Pastors need more harassment, abuse training, study finds
Some seminaries don’t address issue in their curricula.
If the Catholic priest sexabuse scandal has taught Americans anything, it’s that “abuse and harassment don’t end at the front door of the church.”
At least that’s how Jenna Barnett described the findings of a new survey done by her social-justice group Sojourners and others on the attitudes and practices of Protestant pastors in addressing domestic and sexual violence from the pulpit.
The Southern Baptists’ Lifeway Research and IMA World Health, an interfaith health agency, also were partners in the survey released recently.
More pastors recognize abuse and harassment as a problem than did those in a similar survey done in 2014. Yet, even with advancements since the #MeToo movement, more work needs to be done, said Barnett, Women and Girls Campaign coordinator for Sojourners, which examines the intersection of faith, politics and culture.
“Almost every single pastor we surveyed has encountered domestic or sexual violence through their work,” she said during a recent Columbus gathering of the Religion News Association, a trade association for religion journalists. “Yet only 45 percent indicated that seminary prepared them to respond.
“If 90 percent will encounter it, why aren’t 100 percent trained?”
Many Ohio seminaries said they address these topics with their students. But the national accrediting body for theological institutions, the Association of Theological Schools, said its standards currently don’t require schools to address domestic and sexual violence in their curriculum.
“It’s a timely topic and one that our graduates will likely encounter in their ministries,” said Eliza Smith Brown, the association’s spokeswoman, in an email. She said the group’s next set of the accreditation standards might address the topic when they’re revised.
Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, which is associated with the Church of God, has addressed these topics with students for years, said Bruce Coats, vice president of academic advancement.
“We address issues of gender and sexuality in multiple courses,” said Coats, who was an Assembly of God pastor for 20 years. “It’s important to at least gain a level of comfort for pastors discussing the issue.”
Coats said he was aware of parishioners dealing with sexual and domestic violence when he was a pastor. In addition to speaking to them individually, he talked from the pulpit about his — and God’s — availability to help in any situation.
“When you address such subjects and you watch people in the congregation, you clearly can recognize the open wounds for some people,” Coats said. “I wanted to let them know if they’re wounded, we can talk privately.”
Barnett said preaching on the topic alone isn’t enough, though it does “gesture to an open door.”
Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital University in Bexley requires students to take a course called “Boundaries and Healthy Relationships,” which addresses personal boundaries between clergy and congregants, said the Rev. Kathryn “Kit” Kleinhans.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America requires seminaries to provide training, and some regions of the church require also training on the boundaries every three years, said Kleinhans, Trinity’s dean, in an email.
The Rev. Beth Staten, pastor at Zion United Church of Christ in Delaware, said she feels her time in seminary prepared her to address domestic and sexual violence from the pulpit and in oneon-one sessions.
Seminary “taught me how to interpret the Bible, how to connect it to what’s happening in the world and ... to not tiptoe around difficult issues,” said Staten, who graduated from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio in Delaware in May 2017 and has been a pastor at Zion for a year. “We talked about it in our pastoral care classes with the distinction that pastors are not licensed counselors, we’re more like spiritual friends.”
Still, more pastors are addressing the topic than were four years ago. The study found that 77 percent of pastors speak to their church about domestic or sexual violence at least once a year or more and 51 percent talk to their church about it several times a year, compared with 34 percent in 2014.
“Many Christians are breaking the silence on domestic violence,” Barnett said.