Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi. This is Rachel in recovery. We're here with Pete Singer, and he's going to tell us about an article he just wrote. Pete, why don't you say hello again to some of our listeners who have not heard you speak before.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Hi there. My name is Pete. Pete Singer. I'm the executive director over at Grace godly response to abuse in the christian environment, and I've been with grace for a little over three years. Prior to coming to Grace, I worked as a therapist, working with kids and adults who had trauma in their background, and then also working with a lot of organizations across discipline schools and healthcare centers and victim advocacy groups, law firms, really just across a wide variety of backgrounds and wide variety of fields to better understand what is trauma? And then how does that understanding of trauma impact how we interact with each other? Something that is often called trauma informed practice.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Fair enough.
I'm going to ask Pete some questions. So you recently wrote an article. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, the article that I wrote appears in the journal currents and Theology and mission, and that's an open access journal. So anyone can go ahead and log on to the site of the journal currents and theology and mission, and they can read all the articles, including mine, at no charge. And so I really hope listeners feel free to do that. The article was called towards a more trauma informed church equipping faith communities to prevent and respond to abuse. And what I've seen through, really throughout my life, through some childhood experiences, growing up in abusive faith communities, through my work before coming to grace, and then through my work with grace, what I've seen is churches often that either don't know how to respond well to trauma or don't see it as a priority.
You may hear at times things like, well, that'll just distract us from the gospel.
And my counter would be, well, Jesus pretty clearly said that it is the gospel.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Very true. I don't think people realize how much Jesus was really there to heal people with trauma. You think about the lady who bled for so many years or the lady that was at the well, all her trauma. I mean, that's story packed full of trauma.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: And, I mean, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, and he's asked to read a scripture. So he reads a scripture, and he reads from Isaiah, a scripture that is all about the oppressed and the downtrodden and the abused. And he gets done with reading the scripture. And he says, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your presence.
It was the essence of what he was doing with his earthly ministry was reaching out to those who were hurting, those who had been harmed, and helping them to just share the love of God with them. And as the church, if Jesus did it, it's kind of a good idea for us to do it, too.
And so this article is trying to give some ideas. One, it gives, hopefully, a better understanding, a clearer understanding of what trauma is.
And then it says, with this understanding of trauma, how do we interact with people who may have experienced trauma, who may have been harmed, whether that harm occurred at the church or whether it occurred outside of the church. But now the person has come and is in a church, meaning the United States, 70% of people report some type of an event that could be considered traumatic.
With the ACES study, the adverse childhood experiences study, what we know is that roughly two thirds of kids have an adverse childhood experience by the time they're 18.
So it's not this rare occurrence any given Sunday.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: No.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: Or any given day that you worship.
It's more than half the people in your community that have experienced trauma. And if it's more than half the people, we'd be wise to figure out how to respond. Well.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, people think it's just such a small number, and I'm like, it's not.
It's way more people. I mean, even with just childhood sexual abuse alone, those numbers are mind boggling.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Absolutely.
So we have to do a better job. And my hope for this article is that it equips us to do a better job. It helps us to do a better job.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Okay.
How is trauma inseparable from the christian faith?
We mentioned that, but if you have some more examples you would like to.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Well, trauma really is inseparable from the christian faith because it's woven throughout the Bible. And the christian faith rests a lot on the Bible. I mean, in the Old Testament, we've got. Even just in the book of Genesis, we've got slavery, we've got murder, we've got rape, we've got natural disasters. We have intimate partner violence. We have famine, we have child abuse. We have separation from God and loss of loved ones.
The prevalence of trauma, just even in the book of Genesis, argues that our faith is inseparable from trauma. But it doesn't stop there. It occurs through the rest of scripture as well. In the Old Testament, we've got persecution in the book of lamentations, torture in the book of first Kings, oppression throughout the book of judges, clergy sexual abuse.
Clergy sexual abuse, first Samuel 222, spiritual abuse in one Samuel two.
And all of these are tied to abuse and are tied to the misuse of power.
And then we get into the Old Testament, and Jesus comes, and he totally changes the scenery. He totally changes the landscape. But even though Jesus has come, even though Jesus has ushered in a new age, we still have trauma. Matthew talks about spiritual abuse. Two Corinthians talks about the torture that Paul had to endure. John talks about harassment and assault. Matthew talks about political and religious oppression in acts. There's death, and there's racial bias and ethnic bias in Luke. There's medical trauma, there's financial exploitation in Luke.
Mark has executions. It's just throughout scripture.
It's story after story of trauma. And if we try to separate trauma from our christian faith, we're ignoring a large portion of the Bible.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
And people don't even realize that. I feel like sometimes they just listen to sermons on there on some sort of autopilot half the time.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's also how we talk about the situation, and we don't stop to think, wait a minute, wait a minute. Is that pastor framing the situation correctly? Like, I cannot tell you how many sermons I have heard about the quote unquote affair that David had with Bathsheba.
But if we look at that situation, what we see is we see a woman performing her, most likely performing her ritual duties associated with her faith. So just living out her faith. And the king, who was supposed to be with his troops but instead had decided to stay home, spies her and says, come on over. I think you're hot.
In that day and age, you couldn't say no to the king. It wasn't just, no, thank you. It was, you have to obey. And the last time that I heard, when you don't really have a choice in the matter, that's not an affair.
When you have the possibility that you could even be killed for saying, no, that's not an affair. But how many times do we hear about the rape or the sexual assault that David committed against Bathsheba?
Never hear about those things. So we either decide to just frame it as an affair, or we don't talk about it.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: No.
Even how lot. And his daughters. I mean, I remember being in Sunday school and that being taught, like, don't drink.
