As we engage in political discourse among our own camps, we find ourselves automatically shifting from one category to another. A hearty discussion on “political power” would be incredibly productive among Right-wing friends who understand the nature and purpose of such a thing. Outside of these like-minded friends, the discussion devolves very quickly. The Right and the Left cannot even have a productive discussion on political power, as they categorize them entirely differently. The Right claims that political power is the force of the state, the threat of arrest, and the ability to exact its will. The Left sees political power as influence, peer pressure, and the ability to foster a culture. For any discussion to happen between the Right and the Left, “political power” must first be placed in a category, but therein lies the problem. No one wants to cede their category to the other side.
After all, what purpose would it solve? Leftists care for my categories about as much as I care for theirs. Because I do not assume the liberal framework, I have no need for their definitions and demarcations.
Despite the chiefly apolitical nature of the church, the Left/Right divide is felt there as well. From everything to church governance to church/state relations, the difference between a Leftist and their counterpart on the Right is a truly massive chasm. The point of this article is not to show how to bridge that gap. Rather, this article is a brief look at how the Left/Right chasm affects our ecumenical life, chiefly for the worse.
Leftists And Abuse Reform
The differing views on abuse reform are a prime example of the unbridgeable political divide. Despite the fact that not a single person on the Left or Right wants more abuse to occur, only those advocating for abuse reforms have a distinctly Left-wing appeal. It does not take much to notice that abuse advocates often have Left-wing opinions on social justice, feminism, and sometimes race. This affinity is not a coincidence. In fact, it highlights the fundamentally opposing nature of the two worldviews.
Perhaps the loudest advocate of abuse reform in Christian circles is Rachael Denhollander. Her paper presented to the Evangelical Theological Society made absolutely clear that abuse reform was a matter of justice. How that reform came about was another matter entirely.
“However, the courtroom often fails to bring justice. Under the worst circumstances, courts are even an instrument of perpetrating injustice.”
Rachael Denhollander, “Justice: The Foundation of a Christian Approach to Abuse” – November 19, 20181https://www.fathommag.com/stories/justice-the-foundation-of-a-christian-approach-to-abuse
So, according to Denhollander, courts are clearly to blame for a large number of abuse situations, yet the method of reforming those courts remained a mystery. How can the church even be expected to fix the criminal court system? Nearly three years later, Denhollander was still crying for justice.
“Ask any advocate. ANY advocate. If a pastor comes to court, he comes to support the perpetrator. This is universal and nearly unequivocal. The pastors come to support the perpetrators.[…] So much for ‘do justice.’”
Rachel Denhollander, Twitter thread – July 3, 20212https://twitter.com/R_Denhollander/status/1411468637123354630
While court reforms are a part of the platform, it just as often seems as if Denhollander has come to see church courts as a hindrance, if anything. In a 2019 interview with MinistryWatch, Denhollander praised the response of senior pastor Robert Cunningham when claims of abuse were leveled at Tates Creek Presbyterian Church.3https://ministrywatch.com/rachael-denhollander-speaks-with-ministrywatch-on-sexual-abuse-in-the-church/ The difference? According to pastor Cunningham, “We didn’t do this through the church courts,” who opted to bring in professionals and legal experts instead.4https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/june/presbyterian-church-in-america-abuse-response.html But is bypassing the church court system truly the best thing to do?
Along with Denhollander, writers of the PCA DASA report seem to be urging victims to skip the church’s court system completely. After the PCA failed to implement her report’s recommendations, Ann Maree Goudzward’s critique of the church court system was noted by Christianity Today.
“Goudzwaard, who served on the denomination’s commission on abuse, said she no longer counsels victims to go through the church court process.
‘It is not designed to help [victims],’ Goudzwaard said. ‘I had a best-case scenario on a case, and it should have resulted in a deposition of a pastor and it did not. It had a GRACE [Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment] report, multiple witnesses.’”
Emily Belz, “The Presbyterian Church in America Has an Abuse Crisis Too” – June 13, 20235https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/june/presbyterian-church-in-america-abuse-response.html
In short, the abuse reform advocates all appear to be pushing the same message: That the church and her courts have failed and that true reform must come from the outside. Psychologist Diane Langberg puts it this way, “We have utterly failed God. We protected our own institutions and status more than his name or his people.“6https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2023/january-web-only/diane-langberg-interview-church-abuse-trauma-sbc.html
Billy Graham’s Grandson and former executive director of the GRACE, Boz Tchividijian, seems to blame fundamentalism in general for the cases of abuse in the church.7https://www.huffpost.com/entry/protestant-sex-abuse-boz-tchividijian_n_4019347 Others blame patriarchy itself, recommending that the church “feminize” in order to handle abuse better.8https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/church/3-ways-womens-equality-can-counteract-abuse/ So what should the church do?
