Many years of service in congregational ministry have made it obvious to me that clergy suffer a great deal of abuse at the hands of those they seek to serve. I have seen it first hand and it is harmful not only to the person being abused but also to the congregation. That’s what made me buy this book when I saw it advertised in a publication I respect.
Gene Fowler, Church Abuse of Clergy: A Radical New Understanding. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020.
Chapter 1. Fowler begins with an analysis of the most influential work on the topic, Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations Under Attack, published by G. Lloyd Rediger in 1997. Fowler has several critiques, but the most important way in which he disagrees with Rediger is the specification of the “clergy killer” as one hostile individual supported by a small group of supporters. He proposes to present alternative views in the rest of the book.
Chapter 2. Fowler continues his review of the literature in addition to Rediger’s work. He faults authors for focusing on the manipulative individual and for confusing the issue with a variety of metaphors: well-intentioned dragons, attacking sheep, antagonists, etc. He approves of the emphasis on social-scientific studies that document the effect on abuse on clergy health and marriages. He documents the tendency in Canada and Europe for clergy to seek protection in trade union organizing.
Chapter 3. The author asserts that much church abuse of clergy is buried under the category of church conflict. In addition, many authors claim that conflict is inevitable and can be healthy if managed correctly. Fowler wants to insist that abuse of clergy can be distinguished from general conflict and that abuse is not inevitable, healthy or manageable. The literature on church conflict pays inadequate attention to the suffering of the abused and her/his family. He objects to the solution adopted by middle judicatory officials who, while acknowledging that the clergyperson is not to blame, nevertheless expect the abused person to “move on for the sake of the church.”
Chapter 4. Fowler identifies the abuser of clergy as “the congregation as a whole.” He identifies his method of analysis as “psychoanalytic group psychology.” He traces this method to three pioneers: S. H. Foulkes, a German refugee from the Nazis who practiced Freudian psychoanalysis in England, Wilfred R. Bion, an English psychiatrist, Earl Hopper, and Argentinian psychiatrist Enrique Pichon-Reviere. A “group” is a social system and a church is a group that exists to assist its members to relate to the divine in meaningful ways. A group “permeates the individual” and conditions each individual “down to the last detail.” “Everything happening in a group involves the group as a whole as well as each individual member.” So also “all events in a congregation include the congregation as a whole even if the event seemingly involves only a few people.” Analysts use the analogy of the Greek tragedy, saying that each event in a group involves a main character, who is foregrounded, and a chorus. The play will not be understood if the contribution of the chorus is ignored. Also, in cases of clergy abuse, the foregrounded abusive person or group may change or vary. The congregation as a whole is always part of the abuse even if many people do nothing or appear to support the abused person and family.
Just as an individual has conscious thoughts that are expressed or acknowledged and an unconscious where thoughts and feelings reside that are too threatening to be acknowledged or expressed, a congregational members communicate with each other at conscious and unconscious levels. The congregation as a whole has a group unconscious in which all participate unknowingly. “The social unconscious is a reality in congregations and can be called the congregational social unconscious. Viewing the congregation as a whole as the church abuser shows that the social unconscious is at play among all of the church members, including the person who is perceived as instigating the church abuse of clergy.” “In congregations, the social unconscious involves the existence and constraints of social, cultural, and communicational arrangements of which the church participants are unaware.” “Whoever the pastor and church members consciously identify as instigating the church abuse is unconsciously doing the bidding of the congregation as a whole. As the church abuse unfolds, the instigator must be seen as just one among many who are carrying out the abuse in various abusive episodes happening over time.”
Chapter 5. Aristotle claimed that humans are political animals. Wilfred Bion used this concept to develop a new paradigm, claiming that people are individuals but also members of groups and that there is a “will of the group” in which individuals unconsciously participate. “Bion found that one important characteristic of individuals in groups is that they have an ongoing concern about the attitude of the group (as a whole) toward them.” He claims that every group has a “group mentality” and unconsciously communicates basic assumptions that must be maintained or the group becomes anxious. Thus, the group’s purpose or task can be undermined by the group mentality, which is characterized by powerful emotional drives. There are three basic assumptions:
Pairing. Groups tolerate the pairing of two group members that seems to promise new ideas or new leadership. This, then, undermines the work of the actual leader.