And I'm like, that's just not even close to the point of the story.
Looking back as an adult, I'm like, holy crap, they missed the whole point.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Test it.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: I mean, they blamed the daughters, and really, they were the victims. And who wrote that?
We have to realize, when we were reading the Bible, who is writing this story? And it's not that this story didn't happen. But whose perspective are we getting?
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very important to remember the cultural context of what's being written. It's very important to look at the text with open eyes and to understand the Bible doesn't shy away from talking about trauma. And we shouldn't either.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: No.
Um, what are the stats of those with trauma inside the church? And can you give us a breakdown of the types of trauma?
[00:11:04] Speaker B: I can give you some stats. Certainly not. I don't think that there is an exhaustive list, but I can give you just because there's so much of it.
Start with the understanding that most likely the church reflects society as far as the frequency of trauma. So some of those statistics that we were given before, that 70% of people have experienced some type of traumatic event in their lifetime. About two thirds of kids say that they've experienced at least one adverse childhood experience, that a fourth of girls and a 6th of boys will probably be sexually assaulted by the time they're 18. So these statistics that we were talking about before are probably at least mirrored in the church, but they might actually be higher in the church. We don't know this for certain.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: I don't know. The more research I do, and I just finished reading John Wayne and Jesus, and it just seems like incest and childhood sexual abuse is just.
I feel like it's just bred. I don't know, it's like this dark secret that's almost everywhere you can find in any church.
It's so rampant. I feel like it's more than in the general public.
Maybe I'm a little biased and maybe it's just the way that it's set up.
How much power those men in ministry have had, like Bill Gothry, in those situations with the Duggar family and the Catholic Church, just how much power those men have in authority, and even more so than an education with teachers or coaches and things, that's a certain level of power, but I feel like. I don't know, it's even just higher than that.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: A lot of times, faith leaders don't just have the power to interpret reality, they have the power to declare reality.
And so that is a different level of power that people need to be very careful as they steward. And we have to remember that any power we have, we only have as a steward. It's not our power, it's not our greatness, it's not our foolness, it is God's power. Jesus declared, all power is given to me. And so any power that we have we only have as a steward.
And so when there is somebody that's come to the church that's looking for some context for what has happened to them, maybe it didn't happen in the church, maybe it happened outside of the church, but they're seeking some context. And so they come into the church and they're looking for that context, and instead they find somebody who is abusing their power that causes immense harm. Immense harm. Something that's called retraumatization. When a person is seeking help and goes to a system that's supposed to be able to help, but instead that system causes more harm. And so we really need to equip all within the church, including the leaders, to respond well in a situation like that, when a person is just coming in seeking for some context to what happened.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Well, and I also like to point out that purity culture, I don't know, I feel like that just environment just makes it so much easier to build shame and build silence among victims.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: We know that a lot of the message and purity culture did not work and may have indeed made it easier to abuse people because we can't talk about it. We can't admit that we're struggling with it.
And when you can't talk about a struggle, then it's a lot harder to overcome a struggle.
And we can use the silence as a weapon. We can threaten to undermine a person's reputation through that. So we need to be very careful in how we handle things like that. And I think that theory culture did not do what it was intended to do.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: And I feel like it mostly set. I mean, I know it set me up from my own personal experience, I felt like it set me up to be abused.
And I know a lot of survivors who feel that way, like it set me up for shame. It set me up for not coming forward when I should or how to talking about or having me stay in an abusive relationship when I should have been getting out.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: And I feel like perpetuates abuse is not one that we want to have actively.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I've always thought there should be some curriculum in youth group that talked about what to do with sexual assault and that sort of thing. We strongly along with.
I've always wished, and I know it sounds crazy, but when I was young, I always kind of wished that somebody in youth group or a family member would have told me what to do when you get raped.
And I realize that sounds terrible, but I feel like in today's society, it's necessary what are the protocols? What do you do?
I spent years lifeguarding. And we don't expect somebody to injure their head and have a vertebrae injury, but we're trained for that.
But they don't train you on what to do when you're raped. Nobody sets you aside. Hey, if this happens to you, you need to call the police. You need to not wash your clothes. You need to file a police report.
You need to know what rape actually was. And it wasn't until I was in grad school and it was a state university that gave us kind of guidelines on what rate is, because I feel like that's definitely not talked about and what consent is.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: One of the things that we have to remember is that information, that knowledge needs to be given to youth. It empowers youth to have a safer experience.
We also need to recognize that giving the youth the information does not mean that adults can then wash their hands of the matter. Adults are responsible for protecting kids. It is great. It is, I think, essential for youth to have knowledge about consent, to be told about sexual assault, and what to do in a case of sexual assault in an age appropriate way. But we also never ever take that knowledge as a replacement for also adult responsibility and setting up environments. The youth group isn't setting up youth group activities. They might be involved in the planning, but it's the youth leader, and the youth leader needs to be making sure that there is not an opportunity for sexual assault, or at least that that opportunity would have to be awfully hard, because do you want your youth group to be a haven for sexual assault? My goodness, of course not.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
Nowadays you'd have to go all the way down to children's ministry with some of the stuff that goes on today.
I mean, it's probably been going on longer.
I think it's more known about, especially with sex trafficking, that's something else to bring to the table.
We own 80%, I think it's 80% of sex trafficking in the world.
In America, I mean, is bought and paid for by American, primarily by men.
We pay for it, we buy it.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, there's an awful lot of room for improvement.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Very true.
Thanks for listening. Pete will be back then next week on Thursday to tell the rest of his story. If you have any questions, reach out to Rachel in recovery. Always follow us on your favorite social media platform, and always follow us on.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Your favorite podcast platform. Thanks.
