Obfusticating Christian Language: Shaunti, Preston, and the “Twitter Mob”

Fresh from the Butler controversy about his book and views on contraception, Christian Twitter was directly addressed by Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn on Dr. Preston Sprinkle’s podcast, “Theology in the Raw”.

Firstly, I would like to point some responses to Butler such as by Sheila Gregoire, Rick Pidcock of Baptist News Global, Dr. Beth Falkner Jones, and the speakers featured on the Where Do We Go Podcast by Devi Abraham (Dr. Amy Peeler, Dr. Andrew Draper, Christy Hemphill, Bekah Mason, and myself). These Twitter threads, articles, and podcast in response represent quite a huge chunk of the Twitter conversation surrounding the controversial excerpt published on the Gospel Coalition.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Denny Burk, Kevin DeYoung, and Twitter user Patrick Miller were some of those who labelled all criticism and feedback into a faceless, angry, reactionary mob.

Critics were accused of “snap judgment”, “outrage”, a lack of “charity”, “reactivity”, and “vitriol”. Meanwhile, defendants like Denny Burk celebrated the release of the Theology in the Raw episode responding to the above controversy, featuring Butler.

Aimee Byrd responded to the episode, saying,

I am disturbed because I know who pays the cost when the beautiful picture is twisted. When there isn’t retraction of it, but explanation that we are too sensitive to handle sexual language or don’t understand allegory or are wary to glean rich teaching from the Roman Catholics. When we are told instead to read the whole book. That the other parts are very good. When those who were upset by its teaching are viewed as overreacting mobs of outrage. When parachurch organizations want to front this anthropology and then cut and release, and the nothing to see here, move along, keep coming to our conferences mentality continues. Women pay the cost. Those who are typico-symbolically pointing us to Zion. And therefore, the entire church. Christ’s bride pays the cost.

One can summarize the response by Burk, DeYoung, and the Twitter users above by comparing the feedback to “D.A.R.V.O.”, which is the way abusers response to accusations of abuse by reversing the role of victim and offender.

In this case, the celebrity preacher/teacher says something that generates a response being it is tied so closely to harm. These beliefs and teachings are one and the same (or closely similar to) those that have been directly harmful to critics/respondents. This is why many spoke up.

My thoughts:

1. There probably were Christian Twitter users who may have been more personal in their criticism or verbally abusive towards Butler. I would like to see evidence of this, as well as evidence that these were the predominant voices with the most reach during the “controversy period” as opposed to some of the responses I linked to above
2. These unhealthy/unhelpful criticisms were probably never read by Butler, and I would like to see where they could have harmed him directly or harmed the larger conversation. Is there any evidence in this regard?
3. Is the harm done to Butler by unhealthy/unhelpful responses equal in magnitude to the harm done by large-scale teaching from a celebrity platform?

The answer to Question 3 is part of the crux of the question: people with platforms from which they can project their influence and teaching have a weight disproportionate to the voice of the average Christian. This means that they can speak to large numbers of people, but they can ignore when these people respond to them. At least, until it goes viral on Twitter and becomes bad publicity.

The idea that you can go to a celebrity and speak to them privately is a joke. Firstly, the way influencer/celebrity culture is set up, the influencer/celebrity is extremely visible. Any harm done to them is extremely visible, as is criticism. The harm done to “nobodies”? You can easily ignore that.

If I were to go up to Josh Butler or Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn in an attempt to privately and “nicely” express grave concerns, the best response I can expect to get is “Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.” Most of the time, I can expect to be ignored, or for a publicist to chuck my email into the spam folder. I would likely have to be as polite and conciliatory and fawning as I possibly can, thanking them for the amazing impact they have had on my Christian walk before I dare, gently, bring up any concerns.

If you’re direct, clear, and to the point, there’s even less of a chance you will be considered. Like patriarchy, this is a board meeting that is happening without most of us, we are outside of, that we can only dare dial into and relay messages indirectly into (if they choose to relay our messages).

It’s a one-way conversation.

But if I were to speak with even a small level of the public voice they have, i.e. by writing a GoodReads review, blog post, or Twitter thread, I can easily be characterized as someone who doesn’t obey Matthew 18, have a private vendetta, etc. We’ve placed celebrities and authors on pedestals far out of reach.

Furthermore, we have public conversations about public teaching all the time. We discuss books and sermons and blog posts: since when is this wrong, except when it becomes bad publicity? Is an author expected to directly see and respond to all discussions about public material? Is all public critique supposed to be channeled into private backchannels first?

Authors like Aimee Byrd, Beth Moore, Dr. Kristin Du Mez, Dr. Beth Allison Barr have been the recipients of bullying, threats, and personal attacks. If anyone is attacking Josh Butler in these ways, I think all of us would clearly and unequivocally say that that is wrong. I would ask for examples of how any of the criticism may have directly called for bullying so that these can be retracted/addressed.

But there’s a world of difference between a critical podcast or GoodReads review (shoutout to Nikayla Reize’s detailed, quotation-heavy exposition) and the misogynistic verbal abuse and death threats others have received.

I know the timeline is getting confusing here, so here’s a recap:

1. Release of Excerpt
2. Response, Rising Controversy
3. Theology on the Raw episode featuring Butler
4. Celebration of Theology on the Raw episode by Burk, et. al.
5. Fast forward to this week: Theology in the Raw interview with Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn titled, “Do Evangelicals Know How to Engage Controversial Topics?”

The concern that I have about this latest podcast interview with Dr. Shaunti Feldhahn is that is is rife with obfustication, both-side-ism, and DARVO.

Step 1: Acknowledge some level of harm but insert suggestion that the teachers/preachers are being “misunderstood”.

Shaunti: “These are real lives of real women and men that are being hurt by messaging that’s been maybe ill-considered or maybe even just misunderstood.”

Step 2: Now that there’s some suggestion that there’s two sides, and perhaps some misunderstanding on the side of the people calling out harmful teaching, suggest that criticism/responses are just as wrong.

Shaunti: “… whether those real concerns means that we’re justified in using certain methods to call that out um that might themselves be harmful.”

Preston: “So you’re hitting two sides of the coin here.”

Step 3: Reduce culpability. No one is to blame for harmful teachings on sexuality. Key words “Not aware”, “Well-intentioned”.

The ultimate message is that when pastors/teachers say and do harmful things, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re just doing it out of ignorance and are unaware of the harm.

Preston: “I’m interested in well-intended but just ill-informed people that don’t mean to say things but then say things that they’re not aware of how triggering that can be. Ad when I say… I know triggering can be… Loosely applied I’m talking legitimate like people are, they’re trauma, they’re abused, they’re sent to really dark places by even just hearing certain things and then you have maybe the intended stuff stuff that no is coming from a thought-out way of thinking about sex and sexual relationship.”

Shaunti: “There’s a third element there of neither the well-intentioned person who’s saying something damaging that doesn’t necessarily realize that it’s damaging and maybe just needs to be a bit educated have their eyes opened. Then that second group you talked about which is: No this is exactly what they mean and they’re saying it. The third group is really I think bigger than both of those two and the third group is leaders, pastors, authors, speakers, who we are trying to speak into this space.”

The implication is that the largest group are well-meaning but ill-informed leaders. This should raise alarm bells and lead us to question a larger culture of complicity, ignorance, and enablement in the church.

Why are leaders, leaders, if they need education on basic principles such as trauma, safety, and sexual abuse? Maybe we need to look into what counts as theological and ministerial training. It’s true that we have a problem of ignorance, but because this ignorance is directly related to harm, we need to be proactive in cultivating safety in the midst of a very unsafe church culture. Our leaders need to lead the way, otherwise things will never change.

I believe the presence of silent majority who go along with the abusive minority (and who “innocently” believe many of the same harmful things) are part of why abuse is so difficult to unseat in the church. It keeps getting looked over and silenced in favor of maintaining the institutional status quo.

By focusing on ill-informed leaders as deserving of sympathy, we are shifting our sympathy to where it is most ready and comfortable: the celebrity/influencer/leader. This re-emphasizes the invisibility of those who have been hurt and harmed.

Something is very, very, wrong with how easily calls for accountability and stories of harm can be dismissed, mis-characterized, shut-out, gaslighted, and ignored.

Step 4: Tell us that we need to accept the “imperfection”

Shaunti: “We’re just trying and we’re not gonna do it perfectly and it actually takes a lot of courage for many pastors or authors or speakers or whatever to step out and try to tackle this and because we’re not going to do it perfectly, it feels right now that there’s this like firing squad that there’s this gotcha moment where people are like looking okay what’s the what’s the one wrong thing that this person is saying that I can put up and say see how bad this is.

I think we need to look at the stakes here: We are in the midst of a #churchtoo movement where teachings on sexuality are being linked to actual, physical, harm and abuse.

I’ll give you an example of such a “gotcha” moment from Dr. Feldhahn’s writings. In a blog post titled “Fill up his mental rolodex so that no one else can”, she describes a situation where a grown man and husband struggles not to be aroused by girls. Given that girls younger than teenage age do wear shorts these days, I am heavily concerned about what age group she’s thinking of: whether it’s prepubescent or adolescent, it’s equally concerning and creepy.

I realized the other day that the girls in the mall weren’t wearing jeans shorts. They were wearing denim underwear, artfully designed so their butt would hang out. Oy.

Her response, one that is heavily problematic, suggests to steer a husband’s attention away from underage teenage girls by producing pornography for him.

One woman — who seemed like a bit of a shy, reserved type — said that not too long after she finished the study, her husband came home from some long trips for his consulting job and told her that he was really struggling with his thought life because of the revealing ways in which some of the women at his consulting site had been dressing. At first, his wife got mad at him, but then she realized that his honesty was his way of asking for help and trying to honor her.

When she asked her friends what she should do, one of them responded, “Pray for him and fill up his Rolodex, girl!”

She realized that since she was naturally more reserved, she had probably not been giving her husband a lot of intimate images of her to fill his mind; images he could remember, to help him divert his attention from others when he was feeling tempted. She realized that she didn’t have to go over the top, but that even leaving a muted light on in the bedroom, so he could see her when they were intimate, was a way she could both affirm him for honoring her and help him do so.

Two things are going on here:

1. Women and girls are being sexualized and made into objects of lust against their concern
2. “She has probably not been giving her husband a lot of intimate images of her” indicates that it was the wife’s fault that her husband has lust issues.

Is Dr. Feldhahn trying to tell us that she is being misunderstood for using her public platform for spreading messages like this? That it’s okay to say this and sweep this away as ill-informed? Is the call to address such a teaching some “gotcha” moment and an attempt to “cancel” her?

Shaunti: “Sometime it is bad… sometimes it is misunderstood.”

Step 5: Accuse critics, tell them not to use social media.

Shaunti: Now let’s call this out not just as, “Gosh you know this is something that we really really need to counteract and let me go to them privately and let me say, you know there’s a real issue here.” But no, let’s actually splash it all over social media and do the public shaming thing.

This leader I was talking to said it takes a lot of courage to step into this space and if we keep being shot at for mistakes… well-intentioned people are going to back out of this space and we’re going to be in the same spot we were 20 years ago. We’re we’re not talking about sex in the church because we can’t afford to and that would be just as damaging.

The message is that

1. Social media criticism is “public shaming”, a “firing squad”
2. We should be encouraging “well-intentioned” and “ill-informed” people to have the courage to speak about “sex in the church”.
3. It would be “just as damaging” not to have conversations and teachings about sex than to have ill-informed teaching.

Is she trying to tell us that harmful teaching is better than no teaching?

Step 6: Isolate those who have been harmed

Shaunti: “Do this, the very real needs of this hurting population, do the ends justify the means?”

“There is the Twitter mob right? Not just, ‘This is damaging but let’s look at everybody that endorsed this person’s book. Let’s de-platform that author. Let’s call out all these other people who endorsed it. Wait, so you put this person on their podcast and let’s, you know, de-platform that podcaster or tell them they’re wrong.”

I think there’s a huge matter of discernment here: there’s a difference between something ill-informed in a mundane and unimportant way, and something overtly harmful. In the world of Christian celebrity podcasts and endorsements, we can and should be asking about the discernment of those who endorse books and share platforms.

Is it the worst, most harmful thing a Christian can do, to ask why such and such a person is a celebrity with a huge audience, teaching things that are ill-informed and harmful? What justifies this place of power?

Losing this place of power is not harmful to the person. Stepping back from ministry is not a huge personal sacrifice on par with martyrdom (the firing squad analogy is really on the nose).

Maybe it’s okay to say, “I need to stop being famous and step back to re-learn things. I shouldn’t be in this position of authority.”

Step 7: Use spiritual language against critics

Shaunti: We are all part of the same body we we all share the same Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12 says, right, we share the same spirit. And so we with fear and trembling should go to criticize someone and publicly shame them who presumably has the same Holy Spirit inside of them and is just trying and is led by the Spirit trying to be in the same way we are? We have got to figure out how to have humility and grace with one another and and recognize this person we’re shooting at: they are a brother or a sister in Christ and we are told that this is how the watching world is going to know that you’re my disciples because you love one another.

This completely misses the point: the Christian celebrity/influence is more than just a brother/sister but a public teacher and a leader. There’s a difference between a personal attack on someone’s identity, being, and worth, and someone’s disproportionate influence as a celebrity or leader.

James 3:1 and Jesus’s teachings on authority and power tell us that we should especially careful and especially wary of those who seek places of prominance and control esepcially in the dispensation of doctrine and teaching.

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)

they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others. But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. (Matthew 23:6–12)

The world is watching, yes, but they’re watching a church ridden with sexual abuse scandals preach a gospel of righteousness at them, throw the “book” at the them morally, and attempt to legislate Christian morality while covering up and excusing sexual immorality by leaders and celebrities en masse.

Shaunti: “We have to be caring just as much about, for example, the hurting woman who might be hearing something wrong and feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh… I can never say no to my husband or whatever.’ Who might be absorbing the wrong message. We should care and love that woman and just as much the pastor or the author who said it in a certain way. Like we need to be able to have grace with each other. I just I feel like love is the only answer here.”

What, then, did Jesus mean by saying that what we do to the least of these, we do to Him? What about the last being first, and the least being the greatest?

Jesus recognized that there are people we forget about, we hurt, and steam-roll over. He identified with them the most of all.

What Shaunti is referring to is teaching about obligation sex. I believe that here she is likely referring to Sheila Gregoire and how she publicly refutes harmful teachings about sex to help the women who are suffering from pain, spiritual guilt, vagisnismus, and inorgasmia. Some of these teachers have even justified sexual abuse of children on the basis that mothers must be “withholding” sex. I have written about obligation sex as being an ideology of penetration, rape, and bodily ownership in the past. The message needs to get out there! How else are we supposed to address harmful teaching if we’re not allowed to name or quote harmful teaching?

I think we can and should be kind to preachers and pastors who seek to teach and do the right thing, but their feelings (and ego?) should never take priority in speaking out against abusive and harmful teachings truthfully, unequivocally, and in love.

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. (1 Corinthians 14:29)

Here, Dr. Sprinkle comes in with the statement that “forgiveness is not an option” (in the context of sexual abuse?). I think the issue is not about forgiveness, moving on, and finding closure (which many abuse survivors go through in therapy and throughout their lives), but about forgiveness weaponized to silence abuse.

Preston: “I’ve heard people say, given all that we had, this, you know, victim oppressor narrative that’s been going on for awhile now… I’ve heard people say like we shouldn’t tell the victim you know we shouldn’t be to be patient to be forgiving to be whatever and and some of this is it gets a little dicey because forgiveness is not an option… is always a Christian virtue.

… I am sympathetic to that. At the same time, I don’t know like… the kind of vitriolic response that I think is also very unchristian and unhealthy and not really helping the situation too. That if somebody needs to change, whether it’s unintentional rhetoric they need to fix or an actual world view they need to change and be confronted on, or at least you know reasoned out of maybe, it would be a better way to go about it.

…I want to see healing I want to see reconciliation I want to see um less injustice and less abuse obviously… look at the manner of how we’re going about it… I’m not sure I’m convinced that we’re going about the best ways.”

Secondly, I don’t know what they are specifically referring to. Whose responses are they critiquing? What specific ways of addressing abuse have been not the “best ways”? Some specifics here would help, otherwise it just seems like saying that we shouldn’t have a #churchtoo movement or that the tidal wave of exposure is something we need to stem or control.

Which specific parts of the exposure of abuse or countering of abusive teaching has not been love?

Shaunti: What would it look like what is a better way to honor these many victims and and the history of abuse and yet go about it in a way that’s more Christian and more helpful? Well I think guided by the concept of love, right, like 1 Peter 4:8, ‘Love covers a multitude of sins’. We need to have the humility to say, oh my gosh I should approach criticizing another believer in public with fear and trembling because we are directly commanded by our Lord to love one another in public. Right, like that’s the command. And so to go against that in some way you should do that with fear and trembling. Now are some people called to step up and say things strongly absolutely but it should always be in love.

As a public teacher, Dr. Feldhahn is publicly warning Christians who are speaking up against sexual abuse/abusive teachinigs to do so in “fear and trembling” and with love that “covers a multitude of sins”.

She brings up a story about interacting with someone and witnessing to them from a completely different viewpoint. Given that she refers to the example of the Corinthian church, this passage bears consideration:

But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:11–13)

Shaunti: “Where they throw out something that is an important point and then you see on their Facebook or their Instagram they get all these comments they get more and more and more hateful… that get more and more and more harsh, you know, “So and so isn’t just… misspoken he’s encouraging marital rape right” like or “This person’s clearly a sex addict” maybe that whoever that social media person is, maybe that person stops that commentary and says, ‘Look we disagree with this but this is a brother in Christ or this is a sister in Christ and I need to I need to put a stop to this direction that these comments are going because this is wrong too.’”

Note that this is about commentors identifying someone as promoting marital rape or describing women in a lustful/lacivious way that makes people suspect he himself struggles with. Apparently pointing out that someone is teaching marital rape/speaking about women in a perverted way is un-Christian and “hateful”? Is she referring to the pusback, for example, against Mark Driscoll’s verbally and spiritually abusive teachings? She identifies Emerson Eggerichs and Gary Thomas as victims of such hate.

Shaunti: “Emerson Eggerich, he’s been one of the ones that’s been attacked and I’m gonna put my money where my mouth is and say no, like would I have said everything the same way he did? No I wouldn’t have. There are things that you can go well I actually see why this is being misunderstood yeah of course I’ve told him some of those things. But that paradigm of love and respect there there has been a very necessary eye-opening shift in the Christian Community in the last 20 years because of that book that has helped people.”

“I have watched what’s happened to Gary Thomas with immense sadness…he has he had three or four speaking engagements canceled because somebody’s believing this horrible stuff that the mob is saying.”

Preston: Let’s just say from one perspective it is really feed it into a the harmful ideology that the church has let go for so many years… if we pile up, pile on them, and shame them and then people start pulling articles and maybe getting fired then maybe somebody will wake up and say oh I need to be more careful with how I talk because this last guy lost everythin. That’s still like using power over… power isn’t typically the most Christian response.

Is it abusive to say that someone’s articles need to be pulled, or that they need to be removed from a ministry position? What is the difference between “power over” and holding leaders to high standards of accountability to repent, change, or maybe step back when needed? The idea that public backlash somehow overpowers a celebrity and the repeated fear of a “mob” makes me question if there’s a motive on the part of Christian celebrity culture to keep large numbers of people silent.

Shaunti: If the goal is let’s just burn it down and we don’t care who we hurt, well to some degree they’re kind of doing a good job at that right now.

Preston: Not sure that’s the most Christian way.

Shaunti: Yeah they’re drawing attention to something that needs attention. However… we need to care and love the person who is the author, speaker, pastor just as much as we care about those that we’re supposedly trying to help. Because I personally don’t think that you can heal hurt by doing harm.

But that’s just the thing. Far more people see and love the celebrity “author, speaker, pastor”. They are often willing to excuse gross harm because of how much they love them. See the responses to Ravi Zacharias’s exposure, and how the survivors were silenced, bullied, and attacked for daring to expose a revered celebrity’s sin.

When, then, do we see people who do harm in the name of Jesus, who teach things such as marital rape and enable a culture of abuse, or who commit sexual abuse themselves, as wolves? Are we holding up the example of the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep as a standard in Christian ministry?

Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. (Matthew 7:15–16)

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. (John 10:10–13)

Are our churches places of refuge and healing for the wounded, or are our pulpits places from which they are harmed?

Are we allowing wolves to run amok, devouring and destroying with false teaching and with abusive actions? A church that is a safe place for sheep cannot be a safe place for wolves.

Are we more concerned with trying to tame wolves, be sympathetic to them, and platform them, than trying to do the work of the Good Shepherd? Can there be anything more important right now than to be righteously zealous for than the protection of Jesus’s flock?

Step 8: Sweep with more broad brushes, accuse the majority of being vengeful and mean

Preston: “If somebody who is held up as maybe perpetuating the kind of culture that leads to the kind of abuse, simply shaming that person, attacking that person, ruining that person does that actually heal the… I don’t know if the victim experiences healing from that.

Maybe because what advocates are calling for is not revenge, but a change in church culture, a change in leadership, and the end to abusive leadership. Maybe that is loving to the leaders as well, not “ruining” them. Maybe the church needs to be a “safe space” of accountability, truth, and repentence for them.

Shaunti: “You’re calling people out for perpetuating damaging things which, again don’t hear me wrong, sometimes they really are damaging. When you have proclaimed something on Twitter or you’ve publicly called out your pastor do you wake up the next morning so to speak and think ‘Oh this feels great, I’m living my best life… like this is what I want to feel every day’. The reality is I think for most people yeah there is something that feels really good about like venting. It sort of tastes good, yeah, even right. But we’re actually told in the scripture that’s not a taste that we should be perpetuating and enjoying... something it’s it’s psychological cotton candy, right, I mean it has that euphoric-like… rush of dopamine.”

Notice who Dr. Feldhahn characterizes as the majority:

1. The majority of pastors/leaders who teach harmful things are in the third group of “well-intentioned” people.
2. The majority of the people speaking out publicly and on social people “feel really good about venting”. It “tastes good” to them. They’re enjoying it. They’re doing it for a dopamine rush.

Implication: Most people speaking out against abusive teachings are doing so for the sweet, “cotton-candy”-like taste of revenge and out of a personal agenda.

What a sweeping, un-Christ-like, and ungracious accusation.

Dr. Feldhahn then talks about the “debate about an article that was written” where “Twitter went nuts” (Again, the broad brush. She gives her response of “patiently thinking through” and having “lots of conversations behind the scenes with both the the author and other people.”

Kudos to her for having a voice to which authors will listen to. However, some chose to speak out in the urgency of the moment — can you at least grant that the educated, well-researched responses I linked were not a“mob”, and, indeed, that we should question the very idea of “the mob” as an evil, cruel, unloving mass entity?

Conclusion

Preston: I really want to go about this patiently, thoughtfully, have long form conversations… and I simply refuse to say my whatever on on Twitter… I just think we need to move these conversations more into um humanizing good faith, critical dialogues, so that people can even hear tones and questions and even the kind of what we’re doing now. I just think that that can not only address the situation better it can clear up any wrong interpretations on either side and it can model maybe the kind of unity that we’re looking for.

I have tweeted and tagged Dr. Sprinkle in several comments and conversations. I understand that someone with a huge platform and ministry does not have the time for indivudalized response, but you can imagine my frustration that in speaking on the controversy (yes, on long-form podcasts as well as through tweet threads) and seeing this controversy unfold and finally reach this point in which this podcast was made, I feel like myself and many others have been characterized as an inhuman entity, a mob that does not reserve a response.

How will ordinary, every-day Christians ever have the chance to speak out when teachings ring bells, raise red flags, and actively perpetuate harm? Are we always to go through the back door, trying to privately raise concerns to institutions that may or may not choose to hear us? Where do the voices of everyday, non-celebrity Christians fit in?

Do we always have to sound conciliatory, meek, and submissive in an “impersonal and indirect” voice to celebrities, the way John Piper would have women speak to men? Can we speak with clarity when there is harm?

The message is that abuse must be confronted in private rather than public. The thing is, many times, it has been and it was left unaddressed. How do we deal with the powerful Christian institution and its history of weaponized forgiveness and militant silencing?

As I wrote on Twitter,

The messages being put out are 100% about controlling PR, controlling the narrative, and silencing small but inconvenient voices.

Refusing to condescend to respond to Twitter critics directly is a power move. Celebrities and influences can retreat to a bubble and say, “Talk privately”, but most of us don’t have enough clout to be worth listening to let alone garner an institutional response.

I do believe conversation can and should happen — graciously, Christ-like, and truthful conversation. But who should built that bridge to the conversation — those who are being harmed or those doing the harm?

For those who are harmed to build that bridge, we would need to go over to the “other side” of the cliff, and in doing so take a conciliatory “first step” by denying the harm done to them. The celebrity teacher/author on the other hand, simply needs to hear out those who have been harmed and acknowledge the wrong.

May I be so bold as to ask, where is the Christian love and withholding of judgment with regards to critical responses? Why are we judged, labelled as a mob, preached to about Christian love, and labelled vitriolic reactionaries?

Shaunti: “We’re actually trying to listen to somebody else’s perspective rather than just assuming the worst and lambasting them”

It’s easy to strawman and shoehorn all the conversations on Twitter as just being “noise”. Shaunti even says, “Who knows how many of these accounts are Bots that are just feeding the fire?” She suggests that we’re rubbing our hands together saying “Ooh I can get more comments?”

It’s not just tone-deaf to single out those who speaking out against abuse and harm in the church for generalized and vague rebuke, it’s taking a side. There’s a tsunami of exposure going on,and trying to control and instruct people from a position of power (with some caveats and sympathetic nods) ultimately tells us who you are, what you stand for, and most importantly, who you protect. This is tragic and disappointing.

It’s not just tone-deaf to single out those who speaking out against abuse and harm in the church for generalized and vague rebuke, it’s taking a side.

At a certain point, when enough harm has been done, it serves a Christian leader or teacher well to say, “I’m not an expert on this. I need to learn. I need to listen. I need to center the voices of those who have been harmed and silenced. I’m going to stop promoting myself and my platform, and step back.”

Kristie (@janefortruth), an advocate and survivor, says ,

“Many victims of abuse have to put on overt niceness in order to be heard while abusers continue to be bullies behind pulpits to the praise and adoration of their followers.”

We need to end the culture of obfustication and false niceness, a niceness and politeness that has served to enable abuse in the church.

“Christian niceness” as a cultural expectation values people sitting down to tea “despite disagreements” becomes moral relativism when clearly harmful teachings are not addressed. So many people criticize Sheila Gregoire for directly addressing popular abusive teachings. The thing is, if we know something is spiritually abusive and in line with objectification, sexual assault, etc., to extend Christian niceness in the name of “grace” is to prefer the visible (popular celebrity teacher) over the invisible/silenced (abuse survivors).

It’s one thing to disagree on abstract theologies of atonement, eschatology, etc. It is quite another to be okay with what we clearly know and see to be harmful, violent,. objectifying, fetishizing, etc. and promote some kind of equivalence and moral relativism on the subject of abuse.

Christian niceness favors the powerful and popular, especially abusers. It is a culture of silence, silence that keeps you from speaking truthfully and confronting harm. The person who speaks with conviction is the “bad person” who doesn’t play by the rules. In these situations, the voice we need is that of clarity, clarity to point out harm and give voice to the unheard. Clarity is not vulgarity. It’s saying, ‘This is abuse, this is not okay, this needs to stop.”

Here’s something I wrote on Twitter recently, that I hope will end this conversation on a note of hope:

One thing we need to understand about Christians who teach harmful things and then change/relearn is that belief is so deeply intertwined with self/identity. Relearning things that you have internalized and embedded in your identity, that hurt YOU and others, is brave.

Taking ownership of times you didn’t speak up, abusive preaching that you didn’t realize was wrong, repeating or reinforcing these beliefs… All this is brave. Hard. Important. It’s this journey almost all of us are on.