This week the PCA (Presbyterian Church of America) General Assembly (a yearly conference where male leaders from across the nation vote on issues of PCA polity) voted against Overture 13: a motion of reform that would allow atheists (or, more specifically, those who do not believe in God, Heaven, or Hell) to testify in church court proceedings. Because, yes, the PCA runs a “justice system” parallel to the one our civil government put in place long before the PCA was a twinkle in the PCUSA’s eye. As reported by Christianity Today just this past Tuesday, the PCA system has developed an increasingly poor reputation in a bid to rival its secular cousin. I jest, because otherwise I’d go mad.
In an effort to improve matters, a committee at the General Assembly last year released what has been termed the DASA (Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault) Report, a few hundred pages on what the PCA has done wrong in handling abuse and where/how it could do better. The DASA Report was met with applause by the assembly—an abject anomaly in the staid denomination!—so it is particularly ripe that most of this year’s motions to, you know, actually enact some of those changes in defense of abuse survivors were summarily shot down.
It is worth noting, to some extent, that the vote on “O-13” was a close one, and that those who worked tirelessly in support of the motion to defend survivors were gutted. Here are some quotes from attendees1:
Shane Waldron, founder of Refuge Ministries and contributor to the DASA Report, also sent me this note clarifying his comment:
Hi Stephanie, thank you for asking to quote my Facebook comment on your blog. However, based on another one of Tim’s posts today, I have learned that my comment is factually incorrect. In a moment of frustration, I wrote that the PCA has refused to make any significant changes to address abuse. But in case you haven’t seen Tim’s post he wrote, “The PCA General Assembly ratified one measure protecting witnesses testifying during trials and started the three-part process of approving another measure requiring church courts to provide confessions and statement of facts to victims for input. These are both very important to protect and respond well to abuse.
But the GA declined to approve five other measures including one permitting non-theists to testify, one requiring criminal background checks, and another placing restrictions on professional counsel.
We have work to do.”
This statement is much more accurate.
I found all of these words incredibly validating: they are fully in keeping with my own experience of the PCA. I also found them deeply encouraging because they demonstrated that there are at least some men within this group who are willing to speak the truth about their denomination—not least of which, to me, is the explicit recognition by two separate people that the good old boys club is alive and well in the PCA, with which, again, my own experience has tragically, intimately acquainted me.
So there is evidence that some individuals within the PCA have informed themselves on the nature of abuse to some extent and are working to help survivors. And yet, the results of this year’s General Assembly demonstrate little more than what I would call perfunctory care for survivors that will amount, in practice, to no notable improvement of our circumstances or experience in the PCA at all.
Beyond this, it is my opinion that in shutting down the Overture 13 motion, the PCA has tightened its embrace of a defining characteristic it should never have become known for: the expressed need to censor people’s personal thoughts and beliefs before allowing them any voice of consequence in the community.
Different churches might express this characteristic to a greater or lesser degree, but I’ve found it to be a consistent theme among the PCA, upheld in large part by the men who hold power and generally supported by the zeitgeist of their congregations.
In this particular example, it does not matter to the PCA, as an entity, what witness to truth an atheist might bring to a church trial where an abuse victim seeks justice. It doesn’t matter to the PCA at large that truth is truth regardless who speaks it, that personal beliefs and convictions about unrelated, abstract concepts have literally no bearing on whether or not someone can capably and accurately testify about an occurrence they were privy to. The PCA, generalized as an institution, is more concerned about censoring the private thought lives of people it has zero authority over before it will hear them on matters of extreme import than it is about doing, very simply, the right thing. Which is, in the event there is any doubt—making the truth known, protecting the vulnerable, and caring for survivors.
Last I checked, those three items had nothing to do with being the thought police. Spoken as someone who graduated Thought Police Academy with full honors and went on to a formidable career brandishing my badge at every ill-conceived opportunity.
I’m now retired, after piling up a considerable roster of pathetic mistakes, and let me just say: shutting down the voice of truth because you don’t like its packaging is the epitome of immaturity, cowardice, and inequity.
Hold that thought, because I have a follow-up post coming with more along these lines.
