what kind of leadership blocks dissent & privileges predators, christianity today?

Last night, after a flurry of attention in social media, there were dozens of dissenting comments on the youth pastor abuser narrative at Leadership Journal. The comment count was around eighty, but today there are just eighteen.

My comment was the first on the piece, and it's gone now, too, so I decided to post it here:

this is disgusting. you were not involved in an "extramarital relationship." "extramarital relationships" don't land people in prison. you are a child predator, an abuser, and possibly a rapist. you say that "we gave the devil a foothold", but that was all you, bro. you abused your power and a young person whose care you were charged with. no minor can consent to sex with a adult. have you learned nothing in prison? five pages of this junk? really, CT?

Oddly, the following response comment to me still stands on the piece, and without my own comment, it shapes another sort of imaginary narrative about the behavior of people who are sickened by a leadership publication allowing a predator to cast his teenage victim as an adulteress:

Hey Pastor Tim and Suzannah...you're both SO full of grace...unbelievable...it's not a wonder people don't want to stop sin habits in life (no matter WHAT they are) when the response is so grace-filled as the ones above...you both are missing the point - he is admitting that he will be labeled (and rightfully so) a sex offender for the rest of his life - but what he IS doing with his story is warning ANY of us about ANY sin pattern that will destroy ANY one who ignores God's plans and ways. instead of calling him names (which may be true or not) we should be confessing, forsaking, and finding mercy for the sin that can so easily entangle ANY ONE of us...we should be saying 'Thank you for sharing your story' and then 'Father, keep working on him (and me) to be more like Your Son.' This isn't five pages of junk...this is the story of the beginning of a restored heart - the kind of story that Jesus began regularly with "Go, and sin no more." Thanks, Name Withheld and CT

I didn't engage in any "name-calling." Adults who prey on minors are very much abusers and predators. If he was convicted of statutory rape--and the piece asserts plainly (and problematically) that he had a "physical relationship" with a minor--he is a rapist. Obscuring those truths--and calling it Christian leadership--is deeply troubling and dangerous.

We're gonna keep dragging this into the light, as my friend Sarah Bessey exhorts. Downgrading rape to "a sin that can so easily entangle ANY ONE of us" is not grace--it's a manipulative sleight of hand favoring abusers and re-victimizing the people whose trust, bodies, and childhood they violated. Deleting comments and blocking critics on twitter (as editor Drew Dyck has done) will not make this important conversation go away.

People don't abuse kids--or fail to "stop sin habits"--because "ungracious" Christians won't let them paint young victims with their shame. I rebuke any abuse-enabling, oppressive grace-talk that lays the fault for abuse on anyone but abusers and the cultures and systems favoring them.

Grace and good leadership protect the vulnerable, not power and predation. Take down the post, Leadership Journal and Christianity Today.


UPDATE: They Took Down the Post
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