Thoughts on Powerlessness

Mickey and I have experienced a range of emotions these last 6 months.  Anger.  Grief.  Hopelessness.  Betrayal.  Despair.  One of the hardest emotions for me to handle has been the feeling of powerlessness.  I am powerless to stop the harm at Bethlehem.  I am powerless to heal people's wounds.  I am powerless to make people look at evidence.  I am powerless to persuade people that there is a problem. 

Ways I'm Coping

It's been a painful season. Here are some things that are helping me through it.

1. Psalms 

There's Just One Bucket

I had a helpful conversation with a friend who connected two things I had thought were totally separate.  As Mickey and I have waded through all the issues at Bethlehem, I've been trying hard to keep 2 groups of issues separate.  I've mentally sorted them into 2 buckets, which I'll call "culture wars" and "problematic behavior."  The culture wars bucket includes things like people's views on gender and race, who they voted for, views on Covid, etc.  The problematic behavior bucket includes things like misuse of power, misuse of authority, domineering, cover-up, and deception.

An attempted apology about BBC's NDA lie

In a surprising turn, the two separate posts I made recently have intersected.  I had posted about Ken Currie's lies about there being not even a mention of NDAs at Bethlehem.  I had also posted some reflections about harm, apologies, and forgiveness.  

In response to Janette Takata's initial post about Ken Currie's lie, he emailed her an apology.  You can see on the link her rationale for posting it, as well as get a sense of Steve's reception of the apology with his answer.  Below is Ken's apology with some of my own reflections: 

NDAs at Bethlehem

*NDA - Non-Disclosure/Disparagement Agreement, used in some contexts to silence unhappy employees by promising severance in exchange for silence, an extremely harmful practice.  

When we sat down with two elders to discuss our letter prior to making it public (we had sent it to the elders 6 weeks before we went public with it), one of them observed that it appeared that we were claiming that since what we saw was so concerning, it must have meant there was worse elsewhere.  We said that yes, that was one of our fears - it felt like the church was this dark room and we were trying to shine our flashlight on something we saw was concerning and were pleading for them to "turn on the lights" (have an outside investigation).  That elder reassured us that there wasn't worse on other walls (to take the dark room analogy), implying even though things looked concerning, things were fine.  

"But I Know This Person"

An elder said something at one of the smaller Bethlehem Q&As last summer, and we've been reflecting on it.  At the start of the meeting the elders shared a few prepared statements in order to clarify some things from the 7/11 Q&A that appeared concerning.  Afterward, someone approached Elder X and said something like, "I heard the statement, but what really happened there [on 7/11] was he lied.  He lied."  Elder X reassured her (as best we can remember), "I know Elder Y.  If he thought that he had lied, he would repent for it."

Harm, apologies, and forgiveness

This post is prompted by the interactions recounted by the Julie Roys podcast What Happened at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Part 2) as well as Julie Roys' Opinion: Bethlehem Baptist, Apologies and “Unintentional Sin”.  Of particular note is the linked transcript of Dr. Naselli's apology to the Takatas in the opinion piece.  Excerpts from the apology are played in the podcast so you can get a sense of Dr. Naselli's intonation and context.  Frankly, I found his apology frustrating and disappointing, very much not in keeping with what I would expect out of an apology from a professor at seminary and an elder of Bethlehem.  Unfortunately, this type of non-apology has sadly become commonplace at Bethlehem.  I could name multiple examples I've seen from the past year.  For another public one, see Pastor Kenny's "apology" to Julie Roys.  

Reflections on Where the Light Fell by Yancey

I recently read a book that I really appreciated, Where the Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey.  It is a recounting of his experience growing up in a fundamentalist upbringing, raised by a single mom (pastor husband died when Yancey was 1), who swore that her children would become missionaries (that was a very damaging promise).  She dedicated her life to ministry, teaching the Bible, raising her children, protecting them from temptations and the dangers in the culture, all the while seeing/feeling the increasing distance and hostility from her sons towards God while she tries to control them.  It feels similar to the stories of Educated by Tara Westover or Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, except it's a picture from a fundamentalist upbringing and the hope at the end is God and grace.