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A UMNS Report
By Barbara Dunlap-Berg*
12:00 P.M. EST Aug. 10, 2010
Women continue to be “disproportionately targeted” for sexual abuse and
sexual harassment, according to the United Methodist Commission on the
Status and Role
of Women. A UMNS photo illustration by Ronny Perry.
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It began three decades ago with anxious phone calls and letters.
Women dealing with sexual misconduct started to contact the United
Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women in Chicago and say,
“I see that you are a women’s support organization, and I’ve had this
experience in the church. Nobody in my local church knows how to help
me. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me?”
Rather than trying to provide a one-size-fits-all answer to questions
about sexual ethics, the commission went to work — studying trends,
developing training modules and providing information for the church.
And in the years that followed, other United Methodist general agencies
got on board.
“We have grown into an interagency movement,” said Garlinda Burton,
top staff executive for the commission. “We are branching out and
embracing the different aspects of the denomination that also have a
stake in this discussion.”
To that end, the commission has scheduled a churchwide training
opportunity on sexual ethics on Jan. 26-29, 2011, in Houston. The event,
titled “Do No Harm,” is for anyone in The United Methodist Church who
has a leadership role in sexual-ethics training or in intervening when
sexual misconduct occurs.
Burton said the gathering will focus on prevention of sexual
misconduct in churches or by church professionals or anyone in a
ministerial role, intervention techniques for adjudicating cases and
information on how to arrive at just resolutions.
It is geared primarily toward bishops, district superintendents, and
response and safe-sanctuary teams in annual (regional) conferences.
Planners hope for 150 to 200 participants.
Today, United Methodists will find paragraphs in the church’s Social
Principles and Book of Resolutions about human sexuality, sexual abuse
and sexual harassment.
Burton credited the commission with “getting policies in the Book of
Discipline that require training, name sexual misconduct as a chargeable
offense, and require policies and procedures to be published.”
And while many aspects of the issue have changed, much remains the same.
‘We see this as a pastoral role’
The Book of Discipline, the denomination’s law book, defines sexual
harassment as “any unwanted sexual comment, advance, or demand, either
verbal or physical, that is reasonably perceived by the recipient as
demeaning, intimidating, or coercive.”
Sexual harassment should be understood as an exploitation of power,
according to the Discipline. “Sexual harassment includes, but is not
limited to, the creation of a hostile or abusive working environment
resulting from discrimination on the basis of gender,” the book says.
Women continue to be “disproportionately targeted” for sexual abuse
and sexual harassment in the church, Burton said. The majority of
complaints the commission receives come from laywomen where the
perpetrators or alleged perpetrators are clergymen.
Garlinda Burton
Often, Burton said, the women “have no idea how to file a complaint.
They have no idea whether anyone will listen. They don’t know that
sexual misconduct is a chargeable offense in The United Methodist
Church, and that there are remedies, that there is a place for them to
go. They don’t know whom to contact. So most of our work is helping to
point victim survivors to the correct person through which they can file
a complaint.”
The commission’s goal, she explained, is not to investigate or to
resolve complaints, “but to make sure our church leaders are equipped to
deal with complaints in a way that not only has legal integrity, but
also has pastoral integrity.”
“If the church cannot adequately address sexual misconduct and make
people feel safe,” Burton declared, “we are not being a credible witness
to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see this as a pastoral role.”
Ninety percent of the calls to the commission are laity complaining
about clergy. However, as more women enter ordained ministry and
congregations are unsure how to relate to women as pastors, clergywomen
are reporting harassment.
A handful of clergymen, Burton said, have reported harassment as
well. “Men are becoming more comfortable in drawing boundaries with
their congregants and — when a congregant crosses the boundary — in
seeking help for that.”
The commission also hears from men who feel that clergywomen have
harassed or sexually abused them. “We get clergy-on-clergy misconduct
and harassment calls,” Burton added.
Safe and sacred spaces
She is encouraged that the church is “getting more serious about
education and prevention. I think most of our annual conferences in the
United States require some sort of boundary and sexual ethics training
for their clergy,” she said. Some conferences require something every
year, others every quadrennium.
Safe-sanctuary training focuses on congregants, parents, adult
workers with youth and adult workers with developmentally delayed
adults. “Safe sanctuary” is a term used to indicate that churches are
providing a safe place for children and adults, one free from abuse,
harassment or misconduct.
Kansas East was the first annual (regional) conference to require
background checks and certification of anyone working with children and
youth on any level in the church. The conference has certified 11,000
people, according to Safe and Sacred Space coordinator Nancy Brown.
“Now,” Burton said, “the commission is in conversation with them
about replicating that training as an offering for the entire
denomination because they’re doing such an excellent job.”
‘Insecurity about talking about the issue’
Burton believes sex is a hot-button topic because the church doesn’t know how to talk about it.
“Whenever there is a complaint about sexual misconduct,” she
asserted, “we focus on the sexuality instead of the sacred-trust part of
it. It’s not the sex that is important. It is the fact that personal
boundaries have been crossed, the church has not been a safe place for
persons who are children of God and abuse has taken the form of sexual
abuse.
“When you add the misconduct part, it just deepens our level of insecurity about talking about the issue.”
Burton believes her agency’s work is vital to United Methodism’s future.
“We don’t want anything to keep (anyone) from feeling they have a safe and welcoming place in the church.”
*Dunlap-Berg is internal content editor for United Methodist Communications.
News media contact: Barbara Dunlap-Berg, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5489 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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