Five years ago I eagerly shared with readers that internationally known Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias was speaking in Bangor. The event, Why Jesus?, sold out, packing the Cross Insurance Center with 6,755 people. Among them were a load of high school students I’d wrangled onto a bus.
When it comes to admitting where we’ve made mistakes, the Christian church has often failed to walk in the way of humility, love and repentance set out by Jesus. Two important new books seek to change that by wrestling with the sexual abuse crisis in the church and gender-based violence around the world.
It shouldn’t happen, but it does. To remain silent is to take the side of the abuser, rather than the victim of abuse. What am I talking about? Sexual harassment, assault and abuse in the church. Maybe those three last words don’t come as a surprise, considering the swell of abuse claims against priests in the past decade. But many incidents of church abuse are never reported.
Wife, mom, writer, friend, sharing God in my everyday life through “Faith Notes.”