Disclaimer: I am related to, and friends with, members of this church, but am not, myself, a member, nor an adherent of either the sect or its parent religion. I was raised as a variety of protestant christians, notably as a child in a Presbyterian church community, and later as a student in a series of sectarian institutions: Episcopal high school, Mennonite college, Catholic law school; nor am I an adjudicated child abuser, although, to be fair (and safe) it must be noted that I have not enjoyed a great deal of opportunity for that sort of thing.
One family has been a part of this congregation for more than 35 years. The father -- who as a youth had been baptised in the church, and as an adult attended with his family -- is a convicted sex offender: From 1990 until 1993 he had repeated inappropriate relations with a juvenile neighbor. Some years later, around 2000, when the victim's therapist accused him, he pled guilty, was convicted and sentenced, receiving a 10-year sentence, suspended at 18-months in recognition of his exemplary behavior.
At his sentencing hearing, his psychologist and members of the church leadership appeared and spoke on his behalf. The presiding judge, acknowledging the convict's other conciliatory behaviors (pleading guilty, for example, spared the victim and both parties' families the rancor and continuing trauma that a trial would certainly have presented), accepted the psychologist's assessment that the convict was "a situational offender" and thus unlikely to commit such acts again, suspending his 10-year sentence in favor of 18 months (and, of course, continued counseling and restrictions, including being listed on the state sex offender registry).
Upon his release, around 2001, he returned to the church, which he has attended with his family ever since. At that time the church leadership, cognizant of his crime and his served sentence, welcomed him back into the congregation.
In intervening years, the state has amended its sex-offender registry laws, modifying the statutory description and treatment of his offense, so that the registration requirement for his crime -- now reclassified as a Tier III offense -- is not limited to a term of years, as it was when he was convicted and sentenced, but endures for life. Naturally, there are also state regulations barring registered persons from entering properties properly accredited by the state as schools.
Within the past year, a new pastor was assigned to the church and charged with raising membership. To that end, and in light of the aging-baby-boomer demographic of the congregation, the new pastor has made an effort to recruit young families.
Last fall, some, among the new families, discovered that their fellow parishioner was a registered sex offender and demanded that the new pastor bar him from the church. This the pastor immediately and unilaterally did, by telling the man's wife, inaccurately, that, because he was a registered offender, and because the church hosted Sunday school for children and a day care facility during the week, that member of the congregation, her husband, was prohibited from entering the property by state law.
This was not true at the time and it remains untrue.
In the months since, that man and his family have not returned to the church. But, because some members of the congregation got word of, and took issue with, the pastor's unilateral action and spiteful misstatement of the law, there has been an increasing amount of drama, and the pastor has undertaken some additional acts in an effort to make her wrongful actions appear to be endorsed by church authorities, after the fact.
To this end, she has misstated the law (and Methodist policy) to the church leadership committees, and, because there happens, at present in the Methodist church, to be an initiative to distinguish that church from those scandals perennially plaguing the Catholic church (the "Safe Sanctuaries" program ostensibly addresses the question of sexual abuse by members of the clergy), she has convened a hand-picked committee to adopt a "Safe Sanctuaries" policy that will ratify her precipitous action with respect to the parishioner in question. [My sources express uncertainty that discussion of the Safe Sanctuaries program at the time was anything more than a coincidence.]
There are laws in the state, and there are policies in the Methodist denomination, and the church leadership may adopt policies within the parameters of those authorities. So far, none of those laws and policies are as the pastor has represented them, and some of them call for procedures which that pastor has not provided. For example, the Methodist Book of Resolutions, in the event that there is a sex offender in the congregation, requires the church leadership to reach an "openly negotiated" agreement with the offender, and the congregation, setting the parameters of the offender's participation in the ministry.
Toward the end of November -- at the behest of a state jurist who is a member of the church council, and some other parties -- a meeting, of those who were in the know, was held. At that meeting, the pastor asserted that representatives of the state custodians of the sex offender registry had clearly explained that the church counted as an educational institution from which registered offenders were statutorily banned.
When questioned about this assertion, the pastor did not recall which representative of the state had provided that information, and, later, when, pressured by unsatisfied parties, the church retained an attorney, who, in the face of much hostility from proponents of the unilateral ban, explained that the law did not, in fact, ban offenders from the facility: Sunday school is not covered; the day care is not accredited by the state as such an educational facility; and, even if it were so accredited, it is in session only during weekdays, when the congregation does not meet for worship services, and, conversely, is not in session during times that the congregation congregates.
Accordingly, the pastor was shown to be . . . misinformed, at best, if not outright mendacious.