Fight/Flight. Groups unconsciously seek either to fight their problems or to flee from them. When the actual leader does not fit this agenda, the leader is resisted and criticized. The leader’s attempt to call attention to the dysfunctional fight/flight tendencies will also be resisted.
Dependency. A group seeks a leader on whom it can depend for “nourishment, material and spiritual, and protection,” without regard for the stated purpose of the group. “Congregational members who feel that their pastor is not protecting them sufficiently from the distress they may be experiencing in the congregation will sometimes go in search of someone else in the congregation to be their leader, someone to whom they can give their support and loyalty, on whom they can depend, and who will lead them out of the desert and into the promised land of emotional relief.”
Individuals vary in terms of their vulnerability to the influence of the basic assumptions of the group, but the unconscious dimensions are much easier to cooperative with than the stated purpose of the group, which takes conscious and intentional effort and often involve hard work, anxiety, complexity, and change. “How much easier it is to spontaneously and instinctively fit in with the basic assumption group as it provides the members with the thoughts and leadership that fulfill their needs for such things as hope (paring), safety from frightening difficulties (fight/flight), and nurture and protection (dependency).”
A fourth basic assumption has been identified as incohesion, characterized by either aggregation or massification. This means that the group threatens to fall apart, either because the members are too individualistic and the group a mere aggregation of disparate pieces or that the members are inadequately individualistic and mass together in an undifferentiated lump. Certain group members may temporarily personify one of the “roles” of incohesion.
Incohesion surfaces when the group absorbs traumatic experiences of various members and experiences a fear of annihilation.
The kinds of trauma that trigger abuse of pastors have to do with “failed dependency on the people and situations that previously provided the nourishment and protection needed for accomplishing ministry in the community.” A very common trauma is caused by failed dependency on the culture that sustained the congregation in the past. When dramatic cultural change occurs, congregations experience a sense of helplessness, which leads to a fear of annihilation. A common response is to do everything possible to keep the congregation exactly the same as it was before the cultural change. Thus, the pastor who leads development, reconsideration, and change is a threat to the unconscious sense of pre-trauma safety. Naming and recognizing the trauma makes it possible to mourn and grieve the losses, clearing the way (perhaps) for new developments. Otherwise, the leader who personifies the unconscious assumptions of the group will become the leader of the congregation’s abuse of the clergy leader.
Chapter 6. Contexts and methods of congregational abuse of clergy
One: The social arrangement. Churches in the US are not set up to provide advocacy for pastors. Judicatory officials are expected to support both the congregation and the clergyperson. This is not advocacy; it would be like a lawyer representing both the plaintiff and the defendant in a lawsuit. US courts will not hear defamation cases against congregations because of the First Amendment prohibition of state interference in religion. A congregation pays no legal penalty for abusing the pastor by defamation.
Two: The cultural arrangement. The 1950s was the time of highest church participation in US history. Robert Wuthnow has identified the spirituality of this period as a spirituality of dwelling. The culture provided a nourishing and safe place to live and this culture was brought into the churches. This came with limitations. Comfort produced a shallow faith and a lack of self-examination of the individual or the group. In majority churches there was also a denial of social injustice in favor of living according to conventional values. This need for safety was underscored by the losses of WWII and the Korean War and the fear of nuclear annihilation.
The congregational decline that began in the 1960s led to the trauma of the churches’ failed dependence on culture. The new “spirituality of seeking” was incompatible with the “spirituality of dwelling” and gradually replaced it in the 1970s and following. The resulting membership decline in congregations, especially the abandonment of congregations by adult children. The consequent financial losses were traumatizing as well. Congregations fell into the pattern of working harder to do what had made them successful in the spirituality of dwelling.
