Evangelicals and Church Abuse
What the Mother and Baby Homes Report reminds us
By Kevin Hargaden
(From the April - June 2021 issue of VOX)
Paul preached a sermon for the people of Athens in Acts 17 which has been studied ceaselessly since. It is the definitive example of how important it is to, “know your audience.” On the hill which had, for centuries, hosted some of the greatest philosophical discourses in human history, Paul demonstrated his understanding and respect of their culture. It is a template evangelists have followed for millennia.
For those of us involved in ministry in Ireland today, appreciating the historical context of the place we serve remains absolutely essential. And the tragic fact is that right now, and for decades into the future, as soon as you stand up to preach in Ireland, you step inside the shadow cast by the generations of abuse committed by Irish Christians throughout the 20th century.
This year began with the publishing of the government’s report into the Mother and Baby Homes. Over the last decade or so there have been reports into the abuses in the Magdalene Laundry system, the industrial schools, and various devastating reports into abuses in particular Catholic dioceses. There is no Irish person unaware of this phenomenon. Any missional project that does not consider this context is bound to fail, defeating itself by ignoring the wisdom of the New Testament and the plain fact that God’s good news is deeply tied up with our abuse.
“The historical fact is clear: we conduct our mission today in the light of what Christians of all kinds did up until the last Mother and Baby home closed in 1998.”
When I say our abuse, I mean it. This is not a problem that evangelicals can brush aside as some kind of “Catholic issue”. The Mother and Baby Homes report includes many references to evangelical initiatives like the Bethany Home in south Dublin, where hundreds of babies were buried in unmarked graves. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, never legally ran these homes but prominent leaders within our congregations were deeply involved in their operation. They were joined by evangelicals from every conceivable tradition present in Ireland at the time. The historical fact is clear: we conduct our mission today in the light of what Christians of all kinds did up until the last Mother and Baby home closed in 1998.
I feel the temptation to read these reports and distance myself from them. I want to profess, “But, I’m not that kind of Christian!” Since Pontius Pilate, however, the option of washing our hands has not been available to us. The instinct to parse the detail of legal culpability to avoid moral responsibility must be resisted. Those who ran these homes and laundries and schools and dioceses could say the creed, they prayed daily, they called Jesus Lord. Every single member of the Managing Committee of Bethany House had to sign an evangelical doctrinal commitment as rigorous as any I have encountered. No one will be convinced by our efforts to declare ourselves righteous!
To understand our mission in historical context means wrestling with the fact that when vulnerable young women were at their most fearful, Christians not just colluded but actively constructed and sustained a system that incarcerated them and then often dispatched their babies to foreign lands without consulting them. This is the stuff of nightmares. And it is arguably at the benign end of the spectrum of abuse associated with the churches in our land.
“This is a serious word for anyone with ears to hear: how are we different?”
Reading the Mother and Baby Homes Report feels like a gruelling test of our spiritual stamina. Page after page, atrocities are recorded in the cold and dispassionate tone of an official publication. One marvels at the strength of the women who rebuilt their lives after being so broken down like this. One laments for the many who surely were crushed entirely. Remembering the historical context has contemporary consequences. The Irish churches once paid so little attention to women in their midst that they could shuffle them off into captivity and barely even notice. This is a serious word for anyone with ears to hear: how are we different?
Lament is the biblical mode of worship most commonly neglected by the contemporary church. It is praise that begins in repentance. To appreciate the context for our mission is to begin in lament. This is exhausting but it is the only path to liberation. We preach a message we say is good news – that God took on human form and dwelt among us. He was born in a state of illegitimacy and shame, and farm animals were His first companions, along with His unwed mother and foster father. The entire message hinges around a young woman with the remarkable courage to stare into the abyss of social disgrace and yet still declare, “God’s will be done”. When we align the Mother and Baby Homes against the core of the Gospel message, we cannot fail to see how compromised our message is if we do not appreciate this historical context. Such a perversion of the gospel, such a crime against God – and women and children – we inherit.
We must own this legacy and lament. Even if we think we can protest that our denomination or tradition or congregation were not implicated, our message is still heard in this setting. And these abuses continue to have real world effects in the lives of the victims who are still with us, our colleagues and neighbours, and friends in church. That’s where our lament should lead us – back to care for those caught up by this system and forward to create cultures where such abuses will not be replicated.
Acts 17 does not record a mass conversion followed from Paul’s sensitive sermon. Wrestling seriously with how our gospel message has been bound up with heinous abuse is not a church growth strategy but an invitation to faithfulness and to the cultivation of communities of Christians where vulnerable people are safe and those scorned by society are welcomed.
But to understand our mission in historical context also shines light on our contemporary situation. The last Mother and Baby Home was still open years after the first Direct Provision Centre was established. These two coercive cultures overlapped. Where once we viewed pregnant women with scorn and suspicion, modern Ireland – which is still all too eager to pat itself on the back for what it sees as its moral progress – now views the foreigner the same way. Men, women, and children arrive at our shores having escaped war or persecution or torture and we put them in pseudo-prisons and give them €21.60 a week and tell them to be grateful.
The Mother and Baby Homes Report – for all of its deficiencies – allows us to hear some of the voices that have gone unheard. It is thus essential reading for those want to get a hearing in contemporary Ireland. Paul paid attention. We must too.
Dr Kevin Hargaden leads the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, where he works as a social theologian. He is an elder for the Presbyterian Church in Lucan. His most recent book is entitled Theological Ethics in a Neoliberal Age.
