Forgiveness and Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Abuse

Archbishops Council

• Publisher: Church House Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780715111321
• eBook ISBN: 9780715111345
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This theological and pastoral resource addresses specific challenges to the church as it seeks to speak truthfully in the aftermath of abuse and provides material to help parishes and dioceses who find themselves facing the complex realities of such issues.

PART I

Understanding Abuse

1.  What do we mean by ‘abuse’?

Some will think immediately of various forms of sexual abuse, though many other forms of abuse exist. Reflection on the harrowing biblical story of the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 suggests four characteristic dimensions that can apply across this range: (i) serious harm on the part of the victim; made possible by (ii) an imbalance of power between victim and perpetrator; linked to (iii) the perpetrator’s position of trust; and abetted by (iv) deceit on the perpetrator’s behalf, denying what has happened and making others more or less witting accomplices.

‘Abuse’ has been developed and explored as a central moral and legal category for our culture over the past fifty years. The range of situations to which it may be applied is diverse (perhaps increasingly so), and invoking it is a serious matter that may require a formal response. What is happening in terms of human behaviour and relationships when abuse takes place – what makes it different from other situations where people do bad things to other people?

Christian understanding is informed by the study of the Scriptures. Although the specific way our culture uses the term ‘abuse’ is shaped by relatively recent developments, what we are talking about here is nothing new. Scripture includes a number of passages that describe what we call ‘abuse’, and this and the following sections are informed by consideration of one of them, the account of the rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon in 2 Samuel 13.1–39.16 This is a text that has been used for contextual Bible study on women and violence in the context of South Africa and beyond, to good effect.17

At the start of the narrative, Tamar’s social value lies in her relationship to David and in her virginity. As Amnon knows, her position should have made her untouchable. Nevertheless, Amnon is David’s first son and enjoys a favouritism that has dire consequences for Tamar. Amnon’s claim to be ill means that David does not refuse his request to see Tamar and be fed by her. Amnon’s position of power allows him to orchestrate the situation that enables him to rape Tamar: he sends all the servants away, thus removing a source of protection on which Tamar could rely. The narrative itself reinforces the ease with which Amnon was able to do this, as Tamar herself protests (verses 12–13). Throughout the narrative, Tamar is treated as an object, one who can be commanded without resistance. She is summoned by David and goes to Amnon; she makes cakes, is raped and is thrown out. Her argument and pleading breaks up this pattern, but her words are ignored by Amnon. By objectifying Tamar, he gives himself the permission to treat her as less than human. The rape itself is described in objectifying terms: a literal translation might be: ‘he laid her’. This refusal to acknowledge her dignity as a human person represents a fundamental denial of the claims to just treatment in accord with the right relations intended for humanity, rooted in their created worth which was reaffirmed in Christ. The text then says that ‘he began to hate her’, more keenly than he had desired her to begin with. After Tamar’s refusal to leave, Amnon commands his servant to ‘send this away’ (the word ‘woman’ is added by translators for clarity). Tamar is left standing outside the door crying; she symbolically mourns her violation with ashes and tears the robe which is no longer appropriate clothing for her: after the rape, she is no longer one of the king’s virgin daughters.

A number of important themes for understanding abuse emerge from this powerful and disturbing story. To begin with, abuse is linked to serious, even shattering harm.18 It is clear that the damage done to Tamar is incalculable. It affects her present situation in immediate ways: what she can wear and where she can live. And it affects her future: what she can hope for. It affects her sense of self, her well-being, her dignity, at the deepest level: she is overwhelmed by consciousness of having suffered something ‘vile’ (verse 12), and becomes ‘a desolate woman’ (verse 20).

Second, the abuse is made possible by a relative imbalance of power. As a daughter of the king, Tamar herself would have been a powerful person, for instance in relation to her servants. Relative to Amnon, however, and indeed to David, she is in a position of weakness. She could not refuse to follow the king’s orders, whether or not she had any misgivings about the assignment of visiting her sick half-brother. When he sends the servants away to leave them alone together, she cannot effectively protest. When he decides to use physical force to rape her, ‘being stronger than she was’ (verse 14), he prevails, despite her resistance.

Third, the imbalance of power is linked to the responsibility (and the consequent authority) entrusted to the abuser. Power is given to kings so that they may secure justice for those under their sovereignty, which includes protecting those who are most vulnerable from manifest injustice. Men are trusted to be alone with female family members, who would never otherwise be willingly left exposed to the risk of rape, because it is assumed that they will have a strong sense of care for their well-being and a respect for their dignity that will safely prevent them from behaving in such a way. Instead, however, the abuser, trusted to respond to those within their responsibility and therefore within the reach of their power as persons evoking care and respect, treats their victim as an object to be used and discarded. All human relationships involve trust, and, as such, the giving over of power by some to others. This takes place in many different ways, but wherever it happens the consequent dynamics of power provide scope for abusers to operate.