“Here are some ways that the inherited defensive fantasy may be kept in place in many previously traumatized congregations that are in decline:
The uncurious: Church members may clamor for change. Yet, they exhibit little or no curiosity about contemporary culture or contemporary manifestations of spirituality in the population. The church members make no effort to learn about these things.
Long-Range Planning: The congregation has no long-range planning. . . . each year’s spiritual journey is a mere repetition of the previous year.
Governing: . . .declining congregations often function organizationally as if nothing has changed since their heyday decades ago. . . .Finding enough people to serve on committees is like pulling teeth, while devoted church members multitask to the point of burnout.
Worship patterns: Many declining congregations cling to their long-time worship style, whatever that style may be, as if time stood still.
Social justice and preaching: Pastors have not lived until they have been told by well-meaning church members that pastors are supposed to keep their social and political views to themselves and that they should not preach about social justice. . . .Many pastors dare to be prophetic in the pulpit at their own peril.”
Three: The Communicational Arrangement. The pattern of communication “involves defamation, a legal concept whose communication pattern is the very definition of church abuse of clergy. . . .An abusing church is a defaming church.”
“Defamation means:
1. oral or written statements about another person
2. that are false
3. that are “published” (that is, communicated to other persons), and
4. that injure the other person’s reputation.”
The courts call defamatory oral statements slander and defamatory written statements libel, but both constitute defamation. . . .Pastors should be aware that the courts are willing for ministers to suffer defamation in the name of maintaining religious freedom. . . .According to legal scholar Richard Hammar, clergy should assume that they ‘will be deemed to be public figures and as a result they will have to prove malice as a precondition to winning a defamation suit’ (if the court would hear the case).” Fowler cites a number of suits against churches or individuals in churches that courts refused to hear at all, citing the First Amendment.
Probably the most controversial, but not surprising, statement in the book is this paragraph from page 158:
“It has been shown that the congregation as a whole is the church abuser. At the unconscious level, the congregational incohesion basic assumption group chooses a central person, a leader, whose personality is suited for personifying the incohesive behavior. Therefore, the instigator who initiates the church abuse by telling the first defamatory lie is unconsciously doing the will of the congregation as a whole.”
Ways that congregations act defamatorily:
Passivity: The vast majority of congregants do nothing to protect the minister being defamed. Some pretend not to know there is a problem. Others give the pastor false assurances that “everything will be fine.”
Gossip: “Reputations do not exist except in the conversations that people have about one another.”
Contra Groups: These are groups that oppose the abuse, but they escalate the conflict. “The pastor cannot put an end to the conflict and looks weak.”
Withholding finances.
Leaving the Congregation. Even if people leave because they oppose the abuse, the membership decline harms the pastor’s reputation.
More lies: When the initial instigator gets away with lies, other people begin to tell other lies.
Other despicable actions: secret meetings, complaints to the governing board or to judicatory officials, emails, social media, threatening phone calls, anonymous threatening letters. “Now the pastor’s reputation is so fragile that church members can act with impunity without being confronted by church leaders.”
Attacking the pastor’s family.
Post-Termination abuse. . . .sometimes the congregation unconsciously influences a church member or other person connected to the congregation to talk to other congregations about the pastor even in other states.”
The judicatory: Sometimes a pastor under threat or who has been terminated is required by denominational officials to undergo psychological testing or jump through various hoops before being placed in another parish. This feels like blaming the victim.
Chapter 7. The goal and effects of abusive congregations.
The goal of abuse is to injure the pastor’s reputation. Reputation is a social construct and involved dignity, honor, and (in a sense) property. Reputation as property affects the pastor’s ability to earn income. Obviously, this affects the pastor’s family.
