Domestic violence within our plain culture?

[jahertz]

Grace, the Scriptures never, not once, equate forgiveness with burying awkward parts of one's story to protect the reputation of a wicked and destructive person, even if that person did subsequently repent—and a key mark of godly repentance is a total and final end of trying to protect one's reputation from the consequences of past sin.

What is not debatable is the need of a victim to somehow forgive the abuser, at least if they want to be forgiven by Christ themselves. This is the word of Jesus himself. We can't get around this. The real question that should and always seems to be debated is how that forgiveness should look.

For example, I believe that a victim of sexual assault should have the choice of never being in contact with the abuser again, even if they have found it within themselves to forgive them from the heart. This causes excruciatingly painful situations, but this kind of pain rests solely on the shoulders of an abuser. And no one should put a shred of guilt on a sexual assault victim for protecting themselves in such situations, even while they must face the call of Jesus to forgive at the same time.

Pertinent words, Mike. I think your phrase "to somehow forgive the abuser" is interesting, as it hints at a controversial idea which I don't feel I have pinned down but which seems unavoidable in Scripture: that different qualities of forgiveness are possible and appropriate depending on the specifics of the relationship, especially the current level of repentance or denial in the perpetrator being forgiven.

Theologically, Anabaptists have historically understood God's forgiveness to us, or at least our ability to receive and profit by it, as conditional on our repentance, including our release of debts held against our own debtors. It's implied that the function of God's forgiveness is only complete or effectual when it has been received by the offender, a process which involves both confession ("God be merciful to me a sinner") and repentance ("Go and sin no more"). Because the original breach in our relationship with God was generated on our side, not his, the relationship cannot be fully restored until we give up the fog of excuses, self-justification, and alliances with darkness that we have used to hide from his holy face.

If our human forgiveness is to be modeled on the perfect example of God himself (and Scripture explicitly states that it is) that seems to lead directly to several insights about ideal human forgiveness:

1. We should extend the offer of forgiveness to all offenders
2. True forgiveness is compatible with anger against sin
3. True forgiveness is compatible with maintaining and recounting the full history of the relationship, including past wrongs committed and repented of
4. Forgiveness, no matter how sincerely offered, only bears fruit in a restored relationship when the offender has acknowledged the wrong done and demonstrated the fruit of genuine repentance

If these conclusions are true, what do they imply for our handling of domestic abuse within the church?

[jahertz]

If a person with a Tier 3 child molestation record comes to a church for membership, the first, minimum indicator of genuine repentance every church should look for is complete openness and clarity about his or her record, plus a welcoming and compliant attitude toward any and all accountability measures, no matter how restrictive, that the church sees fit to require for the protection of its children. The discovery at any point that the applicant has been less than forthright about his or her criminal history should be a one-strike deal-breaker, as should any attempt to circumvent agreed-to restrictions, especially regarding access to children. No one's hurt feelings are worth gambling with the souls of the innocent.

I see where you're going with this, not sure I agree 100%. So, if a newcomer becomes a regular attender, is he/she supposed come right out with "yeah, by the way, I'm a registered sex offender."?

I know a convicted child sex offender personally who does precisely this. He is so consistent about it that he mentions it not only upon signup to any conference or group event (which naturally leads to frequent bans from such events), but as a matter of course in personal introductions as well. He says he wants people to know his history so they can have the information up front to take whatever precautions they feel appropriate and so no one feels betrayed if they later learn a sex offender was in proximity to their children without their knowledge.

I haven't heard him say what follows, but this transparency also reduces his own vulnerability to backsliding, since it ensures for him the scrutiny of many eyes and virtually ensures confrontation should any suspicious behavior be observed.

This kind of forthrightness points to radical shift in focus from protecting one's personal reputation to a jealousy for truth and the integrity of the community of saints. That's the kind of 180-degree reversal of priorities the Scripture teaches us to expect from someone who has truly repented. Perhaps not every repentant offender will apply the principle as radically as this man does, but a general posture of intentional transparency and radical, voluntary accountability seems to me the absolute minimum credible fruit of repentance for pretty much any history of harm against others.

Most groups require that anyone with access to children, like teaching Sunday school, has to get a background check. It will be exposed then.

A history of criminal conviction will be exposed. Unfortunately, most abusers, even some with a decades-long trail of victims, have never been charged or convicted with those crimes. So while a background check policy is a valuable due diligence step, it becomes worse than useless if it lulls the organization into an unwarranted sense of security.

[Ken]

If a person with a Tier 3 child molestation record comes to a church for membership, the first, minimum indicator of genuine repentance every church should look for is complete openness and clarity about his or her record, plus a welcoming and compliant attitude toward any and all accountability measures, no matter how restrictive, that the church sees fit to require for the protection of its children. The discovery at any point that the applicant has been less than forthright about his or her criminal history should be a one-strike deal-breaker, as should any attempt to circumvent agreed-to restrictions, especially regarding access to children. No one's hurt feelings are worth gambling with the souls of the innocent.

