“Now, it is undeniably true that some of the more fundamentalist forms of Christianity— Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox— can do serious psychological and emotional damage to people… It’s wrong for Christians (or Jews, Muslims, and any other religious believer) to be so defensive about attacks on our faith that we deny that people within the religion can use its teachings to psychologically abuse others. But we should be very wary of attempts to pathologize all orthodox religious belief.”
Rod Dreher, “Christophobia is Real” in The American Conservative (February 8, 2019). https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/christophobia-is-real/
A friend who grew up in a similar cult-like environment to the one I was raised in was taken out of figure skating lessons just when she started to get the hang of it. The reason? She was required to wear figure-skating costumes! Even when her instructor explained to her parents that she couldn’t wear an ankle-length skirt for safety reasons, it didn’t matter. She was forced to stop and this crushed her spirit. As you can imagine, those watching from the outside thought this was nonsense and were deeply concerned. My friend said she wasn’t even allowed to play sports (even on the homeschool teams) because of the uniforms she’d have to wear. Even baggy sleeveless jerseys and loose knee-length shorts were still too immodest!
It’s no surprise given the myriad of ridiculous stories like this why some choose to write off the Church and Christianity altogether. And this brings up a fair question related to cult-like places or the Church as a whole: Should a movement be judged by its abuses?” I first heard Dr. Ravi Zacharias speak to this question during a talk he gave at Harvard University defending the Christian faith. He said, “Don’t judge a movement by its abuses” and applied it to some of Christianity’s most appalling abuses like the Crusades, Salem witch trials, and racial bigotry and slavery. His point? Don’t judge the person and message of Christ, or the center of a good, great, and vast movement by its aberrations or ugliest moments. Put simply, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
For example, in recent years, I’ve enjoyed Blue Bloods, the award-winning TV show that gives a fictional and inviting vision of Irish Catholicism played out in a family of police officers. Conversely, the Oscar-winning film Spotlight gives a factual and repulsive account of the widespread child sex abuse by numerous Roman Catholic priests in the Boston area. What are we to think of these disparities? Again, I think Dr. Zacharias’ wisdom applies: don’t judge a movement (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church as a whole) by its abuses. Analogously, just because counterfeit money exists doesn’t mean we stop using currency. Leo Tolstoy made a similar point, applying a “don’t judge a movement by its’ abuses” logic to his own seriously flawed example as a Christian:
“Attack me, I do this myself, but attack me rather than the path I follow and which I point out to anyone who asks me where I think it lies. If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side?”[1]
Yet, what did Jesus say? “You will recognize them by their fruits.”[2] When Jesus said “fruits,” he was talking about both the actions of a particular teacher and the legacy that teacher leaves in the lives of his or her followers. How do his words apply to “don’t judge a movement by its abuses”? Honestly, like so many things Jesus said, they call for nuance as the “abuses” in question could be one of four areas:
- “Heresies”[3] — False Teachings that become movements with their associated leader or “heretic.” This is “the fringe of the fringe” of a movement like Westboro Baptist Church or the church I grew up in.
- Times when the global church has missed the boat—Think back to the church’s initial response to Galileo and Copernicus’ heliocentric view of the known universe.[4] Or think of many of the church’s current responses to evolution or related findings from the Human Genome Project.
- Flawed individual examples who are nevertheless honest—like Tolstoy. We all have our sins and thankfully there is still hope for our rebel hearts when we look to Christ in faith and repentance. In Isaiah 30:1-17, God’s people forsake him for a false salvation and what do we find in 18a? “Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.”
- Blatant misrepresentation and hypocrisy—the pedophile-priests in the movie Spotlight provide clear examples of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Although this category must sometimes be combined with “heresies” or “heretics”, this is not always the case.
Almost forty years later, the best answer I’ve found to the difficult question, “should a movement be judged by its abuses?” is from Alister McGrath. He gives clarity on what heresy is, how we should view it, as well as the challenge of how it relates to judging a movement by its abuses in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:20:
[A Christian heresy is] “best seen as a form of Christian belief that, more by accident than design, ultimately ends up subverting, destabilizing or even destroying the core of Christian faith… [But] both this process of destabilization and the identification of its threat may be spread out over an extended period of time.”[5]
*** This is a revised and expanded version of a post originally published June 5, 2019.
[1] Phillip Yancy, Soul Survivor (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 130.
[2] Matt. 7:20, ESV.
[3] I am defining heresy here as something the church as a whole over time (based on scriptural authority and tradition rather than simply power) agrees is false and, therefore, harmful.
[4] The heliocentric view refers to the idea that the sun is at the center of the solar system, rather than the earth. “Helio” means sun.
[5] Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 11-12.