A few weeks after the #MeToo movement first gained traction in October 2017, a related hashtag also began appearing on social media: #ChurchToo. It quickly caught the attention of Marie Griffith, a faculty member at Washington University who was raised Southern Baptist.
For Griffith, who leads the university’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, the idea that sexual harassment and assault occur within Christian faith communities wasn’t new. What was different was the growing spotlight on the problem. In some cases, the outcry led to the resignation of powerful pastors who had abused victims for decades.
“Many of the cases that we’re learning about have been covered up for a very long time,” Griffith said on Monday’s St. Louis on the Air. “I think that’s the most disturbing part about this. No one is surprised that sexual abuse happens – it happens in all sectors of our society and any profession … but the sort of degree of covering up and protecting abusers over their victims – I think this is what raised so much dismay and disgust, frankly, with church leadership.”
In conversation with host Don Marsh, Griffith said she is somewhat optimistic about where things are headed within many evangelical circles as victims become “more emboldened.”
“Far more Americans care [now] about these issues and are willing to speak about them,” said Griffith, who is the author of several books including “Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics.” “There’s less stigma attached these days to saying, ‘I have been the victim of a sexual assault.’ And so that has enabled far more people to come forward. I think that’s really the shift that we’re seeing.”
At the same time, the level of cover-up being exposed gives her pause. Griffith said she sees some parallels to highly publicized scandals within the Catholic Church.
“You still see this attempt to silence these allegations,” she explained. “I think there’s an assumption, ‘We can handle this ourselves. We don’t want to bring shame to the institution, and so we’ll handle this.’
“I don’t think it’s always indifference to the sinful behavior of these men, but I do think it’s a misguided desire to handle things quietly – handle it internally – and forget that a lot of these things, they’re not just sins – they’re crimes. And to fail to report them to law enforcement is to ignore or even disobey the law.”
Griffith said she also sees some links between the abuse coming to light and the “tolerance for that sort of behavior in the highest leaders of the land.”
“We’re seeing all kinds of impact … as people become more and more emboldened and churches are sort of in the spotlight and being forced to make public statements and change policies,” she noted. “And I think ... things will and are changing within the churches. Now the larger culture, that’s a tougher nut to crack. And whether or not that will translate [into] any kind of diminished loyalty for the president or any increased criticism for [Trump’s] own past sexual misbehavior and possible assault and possible criminal activity, I don’t know if we’ll see that or not.”
One of the denominations where high-profile abuse cases have come to light and church leaders have responded is the one in which Griffith was raised. She noted that the Southern Baptist Convention recently passed resolutions aimed at addressing the issue.
In Griffith’s view, though, it’s not enough.
“In the body of those statements, they also reaffirmed what they see as the biblical doctrine of complementarianism – that is that wives should submit graciously to their husbands,” said Griffith, who left the denomination partly due to what she terms the “gender ideology” that was formally codified into church doctrine in the late ’90s. “There’s this notion, again, of female subordination to male authority, and as long as you hold onto that as sort of a core doctrinal issue, my worry is these abuse cases happen over and over again and that people find ways to justify them.
“So that’s the interesting thing – they’re trying to stand up and say, ‘We renounce sexual abuse – we deplore this.’ But I’m not sure the statements [are] nearly strong enough to be able to do that effectively.”
Griffith believes that bringing women into the leadership and into ministry can help address the issue.
“The more open to women’s leadership the denominations are, the more vigorous the response is when these situations of abuse do occur,” she said.
There’s also a need for pastors in general to “be more familiar with the law.”
“I’ve been very struck by the number of men I’ve seen – young pastors – who’ve said, ‘Never when I was in seminary did anyone raise the issue of what I should do if an abuse allegation came my way,’” Griffith said. “‘I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.’ … This is probably true in education and academia and many other professions as well. But there’s just a lack of understanding.”
She added that “educating people about the law, about their responsibility, about what to look out for” are all “simple changes” that can be made at the seminary level as well as local congregational and denominational levels.
Listen to the full conversation:
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