When Fabian Beck volunteered to assist with the youngsters’s ministry at his small evangelical church on the outskirts of Hanover, Germany, he imagined he’d be singing songs, telling Bible stories, and performing puppet shows.
He had no idea what he could do to guard Sunday school children from the potential of sexual abuse. As he prepared to hitch the team, nonetheless, he got here across resources provided by the Federation of Free Evangelical Churches (FeG) with regards to violence against children and adolescents within the context of Christian communities like his own.
“Believers must face the indisputable fact that our congregations usually are not secure simply because they’re stuffed with Christians,” Beck said. “Safe places for youths don’t come naturally, and too often, we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Andreas Schlüter, the FeG’s federal secretary for the young generation, said the program Beck is using, “Protect and Accompany,” is an element a much larger trend amongst free churches organizing against abuse. Evangelical churches are developing programs to face the fact of sexual abuse and in search of to forestall it from happening in the long run.
“I do know that in Germany, every free church is actively tackling the difficulty,” he said. “Free evangelical congregations needs to be, or turn into, secure places for youngsters and young people.”
In recent years, child sex abuse cases have been extensively reported across multiple Roman Catholic dioceses in Europe. Spurred by these revelations, Catholics have taken steps in France, Portugal, Germany, and Italy to forestall abuse. Pope Francis, for instance, removed the choice for pontifical secrecy from cases involving the mistreatment of minors or other vulnerable individuals.
Myriam Letzel, coordinator for the French evangelical organization Stop Abus, said that the Catholic church in France’s groundbreaking investigations into clerical abuse (the so-called “Sauvé report”) not only highlighted the systemic nature of sexual violence but in addition put evangelicals on notice about dynamics of their churches that may also result in inappropriate and illegal behavior. The conversations around #ChurchToo and revelations of widespread abuse amongst Southern Baptists within the United States have also led European evangelicals to reckon with the actual fact their churches usually are not immune.
“We must query ourselves on the theological bases which have, previously, favored inappropriate sexual behavior: a misunderstanding of the connection between men and ladies and a distorted relationship to sexuality,” Letzel said.
In September 2022, the National Council of Evangelicals of France (CNEF) began Stop Abus. It is run by a commission of 10 experts within the fields of social work, psychology, medicine, law, and pastoral care. The organization also has a listening service with a team of 35 “listeners” who receive abuse reports. In its first six months, Stop Abus received 15 disclosures which are now being processed.
Letzel said that is just step one.
“What was happening elsewhere served as a warning: We couldn’t pretend that such things didn’t exist in evangelical Protestant churches, and above all we didn’t need to pretend that they didn’t exist,” she said. “The mission entrusted to us by Christ obliges us: As Christians we now have an obligation to be exemplary in our conduct and in our way of caring for probably the most vulnerable.”
One of the church networks belonging to the CNEF, the Réseau-FEF, informed members and partners at the top of March that it could “neither recognize nor support any ministry” by one pastor, who has been accused of abuse by six women, two of whom went to the police. This is a primary for French evangelicals. The pastor had a large influence in French-speaking evangelical circles, especially online.
Other evangelical groups in Europe have launched similar efforts. In Switzerland, under the umbrella of the Swiss Evangelical Alliance, some 60 Christian groups and organizations put standards in place for workers and began crisis intervention teams alongside local church prevention programs. Among these organizations, the Fédération romande d’Eglises évangéliques (FREE) promoted online resources to assist prevent abuse, including guidelines for Sunday school teachers.
The German Evangelical Alliance (EAD) has had a so-called “clearing house” for abuse cases in evangelical congregations in Germany for several years now. To equip churches of their association, they turn to groups just like the White Cross (Weißes Kreuz), a Protestant organization that advises institutions and individuals on issues related to sex and sexuality. Ute Buth, a gynecologist and sexual counselor who has worked with the White Cross for 15 years, said the organization’s first task is to assist churches turn into more aware of how their environments can provide fertile ground for abuse.
Buth said there aren’t any reliable statistics on the prevalence of abuse amongst Europe’s evangelicals. But mainline Protestants in Europe, including Germany’s national Protestant church, have similar concerns about sexualized violence of their congregations and created a forum and dealing groups to deal with the difficulty in June 2022.
Some, nonetheless, think evangelical Christians could also be especially vulnerable—and should even draw sexual predators.
Christian Rommert, a public theologian and former host of the favored Christian television program Wort zum Sonntag (Word on Sunday), told Germany’s largest public-radio broadcaster that free churches’ emphasis on trust and obedience, close physical contact, and conservative sexual morality create an environment where sexual abuse can thrive.
“In the free church context, everyone trusts everyone. No one expects the opposite to do anything bad,” he said. “The topic of sexuality continues to be something that continues to be somewhat taboo within the church context. Because you mix fear with it, you possibly can’t speak about it openly. And unfortunately, there are also churches during which the ability gap between man and woman is cultivated. And such power disparities are all the time uncertainty aspects.”
Buth said that evangelical opposition to working with White Cross on problems with sexual abuse has declined, though, as people have turn into more aware of the widespread problems and switch their attention to prevention. The White Cross doesn’t make accusations against churches but provides training.
“If you don’t have a great strategy on this stuff, structures allow children and even adults to be abused,” she said. “That’s a heavy price to pay for the Christian faith.”
Buth first guides churches through a risk evaluation to assist them understand what makes churches vulnerable.
“It’s concerning the atmosphere,” Buth said. “Do you give preference to 1 gender? What is the speech you utilize? Are there sexualized jokes? Is your leadership very hierarchical? That’s where the perpetrators start, profiting from the cultures and customs your church has already created.”
At the top of coaching, Buth said, congregations do a self-analysis before developing a recent Schutzkonzept—or “protection concept”—that involves safety guidelines and reporting mechanisms. German laws, passed in 2010, stipulate that each organization that works with children, including churches, should have a protection plan in place.
Having a plan allayed Beck’s fear as he became a children’s minister in Hanover.
“It’s an enormous relief to have a system in place,” he said. “Now our church is aware of the issue, and we all know what to do.”
