NBC looks at the Assemblies of God pulling a Southern Baptist impersonation — the church hierarchy in both cases knew there were predators in pulpits and did nothing. In both cases some people argued the church should take action; in both cases the church leaders worried taking any action would make them legally liable. In the case of the Assemblies of God, the article (and much as I criticize the mainstream media here, this shows what they can do when they have a mind) says stopping child abusers from getting new jobs would “defy a core biblical command: to forgive.”
Um, no.
Victims can forgive the one who wronged them or abused them. The pedophiles and rapists didn’t wrong the organization so it can’t forgive them. What it can do, and should have done, is stop them from abusing others (to the extent they have the power). Not doing that is not compassion, it’s cowardice, it’s apathy towards the past and future victims, it’s morally appalling.
It may tie in with Fred Clark’s comment about the discomfort of forgiveness: “The Powers That Be cannot abide the idea of the previously powerless having power over them, even so seemingly abstract a power as the granting or withholding of absolution. (And even though such absolution is something that none of their actions has previously shown them to desire or care about.) And so TPTB will not allow the victims of injustice to offer forgiveness, they will simply take it from them, thereby restoring and re-blessing the previous imbalance of power.”
Nobody in the article says the victims were forced to forgive (or say they forgave) their rapist, which has happened in other churches. Or as happened in this case, which involves a cop and a police department (there are lots of predators outside pulpits). I wonder, if someone embezzled from the church or set fire to one, would they react the same? Or would they decide attacking the institution rather than women and kids was actionable?
I’m sure the decision to let predators go free involved a lot of the rationalization that “well, he’s learned his lesson, he probably won’t do it again.” Spoiler: several of the guys who were outed as predators did it again. As one HR person put it a few years back, the questiona to ask are “what if he keeps doing it? What if it’s not even the first time?”
It’s unsurprising a right-wing religious culture, steeped in misogyny, reacts this way. As Methodist Minister Madeline Southard put it, when a woman’s status depends on being “the wife, mother, daughter, concubine or mistress of some man,” rather than “a person in herself,” men may have respect for their own kin and contempt for any woman outside that circle (unless she’s the property of some more important man). Under Wilhoit’s Law, if your man’s status doesn’t make you part of the protected in group, you’re fair game, a stray lamb ready for the predator’s maw. When Rep. Ted Yoho called A-OC a fucking bitch, she replied that saying that to her tells other men they can say it to his wife, his daughters. I’m sure Yoho thinks that would be outrageous — his women are in the protected circle because they’re his!
That consent is unimportant to many people on the religious right is also a factor.
Shitbag Southern Baptist leader William Wolfe thinks the SBC’s own assault and abuse issues are less important than women having authority in the church — and besides the SBC’s no worse than other groups. As I say at the link, “Even if true, the women’s accounts show the church is still unique — colleges and corporations can’t invoke God as a defense against accusations or tell a victim God demands she keep quiet.
Even if they were, say, “no worse than IBM” or “no worse than the FDA” (I’m picking those name entirely at random), so? Isn’t the point of Christian theocracy supposed to be that it will uplift people and make us morally better? Many leaders of the religious right want to be recognized our moral superiors, they don’t want to put in the effort to achieve that level of morality.” As witness, “it’s no big, we’re no worse than anyone else is not a moral of Christian stance.” It’s butt covering by a misogynist right-wing bullshit artist (they’ve been whining for more than a decade about how Christians will be jailed for their beliefs. It hasn’t happened).
