“How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities” with Dr. Andrew J. Bauman

by on May 16, 2025

What happens when a woman names harm in her church community—and instead of support, she’s met with silence, suspicion, or even exile? 

Too often, the church’s response to abuse and inequity reveals a painful truth: that protecting systems has taken precedence over protecting people.

In this powerful and layered conversation, Dr. Andrew J. Bauman joins Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to confront the realities explored in Andrew’s new book Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities. 

Together, they discuss:

  • The cost many women pay for speaking up: isolation, lost community, and spiritual disillusionment
  • How even “progressive” churches can harbor subtle patterns of power and control
  • The stark data that exposes ongoing gender inequity in ministry
  • The personal stories that bring this reality to life—and why representation matters
  • What a truly safe and equitable church could look like

This is not just a conversation about what’s broken—it’s a call to build something better. A church where truth is welcomed, not silenced. Where policies protect the vulnerable. Where power is shared, not hoarded. And where the sacred image of God in women is honored, nurtured, and empowered.

Whether you’re a survivor, a leader, or someone wrestling with disillusionment, this episode offers a brave and hopeful vision of what the church can become—if we have the courage to tell the truth and move toward change.

Related Resources:

About Our Guest:

Dr. Andrew J. Bauman is the Founder & Director of the Christian Counseling Center: For Sexual Health & Trauma (CCC) and a therapist with a Doctorate from Northeastern University. His dissertation was on studying the impact of sexism and abuse on women in the Protestant Church. Andrew is the author of seven books, and his newest book with Baker, is called SAFE CHURCH: How to Guard Against Sexism & Abuse in Christian Communities (2025).

Episode Transcript:

Dan: Rachael, we have a dear friend joining us today, Dr. Andrew Bauman. It is a delight to have you with us. Folks, we’ll need an introduction, but we’ll just start to say, an esteemed graduate of the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and indeed, a remarkable writer. 11 books, seven books, nine books. All I know is I have a little section in my library of Andrew Bauman and his beloved wife between the two of you. I think it was about 14 or 15 books. But again, we have an incredible privilege to talk with you about your newest book. But just a little bit of background, you’re the founder and director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma, and as both a former pastor, but also as a very live therapist, particularly working from amazing work from your doctorate at Northeastern, you have focused on the reality of trauma and abuse, particularly in the context of the church. And that is what we get to talk about your newest book, Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities. So it isn’t a trigger warning here, it isn’t an effort to say to folks, don’t let your children be near. But it is a way of saying, look, people wouldn’t be, shall we say, joining our podcast if they weren’t somewhat open to addressing the issue of abuse and trauma. But there is nothing like abuse and trauma in the context of the church, perpetrated in the church, or in some sense facilitated by the church in the sense of not addressing the reality of trauma. So this is a really, really heartbreaking and brilliant and such an important book. So we’re so grateful to have you with us.

Andrew: Well, thank you. It’s so good to be with you guys. I miss your faces and it’s an honor to be here and talk about such an important thing that you guys are pioneering in so many ways, and I’m standing on your all shoulders, so it’s an honor to be here.

Dan: Well, indeed, one of the things that I want to jump into immediately is that you did some really amazing research, and that’s so important to be able to say… We know anecdotally the reality of this heartache, but I just want you to kind of talk a little bit about the 2,800 women that you engaged and what the research. I’ve got few things I want to make sure you say. So if you don’t, I’ll add it. But just to say, talk a little bit about what you did in that research.

Andrew: I mean, I had an idea. So I was a pastor before I came out there 15, 16 years ago to become a therapist. I was a youth pastor, a college pastor in the Southern Baptist tradition, and I kind of had an idea of what I was going to find because I lived that world for so long. I mean, it was a great job. Me and my buddies had this church, it’s so much fun. We would be hunting on the weekends and I’d golf everywhere, all free. Of course. It was just like, I’m living the dream in this kind of male dominated space, and the women would prepare our food and that was their place, and we had the important work of God to do.And then realizing as I began to investigate myself, my own story and kind of deconstruct parts of my faith to rebuild a stronger faith, I realized, wow, there’s a lot. I was very blinded from half the church from half the image bearers of God. And so I kind of thought what I might find, but I was blown away by the actual data. And these aren’t just random women, these are women who have worked in the church. 16% of them worked in the church for 25 years or longer. Let’s see, and 16% worked for 16 years or something like that. I messed up the stats, but these are women who’ve worked in the church for decades. So these are women who have been on the front lines of ministry and they’re telling their stories and they’re sharing what they’ve experienced. And it is so heartbreaking. It is so heartbreaking, but profound, and we have so much to learn. We have so much to learn. So 82% said that they experienced some form of sexism in their church. And so what is sexism basically? Prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping because of someone’s sex. That’s the simple definition. So we have 82% of women said they experienced that. And I don’t know if you want me to dive into some of the stories, the particulars of these stories, but that’s what really impacted me the most was hearing the stories, literally putting faces to stories and how common they were. This is not something that’s just a one-off. This is the norm.

