There is a growing awareness that abuse is an endemic problem in human society. Christian communities are not exempt from abuse. Responses to abuse often give easy grace and cheap forgiveness to abusers while giving only harsh demands to victims. However, it is possible to address abuse effectively. In this article, we draw on the traditional Restoration Movement emphases on weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, congregational autonomy, and voluntary cooperation to explore how our churches can be empowered to address abuse in ways that are both effective and aligned with Jesus.
What Does Abuse Have to Do with Restoration Movement Churches?
Globally, the church is facing an abuse crisis. This crisis came to global attention in 2002 when the Boston Globe published its Spotlight report on child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and the cover-up by the Catholic Church. That led to a number of investigations around the world. Investigations into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church revealed that the problem is much deeper than most people imagined. Collectively, Protestant churches heaved a sigh of superiority. This is a Roman Catholic issue. Our churches, the truly Christian churches, are immune to sexual abuse. Nothing to see here. The same year, it was belatedly acknowledged that a “lack of response” to abuse—“a pattern of keeping things quiet, avoiding a scandal”— was also “typical in the Orthodox Church”. Then in 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News released “Abuse of Faith,” an investigative report on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Church. That led to an investigation. The investigation into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) revealed that the problem is much deeper than most people imagined.
But what about us in the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ? Surely we’re okay! As an administrator at one of our colleges told me (Ruth), “I just don’t think the Churches of Christ have a problem with abuse like other churches do.” Nothing to see here. Then 2020 hit. Ravi Zacharias was scheduled to speak at ICOM 2020, the International Conference on Missions of the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (4Cs), but then he died after a short battle with cancer. This freed his victims to speak up and forced an investigation. The investigation into sexual abuse by Ravi Zacharias revealed that the problem was much, much deeper than most people imagined. These examples are all about sexual abuse, but there are many other forms of abuse that take place in Christian contexts. These include domestic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse by church leaders, abuses of authority, and so on.
The Zacharias scandal hit our churches closer to home. We realized that we may not be as immune to sexual abuse as we believed we were, so at ICOM 2020, in place of Ravi Zacharias’s message, we had a few messages on responding to sexual abuse allegations. Jeff Vines, the outgoing ICOM president and a protégé of Ravi Zacharias, declared, “Those of us in leadership who are on the wrong path are depending on the fact that you don’t want to know about it. Any organization in this day and age that does not create systems of accountability will eventually come to ruin.” A representative of an ICOM member organization, a missionary organization founded and supported by the 4Cs, spoke about two women who reported sexual abuse decades before. The organization apologized and offered money for counseling. Case closed. No mention of investigation to discern whether there were other victims either in the US or in the country of service. No mention of the abuser. Nothing to see here.
There is a pattern in the abuse revelations that speaks a hard truth. No denomination or movement is immune to sexual abuse. No denomination or movement is immune to any form of abuse. Abuse is in our midst. Closing our eyes and saying “Nothing to see here” doesn’t make the problem disappear. Failure to address abuse represents a failure of faithfulness and justice—a failure of faithfulness and justice toward Christ and each other, as well as a failure of mission. When the time comes and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (4Cs) and the a cappella Churches of Christ (2Cs) are investigated—When, not If—the investigation will reveal that the problem is much, much deeper than most people imagine. That is the reality. In 2023, I (Ruth) exchanged a few letters with ICOM and with other 4Cs ministries asking what we, in Restoration Movement (RM) churches, are doing now about sexual abuse. The answer is that, as a movement, we don’t yet have any plan to address this issue. However, even though no church is exempt from sexual abuse or other forms of abuse, each movement/denomination has a unique culture that offers both strengths and weaknesses toward addressing abuse in the church. In this article, we will focus on how the Restoration Movement can effectively address the abuse crisis in our churches while honoring our unique culture by exploring how two key RM values, weekly communion and autonomy with cooperation, can empower the church to address abuse effectively.