Finally, in order to misuse the power that comes from being trusted to behave with responsibility and therefore given authority, abusers must deceive others, and even themselves. The abuser lies to the victim to enable the abuse to happen; but, crucially, the abuser must also hide the truth from others. What the abuser wants threatens the position of responsibility through which he has the power to achieve it. Because the abuser has to retain the position of trusted responsibility, bound up with their exercise of power, in order to abuse, deception is a necessity. Moreover, deception of others is bound up with a certain masking of the truth from oneself: in order to carry on exercising their position of responsibility, the abuser may find it easier to hide the truth of what they have done even from themselves, at least some of the time. Hence Amnon’s response after the abuse: ‘Send this away’. Self-deceit can begin with the act of abuse itself: a study of clergy who had admitted to the sexual abuse of children found that in a number of cases they convinced themselves that the children concerned consented to what was done to them and could not therefore be considered as victims.19 Unfortunately, some in wider society would affirm that distorted view.

The narrative of the rape of Tamar highlights four interrelated dimensions for understanding abuse: serious harm on the part of the victim; made possible by an imbalance of power in the particular situation obtaining between victim and perpetrator; linked to the perpetrator’s position of trust; and abetted by deceit on the perpetrator’s behalf, who uses the power that comes from this position to act in a way that contradicts the responsibility and trust associated with it. These four dimensions constitute a framework for understanding what is meant by ‘abuse’ that is neither too narrow to do justice to the variety of situations where it is relevant (see Introduction, pages 19–21) nor so open-ended that it is hard to identify its limits.

This framework is not intended to serve as a strict definition of abuse, or restrict the use of the term or displace other ways in which abuse may be characterized, such as failure to honour the image of God in another person. One or more of the four dimensions given above might be weak or absent in a particular case; others could doubtless be suggested in addition. The aim here is rather to offer an initial account of what is characteristic of the kind of actions that we refer to as ‘abuse’ – what makes them different from other kinds of harm and serious wrongdoing. It is an account that resists reducing the characterization of abuse to a single feature, or focusing solely on the experience of the person abused, the behaviour of the person abusing, or the nature of the relation between them. All of these are relevant for understanding abuse. This account also seeks to avoid the risk of circularity in drawing on the concept of abuse (or misuse) to explain what we mean by ‘abuse'.

The Church of England’s policy literature highlights the abuse of power as a principal dimension of abuse.20 In doing so, it follows an important strand in both secular and theological writing about abuse.21 The framework being proposed here does not take issue with this, but rather seeks to set out what the particular form of power that is being abused might be. Any harm done by one person to another involves an abuse of power at some level: by definition, human action deploys human powers, and therefore every wrong action against another person involves the misuse of human powers to that person’s harm, since all power comes from God and is meant for good. We now turn our attention to this idea.

The concept of power has been much discussed by sociologists and philosophers in recent decades,22 and the significant debate about power has received attention from theologians.23 For Christians, the hermeneutic of suspicion about power in some of this literature, more or less identifying power with (oppressive) domination of others, cannot be the only lens for viewing it. God is ‘almighty’, and that is a reason for rejoicing, not cause for fear and suspicion. In God, all power is held by one who is also worthy of all our trust, and utterly faithful, carrying out what is promised and acting for justice. While there is no clear identification of divine action or intention in 2 Samuel 13—14, its literary context within 2 Samuel, and within the canon of Scripture as a whole, affirms that the purposes of the one God who is faithful and true are indeed at work in human affairs, and will finally prevail.

An understanding of abuse that is too narrow, or theologically unbalanced, may skew the church's approach to the challenges of safeguarding from abuse. For example, isolating the dimension of the imbalance of power may lead to the implication that the most effective form of safeguarding is simply to reduce all inequalities of power as far as possible. This depends on the assumption that power as such corrupts people, so that we can expect relatively powerful people to exploit their position at the expense of others. Thinking this way leads to the gloomy conclusion that the more powerful someone is, the less they should be trusted, and that the best way to organize things is to minimize power differentials between people.

