I’ve been thinking about the Church’s response to the AP story about the sex abuse case in Arizona. In it, there’s a bit that says “Church teachings and handbooks are clear and unequivocal about the evils of abuse.” This is definitely a good step, but what struck me is that I think it’s hard for the anti-abuse message to get across clearly when the Church has organizational features and makes rhetorical choices that can actually enable abuse (and here I’m thinking of abuse more generally, not just in the particular Arizona case). There are four issues in particular that I was thinking of.
The first is the authoritarian power structure. In the Church organization, control and information are only supposed to flow in one direction. GAs periodically remind us that they’re too busy to listen to us individually. This is bad for the Church in that it makes it difficult for those at the top to get real feedback. But it’s also a bad family structure. It sets parents (and fathers in particular) up as authorities who are not to be questioned. I don’t know if being an unquestioned authority makes someone more likely to become abusive in the first place, but it seems like it’s definitely smoothing the path for them to continue if they start, as a potential brake has been removed.
The second is the all-male power structure. The Church has an all-male power structure, both at the general and local levels, and it similarly endorses a patriarchal power structure in families. (Of course I’m aware that the Family Proclamation also has a line about equal partnership, but given that this contradicts the preceding line about fathers presiding, not to mention the overwhelming majority of Church rhetoric endorsing patriarchy, it seems pretty clear that this is just a sop for the more egalitarian members.) This is intertwined with the problem of the authoritarian power structure. I’m not saying that men are necessarily more prone to abuse, but I think having the Church power structure match the family power structure clearly reduces the effectiveness of local Church leadership in responding to abuse. I’ve read many stories of women who were being abused being told by their bishops that they could stop the abuse if only they did more of something or less of something else. The problem, of course, is that local leaders find it easier to sympathize with abusers than with their victims.
The third is the use of insider/outsider language. Church leaders are prone to doing this when they want to frame an issue one way for outsiders, but a different way for Church members. For example, President Hinckley famously downplayed the idea of humans becoming gods, and at another time he said that the Church’s financial information belongs to the members who made the contributions. In both cases, he had something different to say to insiders: in the first, he reassured us that we didn’t need to worry that he didn’t understand the doctrine. In the second, of course, he made no move whatsoever to publish Church financial information even to members. My worry here is that the use of insider/outsider language can rub off on families, as people see how it’s used at a general level to make the Church look more palatable to outsiders. Use of insider/outsider language may not cause abuse in families, but it definitely helps keep it covered up. Abusers tell their victims that it’s important to put on a happy face for outsiders, and keep quiet about the nastiness happening at home.
The fourth is that the Church’s condemnations of abuse, while welcome, typically rest on the assumption that abusers can identify themselves as abusers. I was struck by this comment made by stephenchardy at BCC in a discussion last year:
I know a few… a handful… of parents/partners whom I think are highly likely to be abusive. That is: they appear to me to emotionally overact to problems at home. Their children/spouses are frightened of them. I am also quite certain that they are not able to see themselves as they are. They don’t think that they are abusive; rather they think that they are righteous. What I see as rigid over-controlling and angry parents, they see as a loving parent who “reproves with sharpness” when moved to do so. Because they are certain that they are themselves good and righteous people, then conference addresses or temple interview questions that are pointed towards them are completely missed. They don’t see themselves as someone with a control or anger problem; they see themselves as a keeper of the way.
Someone close to me was raised in a home with an emotionally abusive parent, and from my discussion with them, this comment is absolutely spot on. They told me that they were heartened to see when their parent paid careful attention to general conference talks that mentioned abuse, only to realize that it was because they (the parent) felt like they were being abused when their family didn’t properly submit to their authority. The way abuse is talked about is typically vague enough that I can see how this can happen. I mean, of course it seems maybe unusual for an abuser to identify themselves as an abuse victim, but even short of that, I don’t doubt that it’s easy for many or most abusers to entirely miss the point of conference talks that say simple things like “don’t abuse your spouse or children.”
Having raised these concerns, I know I should have suggestions for fixing them. Really, though, the first three seem pretty core to what the Church (or at least the GAs and most members) imagines itself to be. The authoritarian structure follows from the prophet having a direct line to God in a way none of the rest of us are supposed to. If God says one thing to him and something else to one or more of us, who are we supposed to listen to? The all-male power structure could be tinkered with around the edges, and already has been a little by things like having women speak in conference and having women general officers sit on general Church committees. But can you imagine what good it might do if a woman seeking pastoral care at the local level could go to another woman instead of always to a man? On the third, I think it would be really difficult for the Church to give up insider/outsider language while maintaining its stance of standing against the world. Giving up insider/outsider language would almost necessarily mean more assimilation, which GAs clearly don’t find acceptable. The fourth, although it’s not tied up with the structure of the Church, would still be very difficult to change. I can imagine speakers in conference maybe getting into a little more detail about what constitutes abuse, or perhaps even bringing up the point that abusers often don’t identify themselves as such. I doubt that these would do much good, though. I know local leaders are already busy, but I wonder if it might be possible to train them better on these points, as long as they’re inevitably going to be among the first responders in situations of abuse.
This is a really good commentary. Those first three points, as you say, may not cause abuse but they do smooth the way and help cover up abuse. In other words, those are enabling behaviors. There are three parties to abuse: the abuser, the victim and the enabler. The Church is frequently an enabler. An enabler denies and minimizes the abuse — like priesthood leaders who tell women that it’s not that bad. I don’t know if psychologists and family dynamic specialists have studied enabling the way they’ve studied abuse, but in my own personal experience, the enabler isn’t any more likely to repent than the abuser.
Your fourth point applies to both abusers and enablers — neither one recognizes themselves. A loving and forgiving wife is Christlike and doing her best to keep the family together, by enabling her husband’s abuse. How can the Church condemn that? I know people used to tell my mom that she was a saint for staying married to my father. My mom was my father’s enabler. She genuinely thought of herself as Christlike, and just being supportive of her husband.
For the Church to seriously address abuse, it would have to change its culture. From the little bit I’ve read, the approach to treating abusers is to hold them 100% accountable for their behavior and (somehow or other) get them to see the victim as a human being who is as deserving of respect as they are. Abusers don’t see their victims as equals.
Your suggestion to more specifically describe abuse is a good one. I doubt it would actually help abusers identify their behaviors and stop abusing. Instead, it would be a way for victims to realize that there’s something wrong and they shouldn’t have to put up with the situation. You know? Like, if the Church described my father’s conduct and said, “This is abusive,” my father would still find a way to disregard it. But the rest of us could have listened to it and realized that no, father wasn’t a good man, no matter what mother said.
Thanks, Janey! I think you’re spot on that we’d need a dramatic culture change for the LDS Church to do better at not facilitating abuse, but actually work to prevent it and root it out when it happens.