“Notice That”: Discerning the Body
One defining characteristic of RM congregations is our weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which Alexander Campbell (1788–1866) regarded as “absolutely essential to Christian worship.” 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 connects the practice of communion with caring for vulnerable members of a congregation, which includes victims of abuse. In verses 28–30, Paul tells the Corinthian believers, “Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep” (NIV). As we partake of communion, we are to discern the body of Christ, but what is the body of Christ? In verses 23–24, Paul writes, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’” Verse 26 says, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Is Paul simply saying that when we partake of the bread and cup of communion, we are to discern them as the body of Christ through the practice of remembrance of Christ’s body dying on the cross for us? Certainly, remembrance of Christ’s body dying on the cross for us holds a central position within the passage, yet it is embedded within a larger discussion, that of divisions within the church which are revealed in its practice of communion together: in verses 20–21 Paul states, “So then, when you come together, it is not the Lord’s Supper you eat, for when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry, and another gets drunk.” In verses 33–34, Paul reiterates this message, “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you gather to eat, you should all eat together. Anyone who is hungry should eat something at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.”
This indicates that discerning the body of Christ within our practice of communion has something to do with our interactions with our brothers and sisters in Christ and not only with our remembrance of Christ’s suffering for us. Throughout the epistles, Paul refers to the Church as a body or as the body of Christ. For example, in Ephesians 1:22–23, Paul writes, “And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” In Romans 12:4–5, Paul writes, “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” In 1 Corinthians 10:16–17, Paul ties this idea of the Church as one body to that of the bread and cup of communion: “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.” In 1 Corinthians 12:12–12, Paul again connects communion to the concept of the Church as a body, this time focusing on the connection of the cup rather than the bread, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free —and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
Our participation in the Lord’s Supper is also an eschatological reality through which “we already eat at the future Messianic banquet” as “the root metaphor of the Lord’s Supper is neither tomb nor altar, but table”—so how can we eat with those whom we have in some way cut off from our fellowship? Moreover, as early RM leader Robert Richardson (1806–1876) reminds us, our enjoyment of communion with Christ takes place not only at the Table, but even “in every exercise of faith.” The command to discern the body of Christ in the partaking of communion is a command to discern the body of Christ in our brothers and sisters, fellow members together with us of the body of Christ. Our focus here on discerning the body does not “eclipse the fundamental purpose of the meal to proclaim the Lord’s death, a proclamation that includes expounding its role in reconciling God and sinners,” precisely because there can be no reconciliation between God and sinners, or between sinners, when sin is not recognized as sin. When we fail to respond to abuse, we fail to discern the body, and we consequently fail to participate in Christ’s incarnation.
In 1994, Bessel van der Kolk’s article, “The Body Keeps the Score,” developed the thesis that trauma is recorded in changes to the brain, which becomes hyper-aroused to threat, shifting from a baseline of rest and safety to a baseline of stress and danger, and in changes to the body, which is worn down by the ever-present stress hormones, leading to illness. Elsewhere he asserts that “only making it safe for trauma victims to inhabit their bodies, and to tolerate feeling what they feel, and knowing what they know, can lead to lasting healing.” Peter Levine’s earlier book, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, also looked at trauma from a body-based perspective. He explored how wild animals live in an environment where there is an ever-present threat of predation without developing trauma. Observing that after a life-threatening experience animals shake, Levine postulated that the shaking process helps the animals release the traumatic stress-hormone-induced energy and return to a baseline of safe-enough. He offered somatic, or body-based, exercises to help trauma victims reconnect with their bodies, feel their bodily sensations, and restore a sense of safety. Similarly, Judith Herman, who first proposed the term complex-PTSD to differentiate trauma originating in a single incident from long-term, repeated trauma, wrote, “Safety always begins with the body. If a person does not feel safe in her body, she does not feel safe anywhere. Body-oriented therapies, therefore, can be useful in early recovery.”
Yet trauma causes a disconnection from one’s body and sensations. Herman writes,
The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. . . . [Abuse] fosters the development of abnormal states of consciousness in which the ordinary relations of body and mind, reality and imagination, knowledge and memory, no longer hold.
