It Never Starts at Assault: the overlooked ways in which the Church enables abuse – by Denise Anderson

I once went to a supervisor with a difficult request. Purse strings at my home were incredibly tight, and I was putting in a lot of work at the church and miles on my car doing what I thought was faithful work. I was in a supervisory ministry position which paid me a stipend. Not a salary, but a stipend. Among our many responsibilities at home were a mortgage, student loans to repay, and a child to raise. I was not ordained and did not have the protections of being ordained or installed. I went to my supervisor to ask the Session for an increase in my compensation. He asked, “Doesn’t your husband work?”

“I could never go to your church; you’re too pretty and it would be a distraction.” Somehow, that will never feel like a compliment.

I was ordained on my birthday, and as a gift to myself (and out of necessity), I decided to sew my own robe. Though it can be labor intensive, I love sewing and find it to be a centering practice. I remembered seeing a pattern I wanted to recreate, but had trouble finding it on the company’s website. The problem was I wasn’t looking in the right section of the site. I had to look in the “Men’s” section. I still made it — with no pattern adjustments to account for the breasts and hips the patternmakers ignored. The irony was the women of my church deeply appreciated that I chose vestments that still gave me a “feminine shape.” Perhaps the pattern was created for women after all, but the patternmaker didn’t realize it.

Whether it is someone referring to us as a “lady pastor,” someone who feels they need to share with us that they don’t “believe in” our calling, or casual and unthinking remarks about our hair, weight, make-up or lack thereof, it is nearly impossible to be a woman in church leadership or membership and somehow escape sexist microaggressions.

This past autumn, I was invited to share some thoughts at the annual gathering of the Covenant Network in Baltimore. One of the attendees invited me to reflect on the #MeToo movement as it relates to the Church. I used that opportunity to talk about what I thought makes women so susceptible to abuse in church spaces. Our culture fails to challenge the myriad ways we disrespect and objectify women in the most mundane ways. We make it easy to fail women in every part of life together. Why, then, should anyone be surprised that sexual assault and harassment is so common in the Church?

I am clear that women are, sadly, not the only victims of sexual assault and harassment. We need to acknowledge that men are also vulnerable, and we are painfully aware that children are exposed to sexual violence in the Church. We must also acknowledge the particular vulnerability that LGBTQ, disabled, and undocumented persons face. I name and center women in this moment simply because I am one. These have been my experiences, and they have been shared by more women than I care to count. The history of the Church’s treatment of women is a shameful one.

We know about the gender pay gap that exists in the workforce and that women regularly take home less pay than men for the same work. Where women are in ordered ministry in the Church, the gap is just as problematic and in some cases wider. Pastors who are also mothers are five times as likely to be called to part-time positions. We more regularly call women to positions with less job security. And when they are called to lead, it’s not unheard of for them to be labeled shrill or unreasonable when they assert their authority. Women must withstand comments about their appearance, parenting, or singleness at a regularity not often shared by men. People assume an ownership of women’s bodies that they simply don’t assume for men. The seemingly innocuous things — favoritism of lapel mics over microphones that would be compatible with more clothing options — are often indicative of an implicit favoritism toward male leadership. And how our theology enables all of this has been covered by a number of books and articles, much of which have been written by women.

If this is how we treat women outwardly when everyone is watching, what then is happening when no one is watching?

In terms of systemic behaviors, we just don’t jump to sexual assault. The most heinous behaviors have their beginnings elsewhere. They are undergirded by our commonly accepted practices and the things we never interrogate. When we don’t take care to pay women with equity, it doesn’t happen. When we aren’t intentional about examining our biases and respecting women’s leadership, it doesn’t happen. And if we can’t even trust women to make decisions about something as simple as their hair, how will we ever believe them when they come forward with their stories of abuse?

I want us to create space for women to be open about their experiences, and I think that can only happen when we make every space in the church safe. By “safe”, I don’t mean comfortable, for I know that women regularly rise to the occasion in the most hostile and uncomfortable environments. But the constant barrage of microaggressions takes its toll on a person and makes more space for greater violence. A culture of intentional respect leaves no room for a culture of abuse. We practice believing women when we take seriously their concerns about their pay. We practice respecting women when we refrain from unnecessary and unwelcome comments about their appearance. We practice valuing women when we listen to their words even when we’re not used to hearing their tone. When we take the most rudimentary measures to value and uplift women, it’s a lot harder for the more horrifying forms of abuse to proliferate.

The Rev. Denise Anderson is pastor of Unity Presbyterian Church in Temple Hills, MD and Co-moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). A nationally-recognized writer and preacher, her work has been featured in the Christian Century and the Huffington Post. Anderson blogs at SOULa Scriptura: To be young, gifted, and Reformed (http://soulascriptura.com) on issues of race, justice, and the Church. She lives in the Washington DC metropolitan area with her husband and daughter.