A correspondent writes to ask what the laity are to do when when ruling elders and ministers refuse to address a situation. May a lay member of a URCNA congregation address a matter herself? Yes, indeed, a lay person may indeed address a matter herself even if the local elders or ministers refuse. As I explained, the various NAPARC denominations and federations each have books of church order. Let us consider the church order of my own federation, the United Reformed Churches in North America.
By spiritual abuse I mean: the malevolent, ungracious use of the authority or processes of the church to lord it over the laity or other officers in the church for personal gain, emotional or psychological manipulation, or for the exercise of ungodly or undue control over others, which infringes upon Christian liberty and that violates the second table of the moral law of God.
The church is to care for orphans and widows (James 1:27). An abuser has essentially orphaned his children and abandoned his wife. He has turned his vocation as a caregiver and protector on its head and corrupted it. Where the husband is meant to be a source of strength and safety, he has become weak and a source of fear and violence. If so, the church must step up and step in. Wives and children of abusers must be able to see in the church a refuge, a place of safety and help. Abused church members are the most vulnerable of all of Christ’s lambs and to them we owe a duty of special care and protection.
I think that applies in terms of cases of physical abuse, sexual abuse, those sorts of things, where if the home is not safe for someone to be in, then that is a form of abandonment. And even if people have different convictions about that, you’re exactly right. People can use even Bible verses to cover over awful sin. So there can be abusive situations where somebody will say, “Well, the Bible says that you can’t leave.” Which means you have to live through all of the sinful and unjust things that I’m doing to you. And that’s not what the Bible teaches.
As a pastor, I’ve had countless conversations with people hurt by religious authority. One would hope that words like coercive, corrupt, and manipulative would never be used to describe church leadership, but sadly that’s not the case. If you’re one of the wounded and you have turned your back on Christianity due to the experience, I want to plead with you to reconsider your response for three reasons:
As a non “white” or non “black” Christian looking in as the church attempts to makes sense of whiteness, I have many concerns. When Christian’s resort to using terms like whiteness or blackness to explain the myriad of sinfulness expressions of partiality and with the current conversation more focused on the social construct of whiteness, very little attention is given to the social construct of blackness.
Christians tend to focus only on what Christ did to the soul when he died on the cross, propitiating for our sin and our sin nature, reconciling us to the Father. This extravagant yet limited focus often neglects how a regenerated new birthed soul (a one-time work of God) impacts what we do with redeemed transforming bodies, where our sin nature will continue to exist, but will have no power to reign (Romans 6).
In light of ongoing racial disparity in our communities and churches, I concluded by saying that the White Evangelical Church at large (which includes the PCA) must accept responsibility for advancing racism and segregation in our country for centuries; actions which continue to have lasting impact in our communities and our churches today.
How tragic for me that I accepted and held such views until only a few years ago. In my sin, I not only believed my music was superior, but I believed the worship music of other cultures was inferior. In the case of my views toward the must of the Black Church, such views cannot be adequately described without using the uncomfortable but necessary language of racism and White Supremacy.