UNITED STATES
Religion News Service – Rhymes with Religion
Boz Tchividjian | Dec 11, 2015
Last February, I had the distinct privilege to interview Jonathan Hollingsworth and his mom, Amy Hollingsworth about Runaway Radical and the darker sides to being “radical for Jesus”. However, it was not until just a couple of months ago that my wife and I were finally able to finally meet these two heroes in person and share a wonderful meal together. I hope it will be the first meals of many! Jonathan returns this week as a guest writer to share about the dangers of mob forgiveness that finds redemption stories where they don’t exist, while at the same time affirming perpetrators and re-traumatizing victims.
I am grateful for the life and voice of my friend, Jonathan Hollingsworth. – Boz
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A small town in Missouri recently came under fire for rallying around an accused child sex offender and shunning the abuse victim—even after the offender pleaded guilty in court.
“If it takes a village to raise a child,” said a local prosecuting attorney, “what is a child to do when the village turns its back and supports a confessed child molester?”
The townspeople, who were described as deeply religious, insisted that the sex offender was a “good man” who had already suffered enough and that “only God knows” what really happened.
It’s a familiar ritual, one that’s performed everywhere from small towns in Missouri to megachurches, a subtle form of mob justice where the primary weapons are not pitchforks and torches but mercy and forgiveness. Whenever a beloved Christian figure gets caught in a sexual abuse scandal, it’s not long before the Christian mob comes rushing to his defense.
On the surface, this redemption-over-retribution approach might seem well within the Christian mandate to love one’s enemies and forgive one’s transgressors. However, there’s a fine line between offering a perpetrator grace and denying a victim justice, and it’s a line that Christian culture crosses all too often.
Minimizing wrongs
Mob forgiveness follows a progression. First, the perpetrator’s supporters (family, friends, colleagues, and the like) come out of the woodwork to defend him. Here, the mob doesn’t deny that the perpetrator did anything wrong. Rather, the mob reframes what the perpetrator did in a way that makes it seem less wrong.
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