Author’s Summary
- The responses of evangelical churches and organisations to allegations of abuse have been vitiated by five factors:
- Wrong expectations,
- Wrong priorities,
- A wrong reading of biblical stories,
- A wrong approach to sin and crime, and
- A wrong view of love and justice.
(Consequently)
- First, evangelical institutions have fallen prey to the cult of the charismatic leader.
- Second, when abuse has been exposed, it has been dealt with privately and/or with a focus on rehabilitating the offender rather than vindicating the victims and preventing others from being victimised.
- Third, the ugly truths of sexual and other forms of abuse with which the Bible deals have been replaced by narratives which protect the powerful.
- Fourth, the reality that we are all sinners has been used to obscure the truth that some sins are deeply destructive and amount to crimes meriting public action.
- Fifth, love has been wrongly separated from justice.
David McIlroy is a practising barrister. Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame (USA) in England, and a theologian.
Notes
- Apart from it being a band-waggon to jump on, I wasn’t really sure why this Paper was written.
- There were lots of references to secular abuse, and – of course – a reference to Justin Welby (though he himself was not an abuser and the CofE is hardly an Evangelical Church, but a Broad one).
- There are two points that could have been clearer.
- Just what is meant by ‘abuse’? Is it just sexual abuse? In a Christian context any casual sexual interaction should be ‘called out’ – even where consensual and legal – and non-consensual interaction – which would be illegal – doubly so. But what about ‘controlling behaviour’ – usually equated with ‘bullying’ – the sort of thing that those in power have always done (and had to do to maintain discipline1). Just when does the use of power become abuse?
- Should there not be due process when it comes to accusations? We’ve moved from the situation in which ‘the mighty’ are assumed to be innocent until proved guilty to where – to avoid ‘victim shaming’ – the accuser is ‘to be believed’ and the accused suspended until proved innocent. I agree that there needed to be a resetting of the balance here, but it seems to have gone too far the other way, with ‘zero tolerance’ of the accused rather than of the guilty.
- The Paper assumes that all abusers are men. In this regard, the incident of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is raised in the context of false accusations and brushed off because Joseph is the powerless one (the case is not parallel to that where the accused is the powerful participant). Now, it is true that this pericope has been abused as a paradigm case to imply that all accusations of the supposedly virtuous are prima facie false. However, historically, the powerful – who are in a position to abuse – have mostly been men but this situation is changing, and we must wait and see. There have been many nasty tales of abuse in convents in Eire where the power has been in the hands of nuns. Maybe not evangelicals, of course, but powerful women can make excellent bullies in the workplace and sometimes even in the home (though admittedly relatively rarely).
- However, the Paper makes many valid points. Even so, I suspect the ‘safeguarding industry’ tends to be aimed at the powerless who have no intention of abusing anyone so that quotas can be fulfilled. It must discourage many from volunteering.
Comment:
See McIlroy - Abuse within evangelical churches and organisations: Addressing the vulnerabilities.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)