Open the ledgers
Who can quantify the abuse crisis in the church?
This guest post was originally published on Substack. We share it here with the permission of the author.
I joined Twitter two-ish years ago to follow the response to an abuse crisis within my corner of the church. I remember the wave of uncomfortable feelings that came upon reading that initial flood of information regarding a leader I had trusted: a mash-up of betrayal blindness, anger, defensiveness, and horror. Varied responses of churchgoers and clergy soon followed and exhibited, I now know, predictable patterns ranging from victim blaming to muffling information to public outcry and grassroots advocacy. Denial comes in other forms as well.
Demanding statistics to prove whether or not there’s an “abuse crisis” in the church reveals a willful ignorance regarding the complexity of such disclosures and, as Karen Swallow Prior aptly named in a twitter thread, a version of utilitarianism that welcomes detached data over the painful process of rending our hearts and then prioritizing systemic change. Because one thing soon became devastatingly clear as I listened to survivors: the sinister nature of abuse paired with spiritual authority results in unique dynamics that impair disclosure.
People are asking for hard data, so how does one quantify the betrayal of trust that occurs at both an individual and collective level when Christ’s church fails the most vulnerable? Open the ledgers and listen:
What calculators are equipped to tally the compounded betrayal that comes from organizational structures that enable abuse?
What scale can measure the weight of shame and victim blaming that crashes down on the rare survivors who decide to go public?
What accounting book can catalog the “in-house” responses that come from pastors and staff members who have never received training or themselves are at sea in a situation well beyond their competency?
How do we distill the complicated whirlwind of community grooming, betrayal blindness, good intentions, and…not so good intentions?
How does one factor in the absence of wise safeguarding and protective policies? The culpability of negligent or nonfunctional response procedures?
Institutional statements that name “we are grieved” and send prayers are a poor offering on the balance scale of justice.
Because how to you quantify the nightmare of a child enduring what should never be endured?
How do you add up the moments and memories, the years it often takes for gradual understanding until an abuse survivor has capacity to name what occurred, let alone disclose it to another?
How do you multiply the number of unknown victims resulting from known perpetrators being relocated to other churches? Who can do the math on performative rehabilitation that prioritizes a predator’s desire to continue to attend church or an abuser’s ministerial ambitions that come at the expense of the vulnerable?
What is the nth degree contributed by teaching that directly cultivates and enables abuse, exponentially magnified by distorted theologies of cheerful obedience, instant compliance, and submission to all authorities? When egregious harms are supposed to be subtracted via warped requirements for forgiveness and grace?
Where are the receipts by which we can total up the spiritual betrayal?
Who can parse out the community complicity, the church cultures and self-protective ignorance that contributed to gatherings ripe for abuse? How do you divvy up the harm done by enablers who seek to protect beloved reputations and leaders?
It is the worst kind of self-betrayal when the Body of Christ turns away from the acute pain of our suffering members, magnified by the unflinching reality that it happened on our watch. What is the price of our institutional loyalty when we blame the injured in order to defend the indefensible?
Because while perpetrators are the ones who abuse, countless other factors enabled it.
Rhetorical attempts to minimize the abuse crises in every Christian denomination often come with Whataboutism. What about abuse happening in X community? Or under Y circumstances? It must be “worse” somewhere else, an impossible math that attempts to compare soul-crushing betrayal.
It is understandable that people prefer to focus on how unsafe it is somewhere else, because it is nearly unbearable to realize that children were welcomed into God’s house where they experienced incalculable harm.
What, indeed, constitutes an “abuse crisis”, and what is the metric at which Christians begin to own collective responsibility?
What mathematical percentage point makes the crushing lifelong legacy of abuse done in God’s Name worthy of such language?
How many children must come forward to tip that scale a little further until it registers to peoples’ satisfaction?
And how many more who will never disclose are hidden behind the faulty statistics we do have?
And what are their names?
There is One who knows every name, every moment, every single tear. The Ancient of Days sees and knows and keeps accurate ledgers. He is the same One who cried “Woe to the world!,” using the language of millstones for people who caused “one” of His little ones to stumble. The One who sent prophets with pointed messages for the people of God who volleyed back queries demanding data when confronted with their actions: “How have we despised your Name?”
We can use whatever words we want to describe this moment of reckoning, the revealing apocalypse that lays bare the unbearable things that have been done in secret, the destruction of God’s temple—which isn’t an organization or denominations or the institution of the church.
When one part of Christ’s body suffers, every part suffers. We deny this to our own peril.
Ezekiel 34 has haunted my spiritual imagination as I’ve witnessed church leaders, those entrusted with the care of God’s flock, failing to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind the injured, bring back the strays. Instead I’ve seen many close their eyes and stop up their ears, refusing to listen to the cries of the injured, refusing to move beyond expressions of dismay and lament.
Naming that something is systemic initiates a collective responsibility which means prioritizing the work of repair.
It means a reordering of resources and attention, a casting down of the powerful and exalting the lowly, an unflinching attempt to humbly engage something that isn’t crisply & mathematically defined—the unquantifiable wreckage of both individual and collective sin.
Whether we name it a crisis or some other term, name it we must, because naming is the first step in repentance. Ezekiel 34 closes with the Lord Himself promising to tend His flock like a shepherd, procuring safety and well being for those once injured and scattered. The descriptions there put me in mind of the work Jesus declared He came to do. His promise that He has come to put all things, including the systemic legacy of collective sin, to rights is Good News for those who have ears to hear.
Marissa Burt is an author and educator. She holds an M.A. in Theology, with a special interest in church history and Koine Greek. She is currently working on the book Lies Christian Parents Believe: The Rise of the Christian Parenting Empire and the Ideologies, Theologies, and Celebrities that Built It.