Reconciling the Difference
I recently stumbled across a blog post by OPC Pastor Mathis where he did some research of his own into the GRACE organization. Apparently, his denomination had considered hiring the GRACE organization to perform an assessment. As a pastor with limited time on his hands, it was difficult to find or even to understand the objectives of such an assessment, much less the intentions of an outside organization. During his initial research, Mathis found himself unable to move past the blatant Leftism of the board members.
Mathis concludes his blog post with this final thought:
“With long-standing board members aggressively promoting views and practices in direct contradiction to the OPC, I cannot help but wonder how much a GRACE evaluation would undermine my denomination’s integrity.”
Pastor Mathis, “Why GRACE is Not Amazing: A Preliminary Analysis” – June 7, 2022
Now, to put our brains to the test: if you were a pastor attempting to reconcile the difference between a Left-wing abuse reform advocate and a Right-wing Theonomist, how would you do it?
It’s a trick question. You can’t.
Even if the abuse advocates gave you a bullet point list of everything they wanted changed, and the Right-leaning church members all had a chance to go over it and make as many changes as they wanted, both the Left and Right would be completely dissatisfied.
Leftism places church authority and power in a completely different category. Their abuse reforms seek to emphasize the social and systemic changes that create a very specific culture. By prioritizing victims and disenfranchising potential perpetrators, Leftism makes constant appeals to emotion and feminine intuition.
By contrast, the Right sees church authority in a very specific light. Power is to be used for discipline, and discipline is to be administered for sinful behavior. To the Right, male headship is important to both the church and the home, providing the best protection for women.
The fact of the matter is you cannot reconcile the Leftist and the Rightist, even if they are both professing Christians in your church. Today’s politics simply do not allow these two groups to work together because their frameworks for even the most basic assumptions are too far apart. Leftists have no use for the Right-wing understanding of authority, and Rightists have no place to categorize power dynamics.
One Way Out
As a case in point, take a look at the SBC. Over the last few years, the denomination has been waging a battle on two related fronts: abuse reform and women pastors. Abuse reform in the SBC has been nothing short of a disaster. From improper and “hearsay” investigations,9https://protestia.com/2023/07/17/guidepost-throws-sbc-and-artif-under-the-bus-in-newest-churchtoo-lawsuit-filings-says-it-did-not-investigate-lyell-vs-sills-claims/ to pastors suing for defamation,10https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/sills-files-defamation-suit-against-sbc-lyell-others/11https://evangelicaldarkweb.org/2023/03/19/johnny-hunt-sues-southern-baptist-convention-guidepost/ the SBC has attached itself to a bureaucratic nightmare. Similarly, women pastors continue to plague the denomination. Despite the fact that the Baptist Faith and Message explicitly limits the pastoral role to men, some estimates conclude that there are over 1200 churches with female pastors.12https://americanreformer.org/2023/06/how-many-female-pastors-are-in-the-sbc/ While SBC messengers have recently voted for an amendment to address this, there is still another convention that must happen before anything can be done.13https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182141691/southern-baptist-convention-sbc-women-pastors-saddleback-megachurch
For those on the Right, these issues appear to be completely unrelated. Abuse reforms are a matter of fairness in church courts and properly exercising church discipline, while the issue of female pastors is a matter of disfellowship and dismissal. In fact, if the SBC refused to entertain the proposals of Leftists, both issues would be resolved almost overnight.
Unfortunately for the SBC, that’s not how it went down. Instead, SBC leadership attempted to compromise, accommodating the Left-wing framework into a structure that wasn’t meant to hold it. Like trying to hit a home run with a fork, the attempt didn’t even make sense. To Leftists, however, the point of picking up the fork is so that you can turn the stadium into a kitchen. Instead of dealing with the issues on their own terms, feminism connects the dots and changes the rules. If you view the two issues through the lens of egalitarianism, emotive appeal, and power, the fight becomes one and the same. Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, connected the two problems like this:
“In many ways, the Southern Baptist Convention’s beliefs about gender roles are flat out sexist, oppressive and deeply unjust. No debate needed.
Ultimately, the SBC can’t affirm the worth of women in one breath and exclude them from leadership in the next. It’s simply impossible to have it both ways.”
Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, “The Southern Baptist Convention’s hypocrisy on women” – June 25, 202314https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/4061299-the-southern-baptist-conventions-hypocrisy-on-women/
Simply put, the suggestions for abuse reform would have never worked in the SBC. As a moderately conservative denomination, the SBC did not have the liberal framework for implementing these suggestions. As a Bible-believing church, it is complementarian at its core. So when egalitarians suggested abuse reform, the SBC quickly found itself straining between the Right-wing gender roles and the all-consuming principles of liberalism. As the Leftist “reverend” said, “It’s simply impossible to have it both ways.”
Sources:
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