If gold rust, what shall iron do?

 

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual abuse

When I was a devout Evangelical teenager, I wanted to be like my youth pastor. So much so that I went to an Evangelical college partly with the idea that I could become a youth pastor. I minored in Bible and Christian education, and seriously considered majoring in them. The only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t think I was godly enough. Not like my youth pastor.

 

Over the years I’ve come to disbelieve all the things I used to believe. And while I was very much aware that Evangelical Christianity as a movement is bullshit and its leaders generally KNOW they’re lying but keep it up for the sake of the money and power, I at least thought this one guy was sincere. After all, the last sermon I heard him preach was about how he was moving to Belize to start a ministry to help the poor there – how he felt that his calling from his god was not to stay in a comfortable middle class suburb living the American dream, but to minister to poor and hurting people like Jesus would, and how he was going to help build houses and churches for people who wouldn’t otherwise have them. Even after I became an anti-theist, I always felt that he was wrong in his beliefs, but at least he walked the walk and did some actual good in the world despite preaching and voting against LGBTQ peoples’ rights.

 

Or so I thought.

 

I just learned that he was credibly accused of sexually abusing multiple young (ages 5-10) girls during the time he was my youth pastor. And that his move to Belize happened shortly after one of those incidents, which makes it seem an awful lot like it was less “God called me to minister to youth who need me in another country” and more “If I leave the U.S. I probably won’t get prosecuted even if the kid tells her parents, and I can find a new pool of potential victims among people too poor to afford justice”. The victims were well-chosen – shy, soft-spoken, compliant kids who had always been told that the pastors were good, godly men and should be listened to. This guy who spent so many Wednesday nights telling me and my peers about how it was sinful to even THINK about having sex outside of marriage with a consenting adult opposite-sex spouse, had apparently spent his afternoons molesting his kid’s kindergarten friends. They didn’t report at the time, and by the time they were old enough to realize they could and should do something about it the statute of limitations had expired. They were able, after a change in state law extending the statute of limitations, to sue the church for failure to properly screen and supervise their employee. And as far as I can tell from what I can find online, the church didn’t even bother to argue that the abuse didn’t happen, only that because of some legal technicalities they weren’t liable for the abuse. Their response to the allegations was to lawyer up and wriggle out of responsibility, rather than to try and make things right.

 

And of fucking COURSE that’s what happened.

 

I had thought I was beyond the point where I could be surprised by the hypocrisy and immorality of Evangelical Christians. I thought I was beyond the point where I could be shocked that a sex offender would seek out a church leadership position where kids and their parents would trust him so that he could use that trust to manipulate victims into accepting abuse. Or that a church would ignore, cover up, make excuses for, and deny the abuse perpetrated by its employees. I thought I was sufficiently cynical about the degree to which Evangelical leaders who preach about chastity, and sexual purity, and accountability, and being like Jesus… do not believe their own bullshit. And even so, I was taken aback by the depth to which these motherfuckers were willing to sink. Not even so much as “Shit, we’re sorry, we didn’t know, we can’t undo the abuse but we will absolutely help you pay for therapy to heal”, which would have been the bare fucking minimum. Nope, just “Even if it’s true, it’s not our fault, go fuck yourself”. Just, utterly breathtaking lack of concern for the harm they had enabled.

And, like, I went to school with this guy’s daughter. I spent a number of afternoons at his house for Bible study. I hung out with him in his office and had him pray for me when I was having a rough time. I slept in the same ROOM as him on “mission trips”. I went to an Evangelical college, and studied the Bible, and stayed a virgin till my wedding night, and chose a helping profession instead of a moneymaking profession, and stayed a Christian long after I should have accepted the fact that Christianity isn’t true, in large part because of his influence. I wanted to BE this guy because I believed he was such a moral paragon, I trusted him absolutely, I would have done anything he’d asked.

How many victims were there who felt the same? How many had been deceived by his position and by his ability to give lip service to virtues he did not possess? How close was I, and how close were my childhood friends and our younger siblings, to being among the victims?

And the most haunting question of all: Were there warning signs I missed? Things I would have noticed if I hadn’t been brainwashed into believing that the church’s pastors were beyond reproach? Could I have saved the kid from trauma if I’d had my eyes open and pointed out the signs to an adult? Or could some adult who was old enough to know better have seen it and stopped it, if they hadn’t bought into the church’s bullshit? To what extent did we, who supported the church and its leaders and labored to bring more people into the fold, help enable this abuse?