The Complicities

When we refuse to see what is right before our eyes

Artwork that captured me in a gallery somewhere in the world.

I returned this week from an amazing trip walking 75 miles of the Portuguese Camino. I left home with great excitement, carrying only one disappointment: I hadn’t found a novel to read on the airplane. I love a good read on an overseas flight. I’d requested several from the library, but my turn to borrow had not yet come for any of my desired reads.

When I arrived at my gate, my disappointment evaporated as I found a library cart with books—a take one, leave one kind of thing. I didn’t have one to leave, but I did find one to take. So I did.

I claimed a book called, The Complicities: A Novel, by Stacey D Eras. It’s the story of a woman whose husband made tens of millions in a white collar crime. He went to jail. She divorced him and moved on with life. New town, new name, new identity. The book traces their separate lives after he is released from jail and asks a question of ethics: who exactly is complicit?

The main character dodges her responsibility from beginning to end. She never questioned the extravagant lifestyle they lived, the level of spending far beyond the salary for his profession. Should that not have been enough to say something was off? She dodges the faces of those he stole from and refuses to see her part in restitution. Rather than admit her complicity, she makes excuses.

I read the book, thinking about the church world I have inhabited all my life. I’ve written about complicity in the past. We are a complicit bunch—to spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, misogyny, and extravagant spending (with the Lord’s money). We are complicit because it seems nearly impossible for us to admit our responsibility from beginning to end.

We are complicit when we refuse to believe what our eyes tell us to be true. We are complicit when we refuse to let our voices speak to what our eyes see and what our hearts know. We are complicit when we benefit in any way from not speaking truth.

The book was titled The Complicities. It’s plural. It wasn’t only the ex-wife who was complicit. It was friends, the son, the new wife, parents. Many people were complicit to the crime and what followed.

The book fascinated me because it so parallels what is happening his the church. Who is complicit to the current abuses happening in the church?

I have been thinking about these ideas many years. I perused my online journal to see what I had previously written. I found this from 2019:

As women who minister alongside husbands, we can ride in the wake of our husband’s power. I watch men in ministry who use their power to control and harm people. I’ve often looked at their wives thinking they can do little. But it isn’t true. Because they see the things their husbands are doing. To confront it would be hard and maybe disastrous. But, more often, they don’t do so because they enjoy being in the wake of the powerful ride. They get privilege because of it. And because they are close and do not confront it, they are complicit to the evil their husbands do. As women, we have a responsibility to speak when we see our husbands doing wrong to others.

Maybe it is impossible for a wife to speak to her husband. Maybe he has abused her too, and she cowers in his wake of power. It’s the dynamics of their marriage. But maybe the travel, the wardrobe, the position to power, the lifestyle in ministry keeps her silent. Either way, it is complicity, an excuse to not take responsibility.

Since 2020 we have seen allegation after allegation of sexual abuse in nearly every branch of the protestant church (and one by one they all prove to be true!). Statistics are on the side of the woman accusing, as 99% of allegations of sexual misconduct in the church prove to be true. It is simply too costly to the woman making the accusation. She loses reputation and community. She is blamed and called a seductress. She is the victim but made the villain. And sadly, the same narrative repeats with every new story. The accused pastor stays in the pulpit and in power for a time (time always catches up) because a host of complicit people surround and defend him.

Who are these people?

The wife. There is no doubt she is terribly wronged by her husband sexually using another woman. (Understand this is about power on his part. This is not an affair, no matter the abused woman’s age). We question, did she know? Likely she didn’t know, just as a mother doesn’t know her husband is sexually abusing their daughter. Both wife and mother read the signs and turn the other way, refusing to look, refusing to see what they know.

I have read accounts of young women, girls, who were abused by a pastor and then made to apologize to his wife for seducing him. Let it be said, this is not seduction. It is abuse of power, no matter the age of the woman. And the wife believes the story told her, because it holds the facade of her marriage in place.

The abused woman goes to counseling for years, trying to find healing. She is labeled the problem, mentally ill, a seductress, or crazy, while the wife is lauded as a perfect woman of God. The pastor’s wife lives a life respected by others because of her position in the church. She has benefits to her position and honor. (I have heard it said the wife of the pastor is the 2nd most powerful person in a church). She may have a wardrobe allowance, get to travel with her husband, and rub shoulders with other powerful people. So she refuses to see what her eyes tell her is true.

