I am still very much in the throws if sorting where and how to put resources to have the most outward impact and the least impact inward. The impetus for me to even be on this platform was victimization by the evangelical elite. However, I must confess that I am less hopeful than ever for change in faith communities.
While sexual abuse is ubiquitous… the cloistering of clerical deviance sets up the naive as fodder for the nefarious is reprehensible. There are beautiful people across faith platforms — there is also profoundly misinformed and/or malfeasant ones. We cling to our naivety to our peril.
I spoke recently to an advocate that I ardently admire. She is smart, informed, maternal, married, feminine, fierce, and part of the evangelical in group. And the elites demonize, harass, and marginalize her. If they won’t hear her — they are not going to hear anyone.
As a child and later as a young adult, I was drawn to the faith by the simple fact that I needed good news. I was the poor in spirit; the lost; the lonely; the mourning. I hungered and I thirsted. I came for the living water. The well that I drank from was poisoned by predators.
And now… twenty years and two elite deviants later, have rolled into a religious trauma that left the hungry eaten; the bruised reed broken; the orphan more orphaned still; and the fatherless fractured. You have not been as Christ to me. You have been a cover for the corruption of your brother.
The ground around my feet is filled with “bloodied dust” and while you walk on, eyes closed, hands waving — I sit with my broken hallelujah. I was the one that Christ came for — the orphan; the widow; the alien. You are the people who trod upon the least of these.
I have this against you. You may know not what you do — but I know what you have done. You wounded when you should have healed; you loosed what you ought to have bound up; you imprisoned what you should have set free.
People are perishing less on account of their own sin — but more on account of your complicity. Your silence has long since become betrayal. The shadow of it lingers long after the moonlight of malfeasance eclipsed the eviscerated. The misery of the maligned will be sung to sleep by lullaby or by lament.
You have been to me the loveless and the lightless; the liars and the ruthless. Therefore, I have given up on you. I am the one — and unlike our Christ — you run in search of the ninety-nine. So be it. The lost may yet be found, the blind may yet see, the lame may yet be strengthened — but it will not be because of you — it will be despite you.