Bible Belt Evangelicals, many of you seem to be having a really tough time navigating sexual assault claims against men in power lately.
As a service, I’ve provided the following simple guide to better prepare you:
1) Sexual assault is wrong—period. It is indefensible, regardless of what the victim was wearing or their dating history or their orientation or their politics—or whatever supposed signals the offender received prior. Unwanted verbal harassment or physical contact without clear consent is abhorrent and deserves no advocate. This is about the character of the victimizer, and the unequivocal condemnation of violence against another human being. Anything else is misplaced and shameful energy.
2) There is almost nothing to be gained by falsely reporting sexual assault. Survivors who take the courageous step to report violence against them, face every kind of character assassination and public humiliation. Their pasts are dissected, their motives are questioned, and their deepest wounds are fully exposed to a vast multitude of critics, pundits, and voyeurs. It is a second trauma. If someone comes forward to report a sexual assault, they’re probably telling the truth—and your first response shouldn’t be ascribing some supposed motive to them that would probably never be sufficient compensation for the hostility they endure.
3) Name-dropping Jesus is a really terrible idea. Men who abuse their power and leverage their position in the Church in order to commit unspeakable acts, are not persecuted martyrs deserving of some Biblical callback. Every time you invoke religion in an attempt to lionize a possible offender, you’re nurturing the very environment that has protected abusers and silenced their accusers in the Church. You’re also dragging the name of Jesus into the vile acts you’re defending—and you’re muddying-up a beautiful message with the most foul of human excrement. Stop it.
4) Publicly supporting accused predators before and above alleged victims is equally terrible. If you take to social media to say that you’re “praying for” a man with multiple, highly credible allegations of sexual assault of minors, and you don’t mention concern for those possibly traumatized by that man—you probably have your priorities out-of-order. You’re probably saying more than you’re pretending to say. You’re probably broadcasting your politics and undermining the victims under the guise of prayer. God help you if you are.
5) Don’t play politics. If a fellow Republican or Conservative Christian stands accused of heinous deeds, and your first response is to bring up the member of another political party’s past sins, as some whataboutism comparison of public response—you’re deflecting and wrong. Rape should be seen as a nonpartisan abomination, and your defense of humanity should trump your loyalty to party and to religious tradition. The offenses in front of you should be the ones you respond to, and that response should emulate Jesus.
Bible Belt Evangelicals, there are moments when your professed faith is supposed to show up and be a clear source of goodness and truth in the moments of our greatest human darkness. This is never more true than when someone with tremendous power exploits someone with far less power—and then tries to silence and shame them. You are supposed to elevate those quieted voices and guard them from guilt that does not belong to them.
When Jesus commanded us to love the least, he was ordering us to the defense of the most vulnerable, the most silenced, the most overlooked among us. I’m not sure there’s a more accurate description of those who are preyed upon by those who feel emboldened by their position and privilege to do so.
When Jesus warned people not to hinder the little children from his presence, he was condemning those who would steal the innocence and obscure the light from their eyes—those who would prevent them from accurately seeing him.
Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd, because he saw how many were harassed and helpless, how many people were vulnerable to the wolves in the world. This is your calling too. It is to step into the world and be the protector of those who often have little protection. You are not called to cultivate more fear in them, to commit more violence to them.
Christian, those who are assaulted are the sheep. You are supposed to defend them.
Men who assault are the wolves. You’re supposed to stop them.
Stop getting it twisted.
Order John’s book, ‘A Bigger Table’ here.
