Ending the silence

News recently broke about Jean Vanier's sexual abuse of at least six women who came to him for spiritual direction.

I have no words for this yet. I've long admired his work and have spoken publicly about how his thinking about the nature of Christian community has been formational for me personally. To say that I'm deeply disappointed by this news really doesn't cut it, but I haven't yet found a better way to express the impact that these recent revelations have had on me. Like many others, I'm struggling to know how to hold onto deep admiration for the ongoing work of L'Arche, the community Vanier founded, and for his work as a theologian, while wholeheartedly stating that his actions toward these women were appalling.

This and a few other recent conversations have got me thinking about power dynamics in the Church, and about how they relate to my own experiences.

I cannot imagine the courage that it took for these women to speak out about the abuse they'd experienced at the hands of someone who was revered by so many.

Speaking out is hard, and many of us know all too well that speaking out doesn't always mean that we will be believed, that speaking out sometimes feels like it makes things worse, not better.

I thought about how power is used, and abused, in the Church. About how real the power afforded to clergy and others in church leadership is, and about how it can allow them to get away with much that should never be allowed.

I thought about the fact that I'm now a pastor, and about how much I want to believe that something like this could never happen in my congregation, on my watch. About how if someone ever came to me reporting misconduct, I hope I would believe them and act quickly and appropriately to help.

I thought about my own experiences, having grown up in and remained within the Church in one form or another throughout my life.

The truth is, I had no trouble quickly identifying three men in positions of power in the Church, in three different contexts in my life, who abused that power in different ways toward me in significant and intentional ways, in words and actions that hurt deeply.

Let me add quickly and firmly that none come from my current congregation or my current church context in any way.

And the truth is that I don't think I've ever spoken publicly about these situations before. I've shared the stories with close, trusted friends or family members, but even at the time when the #metoo conversation was at its height a few years ago, none of my experiences seemed "bad enough" to count.

Until a recent conversation made me realize that my silence on these things is not helping anyone, and that while I've told myself that none of these experiences was "really that bad," I'd be horrified if someone came to me and told me that one of these same experiences had happened to them. Until I realized that my silence might have allowed these individuals to continue to hold the power vested in them in a way that was at the expense of someone more vulnerable. Until I wondered about how prevalent experiences like mine really are.

All were wrong. None constituted sexual abuse, but all of them constituted a misuse of power to oppress or manipulate another person for their own gain.

That is not the way that I want my Church to operate.

But until we are willing to have hard conversations about how ministry leadership and power are connected--until we are ready to have hard and honest conversations about the fact that sometimes our very theology gives men a power over others that creates an environment conducive to such misuses of power and that makes it so hard for victims to bring such misuses of power to light, I fear that we aren't really getting to the heart of the issue.

I'm not sure yet how I want to speak about my own experiences, or to use my voice to advocate for changes that might make our congregations and faith communities safer and healthier for all people. I just know that I want to end my silence, in some small way--to take courage from the courage of others, to urge all of us to work for the safety of every person among us, to hope that I might in some way contribute to a safer Church for the little ones among us, to pray that they might grow up having a very different experience of church leaders than what some of mine has been.

I pray that someday stories like the news about Jean Vanier this week might be shocking to me, rather than disappointing.