Dear Care & Feeding: CHURCH DRAMA

[minoanmiss]

How Will My Family Get Past This Scandal?

Our family has been members of a large church for many years now. My kids loved the children’s ministry and now happily attend youth group, which is both surprising and delightful to my husband and me. (We have been pretty careful about not forcing anything upon our kids religion-wise so we’re happy they have taken a liking to church.) It almost felt too good to be true as I talked with other moms whose kids boycotted church altogether.

Well…the other shoe has dropped. It just came to light that the lead pastor of our church, who if I’m being honest has a bit of a cult of personality around him, was having an extramarital affair and resigned in disgrace. The church has been thrown for a lurch. There’s a lot of intrigue and drama, with nearly every church event (both formal and informal) spent discussing the situation.

My kids have both become withdrawn and seem pretty sad. I was able to talk to my oldest (16) who said he felt like the pastor was hypocritical after all those years of preaching holiness and purity. My youngest (14) won’t talk to me about it. I can tell they’re upset over what happened, and I’m not exactly sure whether it’s being handled appropriately in youth group. Yesterday my youngest asked if we would even be going to church anymore. Obviously my husband and I are sad over the situation too, and we don’t really know what to do about this or how to help our kids navigate their sadness. What can we do?

— Sad in the South

Dear Sad in the South,

This is such a challenging experience you’re facing as a family. It’s great that you’ve been open to frank discussion with your kids about what’s happened, and I’m glad that your son has felt comfortable expressing his feelings about the situation. Your daughter’s response to the issue is also very understandable. An institution in which both children placed a great deal of trust and found a sense of community and belonging has now become a site of betrayal and confusion. That can be overwhelming, and it may be difficult for your daughter to find the words.

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Crisis counseling may be a good idea for both kids, but not via any resource your current church is offering. It would be best for your family to discuss this with an objective professional. You’ve mentioned your concern about how the pastor’s indiscretion is being handled in the youth group your kids have been attending. It may be best for them to sit those classes out until you’ve gotten a better sense of what they’re being told there.

While you and your husband are taking a step back to address your children’s emotional needs, also ask yourselves some big-picture questions. Do you still want to attend this church, specifically? If so, what would need to happen there for you both to consider it a safe space to attend again? Do you still want to attend church in general? Sometimes, faith can be shaken enough by a scandal like this one for families to reconsider church attendance altogether. It’s okay to consider that option, but it may also be good for your kids to see that every church is different and not every faith leader finds themselves embroiled in scandal. Withdrawal from an entire institution based on a hurtful experience with one may not be the healthiest action to model right now.

If you do decide to continue attending a church, ask your kids what they loved most about their children’s and youth groups at your current place of worship? What would be important for them to have access to at any new church you may attend? If you’re looking into new churches to visit, make them as much a part of the selection process as possible, since it sounds like they were experiencing some benefits of attendance that even you and your husband were not. Best wishes to you all as you navigate this together.

Comments

[movingfinger]

In all seriousness, this is a good moment for the parents to have a conversation about how knowing what is right and wrong is not based in an institution (like the church), but in ourselves. The church doesn't have an exclusive on morality.

If the pastor's scandal is dominating the church's conversations right now, it is human but maaaybe they could try to move on from that? Unless this is taking the form of a broader examination of assumptions about the role of the church, it sounds both corrosive and prurient.

Finally, parents should know what is going on in youth group! Always! If the youth group leaders aren't open to giving a full account of the conversations there, take a break.

[xenacryst]

Finally, parents should know what is going on in youth group! Always! If the youth group leaders aren't open to giving a full account of the conversations there, take a break.

Especially if the community has had a scandal like this.

[melannen]

This is all good advice! I think it's also a good idea to talk about cults of personality and charismatic leaders and the dangers of putting your faith in a powerful person instead of an ideal, a community, or a reciprocal relationship.

I come from a church community where pastors fucking up and resigning or retiring or getting kicked out is, while not normal, something that happens. And it's a scandal and it's super disruptive but it's not a crisis of faith because 'pastors are people who fuck up too, and you shouldn't idolize them' is also built into the community. And that's something that's really important to teach kids young.

[ekaterinn]

And it's a scandal and it's super disruptive but it's not a crisis of faith because 'pastors are people who fuck up too, and you shouldn't idolize them' is also built into the community. And that's something that's really important to teach kids young.

This exactly! I am kind of side-eyeing that the pastor was apparently all about purity - that's exactly what you DON'T want to teach kids, as pretty much everyone fails in a purity culture. I echo the columnist in suggesting looking at other churches where people are expected to be human or maybe just taking a break from church.

[melannen]

Yeah like, if your pastor's message is "You should all strive to be pure and perfect like me, and take my every word as gospel, for if you fuck up you go to hell" then him having an affair with a parishioner is a different problem than if your pastor's message is "all humans sin and fail but we should strive to be the good people God wants us to be".

The first one it's a crisis of faith for the whole church, the second one it's professional malpractice.

(also if it's the first one, find a new church, red flags everywhere anyway.)

[ekaterinn]

Yep. Also, wanna bet that the church was anti-LGBTQ? That usually goes along with purity culture. Another good reason to leave, especially since the kids are at ages where they are thinking a lot about their sexuality.

[melannen]

I have known of theoretically-LGBTQ positive churches that also got personality cults around the pastor, it's not immunizing (and even if it was Bay Area super-liberal church that was okay with open relationships and poly, the pastor being involved in cheating would still be a scandal.)

After all, there are plenty of LGBTQ people on the internet who are sure into purity culture!!

But you're right that this really doesn't give off that vibe.

[conuly]

Yeah, but purity culture + personality cult go together like toxic + waste. Almost can't have one without the other.

[ekaterinn]

True dat!

[castiron]

This. One of the pastors at the church I attended as a kid ran off with the wife of one of the church members (who was also a neighbor; Mom said later that she'd seen them walking around the neighborhood and went "hmmm"). It didn't affect my religious beliefs at all, because we weren't taught that a church pastor was a demigod.

[cereta]

Finally, parents should know what is going on in youth group! Always! If the youth group leaders aren't open to giving a full account of the conversations there, take a break.

Yah, this gives Catholic me the wiggins, especially when we had a pastor who was, to say the least, a little too involved with the kids in the parish school (he is gone, thank goodness, and boy howdy did we inoculate the then-small fanperson against the slightest hint of inappropriate behavior, but, well, yes).