Shouldn't We Just Trust Christian Leaders?

INCIDENTS OF SEXUAL misconduct in faith communities shine a spotlight on issues of power in congregations.

As important as recognition, prevention, and intervention are for ending sexual violence, faith communities have significant work to do on routine, everyday abuses of power.

The way faith communities distribute labor and educational responsibilities, as well as committee assignments and financial obligations, often fall along stereotypical gender, class, and age lines. These mundane misuses of power in church settings desensitize us to recognizing serious boundary violations when they occur.

Faith communities assess power differentials and concurrent risks to determine policies that provide checks and balances on power imbalances. For example, individuals who are ordained have more power because of their level of education, professional status, and theological notions of representing God or a tradition. Adults have more power than youth because of social experience, economic means, or physical ability. In these dyads, power accrues to the individual with more resources. This is generally a solid starting point when assessing power differentials and then minimizing risk by creating practices of accountability. However, we rarely occupy one identity or one role when participating in congregations.

In Jeanne Hoeft’s essay “Pastor/Parishioner Relationships” in Professional Sexual Ethics, she defines power as “the capacity for influence.” Following current literature, Hoeft reflects on the fluidity of power. Power is a “dynamic,” not a set quantity.

For example, in a committee meeting where all members vote on the church budget (including the pastor’s salary), Hoeft writes, “power is more evenly distributed than when the pastor is visiting one of those committee members in the hospital.” In one community, among the same group of people, power shifts based on the context, purpose, and roles of the individuals. When we assume power dynamics are static instead of dynamic, we miss nuances of privilege, influence, and control.

Routine aspects of congregational life can model healthy boundaries—guidelines and opportunities to assess power dynamics, such as systems of checks and balances.

For example, many congregations have a system that regulates offerings from the point of collection, to the bank deposit, to expenditures. No singular person oversees the whole process. Lay members take the collection, appointed members count and store the money in a safe, the treasurer makes the deposit and cross-references the amount with an independent group of counters. The treasurer and committee develop a budget and keep track of spending. These steps and the number of people involved represent a dynamic and relational use of power for accountability.

Some might feel such a fastidious approach is excessive. Shouldn’t we trust people and rely on them to be Christian? Yes—and trustworthy Christians welcome policies and procedures that are transparent, effective, and appropriate. When we think we do not need boundaries, we are most vulnerable to causing harm. In his book Just Ministry, Richard Gula cautions clergy to “resist the temptation to hide behind the status of ‘religious vocation’ to avoid fulfilling the sometimes heavy demands of moral character, duties, and responsibilities of the pastoral relationship that brings a professional dimension to our vocation.”

Congregations are both communities and workplaces. We too often eschew responsibilities related to a workplace—such as job descriptions, human resource policies, and volunteer training practices. Nuanced attention to relational dynamics and practices that seek to balance power differentials allow us to deal with daily issues, such as conflict in meetings.

In cases of sexual misconduct, most policies have more than one person to whom one may report an incident because the abuser might be included in the reporting mechanism. Checks and balances in the claim process may include engaging an outside third party to ensure healthy boundaries and clarity of roles and responsibilities, and to prevent personal, institutional, or theological bias from interfering with the process.

The most significant and difficult assessment of power differentials and proper implementation of checks and balances is the check on our socialized sexism in cases of sexual misconduct, especially bias against believing a female or child trauma survivor. We balance that bias through education and listening to the most vulnerable in our midst.

As faith communities practice healthy power relations in low-stake interactions, we may more adeptly implement sexual-violence prevention and handle intervention for ourselves and as a model for the wider society.