Growing up Evangelical, I saw church governance deployed to cover up everything from adultery to child sexual abuse. Including in my own family. Although my parents currently attend an Episcopalian church, swear, and
drink a lot of wine, my family resembles the independent Baptist Duggars
— America’s most famous Evangelicals — in many ways, one tragic. When
my sister, then age 15, reported that she had been sexually abused by
someone in our family, she was counseled by family members and church
leaders that prosecution would make things worse.
Better to forgive,
they told her, and find true reconciliation with God. She was also
warned that criminal proceedings would tear her family apart. And
because she loved her family, she relented. After all, she was a child
with nowhere else to go. She had been taught that her whole world was
her family and her church, and they all conspired to keep her silent
with the admonition to forgive. And forgiveness so often means
complicity.