Abuse often leads the abuse victim to disconnect from their bodies to prevent themselves from feeling the overwhelming sensations and emotions that the abuse has awakened and sometimes even to prevent themselves from remembering what happened at all. The victim adapts by dissociating from the reality that isn’t safe for them to acknowledge. Where others’ lives are organized around being present and connected to their current lives and experiences, the dissociated victim’s life is organized around avoiding awareness of the overwhelming trauma of the present or past that continually seeks to be seen, felt, and acknowledged.
However, it is not only the victims who face this dilemma. When the church lacks the capacity to process the reality of abuse in its midst, they often respond with denial or minimization. Because of this, the victim’s trauma symptoms have no context, and the church sees the trauma symptoms as the problem rather than as symptoms of the true problem: the abuse itself. The victim’s distress is very dysregulating to the body of Christ. The church attempts to resolve that dysregulation by urging the victims to immerse themselves more deeply in faith practices. When the victim’s faith in Christ fails to resolve their trauma symptoms quickly, and those symptoms continue to cause distress to the body of Christ, the church determines that the victim is not truly faithful to Christ, so they seek to resolve the problem by disconnecting from the victims themselves, either by tuning out the victim’s distress or by driving away or even directly excommunicating the victim. Thus, the victim is ostracized from Christian community for struggling to process what the Christian community themselves cannot process nor even acknowledge.
Some churches think that a focus on prevention is an adequate response to abuse and that there is no need to acknowledge the painful reality of any past failures in response to abuse. A few years ago, I was speaking with an RM pastor about abuse in the church, but he interrupted me, ‘Ruth, you’re going about it wrong. Stop talking about abuse that has already happened; don’t focus on the past. You’ll lose your audience. Focus on preventing future abuses instead.’ The context of the conversation suggested that his focus was organized around avoiding acknowledgment of the past, which he believed would alienate my audience, those with authority to address abuse in the church. “Let’s focus on prevention” sounds like a healthy way to approach abuse on the surface, but how can you prevent something recurring if you don’t know how it happened?
Body-based therapies help victims to be more connected and at peace with their bodies, and that peace and connection enables them to make wiser decisions and to care for their needs more effectively, as van der Kolk writes: “We do not truly know ourselves unless we can feel and interpret our physical sensations; we need to register and act on these sensations to navigate safely through life.” This is in line with Colossians 3:15, “The peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the decisions you make; for it is to this peace that God has called you together in the one body” (TEV). Like the above pastor, many Christians feel reluctant to acknowledge abuses that have happened in the past. Others may acknowledge abuses but want to move on without actually examining the issues. A body-based approach does not attempt to override that reluctance but instead calls us to observe it with curiosity. What thoughts and feelings arise as we tune in to that reluctance? Instead of judging and silencing our reluctance or reacting to it by avoiding the past, we simply offer ourselves compassion and acceptance. What new thoughts and feelings arise as we meet our reluctance with compassion? Van der Kolk writes that “the two most important phrases in therapy . . . are ‘Notice that’ and ‘What happens next?’ Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”
With the view of the church community as a body and of communion as a call to “discern the body of Christ,” these body-based trauma therapies resonate deeply with the practice of communion. Communion offers an opportunity for the church community to process the painful reality of abuse in our midst and our own failure to respond to abuse in an effective manner. Our practice of communion is already a call to tune into suffering: the suffering of Christ. Through communion we remember that Jesus sat at supper with his disciples, his best friends, including one who betrayed Christ with a kiss, so we acknowledge that Christian community can include betrayers who seem like faithful followers and even leaders. Through communion we remember that Jesus was overcome with grief so intense that he wept tears of blood and that he pleaded with his friends to be present with his grief, but instead they slept, so we acknowledge that Christian community can tune out intense suffering in its midst. Through communion we remember that Christ told his disciples repeatedly about his future suffering, but they rebuked him for it and denied reality, so we acknowledge that Christian community can deny reports they don’t want to hear. Through communion we remember that Christ’s disciples abandoned him through his suffering, death, and even the resurrection itself and hid in fear for themselves, so we acknowledge that Christian community can abandon its own members who are suffering out of fear for themselves. Through communion we remember that Christ deeply struggled emotionally in response to his own suffering, even crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46), so we acknowledge that victims of abuse can deeply struggle emotionally in response to their abuse and can cry out in anguish.
