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February 24th 2010 | 3

The size of the scandal

Sensationalist news stories have become less and less shocking. It seems there’s always one scandal or another in the news, whether it be a celebrity (such as the Tiger Woods fiasco) or a politician (Mark Sanford and his Argentinian mistress springs to mind) or a church leader (Ted Haggard’s homosexual propositioning). Certainly these are head-shaking moments, but not earth-shattering ones.

At this point, after years of scandalous indiscretion making the news, another “breaking news” revelation about some hypocritical action hardly ruffles my feathers. But perhaps it should.

I’m not saying that I’m going to pull out my Uncle-Sam finger to point out impropriety, charging down the street with a moral high-ground attitude; nor do I aspire to be incapacitated by outrage with every breaking news scandal.

But I am thinking that there’s a healthy level of indignation to be had - not to revel in my own superiority, but rather to learn to recognize moral corruption. After all, there are a lot of stories out there that never hit the level of high scandal, but still reek of indiscretion and impropriety.

As an example, I would suggest we look no further than scandal within the Christian church.

Here we can clearly see instances to illustrate the discrepancy between professed statements of belief and actions - from priests molesting children to evangelical pastors being caught in adultery. The most well-known examples are the televangelists that are surrounded by high scandal, caught in the midst of sexual and monetary indiscretion. After years of tax fraud, misappropriated funds and adultery, it hardly seems surprising when another church-leader scandal hits the headlines - from Jim Bakker to Jimmy Swaggart to Ted Haggard. Their scandals explode because of their inflated church-celebrity status.

But what about those stories that never hit the front page, that slip through the news in the back pages? It’s not just the big league church leaders that should cause high scandal. One of the most disturbing patterns of misconduct can be found in the figure of the youth pastor, those leaders entrusted with the care and spiritual development of burgeoning adults.

Dan Savage, activist, writer and sex-advice columnist, tracks these news stories on his blog, under the heading “Youth Pastor Watch.” Drawing from the beach convention to hang a “Shark Attack Watch” sign when there are known attacks in the water, Savage posts any stories he finds in the news that concern youth pastors being accused or indicted of molestation, sexual assault or violation of trust.

Savage lists dozens of stories from the past year. Here’s a brief sampling:

- One youth counsellor / minister from Connecticut is accused of having sexually abused several young men. Troy Grant insisted, however, that he was not gay and was saving himself for marriage, saying, “[It] was more a release for me, because I am engaged to a woman I have not been sexual with yet … We are getting married in August of 2010, and I do not want to have sex before marriage.” Grant is a minister and former executive director of a program for at-risk youth.

- A youth minister from Virginia was indicted on charges that she had sexual relations with a 15-year-old boy - 10 counts of taking indecent liberties with a child and 10 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Jennifer Michelle Brennan, 36, met the boy through her position as a youth minister. Apparently, the boy’s mother said that Brennan had counselled her son and his girlfriend against premarital sex.

- Former youth minister Adrian Estrada is currently on death row in Texas for killing a teenage church member who was pregnant with his baby. Subsequently, two more teens have come forward and accused Estrada of raping them. When these allegations were brought to church leaders, no action was taken. Currently, one of these girls is suing the church and the lead pastor for their complicity.

- Indiana youth pastor Jonathan James Hartman was arrested in April 2009 and charged with molesting three girls under the age of 15, impregnating one of them and pressuring her to get an abortion. Even though he has not been convicted and his trial is still pending, Hartman made headlines again when he tried to hire a hit man to kill the three teenage girls with whom he was accused of having sex, and to kill the child of one of the victims (which he believed to be his).

These stories should produce outrage: they are not only scandalous but morally reprehensible. Yet they don’t make headlines like Tiger Woods or Ted Haggard, despite the magnitude of the offenses. It shouldn’t just be the fame of the celebrity that dictates the level of scandal.

The prevalence of these occurrences should be scandalous in itself. The frequency with which youth pastor violations occur should be recognized and the imagined cloud of safety that surrounds the trustworthy figure of the youth pastor should be dispelled.

Of course I’m not saying that every youth pastor is a molester or sexual predator - please do not mistake that. But I am saying that the atmosphere of silence that surrounds occurrences of youth pastor sexual misconduct should be shattered, if for no other reason than how often it occurs. It is a false notion that a youth pastor should be trusted simply because of what he/she claims to believe.

In this instance, silence itself is what’s scandalous.

Check out Youth Pastor Watch by going to www.thestranger.com and entering “Youth Pastor Watch” in the “Search” field.

Discussion

It seems you have a higher expectation of the Christian Church than that of any other institution. Your “indignation” should not just be reserved for youth pastor molesters, but also for the middle manager, Teacher, Counselor or any other authoritative figure who abuses their position. Christianity does not hold a monopoly on morally bankrupt hypocrites.

– Jebus32 in Winnipeg | February 25th 2010 at 3:26pm | Link
I was not intending to suggest that Christianity maintains any monopoly on morally bankrupt hypocrites - certainly they exist across the spectrum of public and private institutions. Their abuses and indiscretions are just as scandalous. But the reason I find moral scandal so fascinating in the Christian church - and the reason I chose it as my example in this blog - is because of how vehemently they denounce such corruption (and even more so as ministers of the “one true faith” to children!). It is fascinating that in the specific youth pastor examples, the minister in question tries to distance him- or herself from their mistake, either through justification (“It was a release for me” and because I’m not gay, it wasn’t sex) or murder (trying to obfuscate their indiscretion through eliminating the victim of it); this only serves to exaggerate their level of hypocrisy and guilt, and undermine their understanding of how they’ve damaged a child, an institution, and even their own moral beliefs. The discrepancy between what the youth pastor professes to believe and how their actions betray their belief seems, to my mind, to epitomize scandal - not to mention the massive rate of occurrence with which these youth pastor violations occur.

Again, this is not to say that a teacher, a counselor, a manager, or any other authoritative figure who abuses their position is not also scandalous. My “indignation” crosses the board.

– Chris Campbell | February 25th 2010 at 4:26pm | Link
So then, in your opinion, moral repugnance is on a sliding scale depending on how much you declare your moral supremacy? The pastor is held to a higher standard than the counselor, the drug addict to a lower standard than the average Joe? Also, all child abusers try and justify their position, you would be hard pressed to find one who thinks they are doing wrong, but just do it anyways. I am also willing to guess that the occurrence of child abuse within the walls of the church is no higher than that outside of it (80% of sexual abuse happens in the family: http://www.safekidsbc.ca/statistics.htm ), but because similar to you, people have higher expectations of the church it is far more news worthy. I find it quite interesting because your blog is about moralizing; you are taking a moral position against what you see as wrong (and I might add that I totally agree with you) but have chosen a figure that you obviously expect more from. I guess all I am saying is, is that expectation fair? If the world were made up of people who had no and preached no morality would that make child abuse less scandalous?

– Jebus32 in Winnipeg | February 26th 2010 at 10:28am | Link