The effects of church abuse of clergy:
Loss of employment. Lawsuits for this damage are excluded by the “ministerial exception.” Civil rights legislation protects people from firing for race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and subsequent legal decisions exempts religious organizations from liability from all laws against discrimination with regard to ministers. Again, the family is harmed.
Emotional harm. This can include a loss of faith and/or vocation. Trauma follows, which remains unaddressed.
Chapter 8 – Clergy Collaborating
There need to be work groups attempting to distinguish between congregational abuse of clergy and church conflict. Local clergy can host an abused pastor’s family in their congregation to keep them away from the abusive situation. “Breaking the conspiracy of silence must begin with clergy and must spread to congregations so that abused clergy loved ones will not be attending host churches under a suspicious cloud of innuendo and puzzlement.”
Fowler thinks that a pastor should leave a church as soon as abuse (defamation) starts. This is, of course, impossible. Pastors have bills to pay, families to look after and a sense of obligation to serve the people, so they stay until completely exhausted or actually ill.
Since the abuser is the congregation as a whole rather than an individual or a small group, denominations, influenced by groups of pastors, should make arrangements to remove a pastor from an abusive congregation as soon as possible and “not allowing the congregation to have a pastoral replacement would deny the congregation a pastor to attack. After the pastor has gone, the congregation should be required to participate in an appropriate program developed by the denomination.”
Pastors should have a course in seminary on the law as it relates to churches and clergy.
Clergy should collaborate in studying the culture of spirituality and educate congregations.
Basically, Fowler thinks that clergy should adopt his view of church abuse as he lays it out in the book and understand the group psychological issues and address them.
There is an extensive bibliography on church conflict and clergy abuse.
Critique
First of all, as a Baptist, I have to point out that church polity that is limited to individual congregations could not involve any of the solutions that involve “judicatory officials” at any level. If Fowler is correct about individual instigators of abuse unconsciously doing the will of the congregation as a whole (and he may be), it will take a popularizer with better writing skills and perhaps a YouTube channel to make pastors and congregations believe it. Pastors have trouble leading Christians to recognize collective/historical sin and guilt; a similar resistance will make it difficult for congregations to acknowledge unconscious collaboration in abusing their clergy.
Gene Fowler, Church Abuse of Clergy: A Radical New Understanding. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020.
Chapter 1. Fowler begins with an analysis of the most influential work on the topic, Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations Under Attack, published by G. Lloyd Rediger in 1997. Fowler has several critiques, but the most important way in which he disagrees with Rediger is the specification of the “clergy killer” as one hostile individual supported by a small group of supporters. He proposes to present alternative views in the rest of the book.
Chapter 2. Fowler continues his review of the literature in addition to Rediger’s work. He faults authors for focusing on the manipulative individual and for confusing the issue with a variety of metaphors: well-intentioned dragons, attacking sheep, antagonists, etc. He approves of the emphasis on social-scientific studies that document the effect on abuse on clergy health and marriages. He documents the tendency in Canada and Europe for clergy to seek protection in trade union organizing.
Chapter 3. The author asserts that much church abuse of clergy is buried under the category of church conflict. In addition, many authors claim that conflict is inevitable and can be healthy if managed correctly. Fowler wants to insist that abuse of clergy can be distinguished from general conflict and that abuse is not inevitable, healthy or manageable. The literature on church conflict pays inadequate attention to the suffering of the abused and her/his family. He objects to the solution adopted by middle judicatory officials who, while acknowledging that the clergyperson is not to blame, nevertheless expect the abused person to “move on for the sake of the church.”
