,” for better or for worse. Even in Acts, as my partner pointed out yesterday, the apostles tossed around a lot of numbers. Peter, especially, has one famous speech about Pentecost and how many were saved.

In the churches I’ve been in that have talked numbers– “X many people were saved! X many people were baptized! X many people have joined our church in the last year!”– the focus has almost always been hope. Numbers are real, concrete indications that we’re headed in the right direction, that what we’re doing is making a difference. Numbers are people.

But, in the last year, my perspective has changed quite a bit. I used to hear those numbers shouted from pulpits all over the country and exult right along with the preacher. And, in some ways, I still do. But, when I hear about how many people regularly come to church, and how many children are in Sunday school, and how many babies are dedicated, a completely different set of numbers starts spinning around my head, and it makes my heart ache.

My heart has been especially broken this week, since Bob Jones University decided to terminate the investigation they’d hired GRACE to do. I wasn’t a student of BJU, but I did grow up in that world and I know many people who were– and I know how important the GRACE investigation was to them, how much hope it had given them that maybe, just maybe, BJU could turn over a new leaf.

But, just like the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and just like Sovereign Grace Ministries, and IBLP, and just like countless other churches and ministries all over the globe, BJU has decided to do what far too many other Christians have done: turn a blind eye to the abuses happening under their watch– abuses they are allowing to happen through their silence, abuses they are complicit in.

I know how hard it is to face the bleak reality that there are so many people willing to hurt others. That abuse in so many forms is commonplace. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a pastor and stand in front of your congregation and know that there are abusers and victims in your church. That you could be shaking the hand of a pedophile or rapist after church. That you could be eating dinner in the home of a batterer. That you can’t know. Not for sure.

But, this is a reality that does need to be faced. We need to look it dead, square in the eye and let it change us. We need to keep in front of us, always, that people are hurting and desperate and don’t know a way out. That most victims don’t even know they’re being abused, that abusers cloak themselves in forgiveness and grace and redemption, that some abusive husbands will use “I am the head of this home and you are my wife, so you must submit to me” as a weapon.

So, because this needs to be something that we know, something that changes how we talk, changes the advice we give, changes the way we love the people in our churches– I’ve broken down an average church size by the most reliable statistics we have.

Most churches in the United States have an average church attendance of around 500 adults, 125 children. Most congregations are dominated by married adults, so in this “average church,” there are 200 married couples, 275 women and 225 men, 64 girls and 61 boys. This means that in this church:

At least 40 marriages are abusive. Studies show that anywhere from 20%-35% of all intimate relationships are abusive, and many are physically violent. Physical abuse is not the only form abuse can take, and other types of abuse are just as damaging.
As many as 20 women are being consistently raped by their husbands. Studies performed by Susan Estrech and Diana Russel indicate that 10% of married women describe most of their sexual encounters with their husbands as non-consensual.
38 of the men were sexually abused as children.
68 of the women were sexually abused as children.
Another 55 women have been raped, probably in college.
7 men have been raped as adults, although if you are near a military base that number is probably higher.
16 of the girls will experience sexual abuse.
10 of the boys will experience sexual abuse.
1 or 2 of these children are being physically abused by their parents.
It is possible that there are 9 child sexual abuse perpetrators in this church, since 30% of all child sexual abuse perpetrators are close family relatives– usually male relatives, although in 9%-14% of cases the pedophile is a woman. Another 30% of the time the perpetrator is another, older, minor.

That’s a possible 256 people– 40% of this “average” congregation— who have been violently wounded by some kind of horrific abuse. This isn’t something we can afford to ignore. This is something that should utterly break us and radically transform everything we do as a church body. We can’t be dismissive of hurt. We can’t ignore that there’s darkness and pain and suffering. We can’t preach messages filled to the brim with ideas that can be turned into weapons by abusers. We can’t afford the blithe, non-committal “if you’re being abused, you need to get out,” and then move past that as if it doesn’t happen here. We have to stop burying our heads in the sand with our “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle!” and our “faith like a mustard seed!”

We have to be the ones who love the hurting and the broken, who acknowledge their pain.

February 13, 2014 by SamanthaField

Theology

whole

I imagine many survivors of an IFB cult could sympathize with what I’m about to say. Probably anyone who’s come out of any cult, actually.

The cult is your extended family.

Part of that is the abusive system– the leader often encourages abnormally tight bonds between members as a form of manipulation. If your church-cult is your family, you are far less likely to do anything to “hurt” your family, and what comprises a “hurt” is usually defined by the cult leader.

