In recent blogs, we’re reviewing the recent Pew Center’s research and giving blunt commentary on why fewer people are participating in church services, a signature issue in a post-Christian culture.  Today, in response to a popular survey reply, “I practice my faith in different ways,” I want to bring to light a burning issue that continues to repel people from churches: the direct or indirect effects of ABUSE by a clergy or religious leader.

Many of you know that I live in western PA, and in the summer of 2018, a PA judge released a grand jury report that revealed allegations of abuse of over 1,000 victims within six dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church in the Pittsburgh region.  This revelation shocked scores of people, and uncovered long-term practices of gender intimidation, sexual harassment, and the mistreatment of children, teens, and adults who were participating in these parishes.  Months later, revelations continue to surface, deepening the anger, hurt, and disgust that the general public, not to mention faithful church-going people, have for religious officials, and for the church in general.

Don’t think for the first moment that this problem is confined solely to the Roman Catholic Church.  There are plenty of Protestant Church/leader examples across the country that could be thrown in the spotlight at this moment if time and space permitted.  The depravity of humanity is not confined to one church or denomination.  Suffice to say, Pogo comic strip Walt Kelly’s twist on Oliver Hazard Perry’s 1812 Battle of Lake Erie phrase hits the mark, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

At times, I have wept over these revelations and the repercussions and consequences that have come from them upon families, congregations, and entire communities.  In times of prayer, I have sorrowed over children, youth, and adults who went to their shepherds for help and spiritual care, only to receive something damaging and destructive in return.  If you’re reading this and have been the victim of clergy abuse, I GRIEVE WITH YOU. This should never have happened to you as a sheep under the church’s shepherding care.

The anger, horror and sorrow of these matters has made me look at my own heart to realize that although I would NEVER do something this horrific, there are plenty of sins in other areas of my life that humble me to say with brokenness, “Were it not for the grace of God, there go I.”  In God’s sight, clergy need the cleansing forgiveness from God just as anyone else does.  But in the same breath, we need to be accountable to God and to public law for our actions with other people in public or in private.

Those religious officials who did these heinous acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of civil law if they are found guilty.  In addition to this, churches must enact in more strict and accountable ways childcare and parishioner policies that safeguard the ethical and appropriate engagement of people in public and in private occasions within the church.  Pastors and church leaders need to create, to sign, and to publicize accountable statements of “Ethical Codes of Conduct” that ensure to their congregations that they take matters like these very seriously in their role as leaders and shepherds of God’s people.

I know personally people who have left churches because they were abused or harassed by a priest, pastor, or religious official.  At the time, they came to a church where I was serving and I learned of their plight from their initiative.  I can still see the sorrow etched in their eyes, and can still sense the pain that they continue to feel many years later.  For these precious souls, I don’t know if they will EVER come back to a church again for all the horror that they have experienced.  At the same time, it compels me to challenge church leaders to strategize ways to reach out to this abused “pocket of our population” and to befriend them with the shepherding care of Christ, knowing that Jesus loves them, and is grieved more than any of us will ever be over the way His under-shepherds have fallen to deeper degradation.

Jesus told Peter, “Do you love me?  Then feed my sheep.”  In our day, part of that “feeding” necessitates cleansing and bandaging the wounds that many of God’s people have received from the butchering and abuse of harassment from within the church.