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Sovereign Grace Ministries

Theology

church statistics and abuse

sadness

[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:

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
Feminism

ravening sheep: child abuse in the church

sheep

[serious trigger warning for sexual abuse, child abuse, spiritual abuse]

If there’s a metaphor I dislike for Christians, or for the church in general, it’s probably sheep. This is probably due to a variety of reasons, including the cultural reference that when a person is a “sheep,” it’s because they are somehow the worst form of a conformist. Not only is this person conforming to whatever is around them, they’re doing it without thinking about it, or analyzing it, or making sure that what they’re conforming to is good.

Another reason why I don’t like calling Christians sheep is that anytime I’ve heard this metaphor in church, it’s to call me stupid. I’m a sheep. I’m not smart enough to make my own decisions. I’m incapable of coming to any conclusion on my own– I need help from God’s appointed shepherd. It’s my duty to follow the shepherd, even when I don’t understand what he’s doing. The problem is that this “shepherd” was not Jesus– or anyone resembling Jesus. It was usually a pastor who stood up in front of his congregation, disparagingly called them his “flock,” and told them that God had chosen him to be their shepherd here on earth. He was not the Great Shepherd– but the Great Shepherd’s stand-in.

But there’s an image that’s been haunting me the past few weeks. I read a short post on sheep and wolves that struck me deeply, and part of what resonated with me was the idea of earthly shepherds allowing wolves into their flock– but what if there weren’t any wolves? What if the only thing in the fold was each other– our “fellow brothers and sisters”?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s dusk. The earth is starting to settle down for the night, and nocturnal creatures are beginning to peek out from their nests and burrows. The sun has set, and the flushes of pink and violet and crimson have faded down to a silvery gray.

A shepherd carries a lamb so small and frail and fragile into the fold, a lamb so exhausted she’s trembling. He finds a place for her to settle in for the night– a soft, plush bed of grass, and gently lays her down. He strokes her head, then begins moving more of the other sheep into the fold for the night. They settle down, and the shepherd takes up his usual post at the entrance, idly watching the surrounding countryside be swallowed up by nighttime velvet.

One of the sheep– one that all of the other sheep likes or respects, one that’s been there for as long as any of them can remember– begins making his usual rounds. He’s helped the shepherd corral them all into the fold at night, he’s let the shepherd know when one of the other sheep begins wandering off. So none of the sheep think anything of it when he approaches the fragile, exhausted little lamb. The lamb looks up, expecting a friendly little baaah of goodnight, knowing that this sheep is trustworthy. He’s a leader. He’s respected.

And suddenly, so suddenly that any of the other sheep couldn’t have predicted what was happening, this sheep begins attacking the lamb. He tears into the little lamb’s face– tearing at her ears. His jaw clamps down around her throat, sinking his teeth in, and he mounts her. The other sheep can hear the terrified lamb bleating desperately for help. After he’s done everything he wants to do to the lamb, he starts kicking her. He kicks her, again and again, over and over, until there is nothing left except a macerated bloody pulp of blood and wool. There’s one last weak, pleading bleat, and then everything is silent.

The other sheep in the fold stare at the bleeding remains. They look into the eyes of the lamb, and they see a terror so deep, so profound. They watch as the lamb’s body starts to convulse because of the agonizing pain, they watch her struggle to even breathe. She can’t even cry out for help anymore, her body is so bloodied and beaten and ragged.

And they turn away.

They find their spots in their fold, the places they all usually settle in for the night, and they go to sleep.

In the morning, the shepherd begins waking the sheep up and prodding them out of the fold. When they are all outside in the pasture, contentedly munching on the thick, luscious grass, he begins to count. But wait, one is missing. Where is the little lamb?

He goes to where the lamb has laid all night, shivering in anguish. The blood is dried and caked, mixed in with the sand and grass to become mud. Gingerly, he picks up the lamb, and the lamb is overjoyed. Finally, someone will help. Finally, someone she can trust to take care of her. He carries her out into the pasture, far, far away from all the other sheep. With a rising horror the lamb realizes where the shepherd is taking her. He’s taking her to the place where all the sheep know there are wolves. They know not to go there, because it’s dangerous.

And again, he sets her down on a bed of grass. “It’ll be ok. I just can’t let you inside the fold anymore. You’ll cause more harm to my flock, and I just can’t let that happen.”

He leaves her there. Leaves her where there is no place to run, or hide, or seek safety. Leaves her where she can’t even crawl away. He goes back to his flock, and he spots the sheep covered in blood. There are flakes of blood in his teeth, spattering his wool. His hooves are caked in blood, and the lamb’s wool has gotten caught in his teeth and in his hooves. The shepherd leads him to the stream, and there he tenderly washes it, cooing over him. He tells him that everything will be ok, that no one has to know, that the little lamb has forgiven him and there’s nothing to worry about or be afraid of. The sheep nuzzles the shepherd happily, and looks over at another little lamb in the flock.