I see where you're going with this, not sure I agree 100%. So, if a newcomer becomes a regular attender, is he/she supposed come right out with "yeah, by the way, I'm a registered sex offender."?

I know a convicted child sex offender personally who does precisely this. He is so consistent about it that he mentions it not only upon signup to any conference or group event (which naturally leads to frequent bans from such events), but as a matter of course in personal introductions as well. He says he wants people to know his history so they can have the information up front to take whatever precautions they feel appropriate and so no one feels betrayed if they later learn a sex offender was in proximity to their children without their knowledge.

I haven't heard him say what follows, but this transparency also reduces his own vulnerability to backsliding, since it ensures for him the scrutiny of many eyes and virtually ensures confrontation should any suspicious behavior be observed.

This kind of forthrightness points to radical shift in focus from protecting one's personal reputation to a jealousy for truth and the integrity of the community of saints. That's the kind of 180-degree reversal of priorities the Scripture teaches us to expect from someone who has truly repented. Perhaps not every repentant offender will apply the principle as radically as this man does, but a general posture of intentional transparency and radical, voluntary accountability seems to me the absolute minimum credible fruit of repentance for pretty much any history of harm against others.

Most groups require that anyone with access to children, like teaching Sunday school, has to get a background check. It will be exposed then.

A history of criminal conviction will be exposed. Unfortunately, most abusers, even some with a decades-long trail of victims, have never been charged or convicted with those crimes. So while a background check policy is a valuable due diligence step, it becomes worse than useless if it lulls the organization into an unwarranted sense of security.

Arrests will generally show up on background checks, not just convictions. Unless the records were sealed (which is rare) or it was a juvenile offender.

This is one reason why involving the legal system in these issues is important. Too many faith groups (not just Mennonites but Catholics, Baptists, and others as well) instinctually cover up such allegations when they occur or try to deal with them "in-house" such that a criminal record is never generated. Catholics famously recycled their pedophile priests from parish to parish out of sight of the legal system, and the same thing appears to have happened in the Southern Baptist church. Whether or not you agree with the legal system, it does generate and keep records that are then discoverable.

Frustration at the fact that this was not happening in the church is one reason why the MAP list was created.

It boils down to the fact that a lot of faith groups (and not just plain Mennonites) treat things like domestic violence and sexual abuse as a sin rather than a crime. It is BOTH.

[jahertz]

Arrests will generally show up on background checks, not just convictions. Unless the records were sealed (which is rare) or it was a juvenile offender.

This is one reason why involving the legal system in these issues is important. Too many faith groups (not just Mennonites but Catholics, Baptists, and others as well) instinctually cover up such allegations when they occur or try to deal with them "in-house" such that a criminal record is never generated. Catholics famously recycled their pedophile priests from parish to parish out of sight of the legal system, and the same thing appears to have happened in the Southern Baptist church. Whether or not you agree with the legal system, it does generate and keep records that are then discoverable.

Frustration at the fact that this was not happening in the church is one reason why the MAP list was created.

It boils down to the fact that a lot of faith groups (and not just plain Mennonites) treat things like domestic violence and sexual abuse as a sin rather than a crime. It is BOTH.

Ken, thanks for that clarification. I was not aware that arrests not leading to convictions could be counted on to show up on background checks.

I mentioned this earlier, but an issue that sometimes trips us up is that much of the domestic abuse we encounter in Anabaptist as well as other conservative church circles does not constitute a crime under the laws of the state. This makes it imperative that the church both understand its responsibility to report crimes to the state and also be competent to identify, confront, and resolve patterns of destructive sin that fall short of reportable crimes.

The issue of public records is fraught but key to the church's collective responsibility to protect its people from wolves in sheep's clothing. When the Houston Chronicle ran their big expose on the startling number of sex abusers serving in Southern Baptist leadership positions, they highlighted a long history of calls by advocates and survivors for the Southern Baptist Convention to build a list of credibly accused Southern Baptist sex offenders which churches could check when vetting candidates for staff or pastoral positions. At the time the reporting ran, church brass were still insisting that the autonomous nature of Southern Baptist churches made such a database impossible to maintain in any effective way.

Just after the expose, I personally raised this question in private conversation with a man who at the time was involved in the SBC's official campaign to address and correct the church's handling of abuse. He told me his main personal reason for objecting to an SBC-built database was that he didn't trust current SBC leadership to maintain such a list with integrity even if it were launched. He would rather, he said, establish a better exchange of information with the state, ensuring that offenders in individual churches get written up, and that those state records are then made available in a form that allows churches to reliably access relevant records for vetting, even if an offender has changed states between offending and seeking a new church position.

As it has turned out, this man's mistrust of SBC brass was well founded—so well founded in fact, that it would transpire that a senior SBC figure had been in fact maintaining a private list of offenders, which whatever its intent had not been used to ensure the church's safety from the predators it tracked.

