It is surely not only Southern Baptist churches. It was never only the Roman Catholic Church.
The body of the church is riddled with the cancer of abuse. Some parallels to our present circumstances are obvious. He gives the innkeeper money and tells him, “Look after him, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have” (Luke 10:35). He pours oil and wine over his wounds, binds him up, carries him on his own donkey to an inn, and tends him overnight.
Then a Samaritan, the last person Jesus’ audience would have expected, shows mercy to the traveler. A Levite, a man who serves the worship of God at the temple, does the same. A priest passes by, avoids him, and leaves him to die naked and alone. On this hard and narrow path, robbers set upon him, strip his clothing, and beat him to near death. The parable begins with an innocent traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This same pattern, of course, is also found in one of Jesus’ most beloved parables. It is another when the company of the high and holy treat you as though your suffering means nothing. It is one thing to suffer at the hands of a single low-down hypocrite. An individual suffers the horrific evil of abuse then suffers a second evil of monstrous indifference from religious authorities. The pattern is consistent throughout the report. “It is not only physically, psychologically, and emotionally devastating,” she says, “but it is spiritually annihilating.
THE SUFFERER AND THE WITNESS TORRENT TORRENT
For her, however, faith is “neurologically networked with a nightmare.” She was raped repeatedly as a child by her pastor and endured a torrent of hostility when she told the truth. “For most people of faith,” she says, “their faith is a source of solace,” a reservoir of peace and resource for healing. Christa Brown speaks with excruciating eloquence on the consequences not only of abuse in the church but of the callous inhumanity that greeted the survivors’ attempts to tell their stories. The most harrowing part of last week’s report on the SBC Executive Committee might be its summary of interviews with survivors of sexual abuse.
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