High above the Tasman Sea between Christchurch and Melbourne, the man next to me in 12B was in conversational full flight. I’d heard about his wife’s illness and artistry and his kids interests and academic strength, his business partners, the staff he’d let go, his parents, his interest in singing and photography and electronics and farming.
When the inevitable question of my profession came up, he was not deterred at all when I self-identified as a theologian.
He was on the trail of my philosophical leanings and wanted to know if I knew who Noam Chomsky was, because his son had recently exchanged emails with Chomsky. I was suitably impressed.
He knew to ask if I had a specific faith myself – and what that might be, not taking western christendom’s legacy as a given. He talked about the female vicars he knew, in fact, the lesbian vicar he was friends with. By this time he was two white wines worth of relaxed.
He wanted to know what I did when I was writing or talking ‘theology’.
He asked about the conference I’d been speaking at, sorting out if I’d been preaching (no) or speaking (yes); if I called the assembly a congregation (no) or an audience (yes); and he wanted to know how many ‘hallelujahs’ I’d used (none) as a test of whether I was indeed preaching (no) or speaking (yes).
He asked what I thought of the preacher (Bishop Michael Curry) at the Royal Wedding last week, and we talked about different flavours of religion, and genres and of
communication, and how these could align or get out of tilt. He felt that Curry might have used a few more “Hallelujahs” himself -though conceded that there were enough British Propriety Feathers ruffled as it was.
All of this was jovial and shared at 36,000 feet in easy relaxed smiles and banter and anecdotes and laughter.
Then as we talked more about the specific areas of my own theological interests – the way our theology works itself out in the way we treat the vulnerable, and particularly the young and the aged and those not afforded the luxury of physical or mental prime and the religious self sufficient hubris that often characterises it. I spoke about the days of reckoning that have come upon the Australian church, as the history of child abuse has been unmasked publicly, at length in the proceedings of the Royal Commission. I spoke about the responses of institutions. We need more than simply greater protective legislations and procedures – though of course these are not to be neglected.
At the heart of our history of child sexual abuse are the flawed beliefs we have about who children are. That they are only becoming human. That they are not yet formed. That they are – to be blunt – less. So we do things to them that we think matter less, than what happens to adults.
Our terrible theologies have born poisonous fruit. We have espoused that either that children are innocent and unblemished, so are immune from perpetrating abuse upon one another – thus we neglect their supervision and accountability.
Or it’s been held that children are, along with all humanity, utterly depraved, but being yet too young to be able to respond with conscious will to accept the saving grace of Christ, must be given over to bear the brunt of sin – in the hope of forgiveness and redemption later.
And flowing on from this, our practices that closet children away, because we consider them no asset, or even worse, a distraction in the pursuit of holiness and the right worship God, has left them vulnerable to inadequate leadership and resourcing for safety and flourishing and honouring.
None of this is controversial or surprising to anyone. There church is coming unravelled in the eyes of the public – and rightly so. Some significant unstitching and re-making is in order.
My fellow traveller knew exactly what I was saying on a practical level. Though like many people he had never thought about the way our beliefs, our theology, might help or hinder good practice. He was taken by the importance of this.
A pause – this extraverted electronic engineer, excited to be flying to Australia on a business junket had bubbled away for a couple of hours of conversation with barely a breath till this point.
Then he unravelled a further story.
He spoke of how the issues of child sexual abuse had come close to him personally. His 11 year old daughter had recently revealed to him that she had been sexually abused over a period of several years – since she was about 8 – by an older cousin, taking place in the midst of family gatherings, holidays and celebrations.
snap. #metoo.
I listened as he spoke of the pain of the disclosure, his wife’s denial, his courage to face up to his brother (whose son was involved) and speak of such difficult things. The role wise and steady Grandma, his mother, had giving him strength for this task. He spoke of the school processes, of counselling, and how he has a commitment with his daughter to check in once a week and have a conversation about this with her, not to let it drift into the distance as irrelevant. He acknowledges that there is still work ahead for every one.
For his daughter, for him and his brother to reconcile fully, for the young lad who enacted the abuse. What brought about such actions in this young person’s being?
What was motivating and informing him?
As we travelled across the deepest part of the sea, I listened. I heard a story I knew part of so thoroughly already myself. I hear a story that might have been straight out of any social worker’s files, out of any text book on abuse. Classic. Text book. Predictable. Common.
Most sexual abuse happens in this way. Not in churches or scout groups or swimming clubs or dance schools – though plenty of it happens there. Most abuse happens in families. Most perpetrators of sexual abuse offend for the first time in their early teenage years.
My fellow traveller had come to know this – to know the devastating ordinary of his daughter’s damage and his family’s experience. His family is not a terrible family, a troubled family in the cliched sent we might think. They are happy and healthy and honest, supportive and functional, generous and loving, with a good seasoning of old time Anglican love thy neighbour and community service. They are normal. Their experience is normal.
My work in theology endeavours to reveal the places where our decent and respectable beliefs cover up practices of evil and harm.
The way we read the story of family in the Bible is a large area for revision.
We must not pedestal Abraham – whose own anxieties about power placed his wife at risk and his son almost under the knife.
We must not sugar-coat Jacob, deceptive, manipulative, raising a family of violent, vindictive brothers.
We must stop considering the rapist David a godly example to follow.
The Biblical narrative of family is far from ideal.
The Biblical narrative of family is full of real.
My fellow traveller carried a great gift in his story – he knew his family was a good rich resource of love and life, but this didn’t blind him to the possibility and impact of wrongdoing within it. As we tell the biblical stories of family, and as we speak of family in our communities, we need this wisdom. This real. This possibility that all is not well – even in ‘good’ families. We need this to combat the culture of shame that inhibits timely disclosure by victims, and appropriate support and help for perpetrators. We need this to shut down judgement that divides communities and labels some families as ‘dysfunctional’ and others as ‘exemplary’.
#metoo tells us simply that abuse happens anywhere and everywhere. That those who act wrongly are not monsters in the first instance, but terribly terribly ordinary, thought their unrestrained actions and access to power will in time tragically disfigure them.
As we landed and finished our conversation, the man in 12B – still we hadn’t exchanged names – returned to the thread of conversation about my work speaking at conferences about theologically informed practices with children and families.
He left me with a charge:
“Next time you speak, I want there to be at least one big Hallelujah.”
Although I don’t know his name, he had used the name of his daughter, Hazel, throughout the journey.
So I will.
I will raise a Hallelujah for Hazel. For hope in the honesty of hurting and healing families.
beth barnett