Get Rid of the Old Yeast: Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct
Part 1: What's Obvious & What Isn't
Here’s the text of a talk I gave at Highpoint Church’s recent conference.1 The topic, clergy sexual misconduct, is a bit of a departure from the other posts here which focus on more “macro” level issues like economics, public policy, and war and peace.
While these global issues are important, they are also almost wholly outside the control of most of us. Indeed if I have learned anything from my reflections (I hesitate to describe what I do as “study”) on these matters, is that they are more often than not beyond the control of even those who, ostensibly at least, are in a position to direct events on a large scale.
Clergy sexual misconduct, as I argue in this series of posts, however, is something that is within our sphere of influence. I’m thinking here not of protest or advocacy (though both can have their role to play) but of the cultivation of chastity both as a personal virtue and as an essential part of our ecclesiastical culture.
For now, though, let’s begin with things obvious and less so.
Let’s Start with the Obvious
As the cassock and cross might suggest, I’m not an Evangelical pastor but an Orthodox priest. While I’ve worked some with Protestants, most of my pastoral experience with clergy sexual misconduct has been with Orthodox—and to a lesser degree, Catholic—clergy. This means that I generally have worked within a very formal church structure that might initially seem alien to your situation as Evangelical Christians.
Now Let’s Look at What Isn’t Obvious
But, we shouldn’t confuse hierarchy with formality, or (more to the point) assume that hierarchy is absent in more, informal church structures. At least looking at it from the outside, I think that for all its informality, Evangelical Christianity is also a hierarchical community. This doesn’t mean that you have bishops, priests, and deacons but it does mean that you experience the life of the church as having a specific, sacred, necessary, and even God-given form.
Clergy Sexual Misconduct Challenge My Faith
Understanding that people experience their local church as sacred, necessary, and God-given is critical if we are to take seriously the damage clerical sexual misconduct can do to us. Regardless of how we might theologize about the church, misconduct challenges our assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. For example,
If I discover my pastor has engaged in serious sexual sin, I can feel quite keenly the loss of everything I thought was true about him and my local congregation.
This is hard but it isn’t necessarily or wholly bad. By God’s grace and with prudent counsel, my disappointment can help me realize how much I take for granted the church functioning in a particular way not just administratively but relationally.
Building on this, my disappointment can help me realize that I need people who are faithful to Christ in word and deed if my own life in Christ is to be sustained.
This in turn can challenge me to be the kind of person for others I need in my life.
Finally, clergy misconduct makes me realize that my life in Christ is dependent not just on divine grace but the gracious presence in my life of other Christians and people of goodwill.
We also need to realize that there is no one response to sexual misconduct; different people respond differently. For example,
One of the most common phrases I hear in clergy misconduct cases is “I just can’t believe it...” Whether it’s my parish priest, my pastor, my preacher, or my minister, I find it hard to believe that he could have committed adultery or fornication much less sodomy or pedophilia. I might even find the idea painful.
As a result, I might refuse to accept that the allegations are true even when I am confronted with the evidence.
Alternatively, I might accept the evidence but minimize the seriousness of the offense.
Finally, I might get angry with those who tell me about what’s happened. Alternatively, I might blame the victim or the messenger.
Whether I believe it or not—see, there’s that word again, believe—when I hear about a fallen priest or pastor faith in Christ can be shaken. I may even loss my faith.
Where We’re Going
In what follows, I’m going to invite you to look with me not only at Scripture but the church fathers, those ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers of the 1st through 8th centuries who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity.
And since I’m an Orthodox Christian and a priest, I’m going to refer to the church fathers in a way that I hope you find helpful and maybe even challenging. Let me add, I’m not trying to be polemical. Rather, I’m looking to the past not just for wisdom but also to make it clear that what today we call clergy sexual misconduct is not a new problem. We can’t blame the Sexual Revolution, Capitalism, or Secularism.
While these social movements might be used as a justification, the reality is that sexually immoral Christians, including sexually immoral clergy, have been with us from the New Testament era. So we need to give up any notion (however well meant) that we can “prevent” sexual misconduct among the clergy.
We’ll start with the very early church. Building on what we find in the New Testament, see how the church fathers dealt with what today we call clergy misconduct.
To do this we’re going to look at three points:
Clergy Must Be Blameless: Standards for ordination in the NT (1 Timothy 3).
Healing Every Disease: The Infectious Character of Sexual Immorality (1 Corinthians 5).
Beauty Will Save the World: Reclaiming Chastity.