Rachael Denhollander ought to be in the pulpit, teaching congregations what forgiveness really is and preaching about seeking justice for the abused and be a voice for the silenced and victimized.
This strong young woman left no stone unturned. A few things rang very loud to me and I want to highlight those here. But, first, I want to say that Rachael experienced exactly what every other abuse victim experiences in the church: No one will listen.
My favorite parts of this interview are many:
We can tend to gloss over the devastation of any kind of suffering but especially sexual assault, with Christian platitudes like God works all things together for good or God is sovereign. Those are very good and glorious biblical truths, but when they are misapplied in a way to dampen the horror of evil, they ultimately dampen the goodness of God. Goodness and darkness exist as opposites. If we pretend that the darkness isn’t dark, it dampens the beauty of the light.
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When asked, Where did you find an answer? (To doubting God's goodness), she replied,
Going to Scripture directly.
There is no substitute. She did not go to the latest Bible study book by some well-known author. She did not seek out a publishing house or commentary or even a sermon or a conversation with a friend.
She went to the Scriptures directly and found the answers....all the answers.
They, the answers, are there.
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Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counseled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim. There is an abhorrent lack of knowledge for the damage and devastation that sexual assault brings. It is with deep regret that I say the church is one of the worst places to go for help. That’s a hard to thing to say, because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth. There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.
It is beyond sad to me that the church is considered one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse. This is true of the vast majority of evangelical churches. This has to change. The path to change is going to be hard, but it is possible. More on this later.
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When asked what happened when she told her church she was going to speak up about what happened to her. she said in part:
.......my status as a victim was used against my advocacy.
......rather than engaging with the mountains of evidence that I brought, because this situation was one of the most well-documented cases of institutional cover-up I have ever seen, ever, there was a complete refusal to engage with the evidence.
I have seen this happen time and time again. It's almost an automatic response. This response is so far from what the Bible teaches that one has to wonder how any church leadership can do this. Rather than realize a victim's advocacy is borne out of their victimization, making them especially qualified to be that advocate, church leadership dismisses it as biased.
Who better to advocate for victims than another victim?
Certainly a bunch of men sitting around making rules for their church is not more qualified.
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When you support an organization that has been embroiled in a horrific 30-year cover-up of sexual assault, you know what that communicates to the world and what it communicates to other enablers and abusers within your own church. It’s very obvious that they are not going to speak out against sexual assault when it’s in their own community.
When reading this statement, I reminded myself that she was not talking about ABWE, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, a mission agency that allowed a pedophile doctor to practice his pedophilia in Bangladesh then covered it up for him for decades. Some leaders within ABWE, even to this day, are ones who were part of the cover-up.
Her last sentence, "It's very obvious that they are not going to speak out against sexual assault when it's in their own community," speaks to ABWE as much as USA Gymnastics.
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When asked, "Why are we capable of seeing evil in other communities but not our own?" She responded, in part:
One of the dynamics that you see in a Christian church that is particularly devastating is poor theology.
But often, if not always, people are motivated by poor theology and a poor understanding of grace and repentance and that causes them to handle sexual assault in a way where that a lot of predators go unchecked, often for decades.
Poor theology. But, how can that be? How can one go to an evangelical Christian church and have poor theology? Isn't the preaching, the main avenue of teaching theology, enough?
It is not enough because pastors are not preaching, they are regurgitating what they've read in the latest commentary or book they've read. They are not expounding God's Word, they are expounding mankind's words. They are not citing Truth, they are citing catch phrases and acronyms.
This has led to poor theology. This has led to a massive famine of doctrine.
People have become afraid of doctrine and want to feel good, have their comforts handed to them and go home to their first-world, privileged lives feeling like they are going to see special blessings from God because they "obeyed" Him and went to church.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but that's not how it works.
Rachael is 100% right.....poor theology contributes greatly to the problem of abuse within the church.
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When asked if she was apprehensive in telling her abuser she forgives him, she said, in full:
I did to an extent, because forgiveness can really be misapplied. Taken within the context of my statement, with the call for justice and with what I have done to couple forgiveness and justice, it should not be misunderstood. But I have found it very interesting, to be honest, that every single Christian publication or speaker that has mentioned my statement has only ever focused on the aspect of forgiveness. Very few, if any of them, have recognized what else came with that statement, which was a swift and intentional pursuit of God’s justice. Both of those are biblical concepts. Both of those represent Christ. We do not do well when we focus on only one of them.
This has also been our experience.
Focusing only on the forgiveness aspect of this is misguided thinking.
It is Secular Humanism, something very few Christians recognize.
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When asked what it means for her to forgive her abuser, she said, in full:
It means that I trust in God’s justice and I release bitterness and anger and a desire for personal vengeance. It does not mean that I minimize or mitigate or excuse what he has done. It does not mean that I pursue justice on earth any less zealously. It simply means that I release personal vengeance against him, and I trust God’s justice, whether he chooses to mete that out purely, eternally, or both in heaven and on earth.
It's incredibly sad and disheartening to me that so few Christians understand this.
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The first thing that has to happen to help this change in the church's response to sexual abuse to take place is, patriarchy has to die.
Patriarchy gives power and there is no place for power in any church.
Pastors/deacons/elders/leaders are not in a position of power, they are in a position of servanthood.
If there is no position of power, there can be no abuse of power.
If you have kids, you are their authority, not the pastor/deacon/elder/leader.
You are the authority over everyone when it comes to your kids.
Read Rachael's interview.
Take notes.
~Tricia
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