WHEN I was a young Christian, “abuse” was a word that I rarely heard in church circles. Now, it is part of the Church’s everyday vocabulary. The strange truth, however, is that, after all this time, many people still feel unclear about what abuse is and what causes it, let alone what it would mean to respond to it in a Christian way.
Yet, the Church of England is about to launch a Redress Scheme and completely overhaul its safeguarding structures, before the recently formed Theology and Safeguarding Group has produced a single report. This vacuum of theological diagnosis produces a confusion about what the Church can or should do to treat it. In the mean time, while secular understanding of abuse and repair is decades ahead of ours, we consistently reject advice from mainstream experts.
Abuse is a vague and contested term. A typology of abuse usually sorts it according to the nature of the act; physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological abuse, and so on. There is a debate about whether spiritual abuse should be included as a distinct category, or whether it is best defined as a subset of the others.
One of the drawbacks of this way of thinking is that it implies that abuse is an event — something that happened at a particular time and place. That way of defining abuse puts the emphasis on the actions of the individual abuser rather than on the impact on the victim. Most of the Church’s safeguarding structures are built on this understanding of abuse. We treat it primarily as a civil wrong perpetrated by an individual rather than a spiritual wrong that may be embedded in an organisation, a practice, or a set of beliefs.
A PROPERLY worked Christian theology constructs abuse differently. The offence is not just in the act itself, or in the physical, emotional, or spiritual damage done to the victim, but also in the violation of the relationship between one God-graced person and another, and its disruptive effect on the wider community. At the heart of a Christian understanding of abuse is the wounding of personhood, the violation of trust, the exclusion from safe community, and the rupture of relationship with God. When a person or institution that should protect you actually abuses you instead, the rupture is profound.
In a Christian understanding of abuse, harm is done to the victim, but also to the abuser and the community. Almost inevitably, the abuser is seeking to satisfy some spiritual or psychological deficiency of their own, such as fear, narcissism, or repressed sexuality. Their abuse of others is an effort to use the power and influence they have to make good the deficit they feel within themselves.
The way in which the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) is presented offers an example. The focus of Jesus’s story is not on the fact that a man has been beaten-up and stripped by robbers. The violence of the attack is almost glossed over; it is treated as an inevitable fact of life — just the sort of thing that happens on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
The focus of the story is on the relationships between the wounded victim and the passers-by: representatives of wider society and, especially, of the religious community. A tremor occurs when we see the inhumanity with which the priest and the Levite treat the victim. Theirs is a one-way relationship, which takes account only of their own needs.
The result is that the victim is abused twice. In the first assault, by the thieves, the person is robbed of their property, their clothing, and their dignity. In the second assault, by the priest and the Levite, they are robbed of their identity, their self-worth, and their hope for recovery. This is contrasted with the grace evidenced in the relationship between the victim and the Samaritan.
The victim’s wounds matter and need to be treated. Their shame is real and must be addressed. But abuse is not just an event. It is a narrative: a sacrilegious relationship in which one person or institution uses power to strip another person of their God-given identity, with effects that potentially last a lifetime.
THE risk of understanding abuse as an event is that we look for a single action or event that could reverse the damage.
The General Synod is set to give final approval to the Abuse (Redress) Measure on Monday. The proposed scheme is inadequate and ungenerous, but it cannot come too soon. Synod members will know, however, that the proposed time-limited legislation is almost entirely focused on cash payments. No legislation could replace the lifelong work of restoration to which we are called.
The unfortunate victim on the Jericho road did not need only cash for medical bills, but things that were far more costly and difficult to provide. Today’s victim needs reassurance over the long term that they would be safe; help to regain a sense of agency that was robbed from them; patient and gentle reaffirmation that they were lovable and loved, even after their awful experience; enduring support to recover from their sense of shame.
In short, they need to be “re-dressed” by the community in which they have been stripped of their dignity and identity. That kind of healing cannot be delegated to a scheme. Nor can it be fixed by a few sessions of counselling or a sum of money (important though those things may be). Healing does not restore a position of justice; that is not possible. But it means that the damage no longer controls the relationship.
Like the anonymous person on the Jericho Road, victims of abuse in the Church of England have been abused twice: once by the individuals or organisations that harmed them, and again by the Church itself, walking by on the other side. Both of those harms need to be addressed. That can happen only if the priest and the Levite walk back up the Jericho road with genuine humility, generous listening, and sacrificial love.
Andrew Graystone is a theologian and advocate for victims of abuse in the Church. A revised and updated edition of his book Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the cult of Iwerne Camps (Books, 1 October 2021) will be published by DLT later this year.