Believers leave over churches’ responses to scandal

“I’m leaving Christianity. I’m done.”

I’ve heard this from friends, relatives, readers of my books, members of my congregation and from surprising numbers of clergy. When I ask them why they’re leaving, their reasons vary, but this reason ranks near the top: “I can’t take the institutionalism.”

By “institutionalism,” they mean that a certain kind of religious professional has driven them away. I call them religious company men: those more loyal to the institution and officials in the hierarchy above them than they are to their neighbors, including their parishioners.

The 13 million-member Southern Baptist Convention has a strong network of these loyal company men, and they did a cannonball into the headlines.

A third-party investigation into Southern Baptist sexual abuse released a report on May 22 that found that church executives “closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits … and were singularly focused on avoiding liability.” Consequently, “survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored.”

In short, too many Southern Baptist executives behaved exactly as too many Roman Catholic bishops did in recent decades.

When Catholics told the hierarchy that their clergy were committing sexual abuse, the leaders were more concerned about damage to “the brand” than they were damage to the victims.

Faith communities are by nature networks of minds working under a shared influence. For good or ill they operate in league with our bias toward belonging. We often entrust the leaders of our in-group with the passcodes to very sensitive regions of our brains.

Sex is a powerful way to gain and wield control over someone who has a need to belong. It is a weapon to