Yet communion does not simply call us to theoretical assent of these realities. Communion calls us to discern these realities in our own bodies. Communion is more than a remembrance of the past. It is a call to tune into the present. British RM leader William Robinson (1888–1963) correctly “objected to any view of the Lord’s Supper that reduced it to a purely prescriptive and memorialist rite,” because when we partake together there is a “‘Real Action’ of Christ” which requires “voluntary, ethical, and corporate participation.” This participation certainly includes the shared act of eating and drinking but is more than that. Richardson’s “every exercise of faith” includes our faithfulness to each other. Years ago, Effie Giles, an RM missionary, told Ruth that people often think they want to be missionaries, but she looks to whether they are already doing the work of mission where they are. What a person is already doing is what they will do in the future, and, we add, it is what we would do if Christ were crucified today. Through communion, we choose whether we are now people who would stay awake in the garden with the suffering Christ by whether we sit with the suffering among us or tune out. We can offer our presence to the suffering Christ only through offering our presence to our suffering members. In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31–46), Christ told us that what we do for “least of these,” we are doing for him, and what we fail to do for “the least of these,” we fail to do for him. Conversely, what we do to the least of these—for good or ill—we do to Christ. When Nicole Bedera examined the rationalizations university officials offered for failing to address abuse in their midst, she found one of the key issues was that the officials “had the capacity to learn about the impact of” their responses, “but they often sheltered themselves from the violence of campus sexual assault, which led to manufactured ignorance.” The same rationalizations exist in the church. Communion calls us out of the hiding place of our “manufactured ignorance” and into the truth, from sleeping in the garden to being actively present with those suffering among us.
Our communion meditations should reflect Christ’s call for us to “notice that,” to tune into the reality of abuse in our churches today, to feel our reluctance to address abuse and to acknowledge the suffering of victims without judgment and with compassion, and to invite us into a space of curiosity, wondering “What happens next?” How will our responses to abuse change as we tune into the body in this way? The gospels repeatedly record that Christ was moved with compassion as he reached out to the suffering people around him. A cross-disciplinary study of body-based therapies can deepen our meditations and facilitate this process. While victims have regularly found the church to be unsafe, such a communion practice would “mak[e] it safe for trauma victims to inhabit” the body of Christ. Examining racialized trauma, Resmaa Menakem writes, “Each culture needs to create body-centered rituals and practices that promote self-care and collective wellness. These practices … help us have fewer and less intense reflexive responses. And they help us give more energy to love, compassion, and regard.” He adds that “at the center of all these efforts” must be “an individual and collective willingness to be in our bodies, accept and metabolize clean pain, and heal.” Similarly, Judith Herman wrote, “If traumatic disorders are afflictions of the powerless, then empowerment must be a central principle of recovery. If trauma shames and isolates, then recovery must take place in community.” With the Christian understanding of the community or church as a body such that “if one member suffers, everyone suffers with it” but also”if a member is honored, all rejoice with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26; NET), we can see that community-centered trauma healing is body-centered trauma healing. Weekly communion offers RM churches the opportunity of a regular body-based practice to accomplish this.
What Happens Next? Cooperation in the Restoration Movement
Another key cultural value of RM churches is the autonomy and independence of our congregations. On the surface, this value presents a significant hindrance to any effort to address abuse within the 2Cs and 4Cs. There is no denominational hierarchy or structure to offer us leadership in addressing abuse in our churches. Yet having a denominational structure (albeit not a denominational hierarchy) did not protect the SBC from its failure to address abuse; we offer a comparison/contrast with the SBC since their failures to address abuse have been in the news.
The SBC values congregational autonomy and independence as much as we do: SBC congregations are fully autonomous and are voluntarily members of the SBC. Despite having a denominational structure and a proven willingness to expel a member congregation from its ranks, SBC leaders repeatedly cited this value, which they share with RM churches, as a key hindrance to denominational leaders addressing abuse within their churches. The Guidepost Report into abuse in the SBC found that denominational leaders opposed and hindered survivor calls and initiatives to address abuse in the church. Frequently, this was explicitly because proposed mechanisms to address abuse “would violate local church autonomy.”