Dan: Yeah. Rachael, anything that, any of the stats that you want to go after? Before I go after the one that…

Rachael: Oh, I mostly just want to name as someone raised in the Southern Baptist Church, coming into a ministry, calling in the Southern Baptist Church, pursuing seminary, pursuing biblical studies in undergrad at a Christian liberal arts, Southern Baptist Christian liberal arts school. And in many ways, not doing full-time ministry within a church context, having years of ministry in a church context. But at least in this professional part of my life, this book, it felt like reading my own stories or the statistics in some ways, nothing was shocking to me. Nothing was surprising to me. But that didn’t make it any less harrowing, I guess I would say.

Andrew: Because you lived it, your name could have been in all those women’s names.

Dan: Well, again, everything that you researched bore a kind of heartbreaking, of course. And on the other hand, it doesn’t ever make sense that, again, the figure that just undid me again was one third of the women had experienced some degree of sexual misconduct toward them when they were serving in ministry. And it’s so comparable to what we know is the figure of 38% of people, women have been abused by the time they’re 18, sexually abused. And so you’re looking at this one third category going, it just is ongoingly perpetuated. So when one third of women in ministry experience some degree of sexual violation, we are in the realm of madness, and it’s just heartbreaking. So as you put the research together and knew it somewhat anecdotally, I mean, again, it just had to generate so much heartache and anger as you began to see that. So before we jump in, how did you get into this? I’m prompting the fact that you describe in the book what you discovered about your father.

Andrew: Yeah, there’s so many entry points. Obviously the most important entry point is my own origin story. My father was a pastor and a prominent evangelical leader in the eighties in Florida, and he also had a secret life. He also… sex, drugs, alcohol, all the things, addicted to all these things, but basically discovering that, and it all came out when I was eight years old. So my mom, her whole life just wanted to be a good Christian woman, and so mild, submissive to my father. And so that’s my origin story of my mom went numb because of my father’s abuse, because of my father’s…. So that’s one huge, I dedicate the book to my mom just because of what she has suffered and how the church both wounded her and also saved her. And so I became an orphan, right? And the church parented me. I was there literally five days a week, all my first jobs where I was the gym attendant, passing out roller skates. I was all these things. And so the church was there for me and so many ways. So I loved the church. So I would not, in a sense, this is not just some distant critique of the church. This is because I love the church, and the church has sustained me and helped save me. And also, we’ve got to begin to tell the truth of what half of the church is experiencing. And so that’s one entry point. Another entry point then is later on, I became a pastor. I also had a hidden life in my own porn addiction for 13 years. And I was realizing my objectifying view of women was kind of mixing with this degrading and oppressive theology. It actually fit quite well. Where it’s like, oh, women are a little bit less than, oh, I can have the power. Oh, I am in charge and they can serve. As I began to be more honest with myself and my story, I realized how off base I was with my view of women. And so I had to begin to do the, and you guys were a big part of that hard redemptive suffering work of telling the truth of my own story, of facing my deepest shame, of my deepest fear. And then in that discovering the depth of my purpose, which is actually becoming an advocate for women speaking truth to power systems so we can actually create a safer church.

Rachael: Well, one of the things I deeply appreciate about your research is that you spend time talking about the waters that we’re swimming in, that this isn’t a phenomena of the eighties and nineties in a sense of, or coming out of the 1950s. It’s so much deeper than that. And the way Greek and Roman philosophy really infiltrated the early church ideology, even though you point out so well that the way Jesus interacted with women in the text and the ways in which this new metaphysical reality we’re actually tearing down all false binaries of power, not just across gender, but class and all kinds of things. And there’s something really important, I think, about inviting people to understand when we’re taking this in, when it is the air we’re breathing and the water we’re drinking, it’s almost like, yeah, it feels like you hear it right now in the current administration, they keep throwing around the word common sense. So it’s just common sense, just common sense. And there’s nothing, I hate worse than that word when it’s used as a misuse and abuse of power, because someone’s common sense could be someone else’s death sentence. I just feel like, well, I don’t trust your common sense. But in some ways, if we don’t take a look at like, how did we get here?

Andrew: Yes, exactly.