This held true, on a smaller scale, at my crazy fundamentalist college. I honestly don’t know if what I’m about to describe happens at secular colleges, but from the conversations I’ve had, I don’t think so. Here’s what happens:

Freshmen arrive on campus.
Freshman start making friends. Their friends make friends.
Freshmen start forming friend-groups that are usually a solid group by mid-October.
Friend-groups hover around six people for the rest of the semester (mostly because dinner tables could, at the most, seat either four or six– and it was against the rules to add more chairs, or to combine tables).
Friend groups expand to either 10 or 12– again, to accommodate dinner seating. It’s ridiculous the number of fight-discussions my group was in about who could be invited to dinner because of the forced seating arrangement.
This group exists until the end of sophomore year.
By spring break sophomore year, someone in the group decides they don’t really get along with another person in the group.
This decision is usually mutual.
Also, these two people are probably girls. Girls outnumber boys at this college 3 to 1 most of the time.
Ergo, this decision is usually related to some boy in the group, although, admittedly, not always.
Other people in the group decide they have to “fix” said problem.
Fixing this problem always ends disastrously, as usually the object of the crush decides he’s the one who needs to fix it. Also, he’s usually oblivious that he’s the cause of said problem.
The group splinters into two groups, and everyone feels really bad about it and they all have sore feelings through junior year.
Senior year: they’ve usually learned that no one freaking cares. Usually.

Does anyone have a similar experience to this? I can’t tell you how many times I saw this happen– even in my own group.

One of the things I noticed was that the most tightly-bonded groups tended to be those who were made up of IFB freshman, or some other conservative denomination in Christianity– but, usually, IFB kids had the tendency to do this more often. Looking back, I think I know why. In my experience, children who are raised in the various fundamentalist movements are taught to prize the group over the individual. The church becomes hugely more important than any of the individual members. It is acceptable if an individual member is hurt for the sake of the whole. The church body must be protected at all costs.

We can see this playing out, now– countless stories of how fundamentalist groups have covered up routine, systematic abuse on the parts of members or leaders in order to protect the “group.” Many girls are stepping forward to tell their stories of abuse at the hands of people like Bill Gothard, and how the system where the abuse occurred encouraged silence. Jack Schaap, a man whose wife I knew personally, is finally being sentenced for, not raping a sixteen-year-old girl, but taking her across state lines. I have known two evangelists who left the country to escape sexual molestation charges, and were never brought to justice. Sovereign Grace Ministries is being investigated for covering up sexual abuse and encouraging the victims to remain silent. Multiple people have accused Bob Grenier and many of the churches in the Calvary Chapel network of outrageous abuses. Bob Jones University is also being investigated for its counseling services deliberately covering up multiple sexual abuse cases, and again, encouraging victims to remain silent– in the case of one young lady, expressly telling her she was “lying” for claiming abuse and she should “repent.”

I could go on . . . and on . . . and on . . .

To people who know, and can see the devastation being wrought on the innocents in fundamentalism, it is absolutely heartbreaking, because it is everywhere. Thankfully, more and more people are responding to the need, but that need is overwhelming at times.

But, it all gets started because of the dominance of the group over the needs and hurts of the individual. Western culture is a highly individualized one– to an unhealthy degree, as many have argued much better than I ever could. Rev. Katherine Schori called individualism “the great Western heresy,” and I rather agree with her. Fundamentalists tend to go to an opposite extreme in interesting–and disastrous– ways. After a fundamentalist becomes “saved,” individualism ends. At that moment, they are to see themselves as parts of unit– as a role in a family, as a family in a church, as a church in the body of Christ, etc. We are supposed to suppress individual desires for the needs of the group. Our talents are to be used for the furthering of the “church.” We are to sacrifice ourselves for the “church.” We are to serve the “church.” And we are absolutely forbidden from taking any course of action that could damage the church’s “witness.”

So, when abuse happens, we stay silent. We don’t rock the boat. We don’t want to be the one person who “hurts the church’s reputation”– because the church’s–or the pastor’s–image is more important than us. And because we all stay silent, no one knows that the abuse is probably systematic. That it is happening to all of us.

I didn’t see this until the end of my sophomore year. I had become a part of one of the many friend-groups, and all of my friends were from similar backgrounds in fundamentalism to various degrees of severity. By the end of the year, I had had it up to here with one woman, who, I imagine, has matured since then, but in my freshman and sophomore years was incredibly manipulative and shallow. I decided that I had no particular interest in enduring meal after meal and church service after church service listening to her.

I shocked all of my friends when I left the group.

I did so silently– I didn’t make some flamboyant declaration about how I couldn’t be their friend anymore– that happened, occasionally, from the outbursts you could hear sometimes in the cafeteria and the student commons– I just started declining invitations. After a few weeks, my friends were desperate to do something. My absence–my individual decision to put my feelings above the needs of the group–was changing the group dynamic, and they had no idea how to fix it. Three different people confronted me about me “leaving the group,” and how what I was doing was “hurting people,” and how I was “being selfish.”

I refused to come back. If anything, their accusations made it worse. None of them bothered to ask me why, even though my behavior was clearly abnormal. No one came to me in order to reconcile– they came to condemn, and judge, and rain down their fury at me because how dare I. How dare I think of myself. How dare I take care of myself. How dare I not run myself ragged, to the very edge of my sanity, to protect the whole.

How dare I indeed.

February 27, 2013 by SamanthaField