Some antisocial souls asked "What would Jesus do?" It was at this time that the pastor offered the Safe Sanctuaries initiative of the Methodist church as a basis for her communication to the congregation-member's wife.
That program, which began in a local Methodist conference in 1996 and has spread among and within the conferences ever since, "governs all of the church events attended by children, youths or young adults where custody, care and control are involved," and has as its express aim the protection of children from abuse, and it's only-slightly-less-express aim the protection of the Methodist chain-of-command and reputation from the kinds of allegations that, when eventually investigated and proved correct over and over, as in the notable case(s) of the Catholic church, tend to create potential organizational liability and tarnish the reputation of a creed in the eyes of the faithful, through the promulgation (and adoption) of certain model policies intended to minimize irresistible opportunities for such abuse or allegations to occur.
See?
The purpose of this policy is to protect all the children that come to us, to protect both our paid and unpaid volunteer staff from potential false allegations of abuse and to limit the extent of the liability of local church.Sample policies very clearly contemplate background screening of church staff, volunteers and helpers engaged in activities involving children, rather than for the entire congregation. Indeed, such policies, properly implemented, would eliminate all occasions when an adult might be alone with a child on church grounds: If all children are always accompanied by a) their parents or b) two of 1) church staff, 2) volunteers, 3) helpers, then at no time will a member of the congregation have access to an unattended child.
Anyway, the pastor hand-picked a committee to draft such a policy, and had a series of closed meetings (with some leakage, and some notable lapses in email control), before presenting the draft proposal to some, but not all, of the congregation, and holding a mostly-open meeting to discuss it. Of course the discussion at that meeting was about the registered sex-offender who was a member of the congregation (but had not returned since pastor told his wife the law forbade it), and the effect of the proposed policy on him. The effect of the proposed policy on him, as it turns out, is his being completely restricted from setting foot on the church grounds.
Certain elements objected. More elements, now informed, objected. Thus it happened that, one recent Sunday, as the congregants were leaving, an anonymous tract was distributed, naming him, and painting him, with ad homonym slurs, as an irreconcilable predator about as sick as you can imagine, and presenting a stern case (the proposal) as preferable to an oppressive case (some hand-wavey ominousness about a more-draconian policy that would automatically go into effect if the church couldn't adopt a policy of its own), all replete with citations to sources which did not support the author's assertions.
A wag ironically mused about the author's identity as though it weren't obvious. (Fraudulent assertion of facts backed by fraudulently asserted references seems to be that particular pastor's signature gambit).
Which kicked off a particle storm of electrons carrying email transmissions around the divided and embattled partisans of the erstwhile church community. One party pointed out, again, that the anonymous author's citations of the Book of Resolutions were errant; another took issue with the ad homonym attacks, and the generally dishonest, hateful and otherwise unchristian behavior of the shepherd of this flock, by appealing to the parable of the lost sheep.
The vote was held June 1. After several people enjoyed three minutes apiece to speak their mind on the question at hand (and one guy got out-of-order'd before his time was up for calling the pastor a liar), a vote was held. Most of the speakers were opposed. Several made eloquent and forceful appeals to the source texts of the religion; several described their experiences with the congregant in question; a lifetime congregant told those present that the church had failed, and she foresaw its pending dissolution; another reported a straw poll of local churches of other denominations, each of which would welcome a congregant so described; a few, also citing scripture, spoke in favor of the exclusionary policy. Well, God, sometimes, just don't come through: The policy was adopted by a slim margin with one abstention.
From this time on, all church staff, volunteers and helpers will be required to undergo powerpoint training on abuse awareness, submit to background investigations, will be restricted from being the only adult with any child or children, and will be subject to duties to report certain events.
Also, one member of the congregation, a registered sex offender whose sentence was completed and who was thereupon welcomed back into the bosom of the church in full cognizance of the church leadership, almost a decade ago, and has regularly attended with his family since that time, will not be allowed to go to church there anymore; his family probably won't be coming either. He is probably lucky that the adopted proposal did not direct that he be burnt at the stake.
I have spent these months seething, hearing from confidants about events as they unfolded, thinking all the while that a little public ridicule might cure the pastor's hubris. Of course we wonder, rhetorically, what Jesus would do (and thinking we might have an inkling), we think of his reported open association with pariahs, we look for "he who is without sin" and appeal to the lost sheep. Who, familiar with the basic text, could do less?
I think I'm with the prophetess of doom in this case though, for, these months the passage "I come not to send peace but a sword," has been ringing in my mind. Anyway, what conscientious christian would care to worship in the community administered by such pharisees?