The church staff, whether pastoral or support. They watch the pastor operate from power not love. They refuse to acknowledge that he has not followed the dictates he commands of others—no solo meetings with the opposite sex. They see who goes in the office. They make excuses. They watch the way he is too touchy with young women and call it normal, even fatherly. Their jobs pay well, and they have great benefits. To speak up would mean they are moved to the outside of the circle. They will lose their jobs, be called unfaithful. So rather than allow the truth to rise in their hearts, they label stories as gossip. They refuse to let their eyes see and their ears hear the truth.

The congregation. They risk losing their community, their place in their local society if they question. They may fear for children or friends who work there. Their pastor has become their idol. They bow to his power and refuse to question the truth or speak to the reality they know. Their cost is social, and they refuse to pay that cost.

The elder board. They have gained the seat of power in the church. They refuse to use their own minds and have long ago abandoned any sense of discernment. They reek with complicity.

Denominational leadership claim they lack power to discipline. They run in fear that they too might be accused (why the fear?!) They hide behind lawyers. They refuse to listen to the wounded. They refuse to see the obvious. They love power over godliness. They don’t want to disrupt power.

Again, we are complicit when we refuse to believe what our eyes tell us to be true. We are complicit when we refuse to let our voices speak to what our eyes see and what our hearts know. We are complicit when we benefit in any way from not speaking truth.

I, too, have been complicit, refusing to believe what my eyes and heart told me.

As I perused my online journal the other day, I found a piece I wrote, and it shocked me. I wrote this:

Some weeks back we had a friend over for the evening. During that evening, he took time to focus on my daughters, talking to them and seeming to care for them. But I went to bed and didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t like how he talked to them. While couched in humor, it was demeaning and degrading. It was telling my oldest that she isn’t good enough as she is. It gave a message that to be something, to be accepted, she had to be something else.

I then wrote that I took my thoughts to my husband and continued:

If our daughters were treated by a boyfriend, as we allowed our friend to treat our daughter, we would tell her to make that guy take a hike. We’d fight her on her value vs. the relationship with that young man. But we let our friend treat her that way.

And, when we, as parents, don’t stand up to this type of behavior, we make our girls think they can’t. We take away their power. This man is a man of power and I believe we don’t stand up to him because of that power. And it follows that if we do not stand up to him now, how will they think they have a right to stand up to a boss at some point, who also has power, and tells them to retain their job they have to let him grope them or have sex with him?

I remember this evening clearly. The man, who I no longer call a friend, sat too close to my oldest daughter, (even her dad doesn’t sit like that with her as an adult). The man let his hand graze her breast. I watched it with alarm and said nothing, spoke to move her from him, but never confronted the way he crossed boundaries. My writing clearly states that I knew I acquiesced to his power. My eyes saw. My heart was alarmed. I didn’t sleep that night. But I didn’t use my voice to defend my daughter because he was a person of power in our movement.

I was complicit at the cost of my own lovely daughters!

I knew what I saw was wrong, and I feared speaking. I was correct in everything I saw. Time has shown that to be true.

The bad guys only stay in power because they have a mountain of people who hide them, make excuses for them, and don’t speak to them. We want evidence, as in a gun with fingerprints, before we will speak to what our eyes and heart know to be true.

Andy and I recently finished the first season of a BBC mystery called Ludwig. As I watched, I thought that the genre is like an Agatha Christie novel, or a Psych rerun. These mysteries follow the same pattern. They never find the smoking gun piece of evidence (we think we have to have that), but the expert solves the crime because they allow their eyes to see what is true of the situation. They step outside of their biases that people are too kind, powerful, or seemingly innocent to do the evil deed. They let their voices speak to the truth and accuse. The person almost always confesses in some way.

The church can learn from these characters. We can learn to hear and see what we know to be true. We can stop making excuses and pretending. The accused may never admit to their wrong and continue to make excuses, but the church can do better. The church must do better. We must listen to the voices of the wounded, hear their stories, and examine what we are seeing.

I had a lovely walk through Spain, with the novel in my suitcase. On the flight home, I finished the last bit of the novel and, when I arrived back in Austin, I placed it back on the same cart I took it from a week earlier. This non-christian author answered questions that had been floating in my mind for some time concerning complicity. When we don’t speak up, we are complicit to the failures of the church. We are complicit to sin.