Sex-Scandal Excuses, Part One: Deflection, All Have Sinned

 A frank discussion of how we Christians often deal with public scandal

So, let's talk about the Southern Baptist Church's sex abuse scandal.

A couple weeks ago, the final report of an independent investigation of the SBC denomination was published, showing that leaders in the denomination had been fully aware of several hundred cases of sexual abuse within their churches for 15 years, but did nothing.

As this article from Christianity Today states, "Armed with a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors, Southern Baptist leaders chose to protect the denomination from lawsuits rather than protect the people in their churches from further abuse… [The men who controlled the Executive Committee] maligned the people who wanted to do something about abuse and repeatedly rejected pleas for help and reform."

(The denomination also posted a list of the pastors convicted or credibly accused of sexual assault, which can be viewed by anyone here.)

As both a Christian and as someone who was baptized in a Southern Baptist church when I was 12 (though my family never identified with the denomination particularly), my emotional reaction at this point is… nearly nonexistent. After the slew of scandals that have broken the past several years, as giant after giant of the evangelical world has crashed and burned, I've grown increasingly numb and unsurprised. 

(I don't consider this a good thing, but I have to be honest.)

However, numbness is only one of many reactions that people can have to a scandal like this breaking. Through the years, I've noticed strong reactions in myself, other Christians I know, and Christians online as the sins of the church hit the headlines for all to see.

Four of the most common I've noticed are:

1. Deflection. (Pointing out the flaws in groups or people who aren't Christians.)

2. For All Have Sinned and Fallen Short of the Glory of God. (Saying each of us is no better than another so we have no room to judge.)

3. We Don't Have a ___ Issue, We Have a Heart Issue. (Chalking things up to only individual sin without looking at larger systemic/community issues.)

4. No True Scotsman (AKA "#NotAllChurches"). (Saying that no "real Christian" would do those things.)

These are all profoundly human reactions— we struggle to defend ourselves and those we love when we feel threatened! But if we Christians can become aware of these reactions, and understand why they are neither helpful nor Christlike, we can begin to practice greater self-awareness and try to direct our hurt, pain, and defensiveness into healthy channels.

In this post, I'll go over the first two, and in Part Two, address points 3 and 4. 

I want to reiterate again that all of these postures have been ones I've adopted when trying to handle learning about horrible things Christians have done— I can analyze them because I've experienced them for myself! Being aware of these tendencies, and naming them, has been crucial to my spiritual growth.

Let's dive in.

1. Deflection.

It's truly human nature to try to change the subject when we're uncomfortable, and this is often the first tactic employed: "Well, it's not like [xyz group] is any better. Sex scandals have happened in [xyz community] too!" 

Blameshifting like this feels like a good protection ("This woman you put here with me made me eat the fruit!" Adam tells God in the Garden of Eden), but it's ultimately a way of abandoning the responsibility and accountability that we've been given as members of a particular group. Critiquing other organizations or people or groups isn't relevant when it's our dirty laundry aired out. 

2. For All Have Sinned and Fallen Short of the Glory of God. 

Every time a sex abuse scandal like this breaks, there are Christian men all over the internet loudly proclaiming that everyone has the urge to sexually assault people, and that only the grace of God is holding them back. It's deeply disturbing to see men like this, particularly those with authority over people, proclaiming that they are actively fighting the urge to harm these same people, as if this were a normal thing that everyone deals with. 

The argument has some merit in a rather abstract theological sense— rapists are not somehow a different breed of human, and all of us have the seeds of harm and violence in us. However, I reject the concept that Christianity is all that keeps people from raping, murdering, and attacking others with abandon (no matter what all those youth-group testimonies tried to lead us to believe).

This also dovetails with what I call "sin arithmetic," which doesn't discriminate between different kinds of sin, casting all of them as equally harmful. After all, the most common evangelical theology about hell states that any sin, no matter how small, is grounds for eternal conscious torment, so this encourages people to not approach the topic with nuance. 

At one time, I'm horrified to say that I considered rape as less harmful than consensual premarital sex— because in the former situation, only the rapist was sinning, whereas in the latter situation, both people were sinning. I say this to my shame, but also in anger and rejection of the theology that got me there. This may be an extreme example, but I think it illustrates just how abstract and even cruel this sin arithmetic can get. 

As another example, in Kristin Kobes Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne, she relates this incident from the Vietnam War:

When the young army lieutenant William Calley faced trial for his role in the murder of some five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in what came to be known as the My Lai massacre, Billy Graham['s]… moral reflection in the pages of the "New York Times" was remarkably banal: "We have all had our Mylais in one way or another, perhaps not with guns, but we have hurt others with a thoughtless word, an arrogant act or a selfish deed."

When considerations of severity, harm, impact, or far-reaching consequences can be smoothed over, it allows people to excuse or dismiss incredibly serious offenses. After all, if a thoughtless word or arrogant act are enough to land you in Hell, how can it really get worse from there?

Christians can acknowledge that "all have sinned" (or even identify as sinners) without using this phrase as a steamroller to flatten all harm into an abstract offense to be dismissed or deflected. It can be useful as a tool of humility, but I've seen it all too easily deployed as a tool of oppression.

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In Part Two, I'll discuss the "Heart Issue" excuse and— my personal go-to excuse that I consistently employed for my entire life up until recently— "No True Scotsman."

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