Church gatherings

The word sanctuary evokes a sense of safety. We think of the bird sanctuaries, the fish sanctuaries, and all of the other ones where the animals are safe from predation. What we mean to say about these sanctuaries is that we try our best to keep them safe from human predators. The animals that gather in these sanctuaries are not safe from all predators. The birds continue to prey on fish, the fish prey on each other, as do the land animals.

A lot of churches call their main gathering space a sanctuary. Some are sanctuary churches where people may go to escape a powerful government that wants to send them back to very unsafe places.
We dearly want to feel safe. Those that have been victimized, those that are survivors, dearly want a place where we can let our guard down. We all need that place.

Rationally, we only need to read the news to know that churches aren’t immune or separated from the world. That clergy and parishioners are people and that they can and do sexually assault each other.

Often, people speak from their own experience. Male clergy that have only supported women survivors/victims of sexual assault by male perpetrators will use language that excludes male victims/survivors and female perpetrators. (I conjoin these two words survivor and victim because of a recent discussion that pointed out that there isn’t a switch thrown that transforms a victim to survivor – that both can and do co-exist in the same person) These clergy may not be aware that they further isolate, and in some sense re-victimize survivor/victims who identify as male.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, churches used only male pronouns to refer to God. By not including the broad spectrum of human genders, those that identify as not male were excluded from the divine representation. Some church denominations have worked hard on their language. If there is a God, and we are created in their image, simply standing on a street corner and viewing those that pass by should be enough to show that God cannot exist as one tiny segment of the human experience.

Raise the awareness, people. Any gender can be a perpetrator of sexual assault, and any gender can be a survivor/victim. Our language must be expansive in order to acknowledge, support and care for all people. As I said, if we don’t do this, we further stigmatize and isolate those that already feel isolated.

Peace and Love,
Harold