But back to my original subject:
Note that the tagline of this post here is not, “Who is the most abuse-enabling?” Because we all know by now that Hollywood and Evangelical institutions, grossly generalized, are two sides of the same coin on this point, and it’s not a contest, it’s a collaboration. But what really has been driven home to me lately is that the secular media establishment, the big names, have taken up the banner of religious abuse survivors—have stepped in to do the work that survivors have been begging for, that the church should have been doing all along. They’re telling the truth.
Sins of the Amish came out last summer on Peacock TV.
Shiny Happy People was just released on Amazon Prime.
And yesterday—the day after the PCA General Assembly shot down Overture 13—the announcement was made that Until the Truth, a full-length documentary on survivors of Bill Gothard and his Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP), is due for release in 2024.
This documentary is being produced by a man named Aaron Boyd. This is his profile on the Until the Truth website:
AARON BOYD: PRODUCER. Aaron Boyd is a Los Angeles-based film and television producer. Aaron served as Director of Development for Centropolis Entertainment (STARGATE, INDEPENDENCE DAY) and during his tenure was instrumental in the development and production of Columbia Pictures’ THE PATRIOT (Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger), Warner Bros. EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS (Scarlett Johannson), 20th Century Fox’s THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid), and Lionsgate’s TRADE (Kevin Kline). Additionally, he developed and co-produced the Warner Bros. feature 10,000BC (Steven Strait, Omar Shariff) and the box-office success 2012 (John Cusack, Woody Harrelson) for Sony Pictures. Since his departure from Centropolis he has produced several films including the award-winning PBS feature documentary LAST WILL & TESTAMENT (Vanessa Redgrave, Mark Rylance), and the critically-acclaimed, and Spirit Award nominee COLUMBUS (John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Sundance 2017).
Look at that. Look at that.
Here’s a Hollywood bigwig funding a four-plus-years-in-the-making, trauma-informed project uplifting the voices and experiences of survivors of religious, sexual, and psychological abuse.
Just to underscore that trauma-informed part, here’s more from the website’s Q&A:
WHAT IS TRAUMA-INFORMED FILMMAKING?
Trauma-informed storytelling incorporates several key principles that are a part of our production process:
Safety: We work to create a safe and supportive filming and interview environment for our story subjects. This includes ensuring physical and emotional safety, providing options for participation, and clarifying and respecting boundaries.
Empowerment: We work to ensure that story subjects know they have agency over their own narratives. Stories can be shared on their own terms and in ways that feel comfortable to each person. This involves giving individuals choices about how, when, and where they share their experiences, as well as options for layers of confidentiality.
Sensitivity & Awareness: We acknowledge the potential triggers and retraumatization that can occur when discussing traumatic experiences, and establish a unique pace and framework appropriate to each story subject.
Resilience and Healing: We also recognize the potential for resilience and healing that can come from sharing and listening to stories. The opportunity for individuals to process their experiences, find support, and build connections with others who may have had similar experiences can itself be empowering and healing.
Over the past 20 years, we have filmed stories of trauma and healing all over the world. These stories encompass a range of experiences, including genocide, child soldiers, sex trafficking, and the pervasive effects of poverty. In our work, we have collaborated with survivors to ensure that the telling of their stories is both empowering and healing.
Have you ever seen a single church even take a stab at defining “trauma-informed”?
It’s not that Hollywood is without sin. But there is a stark contrast here between the deference and long-term, self-sacrificial care shown to abuse survivors by a Hollywood elite and his team—and the pathetic, self-serving effort to defend their institution from the needs of survivors by a religious hegemony of men, most of them old, nearly all of them white.
All dissenting opinions aside, of which I’m given to understand there were many—the fact remains that the PCA, a Christian institution, has severely let survivors down, while no less than three secular organizations have upheld and effectively supported survivors within the last year.
Why?
For the record, I’m not interested in answers. None of them are good, I’ve heard them before, and I’m not the party responsible for addressing the problems they reveal.
The correct answer, though, is “We shouldn’t have to ask.”
Correction: Henry C. Thompson II did not attend the General Assembly this year.
“Have you ever seen a single church even take a stab at defining “trauma-informed”?”
The one I founded. City Church San Francisco. Left the PCA in 2006. I never felt safe in that denomination.