Sunday May 15, 2022

 The small congregation to which I belong, Winfield United Church, got national attention in Broadview, a national magazine.

            Winfield is a relatively successful congregation. It is not, for the moment, threatened by closure or amalgamation. It raised more than half the cost of its new building, right beside the famed Okanagan Rail Trail, by donations. Its Thrift Shop provides outreach to the whole community.

            But the Broadview article didn’t deal with any of those. It was about a woman “emotionally and sexually abused” by her minister -- 37 years ago.

            In 1985, Winfield United’s new minister, Bruce Griffin , seemed to offer confident and charismatic leadership. Rumours of improprieties in previous positions hadn’t surfaced yet.

            Incidentally, I’m not breaking confidentiality by naming names. Broadview already made them public.

            Deanna Hills liked Griffin and his Bible study programs. He gave her special attention. Group studies led to private study, from his living room to a small room with a bed in it. And to repeated rape.

            Hills eventually told her husband. Then to a nearby minister. Who took it to the regional court called the Presbytery. Where she told it, over and over, to a group of strangers. Who talked her out of filing a police report.

            But Presbytery did act to terminate Griffin’s ministry. Griffin led the worship service that Christmas Eve. And then fled, apparently fearing for his safety.

Why now?

            So why, several people have asked me, tell this story 37 years later?

            Bruce Griffin died in 2015. He could not offer an apology or make amends. It was over and done, wasn’t it?

            Not quite. Because during the pandemic, another minister, Rev. Linda Ervin, came to the dental clinic where Deanna Hills worked. During conversation, Hills told her story once more. Ervin believed her, and went to bat for her.

            She got Hills a compensation package from the United Church. Which included counselling. And a form of group therapy called “listening circles.”

            Hills told Karin Olafson, author of the Broadview article, “I really felt listened to and heard. Now, having talked about it, it’s shrinking…”

            In a sense, one minister caused Hills’ trauma; another minister helped her healing.

            Broadview, I guess, published the article because it knew many other women would identify with Deanna Hills’ experience of keeping her pain bottled up for over 30 years

Changing standards

            To me, this story is not about airing a church’s dirty laundry. It’s a good-news story. 

            Several decades earlier, we might never have heard of it. Back then, women were still considered unreliable, emotionally unstable witnesses. Clergy -- almost always male -- were authority figures, put on a pedestal as God’s representative.

            Like Catholic priests, clergy were considered above criticism.  And like Catholic priests, transgressors were sometimes quietly transferred to a new location.

            By 1985, though, the United Church took charges of sexual impropriety seriously. Perhaps, in hindsight, too seriously. I know of at least two ministers who had their lives, their health, and their careers ruined by accusations later proved false.

            One of them, forced out of ministry into secular work, died a few years later. Of a broken heart, I suspect.

            So in 1985, the United Church acted promptly to terminate Bruce Griffin’s ministry. But it did little or nothing for Deanna Hills.

            It adopted the “corporate defence mode” I wrote about last week. Admit nothing. Shift the blame. Cover your ass.

            Until Linda Ervin got involved.

37 years later

            Which brings us to the present.

            Yes, we are doing better. But maybe not as well as we should.

            I have not been involved in United Church governance for some years. My impression, however, is that the church would now provide assistance for both victim and victimizer.

            But too often, I fear, someone is still overlooked -- the congregation.

            Long-term members of Winfield United tell me that they never heard officially about Bruce Griffin’s fate. No one helped ordinary members deal with the shock of having at least one of their members, perhaps more, exploited sexually.

            They were left in the dark.

            Personnel issues are always treated as confidential. The public isn’t entitled to know details. Even if it affects them directly.

            A verdict is rendered. Period. Case closed.

            The United Church, I believe, is learning to deal better with individuals. I’m afraid it still doesn’t deal well with the collective “person” -- a congregation – that is also suffering trauma.

            To borrow a military euphemism, congregations often feel abandoned as “collateral damage.”

            Broadview’s article about a 37-year-old case reminds me, again, that congregations also deserve care and counselling.

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

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Your turn

Not as much mail as usual on last week’s column. Perhaps it was a subject that many of you are uncomfortable with. Although Hanny Kooyman did write, “Your writing brightened my morning.”

My central theme was, I think or hope, what I called “corporate defence mode” the patterns that large institutions seem to slip into whenever they come under attack.

            Tom Watson: commented, “What you are talking about is crisis management -- the application of strategies designed to help an organization deal with a sudden and significant negative event. Most companies have people trained in that. In circumstances where they know they'd be proven wrong if things went so far as to go to court, they'll try to settle for a nuisance fee, an undisclosed amount which carries with it the caveat of no admission of guilt.”

Isabel Gibson has had lots of experience dealing with large corporate bodies: “It does seem that the incentives for groups/organizations/companies overwhelmingly promote behaviour that is obviously counter-productive at the interpersonal level, such as their response to complaints.

            “Who among us would keep as a friend someone who denied the fault, dodged responsibility, counter-sued, or stonewalled us? Who would trust a colleague who did that?

            “Yet, somehow, groups/organizations/companies have settled on these very strategies.”

I commented that I liked Archbishop Justin Welby’s term “structural sin.”

            Karen Toole agreed: “Like you, I found that phrase hopeful. Religion attempts to be the worship of God but all too often ends up as being the corporate directors of the business of God. Institutionalization of God (divine, holy, mystery, spirit) is impossible. Doomed to fail.

            “As a woman in ministry for over 45 years I could list how many times I was called a sexist name or told to keep my mouth shut because it was not a woman's place. How does a female minister deal with an abusive male chair of the board (abusive in community and church). I don't think even CBC would tackle that one!

            “Thanks for your direct, honest, authentic writing,”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

            The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns