A Calling to Actively Seek Peace: The Church and Sexual Harassment – by Kerri Allen

It has been over a decade, but I still recall walking through the airport to return to seminary following my nephew’s murder and funeral and encountering a man who commanded me to ‘smile.’  I looked him dead in the eye and said, “My nephew was murdered; I don’t feel like smiling.”  My painful statement wiped the smirk off his face, but I have always been angry that I felt required to expose the depths of my pain to a stranger in order to mitigate a potential confrontation.

For some, this may seem like an innocuous event, but for me, it is part and parcel of a disgusting ethos that is ingrained in the whole of our United States society.  It’s about power and control over women’s bodies, as society teaches men that women are here for the male gaze, the pleasure and entertainment of men.  Even as we walk about in our daily lives, we are expected to perform girl- or womanhood to make boys and men feel good without regard for how we feel in return.  And, for Black girls and women, this expectation owns its colonizing roots in slavery when our bodies were property for pleasure and reproduction.  As much as things have changed, there remains too much that has stayed the same.

The naïve, or worse yet, the intentionally ignorant, attempt to divorce the historical treatment of women with the contemporary issues of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and sexual violence against women.  This serves the purpose of maintaining women as invisible participants in this ongoing violence against our bodies, spirits, and psyches.  And, as a Christian, I believe this is a sinful act of both individuals and institutions.  It calls for the act of confession and repentance that provides the opportunity for redemption, for change, for new life and opportunity.

Last October, as the #metoo movement took off, I was skeptical of how far the movement would reach.  In particular, as one who has spent my adult life with careers in both politics and the church, I have witnessed time and again how idolatrous and intoxicating power halts progress.  In both church and government, I have seen and experienced men who have spent their lifetimes believing in a sense of entitlement to women’s bodies. When that is mixed with the authority that comes with religious or political leadership, the consequences can have a devastating ripple effect.

Having worked in politics in Minnesota, I witnessed the painful personal consequences of this when accusations again Al Franken arose last fall.  Although there is evidence that Franken was politically targeted, he also confessed to incidents of harassment.  The Franken story articulates that #metoo perpetrators are not limited to the “bad guys.”  It’s not just the creepy men you never want to be alone with, the guys pulling out their penises in public places, the Donald Trumps, Clarence Thomases, or Matt Lauers that are capable of various levels of provocation.  It’s also the men who believe in women’s rights, the guy who took his daughter to the Women’s March, the guy who loves and respects his pastor or Rabbi who is a woman.  Too often, we assume that people who have particular religious or political ideologies are immune from the very behaviors they abhor.  Yet, every day, there are “good guys” who are so enculturated in an assumption that it is okay and even expected to treat women as sexual objects that they, like Al Franken, are engaged in cognitive dissonance.

What do we do when the man is one of the ‘good guys’?

As I watched feminists come to Franken’s defense, I remembered that I am a womanist and not a feminist.   I read as one feminist friend after another listed the excuses for the ‘good guys,’ often based on the particular wants and needs of specific victims.  I was reminded of Alice Walker’s definition of womanism that includes being “Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.” I wondered how we weigh the needs and desires of a specific individual against seeking wholeness for a whole community when those things don’t match?

In the church, most mainline denominations have a process for reporting abuse by clergy.  Even though we have seen the horrifying repercussions of coverups, minimizations, and corruption over decades in the Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism is loathe to revisit outdated policies that would put women and children ahead of influential clergy.  In inaction, the church remains complicit, and in willful disregard and failure to hear the voices of women long silenced, the church is actively engaged in sinful violence against women.  It’s unacceptable.

We have a responsibility and a moral obligation to actively seek peace.  Peace as in shalom, wholeness, the completeness that God desires for all creation.

While receiving the National Book Award, Toni Morrison offered wisdom that the church should receive when she said, “There is a certain kind of peace that is not merely the absence of war. It is larger than that. The peace I am thinking of is not at the mercy of history’s rule, nor is it a passive surrender to the status quo… Accessible as it is, this particular kind of peace warrants vigilance.”  My prayer is that we stand in contrast to the status quo and vigilantly seek shalom.

The Rev. Kerri N. Allen is a womanist and Reformed theologian, PhD student, and hospice chaplain. In 2010, Kerri moved to Chicagoland to serve as a Lilly Pastoral Resident at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.  Prior to responding to a call in ministry, Kerri had a first career in politics, serving as a political appointee at multiple levels of government, including serving asa legislative assistant in the United States Senate with an expertise in healthcare policy. Now, as a student of theology and ethics at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, under the tutelage of Dr. Stephen G. Ray. Kerri uses her diverse experiences to focus on Black women’s healthcare, focusing on inequities and structural sin. Kerri’s theological interest focuses on developing a liberative, Reformed, and womanist doctrine of election. Originally from St. Paul, MN, when Kerri is not buried in a book or writing a paper, she enjoys hiking, travel, watching sports, cooking or spending time with one of her many nieces or nephews.