Within the RM, cooperation has often been controversial. While suspicious of traditional hierarchical denominational structures and initially doubtful about the validity of parachurch organizations, Alexander Campbell nonetheless promoted “cooperation and union among the various congregations.” Barton W. Stone (1772–1844), Thomas Campbell (1763–1854), and Alexander Campbell all “opposed church structures that were obstacles to Christian union and reform,” yet all three “valued extra congregational structures and believed that they could serve the church’s mission.” Alexander Campbell came to insist that “the New Testament itself teaches both by precept and example the necessity of united and concentrated action in the advancement of the kingdom” and considered “the necessity of co-operation” to be one of the “great principles” of the New Testament. So “there must,” he concluded, “be some great mistake lurking in the minds of those who imagine that Christ’s kingdom is a collection of ten thousand particular communities, each one being wholly absolved from any respect, co-operation, inspection or subordination in reference to any work” of faithfully fulfilling the Great Commission. In a more recent generation, Church of Christ missionary J. C. Choate (1932–2008) insisted that “each congregation is to be autonomous, independent, self-governing, self-supporting, and doing its own work” but also admitted that such autonomy “does not mean that two or more congregations in an area cannot have fellowship and cooperate in the Lord’s work.” He pled that congregational autonomy be used “to further the cause of Christ, not to isolate, weaken, and destroy one another.” How cooperation is practiced was one of the issues in the first major Restoration schism, dividing the ‘non-cooperative’ a cappella Churches of Christ (2Cs) from the ‘cooperatives.’ Later attempted implementation of cooperation led to the division of the ‘cooperatives’ themselves, resulting in the formation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (4Cs) as two separate fellowships.
The degree to which congregations should or should not cooperate has continued to periodically trouble the 2Cs and 4Cs ever since. Congregational autonomy and independence are not only part of our DNA but can also protect against the structural abuses of power that are too often found in denominational hierarchies. But just as “a cord of three strands is not easily broken” (Eccl 4:12 ), so congregations are stronger when they find ways to collaborate. We see this in the establishment of RM Bible colleges, universities, regional fellowships, youth camps (‘Bible camps’ and ‘Christian service camps’), and missionary agencies. We also see that a cord of a single strand can be easily frayed or snapped. Sometimes insistence on radical congregational autonomy has directly served to isolate, weaken, and destroy our churches—effectively opposing, rather than furthering, the cause of Christ. Appallingly, this has been the case in the recent abuse scandals among the Southern Baptists. Protecting congregational autonomy served primarily to cover up abuse and to protect abusers, shaming the name of Christ in the American public square and abroad. The cultural awakening to #MeToo was quickly followed by #ChurchToo.
We in the Restoration Movement should not think that we are immune. Willingness or refusal to work together, to cooperate, in order to call out abuse, hold abusers accountable, and protect and serve victims of abuse has significant implications for how well we fulfill (or resist) the missio Dei. Our distinctive American individualistic autonomy—whether enfleshed in individual Christians or in our preferred ecclesial polity—should be reconsidered in light of the church’s consistent failure to respond appropriately to abuse.
Our values of autonomy and cooperation will both be vital as we seek to address abuse in the Restoration Movement. Abuse of ecclesial power (e.g., “fencing the table” and excommunicating adherents to historic Christian orthodoxy who did not accept a particular denominational credal statement) was part of what led to the reformation and revitalization movement that became the RM churches. The Restoration Movement, therefore, initially sought to empower individual congregations and individual believers rather than protect ecclesial institutions. However, in the face of the abuse crisis within the global church, churches have regularly prioritized themselves and their leaders at the expense of vulnerable members. Jennifer Freyd calls this “institutional betrayal.”
Diane Langberg, in her book Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, identifies three main characteristics of personhood: voice, relationship, and agency, or the power to influence the world around oneself. These three characteristics could also be understood as essential characteristics of autonomy. Churches commit institutional betrayal by further stripping these three elements of personhood from the victims of abuse when they come forward about abuse. God has given each person and each congregation autonomy for the benefit of the entire community and society, demonstrated through our special care for the vulnerable members of our communities. Cooperation allows us to use our autonomy to accomplish this task. This is rooted deeply in the heart of the Restoration Movement, a strength and value God has given to RM churches for the benefit of the global Church and our broader societies. So how can we as RM churches steward our autonomy in a cooperative manner to effectively address the abuse crisis and set an example for the global church and the world?
