Effective protection of minors and adults in the care of the global church is a mandate for all Christians. However, what an effective safeguarding strategy means in different contexts can be rather different. Instead of pursuing universally valid safeguarding strategies, church organizations need to pursue diverse, context-specific approaches in plural form. Only with this approach can we expect and rely upon effective safeguarding to keep children and vulnerable adults safe.
Why the need for diverse, context-specific approaches? On the one hand, those who want to protect human life cannot indiscriminately place cultures on an equal footing when human life is endangered in one culture for structural and systemic reasons and not in another. Female genital mutilation, the forced marriage of children, the sexual abuse of vulnerable groups and the neglect of entire population groups caused in part by a caste system are not only outrageous but intolerable.
On the other…
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