Thanks for the Encouragement, Roy Moore
Never in thirty years, studying complicity with abuse in the faith community, have I had more encouragement and interest in my work than now. All thanks to Roy Moore and the State of Alabama.
Not in my wildest imagination could I have imagined that such encouragement would come from a southern state. Of course, this encouragement isn't particularly intended by Alabamans--so many of them that I know read some of my work in 1995. That's when, published in the popular, young Baptist "tabloid," known as Baptists Today. What was published back then was both detested and devoured by the critics of the Convention's traitors, such as the rebel Jimmy Carter, who was speaking his own truth back then, too, though it would be years before he would throw in the towel on the Southern Baptist Convention.
The struggling paper, published every three weeks, had an extremely courageous editor, Jack Harwell, bruised and beat up because he'd dared to speak truth already in the largest state Baptist paper, based in Georgia. He also dared to take on homosexuality shortly before he dared to take on my very controversial series of articles, in which I boldly suggested what almost everyone in leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention already knew and the leaders had chosen to ignore, despite warnings, behind closed doors, by a seminary graduate who was also a psychotherapist. There was an enormous problem with sexual abuse of both minors and adults in this largest-by-far of Protestant denominations, I openly suggested. Yet the abuse wasn't the biggest problem, I insisted. It's still not.
The biggest problem is what Roy Moore and his supporters have shown to the world--the justification, if not the outright denial, for abuse of minors!!
The elephant in the room, which most people still don't want to fully face, either inside religion or out, is the endemic complicity with criminal abuse that still exists despite massive education programs to teach the public about the widespread issues of abuse. In conservative religious groups, however, outright cover-ups or DIM Thinking, I declared to be the norm in 1995.
These were words that could only come from an anomaly, both positive and negative feedback indicated. How dare you! That was the tone of some responses, if there were responses at all. In mainline circles, where I was insistent the problems could also be commonly found, though with less frequency, people tended to be kinder. Rather than calling me "radical," the word "courageous" commonly described what I was doing, same as it rightfully does with women speaking out now, over twenty years later. In mainline circles, even the complicit pretended to be in support of what I was saying. Great pretenders, many turned out to be.
I'd not stopped to think how I'd stepped out in the darkness to become the first woman in the SBC--actually the first woman in mainline circles--to have ever published a first-person book about the experience of my secondary victimization following sexual assault by a clergy colleague. Never mind that it also involved career loss, which is a common issue in secular corporations, of course. Never mind that there were adolescent victims who had come forward and others who never did in this same group, but would come to my attention years later.
And never mind that the teens in this story were often equated, in behind-the-scenes conversations, with those of us who were adult survivors of this same perpetrator. Exactly as we're seeing play out today with the Roy Moore story!
Of course, this allows us to take less seriously this problem that is technically abuse by an ephebophile, a crime Dana Dovey in Newsweek pointed out this week is as bad as pedophilia. Yet the public's inability to understand this can make these older teen victims more likely to be re-traumatized by complicity than the victims who reveal abuse as young children.
In two weeks, I'll be making a trip to Dallas to continue what I've already started discussing--a dream that would have sounded impossible to me ten years ago. Now, I know it's possible because of what I've seen happening here in Lawrence, Kansas--the uniting of religious groups with vastly different theological differences to agree to come together for the purpose of changing the way members in the faith community at large think and approach a serious social issue.
I'm talking about bringing together faith leaders from groups as diverse as Unitarian, Muslim, evangelical mega-churches, and Jewish temples. In a city that's embedded in climate of politically and theologically highly-conservative population. Which happens to be my birth place. Also the fastest growing city in America. All to zero in on the complicity that continues to be demonstrated in full color with the Roy Moore story, even with the appalling coming together of twenty-eight clergy, "for justice sake" on behalf of a man who has been accused by nine women--eight with stories of sexual assault and abuse as teens, one giving a collaborative story of what she experienced at age twenty-eight.
Are there individuals from diverse groups, including highly-conservative theological circles, willing now to come together. People wanting to send a different message, one calling for a paradigm change that will call into account oppression of women and children, stories all-too-often still not believed today? Can we draw into such a workshop psychotherapists, who are seeking ways to better understand and combat the Denial, Ignorance, and Minimization that still supports men of power, no matter how many accusations of violence against women and children have come out?
More specifically, are there individuals in Dallas who would be willing to join in this effort? Or in other cities around the country, coming together for the same purpose? If so, I'd love to hear by email
After what I've seen in the past six weeks, I believe anything is possible.