It’s hours later, and the lamb is choking now, gasping for breath. Her heart is beating so violently she can feel it pounding, like it’s going to explode. She knows she’s going to die. This is the end. There’s nothing she can do, nowhere she can go. She can’t even go back to the flock or the fold. Everything she thought she knew was safe and trusthworthy has been obliterated, annihilated, destroyed. There’s nothing left.

There’s a rustling in the grass, but she can’t even turn her head to look at it, to figure out what it is, but she knows it’s a wolf, and suddenly, she’s thankful. Grateful for the death that is about to come swiftly.

But what touches her isn’t sharp teeth, gouging claws. It’s a pair of hands, and she tries to jerk away. Terror seizes her, tells her that she has to run, to hide, to get away. It’s the shepherd come back, and she doesn’t know what he’s going to do. But she can’t even move, there’s so much pain. So much hurt.

The hands gather her up, pull her close to a chest. And it’s a familiar feeling– oh it’s so familiar. She wants to give in to it, but she can’t. She can’t. She tenses when a hand touches her head. The shepherd used to do that. Used to hold her like this, stroke her head, her ears.

Everything is quiet and still for the space of what feels like a few heartbeats. But then… she hears crying. And the crying becomes sobbing, and the sobbing becomes wailing. And the hands pull her tighter to the chest, and the warmth feels good, but… she doesn’t know what to do, or what to think. The body that holds her begins to rock back and forth, and groan, and weep.

“Oh, my lamb.” A voice says. “My precious, darling, wonderful lamb. Oh, my lamb. My lamb.”

It’s a voice she’s heard before, somewhere, but it carries that sense that she’s heard it before in a dream. It’s deep, and wonderful, and there’s so much love. More tears fall into her wool, onto her face.

And the pain fades. It’s still there, aching and devastating, but it’s muted somehow. Finally she’s able to look at the body that’s holding her, and the face she sees is tanned from years in the wilderness, and gaunt from sleeping by roadsides, and scarred so horrifically and so beautifully it almost can’t be borne. She looks into his eyes, and they are overflowing with tears and with love, and he smiles at her, his lips trembling and tears pouring down his scarred, weathered face.

“I’ve got you,” He says. “I’ve got you.”

June 6, 2013 by
Feminism

choices and being allowed to make them, part three

child abuse

I realize the claims I’m about to make here are going to upset some. Many of you are going to violently disagree with me, and I’m anticipating that. I’m not accusing the parents who hold to these ideas as abusers– they have no idea that the system they so fervently believe in as “biblical” is abusive. I’m making some very big, very broad claims, and I’m making them without nuance or complexity simply because of time constraints. There is a Polemical nature to what I’m saying, and I’m aware of that.

Shortly before I married Handsome, I was in his childhood home, kicking around with his younger brother. We’d just finished watching a movie, and we’d been discussing all sorts of interesting things– the merits of a Confederacy over a Republic, for example, and the meanings of oligarchy and aristocracy. Smart kid, right? Well, Handsome came downstairs, and I’m not sure how we got around to this, but we started talking about some of their mutual childhood memories; namely, how they were taught to respect their mother. Handsome and his brother started reminiscing about how their mother would “count” in order to get their attention.

When I say “count,” I’m talking about what we see in the grocery store every day: “I’m going to count to three,” and the child has the opportunity to respond within that time frame, or, well, consequences. That is not how their mother practiced it– she used it only as a means of getting attention, with no threat of consequences implied — but that’s the typical perception of “counting,” I think. Hopefully you agree.

When they started talking about this idea, I scoffed. Probably rolled my eyes, too. “We’re not doing that with our children,” I pronounced, quite firmly.

Handsome turned to me, genuinely confused by my obvious hostility to the idea. “Why not?”

“It’s just teaching them that they can disobey however they want to. That I don’t really mean it when I call them.”

He stared at me, clearly not following. “Huh?”

“Children need to obey their parents. They don’t get to define how and when they obey– we do.”

What followed was a rather intense discussion that, in retrospect on my part, didn’t make any sense. I started trying to argue that “counting” was inherently a threat, and I didn’t want to threaten my children, but somehow completely missed that the kind of authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator-style approach to parenting I was advocating was based on threats.

During our conversation, I started feeling very triggered, and I could feel a panic attack coming on, which perplexed me. Why was I reacting this way? Why was I spiraling out of control? I could feel myself start to tremble all over, and I knew I had to leave. I went up to my room, curled up on my bed and cried, completely not understanding why I was panicking, or even what had triggered me. What was going on? What had caused this? Why was I so upset, when Handsome had not done anything remotely triggering?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the time I attributed it to stress- it was a week before our wedding, and it had been a somewhat intense, although still friendly and open, conversation.