Yet human life and human community depend on the responsible exercise of power by those entrusted with it. This is fundamental both to the care of the vulnerable (of all ages) beginning before birth, and to the nature of intimacy – a situation of mutual vulnerability. In the case of two adults, such entrusting of power may begin as a mutual and free exchange, while in the case of other relationships (parents and children), it is given by social and cultural norms, in turn reflecting biological realities. Yet even here, the distribution of power is not simply fixed or static, nor is the vulnerability all on one side. In their care for a growing child, parents face the challenge of remaining vulnerable within the relationship while at the same time providing security by maintaining appropriate boundaries. In an intimate relationship between adults, one who has used power to care and to protect may begin to use it instead to hurt and to humiliate, and indeed oscillate unpredictably between the two.

Church life, like family life, depends on relationships where power is not equally distributed, and trust needs to be invested in those who occupy positions of power. Trust from those with less power needs to be met by responsibility from those with more power and more authority. Trust depends on truthfulness: that people act in accordance with their promises. There is no regulatory system that can prevent deceit, although a strong culture of accountability and transparency (which the churches have not always fostered) will make it more difficult for deceit to be sustained and pass undetected. The churches have a clear obligation in this regard, but it remains the case that making judgements about trust is part of the risk of human life, of human community and of receiving care from others.

While the nature of interpersonal power is certainly significant, therefore, for understanding abuse, questions about trust and the betrayal of trust by deceit also remain pivotal. In the context of safeguarding practice, then, it is proposed here that by ‘abuse’ is meant serious harm of one person by another (as judged by the person harmed, or those in a position of oversight, or both), in the context of a relationship that is framed by the power of the one who inflicts the harm. It characteristically involves a less powerful person being subjected to harmful behaviours, words or attitudes by someone they should be able to rely on to act responsibly for their best interests, and who uses deceit in order to act in a way that directly contradicts the responsibilities of their power within the situation.

Notes

16.  One might keep in mind another woman in the Scriptures named Tamar when reading this passage, the daughter-in-law of Judah whose story is told in Genesis 38.

17.  Gerald West and Phumzile Zondi-Mabizela, ‘The Bible Story that Became a Campaign: The Tamar Campaign in South Africa (and beyond),’ Ministerial Formation, July 2004, http://ujamaa.ukzn.ac.za/Files/the%20bible%20story.pdf (accessed 7/1/2015).

18.  The choice of terminology is influenced by Cherry’s use of ‘shattering hurt’ in Healing Agony.

19.  Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse, p. 169.

20.  See e.g. the third from last paragraph in the ‘Principles’ set out in slightly different formats at the start of Protecting All God’s Children and Responding Well; also further comments in Protecting All God’s Children, 2.17–19 and Promoting a Safe Church, p. 38. Responding to Domestic Abuse asserts that ‘domestic abuse is caused by a misuse of power by one person over another’ (p. 31).

21.  It is worth noting that an early and influential contribution to theological reflection on safeguarding and sexual abuse placed the abuse of power at the centre of its analysis: James Newton Poling, The Abuse of Power: A Theological Problem (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991).

22.  On power as an ‘essentially contested concept’, that always ‘arises out of and operates within a particular moral and political perspective’, see Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 29–30.

23.  E.g. Stephen Sykes, Power and Christian Theology (London: Continuum, 2006); Kathy Ehrensperger, Paul and the Dynamics of Power: Communication and Interaction in the Early Christ-Movement (London: T & T Clark, 2007).

2. What is distinctive about abuse as a form of sin?

The sin of abuse can have far-reaching and highly destructive effects on the person who suffers it: effects which last for a long time and affect many relationships, including the human–divine relationship. Recovery from abuse can be long, complicated and difficult. Memories may surface in an unexpected and distressing manner, and the emotional response to what is recalled may differ over time. For the abuser, abuse distorts the will and corrupts the conscience. Moreover, abuse may be the occasion which draws into sin others who hold responsibility in the relevant institution and society for ensuring that justice is done and seen to be done. Those who become aware of abuse may fail to respon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Content
• Preface by the Rt Revd Christopher Cocksworth, Chair of the Faith and Order Commission
• Summary
• Introduction
• Part I: Understanding Abuse
• 1. What do we mean by ‘Abuse’?
• 2. What is distinctive about abuse as a form of sin?
• Part II: Responding To Abuse
• 3. Is there a place for repentance by churches where they have shared in some way in the sin of abuse?
• Fictional Case Study: St Matthew’s
• 4. How should the church speak of being forgiven to those who have committed abuse?
• Fictional Case Study: David
• 5. How should the church speak of forgiving to those who have experienced abuse?
• Fictional Case Study: Darren
• 6. Does the church have a ministry of reconciliation in the aftermath of abuse?
• Fictional Case Study: Andrew and Jody
• Conclusion
• Subject Index
• Index of Biblical Citations
• Copyright