Chapter 4. Fowler identifies the abuser of clergy as “the congregation as a whole.” He identifies his method of analysis as “psychoanalytic group psychology.” He traces this method to three pioneers: S. H. Foulkes, a German refugee from the Nazis who practiced Freudian psychoanalysis in England, Wilfred R. Bion, an English psychiatrist, Earl Hopper, and Argentinian psychiatrist Enrique Pichon-Reviere. A “group” is a social system and a church is a group that exists to assist its members to relate to the divine in meaningful ways. A group “permeates the individual” and conditions each individual “down to the last detail.” “Everything happening in a group involves the group as a whole as well as each individual member.” So also “all events in a congregation include the congregation as a whole even if the event seemingly involves only a few people.” Analysts use the analogy of the Greek tragedy, saying that each event in a group involves a main character, who is foregrounded, and a chorus. The play will not be understood if the contribution of the chorus is ignored. Also, in cases of clergy abuse, the foregrounded abusive person or group may change or vary. The congregation as a whole is always part of the abuse even if many people do nothing or appear to support the abused person and family.
Just as an individual has conscious thoughts that are expressed or acknowledged and an unconscious where thoughts and feelings reside that are too threatening to be acknowledged or expressed, a congregational members communicate with each other at conscious and unconscious levels. The congregation as a whole has a group unconscious in which all participate unknowingly. “The social unconscious is a reality in congregations and can be called the congregational social unconscious. Viewing the congregation as a whole as the church abuser shows that the social unconscious is at play among all of the church members, including the person who is perceived as instigating the church abuse of clergy.” “In congregations, the social unconscious involves the existence and constraints of social, cultural, and communicational arrangements of which the church participants are unaware.” “Whoever the pastor and church members consciously identify as instigating the church abuse is unconsciously doing the bidding of the congregation as a whole. As the church abuse unfolds, the instigator must be seen as just one among many who are carrying out the abuse in various abusive episodes happening over time.”
Chapter 5. Aristotle claimed that humans are political animals. Wilfred Bion used this concept to develop a new paradigm, claiming that people are individuals but also members of groups and that there is a “will of the group” in which individuals unconsciously participate. “Bion found that one important characteristic of individuals in groups is that they have an ongoing concern about the attitude of the group (as a whole) toward them.” He claims that every group has a “group mentality” and unconsciously communicates basic assumptions that must be maintained or the group becomes anxious. Thus, the group’s purpose or task can be undermined by the group mentality, which is characterized by powerful emotional drives. There are three basic assumptions:
Pairing. Groups tolerate the pairing of two group members that seems to promise new ideas or new leadership. This, then, undermines the work of the actual leader.
Fight/Flight. Groups unconsciously seek either to fight their problems or to flee from them. When the actual leader does not fit this agenda, the leader is resisted and criticized. The leader’s attempt to call attention to the dysfunctional fight/flight tendencies will also be resisted.
Dependency. A group seeks a leader on whom it can depend for “nourishment, material and spiritual, and protection,” without regard for the stated purpose of the group. “Congregational members who feel that their pastor is not protecting them sufficiently from the distress they may be experiencing in the congregation will sometimes go in search of someone else in the congregation to be their leader, someone to whom they can give their support and loyalty, on whom they can depend, and who will lead them out of the desert and into the promised land of emotional relief.”
Individuals vary in terms of their vulnerability to the influence of the basic assumptions of the group, but the unconscious dimensions are much easier to cooperative with than the stated purpose of the group, which takes conscious and intentional effort and often involve hard work, anxiety, complexity, and change. “How much easier it is to spontaneously and instinctively fit in with the basic assumption group as it provides the members with the thoughts and leadership that fulfill their needs for such things as hope (paring), safety from frightening difficulties (fight/flight), and nurture and protection (dependency).”
A fourth basic assumption has been identified as incohesion, characterized by either aggregation or massification. This means that the group threatens to fall apart, either because the members are too individualistic and the group a mere aggregation of disparate pieces or that the members are inadequately individualistic and mass together in an undifferentiated lump. Certain group members may temporarily personify one of the “roles” of incohesion.
Incohesion surfaces when the group absorbs traumatic experiences of various members and experiences a fear of annihilation.