In Acts 6, Luke tells us about a dispute that arose in the early church. The church distributed food among those in need, but there were two different groups: the Greek-speaking widows and the Hebraic widows. The Greek-speaking widows complained to the elders that the food was not being distributed justly and that the Hebraic widows were receiving preferential treatment. However, the church had become so big that managing the distribution took a considerable amount of time. If the apostles managed the distribution, they would not have the time they needed for prayer and “the ministry of the word,” yet this was a responsibility or a “necessary task” (Acts 6:3–4; NET). They could not simply shirk the distribution nor allow favoritism, so they called the church together and asked them to appoint seven “deacons” who were well-respected, wise, and full of the Spirit to oversee the distribution. The apostles prayed over the deacons they selected and blessed them, and the church continued to grow and prosper under healthy leadership. Moses, too, faced a similar issue during the exodus. There were so many people coming to him for arbitration and to inquire of God that he was overwhelmed. His father-in-law, Jethro, told him, “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” (Exo 18:17–18). Jethro advised Moses to appoint leaders to oversee groups of people, and they would decide the simple cases but bring the difficult cases to Moses. Although there were differences in how the leaders were appointed and in their specific duties, it is clear that this differentiation of duties was important for the health of both communities.
So as we consider how to address abuse in the church in a healthy, effective manner, our tradition of cooperation is important. We must remember that “God did not reveal himself in Christ merely to lone individuals” nor to individual autonomous congregations, but to the large community of the church. What we are currently doing (or not doing) has allowed abuse to flourish within the church, so any action we take must be born from the practice of discerning the body. As noted above, many of us feel a deep reluctance to believe reports of abuse or to listen to victims of abuse.
The field of decision neuroscience has demonstrated that emotion plays an essential role in our actions. Actions we take from this place of reluctance will be impelled by it to accomplish its desires. This is in line with biblical teachings. Paul writes, “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want” (Gal 5:16–17), and “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (Rom 8:5). The Center for Institutional Courage acknowledges the importance of institutions, including churches: they “give our lives meaning.” However, although institutions provide us necessary services, they also often betray those they serve. “They don’t protect us from harm. They are indifferent when we suffer. They focus first on profits and self-protection. The most vulnerable people are the hardest hit. We are in a terrible bind: we depend on institutions that betray us.” The Center calls us away from our indifference and reluctance, which lead us to betray those we serve, and calls us toward institutional courage, “an institution’s commitment to seek the truth and engage in moral action, despite unpleasantness, risk, and short-term cost. It is a pledge to protect and care for those who depend on the institution.”
Even as we process our reluctance and move into courage, we recognize that as humans, we struggle when we hold conflicting desires and loyalties. Paul describes how difficult it is to do what is right when we are driven by battling desires: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me” (Rom 7:15, 21–23).
Nicole Bedera notes that these conflicting desires significantly influenced the failures of a university to uphold its obligations to address sexual assault: “When Title IX staff are dually tasked with managing discrimination complaints and protecting the institution, institutional betrayal will be common.” As we consider how to address abuse within RM churches, our proposal is that our churches form local and/or regional and national committees to focus on the issue of abuse in the church. These committees should be independent from other RM institutions and should not include administrative staff or board members of those institutions. Instead, the committee should include those whose gifts, training, and experience center on the well-being of the vulnerable. Ephesians 4:11–13 tells us that Christ himself gave us diverse gifts and diverse roles “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” These committees could include victim advocates, social workers, counselors, psychologists, lawyers who specialize in representing the vulnerable, theologians, and other such people, but most important is that these committees be survivor-led initiatives. Judith Herman explains that when communities attempt to help establish safety by usurping the agency of the victims, this further disempowers and harms victims and that for many victims, healing includes developing what Robert Jay Lifton calls a “survivor mission,” in which they use their story to advocate for necessary changes that make the world a safer place. So, as we seek to address abuse, our actions must empower victims of abuse and not usurp their callings.
Conclusion: Commitment to Take Compassionate Action
In response to the sexual abuse crisis in their churches, the Southern Baptists made many promises and established an Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARTIF), yet the SBC did not cede the authority and finances necessary for ARTIF to accomplish its assigned mission, making their task impossible. In 2024, Paul Wester, ARTIF’s chair, reported, “It was made clear to us there was no future for robust abuse reform inside the SBC,” and their assigned tasks are back in the hands of the Executive Committee, despite the Guidepost Report’s revelations that the Executive Committee consistently prioritized the concerns of the institution over the needs of the vulnerable.
Preston Hill writes that just as an individual’s “body keeps the score of trauma from a psychological and neuroscientific perspective,” so “from a theological perspective” it is clear that “the body of Christ keeps the score of trauma” suffered by its members. He spoke of Christ’s individual human body, but this is also true of Christ’s communal body, the Church. The trauma of abuse in her midst is recorded in the Church body, and so the Church body must do the work to acknowledge and process the trauma.
We offer a vision for a way forward for RM churches as they face this abuse crisis within their churches and the trauma recorded within their church body. We envision our churches taking the opportunity which weekly communion offers us to truly acknowledge past abuses that have happened in our body and to notice the ways in which this has caused the trauma that is still present in our church body today. We envision our RM churches growing our capacity to stay present with the truth and to feel the emotions we have repressed for so long: our own reluctance and fear as well as the grief and betrayal of the victims. We look with hope toward the “everything shifts” that van der Kolk describes, toward our emotions and actions transforming through the practice of discerning the body.
We envision the development of compassionate action committees in our communities taking up the necessary tasks of responding to reports of abuse, supporting victims as they establish safety and recover from abuse, and educating the church regarding abuse. Statistics say that one in four women have experienced sexual assault, and one in five men. So, we envision a one-in-four approach to the abuse crisis, in which churches dedicate one Sunday a month to issues related to abuse and these committees offer monthly seminars discussing issues related to abuse of all kinds. We often think of sexual abuse when we hear the word abuse, but there are many types of abuse and, grievously, all of them are widespread in the church. We envision these committees bringing in experts to present on the various kinds of abuse and on how to respond to perpetrators and support victims, as well as to educate the church on related topics, such as neurodiversity, disability, and racism. We offer a vision, but our churches must choose whether to embrace that vision. We began our paper looking at how church after church chose to hide from and cover-up the truth, but the Holy Spirit is now revealing those hidden truths. We have a choice before us today: to continue to ignore abuse in our midst until it is exposed or to find the institutional courage to embrace a new vision, centered not around preventing ourselves and others from seeing abuses in our midst but rather around acknowledging the truth so that we can grow and change. The sin of abuse “wants to remain unknown,” and hiding such sin in the darkness “can happen even in the midst of a pious community,” but holding abusers accountable is an act of compassion for abusers as well—“since the sin must come to light some time, it is better that it happens today . . . rather than on the last day in the piercing light of the final judgment.” 1 John 1:8–9 declares, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Let us take courage and choose this new vision, trusting in God’s faithfulness and justice, knowing that God forgives us but also purifies us, calling us into faithfulness and justice with God.
Ruth and Joshua Barron are theological educators and curriculum developers in Kenya. They have been married for 25 years and have six children. Ruth is a #metoo and #churchtoo advocate who has worked in full-time ministry since 2000 and as a missionary in Kenya since 2007. With degrees in English and psychology (BA from Milligan University) and Christian doctrine (MAR from Emmanuel Christian Seminary), her focus is on the intersection of trauma, theology, literature, and church polity. She has developed curricula for Maasai and Turkana churches and writes academic articles, chapters, essays, poems, and stories. Joshua is on staff with the Association for Christian Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA), coordinating research and publications. He is series co-editor for the African Christian Studies Series (Pickwick Publications), series editor for Rethinking Church in the 21st Century (Langham Global Library), series editor of the forthcoming ACTEA Series (Langham Literature), and a managing editor of ACTEA’s open-access academic journal, African Christian Theology (https://africanchristiantheology.org).
