Justin Welby’s recent comments offer a stark but important contrast — and a reminder that it is possible for church leaders to speak plainly about abuse. (Link
here for those who want to read).
Something Welby said also highlights one of the more insidious abuses perpetrated at KCF. "I have never, ever said to a survivor, ‘you must forgive’, because that is their sovereign, absolute individual choice. Everyone wants to be forgiven, but to demand forgiveness is to abuse again.”
At KCF, survivors were not just encouraged to forgive - they were instructed to, or else face spiritual and social consequences. Those who spoke up were labelled ‘bitter’ or ‘unforgiving’ - a tactic used to silence them. This is not forgiveness freely given - it is forgiveness coerced, demanded by those unwilling to face the consequences of their actions.
A common theme in Christianity is how “forgiveness had been one of the factors which has allowed perpetrators of sexual abuse in the Church to evade justice over the last few decades. We have seen time and again dangerous perpetrators being found out and eventually forgiven and brought back into the Church.”
This has become a commonly recognised behaviour in churches who engage on some self reflection - there is a tendency to forgive the abuser whilst the abused are ignored. You can read about it
here but I'll end with a quote from the article itself -
"Unlike an angry mob, the Christian mob exerts its rule not by condemning the perpetrator, but by letting the perpetrator off the hook. But by doing so, the Christian mob is still playing judge and jury, and this allows them to take justice into their own hands. It’s no wonder then, why mob forgiveness only hinders justice and hurts victims. When Christians minimize wrongdoing, when they offer more grace to the perpetrator than to the victims, and when they collectively forgive someone who has never even hurt them in the first place, forgiveness becomes just another form of abuse."