I know what it is now, although thinking about it is still very muddled. But, it is linked to the idea of instant, cheerful obedience that was advocated by nearly everyone I knew as a child and teenager. All the books we read taught it, and it was practiced by everyone in the community. Every child I knew had been taught since they were infants that they were to obey instantaneously and without question– and not just their parent. All children were required to obey all adults, and we could be punished by any adult immediately and with the direct approval by our parents.

My supposed “pastor”-‘s wife used to summon her children by whistling. She whistled through her teeth, and the sound was distinct, unmistakable, and loud. You could hear it from anywhere inside Wal-Mart, practically. Anytime she whistled, all of her children responded immediately— and in the sense of “immediately” that is the result of programming. Their response was so ingrained, so automatic, when they heard a whistle it was like watching Pavlov’s dogs. For all their talk about the evils of psychology, conservative religious disciplinarians sure jumped on board the behavioral modification and classical conditioning bandwagons.

Personally, I was taught to respond with a cheerful, respectful “yes ma’am,” to any demand, with the rationalization that it’s impossible for a child to say “yes ma’am” and try to fake respect if they’re not actually feeling it. I was required to drop anything I was doing the second I was summoned, because the summons was always more important than anything I was doing.

This continued into adulthood– I was still living with my parents, and had gotten home from an exhausting shift at work. All I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch the movie I’d rented when my mother called me into the office.

“Why?” I responded, believing it to be a reasonable response. I didn’t want to move. I was tired. I wanted to watch my movie and then go to bed.

“Just come here!”

“But why? I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not. Come here. I want to show you something.”

“What is it?”

“Just come here!” The frustration in her tone was escalating.

I realized at that point that if I was ever going to watch my movie I’d have to do whatever it was my mother wanted. When it turns out she wanted to show me a map because I’d gotten lost the day before, all I wanted to do was leave. Maps are completely useless to me– they make no sense, and unless I am actually driving on the road with one, all those little lines, squiggly and straight, mean absolutely nothing to me. My sense of direction is abysmal, and yes, it takes me a little while to figure out where I’m going and how to get there. But maps– they are worse than useless. But, they work really well for my mother. And, she was convinced, despite my protestations to the contrary, that if I just stared long and hard enough at the squiggly lines I wouldn’t get lost again.

She was the parent.

I was the child.

What I wanted to do didn’t matter. That I was tired didn’t matter. That I knew myself, my own capabilities and limits, didn’t matter. She knew how to help me, and she wanted to help me right now, no matter if I told her it was a waste of time or I was busy. I didn’t even get to define for myself if I was busy– that was determined by her. I don’t know what’s good for me, but because I’m her child, she does.

This is one of the biggest problems of the “Instant Obedience Doctrine.” No one grows out of it. Not parents, not children. And the children, fed since birth this dogma of absolute, unending, cheerful, complaint obedience to all authority, are implicitly indoctrinated against every outgrowing it.

This is why I believe that the Instant Obedience Doctrine (my term) is inherently abusive.

My parents didn’t abuse me with this doctrine. Our relationship is fine, although we’re having our problems adjusting to me being an independent, autonomous, free-thinking adult. It’s rough, but we’re doing it one day at a time.

The problem with the Instant Obedience Doctrine is that it grooms children to be abused. This is inescapable. Not every child brought up in this doctrine is being abused or will be abused, but it creates an entire system where abuse will be allowed to go unchecked, mainly because the child will have absolutely no concept of abuse. They will not have the ability to think of themselves as autonomous, as free agents, as having rights over their own bodies and what they get to do with them– because this idea is explicitly disavowed. Children do not have any ability to choose in this system– that ability is systematically taken away from them as part of “biblical child-rearing.” We have been taught since infancy that we are never, ever allowed to say “no” to an authority.

Oh, the people who teach this doctrine will pay lip-service to teaching their children about abuse. They’ll say that they’ve taught their children to tell them if someone touches them inappropriately, or if someone does something they don’t like. But the doctrine completely overrules this “stop gap” because the primary, foundational idea in this doctrine is that children are foolish, children are ignorant, and children must be corrected by authorities, usually through physical pain (corporal punishment).

This does unspeakable damage to everyone involved– the parents and the children. Because the children eventually grow up, and if they start asserting independence, like I am now, our relationships can be damaged, because the independence is sudden and unexpected. Expressing my own ideas, disagreeing with my parents can be very emotional, upsetting territory, because the point of the Instant Obedience Doctrine was to raise children who are ideological replicas of the parents. The fact that this doctrine essentially means that parents will never actually get to know who their own children are is completely lost in all the rhetoric.

And for many children brought up in this system, the biggest problem is that they have no access to any concept of being their own, independent person. That idea simply doesn’t exist. They exist to do the bidding of authorities. They are property. These narratives are internalized unconsciously by everyone involved in the process.

Again, not every child brought up in this system is physically or sexually abused by his or her parents, or even by other authority figures in their lives– but they are emotionally and psychologically abused by the fundamental notion that they do not belong to themselves, that they are incapable of making their own choices.

May 17, 2013 by
Theology

whole

gears

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