...I Wanted to Do the Right Thing, but...

In June, when I went public and shared about my horrific experiences of being sexually harassed/abused in the church, many people lauded me for being courageous and brave. They voiced their appreciation for me bringing to light an unimaginable experience that many clergy women deal with at the hands of members in the church. There were even some women who reached out to me via FB, email and through text messages to share their own narratives, many of whom had gone through experiences equally traumatic, and were left to fend for themselves. Just like I was.

In all of this, though, there were others, men and women, who stared in amazement that I would be so vocal in calling out the injustice, yet they stood silent and unwilling to say anything. They supported me privately but would not do so publicly.

The fear of what it meant for them to publicly support me and to join in chastising the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church for how this whole issue was mishandled through negligence on the part of the leadership, was perhaps greater than the courage than it took for me to tell my story. Yes, their fear was greater.

When I took the next steps, and filed a formal complaint against the senior pastor of the church, per the governing polity of the denomination, the amazement and astonishment grew even more. I, an African American woman in a predominantly white denomination, stood up and declared that this was egregious, and that I would not tolerate it. I spoke up and “told it” on the senior pastor and on the member of the church who acted against me, both of whom are white males. As the ancestors would say, I guess I was “being bold and acting out of place.”

In Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, he says this: “Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13 CEB), In other words, being a Christian is about having a spiritual backbone to stand up to the injustices that are happening around us, especially when it is in the church. It is acting out of place when the need arises and standing up to the leadership and challenging them to do the right thing instead of the comfortable thing.

Yes, acting out of place is a phrase that fits, yet there is another phrase that seems to fit into the narrative of my overall experience and it is “moral cowardice.” While there are a few definitions of what it means, let me use this one as defined in the Oxford Dictionary. Moral cowardice is the kind of cowardice in which taking a principled stand is avoided because of its risks, especially the disapproval or hostility of others. I get it. Some of the people were not willing to take a risk on their salary, insurance, housing (for those who received the latter two) nor were they willing to take a risk on how they would be perceived for standing up. 

I was willing to take a risk on my salary. I was willing to take a risk on where I would be appointed in the Conference. I was willing to take a risk on the retaliation and hostility that was sure to come, but some other people were not. I was willing to leave altogether and claim my sanity and dignity over the seven years invested in this credentialing and candidacy process of ordination.

Every person has to decide what risk he or she is willing to take. I am grateful for the ones who stood with me and especially for my white clergy colleagues who willingly used their privilege to speak out against the injustices. That takes courage. 

For me, the greater injustice would be if I chose to remain silent and complicit in a system that devalues who I am as a person, the gifts that I bring and the anointing that God has upon me for ministry with the poor, broken and bruised. Remaining silent, would in essence, echo the audible action of knowing what is right, wanting to do what is right, but not willing to actually do it. Yes, that is an action. Not doing something is choosing a type of action. It takes moral courage to stand up and speak out. 

Finally, these words are penned in James 4:17: “It is a sin when someone knows the right thing to do and doesn’t do it” (CEB). The right thing is often not the easy thing, but it is what is required of us, especially in the church. It is my sincere and earnest prayer that leaders and members in the church, particularly in the North Texas Conference of The United Methodist Church will have moral courage, leave moral cowardice behind and then genuinely work to dismantle the injustices that are in our churches, so that they can effectively work to dismantle the injustices in our communities.  

If a leader, be it a pastor or episcopacy member, will not recognize his or her own infractions and contributions to injustices, then it is next to impossible to do the work of the church in restoring communities that are torn and ravaged by injustices. Fix what is wrong inside your own home, first. Rather than ascribing to "...I wanted to do the right thing, but..." stand up with courage and act on "...I wanted to do the right thing, so I did!"