The kinds of trauma that trigger abuse of pastors have to do with “failed dependency on the people and situations that previously provided the nourishment and protection needed for accomplishing ministry in the community.” A very common trauma is caused by failed dependency on the culture that sustained the congregation in the past. When dramatic cultural change occurs, congregations experience a sense of helplessness, which leads to a fear of annihilation. A common response is to do everything possible to keep the congregation exactly the same as it was before the cultural change. Thus, the pastor who leads development, reconsideration, and change is a threat to the unconscious sense of pre-trauma safety. Naming and recognizing the trauma makes it possible to mourn and grieve the losses, clearing the way (perhaps) for new developments. Otherwise, the leader who personifies the unconscious assumptions of the group will become the leader of the congregation’s abuse of the clergy leader.
Chapter 6. Contexts and methods of congregational abuse of clergy
One: The social arrangement. Churches in the US are not set up to provide advocacy for pastors. Judicatory officials are expected to support both the congregation and the clergyperson. This is not advocacy; it would be like a lawyer representing both the plaintiff and the defendant in a lawsuit. US courts will not hear defamation cases against congregations because of the First Amendment prohibition of state interference in religion. A congregation pays no legal penalty for abusing the pastor by defamation.
Two: The cultural arrangement. The 1950s was the time of highest church participation in US history. Robert Wuthnow has identified the spirituality of this period as a spirituality of dwelling. The culture provided a nourishing and safe place to live and this culture was brought into the churches. This came with limitations. Comfort produced a shallow faith and a lack of self-examination of the individual or the group. In majority churches there was also a denial of social injustice in favor of living according to conventional values. This need for safety was underscored by the losses of WWII and the Korean War and the fear of nuclear annihilation.
The congregational decline that began in the 1960s led to the trauma of the churches’ failed dependence on culture. The new “spirituality of seeking” was incompatible with the “spirituality of dwelling” and gradually replaced it in the 1970s and following. The resulting membership decline in congregations, especially the abandonment of congregations by adult children. The consequent financial losses were traumatizing as well. Congregations fell into the pattern of working harder to do what had made them successful in the spirituality of dwelling.
“Here are some ways that the inherited defensive fantasy may be kept in place in many previously traumatized congregations that are in decline:
The uncurious: Church members may clamor for change. Yet, they exhibit little or no curiosity about contemporary culture or contemporary manifestations of spirituality in the population. The church members make no effort to learn about these things.
Long-Range Planning: The congregation has no long-range planning. . . . each year’s spiritual journey is a mere repetition of the previous year.
Governing: . . .declining congregations often function organizationally as if nothing has changed since their heyday decades ago. . . .Finding enough people to serve on committees is like pulling teeth, while devoted church members multitask to the point of burnout.
Worship patterns: Many declining congregations cling to their long-time worship style, whatever that style may be, as if time stood still.
Social justice and preaching: Pastors have not lived until they have been told by well-meaning church members that pastors are supposed to keep their social and political views to themselves and that they should not preach about social justice. . . .Many pastors dare to be prophetic in the pulpit at their own peril.”
Three: The Communicational Arrangement. The pattern of communication “involves defamation, a legal concept whose communication pattern is the very definition of church abuse of clergy. . . .An abusing church is a defaming church.”
“Defamation means:
1. oral or written statements about another person
2. that are false
3. that are “published” (that is, communicated to other persons), and
4. that injure the other person’s reputation.”
The courts call defamatory oral statements slander and defamatory written statements libel, but both constitute defamation. . . .Pastors should be aware that the courts are willing for ministers to suffer defamation in the name of maintaining religious freedom. . . .According to legal scholar Richard Hammar, clergy should assume that they ‘will be deemed to be public figures and as a result they will have to prove malice as a precondition to winning a defamation suit’ (if the court would hear the case).” Fowler cites a number of suits against churches or individuals in churches that courts refused to hear at all, citing the First Amendment.
