UNITED STATES
David R. Henson
May 28, 2015 by David R. Henson
Now is the time to talk about abuse in the church.
Now, when you are tired of talking about it. Now, when you’ve moved on to the next social media buzz. Now, when you think you’ve exhausted every possible angle of it.
That’s because now is the time where we get to decide whether we will change or whether this was just another distraction, another voyeuristic foray of using tragedy to score political or cultural points.
Now is the time to stop pointing fingers at the far away.
One of the most frustrating elements of the progressive response to the horrendous Duggar scandal is the unspoken insinuation that this kind of abuse only occurs or is much more likely to occur in fundamentalist, conservative, or patriarchal churches.
It been a way for liberals and progressives to tut-tut in the wake of tragedy rather than engage in critical self-reflection of our own institutions. While some social and theological elements certainly can exacerbate in terrible ways abuse, the sobering truth is that any institution — religious or secular, conservative or liberal — that includes or ministers to children can find itself in the midst of an abuse scandal. Institutions and their leaders must remain vigilant at all times and must not succumb to the self-satisfied notion that this kind of scandal is something more likely to happen in those churches over there, among those conservatives, or with those homeschoolers. With a one in four women and one in six men were sexually abused, it’s clear that abuse isn’t just happening in conservative spaces.
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