Christian leaders don’t just want to take the church to task. They also believe it plays a key role in helping victims heal.
“I am a survivor. My home was my unsafe place. My church was my harbor.”
Growing up as a victim of abuse, Bible teacher Beth Moore was grateful that she could escape to her church. But in retrospect, she wished it could have done more.
“I have often wondered what a difference it would have made if that same harbor had not only been a place to hide but a place to heal.” Moore said during a summit held Thursday to address the church’s response to abuse in the wake of the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements.
The Southern Baptist ministry leader has repeatedly spoken out on the issue over the past year, joining a wave of evangelicals calling on the church to more explicitly condemn, prevent, and help the victims of sexism, harassment, and abuse.
“What if I had heard my pastor or my teachers express what I was going through? Call it what it was? Tell me that I wasn’t to blame and not be ashamed? What if they shared a safe place I could go and tell what I endured? What if I had known I wasn’t alone? What if I had known that there was help? What if tens of thousands of us had?”
Today, Moore joined major evangelical leaders including Australian evangelist Christine Caine, San Antonio pastor Max Lucado, and Seattle pastor Eugene Cho at Wheaton College for Reflections: A GC2 Summit on Responding to Sexual Harassment, Abuse, and Violence.
The event represents the largest inter-denominational response to sex abuse since #MeToo took off last fall.
Over 500 people registered to attend the event, with 40 sites live-streaming online. Organizers set out to “bring together Christian leaders today to address what the Bible says about this tragedy, the destruction of silence, how to protect those ...
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