We had become good friends and loved to talk and argue about lots of ideas, including politics, ethics, and morality. But I noticed he sidestepped questions about faith and was reticent to talk about anything to do with the Christian church.
I knew there was a reason.
I later learned that the Catholic priest from his neighborhood had abused children. How are we to respond when the people who have spiritual power and authority use it for evil, against the most vulnerable? And how are we to respond when the larger institutions that are supposed to keep leaders accountable instead use their power to hide, lie, redirect, and punish those who speak out?
I’m not sure which part is more upsetting – that the abuse of power is so rampant, or that the cover ups are so vindictive. A new short film, For Our Daughters, tells the stories of survival from women who were abused by male church leaders and how these leaders were excused for their sins while the women were punished for speaking up.
I have heard many stories from women and men in the church who have been abused and traumatized by those in church leadership positions. A few years ago, at a neighboring Christian school, a fifth grade teacher and boys middle school basketball coach abused more than a dozen children and was convicted and sentenced to federal prison. That particular abuser is now in prison, but so many other Christian leaders quickly move to another church. There have been many headlines detailing abuse in the Catholic church and how the institutional church knowingly moved abusers to new locations and hid the abuse. The Protestants are trickier to track with records of abuse because pastors and youth leaders can leave and begin anew in a new denomination or location with a fresh start. Our ability to communicate and gossip and foster whisper campaigns has never had so many tools to use to ensure that information is shared. And yet these abuses continue.
The film explains the ways that power corrupts and connects it to the Christian Nationalism movement in the United States. Rachel Denhollander remarked, “when you’ve created a culture where manhood and womanhood is defined by submission and authority, you have created a culture where authority goes unchecked and easily becomes abuse. And so men think they can get away with abuse…because they actually can get away with it.”
The film ends with a refreshing image of gospel, explained by Pastor Len Vander Zee, who reminds us that power corrupts. Jesus was tempted by Satan’s offer of power while in the desert, and Jesus refused. I always found it remarkable that an omnipotent God in human form refused the offer of power. Instead, Christ preached love and servanthood and that the Kingdom of God lifts up the meek, the lowly, and the powerless. Vander Zee also quipped, “macho power is not what Jesus calls for.” Indeed.
Throughout the film, the survivors said they thought they were alone. May it not be so! I invite you to watch the film and share the film with your friends, family, colleagues, and fellow believers and ex-believers. Greet the conversations with love and grace as more women and men share their stories. May we show Christ’s love and show them they are not alone.
See the film’s website for the film, discussion guides, how to host a virtual screening, and more
Thank you, Kristin Kobes DuMez and Carl Byker, for this important film
Thank you Rebecca,. And kudos to KKD for courageously taking on the powwr brokers who have misrepresented and blasphemed the gospel itself! I long for the WWJD-bracelet movement of the 1980’s. It flies in the face of another 4-letter movement popular with evangelicals today. Yes, WWJD became commercial, moralistic and sappy, but could we ever use WWJD today! Today’s churchianity and platformianity have taken Christ out of the equation. Did Jesus really teach anything or did he simply come to die?
There were many “hip” Roman Catholic priests in the previous generation who were no less abusive than the very conservative ones. It’s unfortunate that a great proportion of the new, young Roman priests are very, very conservative, closing ranks, even reactionary, partly in reaction to the revelations of abuse. Their macho power is less in their hip personalities than in their personalized possession of the Sacraments. The Pope seems to be aware of this, and is resisting it. But I have encountered younger priests in New York City who hate the Pope. It is a development in the Roman Church which is to be grieved, considering how many wonderful developments it has shown since Vatican II. It is a much more careful kind of misogyny, but misogyny nonetheless.
Thank you.
Regarding (1) ” “…a culture where manhood and womanhood is defined by submission and authority.” And (2) “a refreshing image of gospel…an omnipotent God in human form refused the offer of power”
True enough.
Yet, to (1), one part of me wants to add this: “a Judeo-Christian religion where God is defined in terms of omnipotent power and authority…and discipleship is defined as complete submission” And to (2), this: “a remarkable gospel where the offer power is temporarily refused—to be exercised fully only when coming the next time with legions of angels, to cast the un-submissive and idolatrous un-elect into the outer darkness forever.”
How easily (this part of me thinks) we can forget that, within the historic Christian religion and Scriptures we try so hard to make our own, the gentle and the harsh, the forgiving and the condemning, the welcoming and the purging, have been inextricably bound together in one voice.
And this part of me wonders: Is this not as so for voice of the Hebrew YHWH and the gospel’s Yeshua as it is for MGM’s John Wayne? So is it any wonder that Christian priests and pastors, Christian men, Christian parents, can get so complicated?
Thank you for this comment Steve.
Thanks for this important blog on that very important movie, Rebecca. The subject is tragic but if we don’t face head on what is happening in the American church, then we are putting our daughters and all our kids in grave danger. Not to mention thoroughly trashing the very Gospel itself.