The whole saga, which is ongoing, raises important questions about power and its concentration in Christian organizations, especially large and well-resourced ones, about the proper functions and interactions of church and state, and about what recourse Christians have when they find themselves in a group where leadership is corrupt from the top down.

I think I've drifted off-topic again. I'll try to return to the thread topic in my next post.

[Ken]

Ken, thanks for that clarification. I was not aware that arrests not leading to convictions could be counted on to show up on background checks.

I think it depends on the individual state or jurisdiction and the type of background check conducted.

For example, I recently submitted a background check to volunteer at our local public library because my wife wanted to go volunteer during their Halloween events in the library as a supervised activity to keep kids off the street and out of mischief on Halloween. The questions weren't just whether I had ever been CONVICTED of a crime, but also if I had ever been arrested or charged for any such crimes.

Can and do people lie on their applications for background checks? Of course. But the lie itself is actually a crime for most state and federal background check applications of any sort (government job applications, firearms license applications, etc.) and if it is a private background check, lying could constitute fraud.

And if someone lies on their background check application and then information about arrests does surface I should think that would represent a giant flashing red flag about that individual.

Background checks are not a panacea. But they do serve a purpose and one of those purposes is to actually deter problematic individuals from even attempting to seek roles that involve children in the first place.

[mike]

I mentioned this earlier, but an issue that sometimes trips us up is that much of the domestic abuse we encounter in Anabaptist as well as other conservative church circles does not constitute a crime under the laws of the state. This makes it imperative that the church both understand its responsibility to report crimes to the state and also be competent to identify, confront, and resolve patterns of destructive sin that fall short of reportable crimes.

This bothers me. I have fairly clear ideas on what should be done about criminal behavior, whether in or out of the church. You take it to the proper authorities. When we get into behavior that doesn't constitute crime, I feel we enter a much more difficult zone. I have a lot of questions. Dealing with sin is in the domain of the church, and not all sins are crimes. So, yes, the church is responsible to deal with sins that are not crimes.

What church is truly competent to "identify, confront, and resolve" sins that fall short of being crime? How do incompetent churches get to the point of competence? Churches and church leaders aren't God, and they never will be. What do we do about the fact that churches fail in this task? Do our leaders need training other than what they get from mentors and personal study? Are we supposed to utilize secular or para-church "authorities" in determining what constitutes non-criminal destructive domestic abuse, and what the appropriate measures are? Is scripture insufficient as a text on determining these sorts of things? Who is the proper authority on these issues? (It's not the state, because we're not talking about crimes.) Is it some organization or person outside any particular local church that sets itself up as an authority? Who gets to define what abuse is? Who gets to define what competence is?

[Josh]

The idea that Anabaptists have a duty to run to the state and narc people out is a very interesting one, and has zero historical precedent in Anabaptism since its founding.

I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s not remotely “Anabaptist”, and it presupposes a trustworthy state (which is a rather big assumption).

I also find the idea of assuming people who are arrested but not convicted are somehow guilty to be a rather interesting assumption too. I suppose that in the Court of Jahertz, one is guilty until proven innocent?

[mike]

The idea that Anabaptists have a duty to run to the state and narc people out is a very interesting one, and has zero historical precedent in Anabaptism since its founding.

I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s not remotely “Anabaptist”, and it presupposes a trustworthy state (which is a rather big assumption).

Are you saying that the Anabaptist tradition when confronting a church member who is a murderer or rapist or thief has been to NOT report this person to civil authorities?

[Josh]

The idea that Anabaptists have a duty to run to the state and narc people out is a very interesting one, and has zero historical precedent in Anabaptism since its founding.

I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s not remotely “Anabaptist”, and it presupposes a trustworthy state (which is a rather big assumption).

Are you saying that the Anabaptist tradition when confronting a church member who is a murderer or rapist or thief has been to NOT report this person to civil authorities?

Anabaptists used to debate if you should even call the police if you are being robbed or not.

The shift from being a persecuted people to a wealthy, comfortable people includes getting in bed with the local constabulary, eventually leading to comfort with using the force of the local police to benefit one’s self in matters of business, contracts, landlord evictions, and so on. Overall, this is not moving closer to the ways of Christ.

[mike]

The idea that Anabaptists have a duty to run to the state and narc people out is a very interesting one, and has zero historical precedent in Anabaptism since its founding.

I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying it’s not remotely “Anabaptist”, and it presupposes a trustworthy state (which is a rather big assumption).

Are you saying that the Anabaptist tradition when confronting a church member who is a murderer or rapist or thief has been to NOT report this person to civil authorities?

Anabaptists used to debate if you should even call the police if you are being robbed or not.

The shift from being a persecuted people to a wealthy, comfortable people includes getting in bed with the local constabulary, eventually leading to comfort with using the force of the local police to benefit one’s self in matters of business, contracts, landlord evictions, and so on. Overall, this is not moving closer to the ways of Christ.

So the answer to my question is 'yes'?