Not in my wildest imagination could I have imagined that such encouragement would come from a southern state. Of course, this encouragement isn't particularly intended by Alabamans--so many of them that I know read some of my work in 1995. That's when, published in the popular, young Baptist "tabloid," known as Baptists Today. What was published back then was both detested and devoured by the critics of the Convention's traitors, such as the rebel Jimmy Carter, who was speaking his own truth back then, too, though it would be years before he would throw in the towel on the Southern Baptist Convention.
The struggling paper, published every three weeks, had an extremely courageous editor, Jack Harwell, bruised and beat up because he'd dared to speak truth already in the largest state Baptist paper, based in Georgia. He also dared to take on homosexuality shortly before he dared to take on my very controversial series of articles, in which I boldly suggested what almost everyone in leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention already knew and the leaders had chosen to ignore, despite warnings, behind closed doors, by a seminary graduate who was also a psychotherapist. There was an enormous problem with sexual abuse of both minors and adults in this largest-by-far of Protestant denominations, I openly suggested. Yet the abuse wasn't the biggest problem, I insisted. It's still not.
The biggest problem is what Roy Moore and his supporters have shown to the world--the justification, if not the outright denial, for abuse of minors!!
The elephant in the room, which most people still don't want to fully face, either inside religion or out, is the endemic complicity with criminal abuse that still exists despite massive education programs to teach the public about the widespread issues of abuse. In conservative religious groups, however, outright cover-ups or DIM Thinking, I declared to be the norm in 1995.
These were words that could only come from an anomaly, both positive and negative feedback indicated. How dare you! That was the tone of some responses, if there were responses at all. In mainline circles, where I was insistent the problems could also be commonly found, though with less frequency, people tended to be kinder. Rather than calling me "radical," the word "courageous" commonly described what I was doing, same as it rightfully does with women speaking out now, over twenty years later. In mainline circles, even the complicit pretended to be in support of what I was saying. Great pretenders, many turned out to be.
I'd not stopped to think how I'd stepped out in the darkness to become the first woman in the SBC--actually the first woman in mainline circles--to have ever published a first-person book about the experience of my secondary victimization following sexual assault by a clergy colleague. Never mind that it also involved career loss, which is a common issue in secular corporations, of course. Never mind that there were adolescent victims who had come forward and others who never did in this same group, but would come to my attention years later.
And never mind that the teens in this story were often equated, in behind-the-scenes conversations, with those of us who were adult survivors of this same perpetrator. Exactly as we're seeing play out today with the Roy Moore story!
Of course, this allows us to take less seriously this problem that is technically abuse by an ephebophile, a crime Dana Dovey in Newsweek pointed out this week is as bad as pedophilia. Yet the public's inability to understand this can make these older teen victims more likely to be re-traumatized by complicity than the victims who reveal abuse as young children.
In two weeks, I'll be making a trip to Dallas to continue what I've already started discussing--a dream that would have sounded impossible to me ten years ago. Now, I know it's possible because of what I've seen happening here in Lawrence, Kansas--the uniting of religious groups with vastly different theological differences to agree to come together for the purpose of changing the way members in the faith community at large think and approach a serious social issue.
I'm talking about bringing together faith leaders from groups as diverse as Unitarian, Muslim, evangelical mega-churches, and Jewish temples. In a city that's embedded in climate of politically and theologically highly-conservative population. Which happens to be my birth place. Also the fastest growing city in America. All to zero in on the complicity that continues to be demonstrated in full color with the Roy Moore story, even with the appalling coming together of twenty-eight clergy, "for justice sake" on behalf of a man who has been accused by nine women--eight with stories of sexual assault and abuse as teens, one giving a collaborative story of what she experienced at age twenty-eight.
Are there individuals from diverse groups, including highly-conservative theological circles, willing now to come together. People wanting to send a different message, one calling for a paradigm change that will call into account oppression of women and children, stories all-too-often still not believed today? Can we draw into such a workshop psychotherapists, who are seeking ways to better understand and combat the Denial, Ignorance, and Minimization that still supports men of power, no matter how many accusations of violence against women and children have come out?
More specifically, are there individuals in Dallas who would be willing to join in this effort? Or in other cities around the country, coming together for the same purpose? If so, I'd love to hear by email
After what I've seen in the past six weeks, I believe anything is possible.
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