Spiritual Grooming: Culture that Enables Spiritual Harm & Abuse – Pt. 1  

Over that last year, there have been numerous accounts of Christian leaders and pastors being involved in morally reprehensible abuses. Stories like Jerry Falwell Jr’s sex scandal and abusive university policies and practices, Mark Discoll’s continued bullying and unrepentant behavior, John MacArthur’s hiring and continued support of multiple pedophiles, and even Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston’s accusations of failing to report abuse and subsequent misconduct are all examples of what can happen when unchecked and unrestrained power become central to a religious institution.

         On the surface, these events seem like worse-case scenarios, mainly confined to high-profile leaders with massive churches and platforms. To a large degree, it is true that pastors in that setting are more prone to these types of scandals. However, in May 2022, Guidepost Solutions issued a detailed report stating that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had compiled a list of 700 pastors who had been reported for varying degrees of sexual abuse over a 20-year period.

That report makes it clear that this is not a “megachurch” or celebrity pastor issue. And while there seems to be an ever-growing trail of victims, my biggest question is: How is this happening? How are Christian leaders ignoring this? How have we not condemned and moved to correct this devastating issue? While many factors exist that enable this kind of abuse and make victims reluctant to report it, the spiritual element complicates the issue. And while complicated, there is a very specific rising trend within the American Evangelical Industrial Complex that feeds that complexity.

“Groomers”

         Recently, “grooming” has become an increasingly common part of the modern American Christian lexicon. Unfortunately, its use is incorrect, unhealthy, and exaggerated, only compounding this problematic addition. The most common use of the term that I observe is as a means of expressing disgust with the Queer community, particularly with Transgender issues and toward the entertainment medium known as “drag.” Of the many issues I have with Christians hijacking this word, my primary frustrations have to do with their clear misunderstanding of the term, how its misuse diminishes the seriousness of it, and how it has been unjustly and irrationally applied to an entire group of people.

RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) identifies grooming as “a tool, used by abusers, of manipulative behaviors used to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse and reduce the risk of being caught. While these tactics are used most often against younger kids, teens, and vulnerable adults are also at risk.” This typically takes the form of “building a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them.”

Based on this definition, grooming is not occurring in the Transgender community. Neither is it happening during drag show performances or events like library drag story time. I’m not saying that there aren’t individual abusers who are Transgender or drag performers. But, identifying a whole community or all performers as “groomers” reveals a profound misunderstanding of this tool of abuse, the Transgender community, and drag as entertainment. It also reveals your implicit rejection of an entire people group as divine image bearers and a willful refusal to understand the issue in a nuanced way.

Real Grooming

  Alternatively, we do see, in the previously mentioned examples, literal and rampant grooming and sexual abuse within the Church. We see Christian leaders and pastors, typically straight white men, building trusting relationships and then perpetrating horrible abuse. While 700 pastors over 20 years may not seem like a lot, this is one report pertaining to one denomination and doesn’t consider the over 400,000 clergies in America. It also does not account for the statistically significant 63% of abuse cases that go unreported.

That means, considering those 700 cases, more than 1,200 other cases potentially went unreported to the SBC. Those numbers don’t even account for other denominations that have both reported and unreported cases (think of the Catholic church, Presbyterian Church, Mennonite Church, LDS, or the 30,000 other denominations that exist). This also ignores that other pastors may have been aware of the abuse and did nothing. That knowledge and failure to act automatically make them complicit in the abuse. It also doesn’t account for additional victims who may never come forward. And this only considers sexual abuse and rape.

Calling All Pastors

To be clear, I’m not only, or even primarily, addressing sexual abuse in the church. I want to speak more broadly to other, sometimes less obvious, spiritual abuse and harm that causes religious trauma. This includes the seemingly harmless, and often presented as good, teachings about authority and submission. Often these teachings bare many of the same elements and results as grooming. For this series of posts, I’ll refer to these teachings and the culture they produce as spiritual grooming. Additionally, we’ll define spiritual abuse and harm as “when someone uses spiritual or religious beliefs to hurt, scare or control another person.”  

Because abuse within the Church is serious and widespread, we need to understand the problem in a nuanced way. We also need to find ways to take urgent action. The Guidepost Solutions report makes clear that Christian leaders can no longer dismiss the prevalence of abuse within the Church. Pastors must understand how the implicit trust connected to their position creates fertile ground for abuse and harm. In realizing this, they must reconsider how and what they are teaching regarding topics like authority and submission. In the following accompanying blog posts, we’ll explore the issue deeper and consider some ways forward.

This is part three in a three-part series on spiritual grooming, harm, and abuse. You can read parts two HERE and three HERE.