Probably the most controversial, but not surprising, statement in the book is this paragraph from page 158:
“It has been shown that the congregation as a whole is the church abuser. At the unconscious level, the congregational incohesion basic assumption group chooses a central person, a leader, whose personality is suited for personifying the incohesive behavior. Therefore, the instigator who initiates the church abuse by telling the first defamatory lie is unconsciously doing the will of the congregation as a whole.”
Ways that congregations act defamatorily:
Passivity: The vast majority of congregants do nothing to protect the minister being defamed. Some pretend not to know there is a problem. Others give the pastor false assurances that “everything will be fine.”
Gossip: “Reputations do not exist except in the conversations that people have about one another.”
Contra Groups: These are groups that oppose the abuse, but they escalate the conflict. “The pastor cannot put an end to the conflict and looks weak.”
Withholding finances.
Leaving the Congregation. Even if people leave because they oppose the abuse, the membership decline harms the pastor’s reputation.
More lies: When the initial instigator gets away with lies, other people begin to tell other lies.
Other despicable actions: secret meetings, complaints to the governing board or to judicatory officials, emails, social media, threatening phone calls, anonymous threatening letters. “Now the pastor’s reputation is so fragile that church members can act with impunity without being confronted by church leaders.”
Attacking the pastor’s family.
Post-Termination abuse. . . .sometimes the congregation unconsciously influences a church member or other person connected to the congregation to talk to other congregations about the pastor even in other states.”
The judicatory: Sometimes a pastor under threat or who has been terminated is required by denominational officials to undergo psychological testing or jump through various hoops before being placed in another parish. This feels like blaming the victim.
Chapter 7. The goal and effects of abusive congregations.
The goal of abuse is to injure the pastor’s reputation. Reputation is a social construct and involved dignity, honor, and (in a sense) property. Reputation as property affects the pastor’s ability to earn income. Obviously, this affects the pastor’s family.
The effects of church abuse of clergy:
Loss of employment. Lawsuits for this damage are excluded by the “ministerial exception.” Civil rights legislation protects people from firing for race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and subsequent legal decisions exempts religious organizations from liability from all laws against discrimination with regard to ministers. Again, the family is harmed.
Emotional harm. This can include a loss of faith and/or vocation. Trauma follows, which remains unaddressed.
Chapter 8 – Clergy Collaborating
There need to be work groups attempting to distinguish between congregational abuse of clergy and church conflict. Local clergy can host an abused pastor’s family in their congregation to keep them away from the abusive situation. “Breaking the conspiracy of silence must begin with clergy and must spread to congregations so that abused clergy loved ones will not be attending host churches under a suspicious cloud of innuendo and puzzlement.”
Fowler thinks that a pastor should leave a church as soon as abuse (defamation) starts. This is, of course, impossible. Pastors have bills to pay, families to look after and a sense of obligation to serve the people, so they stay until completely exhausted or actually ill.
Since the abuser is the congregation as a whole rather than an individual or a small group, denominations, influenced by groups of pastors, should make arrangements to remove a pastor from an abusive congregation as soon as possible and “not allowing the congregation to have a pastoral replacement would deny the congregation a pastor to attack. After the pastor has gone, the congregation should be required to participate in an appropriate program developed by the denomination.”
Pastors should have a course in seminary on the law as it relates to churches and clergy.
Clergy should collaborate in studying the culture of spirituality and educate congregations.
Basically, Fowler thinks that clergy should adopt his view of church abuse as he lays it out in the book and understand the group psychological issues and address them.
There is an extensive bibliography on church conflict and clergy abuse.
Critique
First of all, as a Baptist, I have to point out that church polity that is limited to individual congregations could not involve any of the solutions that involve “judicatory officials” at any level. If Fowler is correct about individual instigators of abuse unconsciously doing the will of the congregation as a whole (and he may be), it will take a popularizer with better writing skills and perhaps a YouTube channel to make pastors and congregations believe it. Pastors have trouble leading Christians to recognize collective/historical sin and guilt; a similar resistance will make it difficult for congregations to acknowledge unconscious collaboration in abusing their clergy.