In 2019, the Houston Chronicle published a series exposing rampant clergy sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. When the SBC responded by introducing a curriculum called Caring Well, Diana at notinourchurch.com asked me what I thought that meant, for the denomination, but more, for the victims and those sincerely trying to help them.
I pondered and prayed and finally wrote out an answer. When I sent it to her, she asked to publish it on the Safe Church page of her excellent website, and I said yes.
Here’s what I said then, because it’s still true now …
Many #churchtoo advocates are looking at the issue of sexual abuse, collusion and cover up within the SBC in terms of the need to challenge, help and even require individual churches to recognize and deal appropriately with abusers in their midst. It’s a very legitimate perspective and a very real need.
But there’s also a broader issue here, the issue of abusive systems. If we try to address the individual without also addressing the systemic, it’s rather like trying to help one immigrant family get out of the US government’s detention cages, without also addressing the bigger issue of the system that’s behind it all. One family is helped, which is good. And yet, the abuse just keeps reoccurring, intensifying and multiplying.
The SBC is, by design, an abusive system (read more here). An abusive system has the same characteristics as an abuser. The high-level leaders in that system have gotten there by selling out to the system in one way or another.
If we see the SBC #churchtoo issue as, primarily, a matter of wrongdoing on the part of some individuals and churches – which the SBC as their “overseer” needs to address – we’ll also look at the response from SBC leadership in terms of individuals:
That prominent leader is a sexual abuser!
That one is genuinely trying to help!
That man apologized, kind of!
That board refuses to do what’s right!
But that approach gets us exactly the same place as when we try to figure out a narcissistic abuser by assuming he has the same qualities, feelings and motivations as other people. It keeps us in the fog that the abuser’s gaslighting creates:
- knowing something’s very wrong but unable to pinpoint it;
- torn between believing and disbelieving the illusion the abuser creates;
- desperately trying to fix what the abuser is determined to keep broken;
- blaming ourselves when we fail.
To get the true picture of any and all developments in the SBC sexual abuse saga, we have to step back and look at them in this light: The SBC is an abuser.
Those of us who’ve experienced abuse have come to know the hard way: An abuser almost never changes. Instead, he changes roles and tactics as needed, to continue to protect his image and to maintain control.
The SBC is an abuser. With the uncovering of rampant, ongoing sexual abuse and collusion and cover-up in its midst, its leaders are playing the different roles an abuser plays and using the different tactics an abuser adopts.
In the first light of exposure, SBC leaders tried a little bit of everything. Like every abuser, they’re collectively analyzing as they go. Whichever tactics seem to work best at any given moment to keep the status quo, watch for the SBC to lean that way – until that tactic stops working or becomes less effective and another is needed.
All that to say: I see the #churchtoo curriculum produced by the SBC as a love-bombing tactic.
The material itself may be wonderful. To produce it, the SBC has exploited credible advocates, who truly want to help and who can offer sound advice and wise counsel grounded in years of training and experience. As a result, the curriculum may actually help in some situations, and please do not hear me minimizing that.
But, again, it is geared toward helping an individual church – within a system created and committed to abuse. And so, this curriculum is dangerous in the same way love-bombing is dangerous: It can create the illusion of real change while systemic abuse continues and multiplies.
To extend an earlier analogy:
It’s as if the same government that has orchestrated the abuse of asylum seekers created a document and sent it out to the keepers of the individual cages, telling those keepers to treat the people humanely and instructing them how to do it.
And then that government turned to the rest of us, pointed to those documents and said: “See! We’re the Good Guys, and we’re taking care of this. We’ve got the problem solved.”
This post was originally published in 2019 at http://www.notinourchurch.com/safechurch.html, under the title, “SBC Curriculum: Becoming a Church That Cares Well for the Abused.” (Keep scrolling down to find it.) Thank you, Diana!
Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay
