October 5, 2018
Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,
Companionship is a significant Christian virtue. It stands at the heart of our worship. “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?” When we are a companion with someone, we are literally breaking bread with them. In the letter to the Galatians the apostle Paul invites them to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” That law or commandment was “to love one another as I have loved you.”
The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and especially the courageous testimony of Dr. Ford, opened up cavernous wounds in the lives of many. Memories of similar experiences of trauma and assault, and of times of fearing for their lives, came to the forefront especially for women in all walks of life. For some, years of private therapy have come unraveled in half a day of television testimony.
What I had never really understood is the message women and girls have been given, consciously or unconsciously, that they are fully responsible for their own safety. And if that safety breaks down and they are found at the receiving end of harassment or in a compromising situation, the one they are made to feel to blame is themselves.
“The hardest thing to do (after my own experience of assault) was not to forgive the perpetrator, but to forgive myself; that I let myself down in not preserving my safety.” This was one comment I recently heard. We know of internalized victimization in matters of racial and classist discrimination. We may rarely however extend it to half of the human race in terms of gender.
At General Convention, the Bishops led a “Liturgy of Listening”—a worship service of reconciliation and truth-telling around sexual harassment and assault. Testimony from across the Church was received, and sample letters were read out aloud as acts of witness, of bringing dark secrets into the light of Christ among God’s people. No one chosen to recite a letter stood alone. This practice of standing with a person sharing vulnerable and personally sensitive testimony became practice throughout the more intimate moments of the House of Bishops in Austin.
“O God, you manifest in your servants the signs of your presence; send forth upon us the Spirit, that in companionship with one another your abounding grace may increase among us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (The Book of Common Prayer, 125).
That is an evening collect offered for prayer every night. The Church started out as a place where women found a safe place. Where in Christ our gender identity was said to be indiscriminate. Jesus made the most vulnerable among us feel noticed, loved and protected.
As we know the Church has never fully lived up to that ideal. We were soon telling women to cover their heads, and not tempt the angels, and to keep quiet in worship, to submit to their husbands. The new creation God had made in Jesus Christ has taken thousands of years to shine through. But it is beginning to appear. Or at least its implications are beginning to dawn on us because Jesus has been shining through women from Mary at the tomb onwards.
No one should stand alone. Christians accompany people because God has come among us. And no woman should think that they bear the responsibility for their own safety among men who are allowed to say “I couldn’t help myself” or “boys will be boys.”
One of the actions taken from General Convention was to invite each diocese to look into its culture of bias in relation to women. How affirming are we as a community to women in leadership and especially young women? How safe are we as a community for women whom we invite to be our pastors and spiritual guides? What are the hidden messages of our community in these matters?
Dr. Ford may not have been truly heard at the Judiciary Hearing where her testimony was already being drowned out by the noise of our party politics. But through her I began to hear the testimony of others, and the burdensome responsibility we in society make women in particular bear for the preservation of their own safety. I hope that hearing is also a beginning for us men to look more deeply into why we feel the need to impose such a burden in the first place. What are we afraid of? Maybe companionship itself?
In the peace of Christ,
+Alan
The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of Iowa