Rachael: And what are some of the pillars of this phenomenon, then we can address a problem without actually taking on the things that sustain it. And I’m deeply appreciative of your work there to kind of bring that into the conversation.

Andrew: Totally. I mean, Christianity adopted so much of the Greek sexist, gendered, classist language, right? When you look at St. Augustine, right, when you look at Thomas Aquinas, when you look at these are pillars that the church was built on. I mean, women are… it was St. Augustine, women are biologically and physically defective. He claimed that women were inferior, mind, body, and soul, thus subjected to male rule. If we don’t see what kind of it was born into, which actually to me in my research, made me fall in love with Jesus even more fully because of how wild his engagement was with women and being brought into this patriarchal Roman culture, which was what made his presence so revolutionary.

Dan: And you say it so well, I mean, the first disclosure of his person is in John 4 to the proverbial woman at the well, and the first evangelist, the apostle to the apostles, Mary. So Jesus’s engagement, particularly in a day in which patriarchy was a little different than what patriarchy is today, no less heinous today, but indeed even more evil at that juncture, we’re having to deconstruct not our faith as much as deconstruct how our faith has been, shall we say, erected through Greek and Roman structures that indeed become the lens by which we look at a passage like in 1 Timothy 2 or other passages about the nature of the role of a woman in the context of the church. So one of the things that I think you do so brilliantly is to look at what, at least we would call bad theology, bad, bad theology, that in some sense institutes a structure that inevitably will lead even when they’re good folks, lead to a form again, of patriarchy, misogyny, and ultimately this form of sexism. So what’s the response you’ve had from, shall we say, the more complementarian approach–folks, churches, that would still hold that view? What’s the response to the book so far?

Andrew: Well, I mean, sadly, my fear was the people that actually need this book the most probably won’t read it. And so I realized that, and yet most of it has been positive, and yet some has been a, you’re hijacking women’s stories or you’re basically, rather than, I want to use my privilege, I want to use my platform as a way to help elevate these stories of women. So that’s been some of the critique. And then also just being not biblical, which is why I wanted to take a lot of time in my research. This took me about five years, a lot of time to dive into these texts, a lot of research, and then just realize theology has a face, theology has a story, and so let’s make these women’s stories the thing out in front. So this isn’t just another, I’m not a theologian. This is not just some theological, but I wanted to add both honor to the text, but also say, this is a storied endeavor, and I’ve been a part of the problem. I have been a part of the problem, and the glory is I can be a part of the solution. Kevin Garcia, author Kevin Garcia, he said, bad theology kills. And I truly believe that. And so some of the big things that I take on of problematic theologies and teachings are the issue of submission and headship and authority, even the grace and forgiveness, because one, oh, you need to show grace to your abusers. You need can we basically weaponize forgiveness? And so many of the women that reported, basically, they went to their pastors and said, Hey, here’s my story. My husband’s cheating on me. I caught him this. And the first story was, well, have you forgiven him yet? Have you, you’ve been a Christian longer than he has so I’ll share the direct quote of the woman I’m talking about. Kristen, we named her Kristen. “After my husband was abusive and porn addicted, I was told to forgive that my anger would cause him to do porn even more so I shouldn’t be angry since I was a Christian longer. I should be the better example.” So this is what her pastor told her. And so Christians should not feel angry. So basically taking her, I think glorious anger that actually of feeling betrayed, to not trust her intuition, where actually she should feel rage because she was betrayed by someone she loved. She should feel grief, she should feel heartbreak. And so rather than focusing on the abuser and the abuse, they weaponized forgiveness. And they all, too often, the women reported this over and over and over. And so that was a whole thing. We talked about weaponizing forgiveness as well. And so we also talk about modesty, impurity culture, the weaponizing of that, and also marriage and divorce. So those are a few of the things that I take on, I believe in chapter seven of problematic theologies.

Rachael: Well, just one of the things I was thinking about, and I appreciate how you do this, is you do spend some time really unpacking sexism, and it’s varied multi dynamic nuances. And one of the last definitions you bring of sexism is internalized sexism. And I think that that’s part of what certainly we see playing out in the church today is, and we see this with internalized racism, we see this with internalized homophobia and queer phobia and transphobia. Anytime there’s a system of bringing oppression, and you are one of the people under that oppression, you do internalize those messages and take them as a way to stay safe, right? To not be the one who scapegoated or violated or exiled. And it just made me think so much about my own story because if you had talked to me 20 years ago, maybe I’m like, oh God, I’m getting old. Maybe 25 years ago, I would’ve argued with you that women shouldn’t be in leadership. It was like all the kind of lines around the inferiority of women, the emotionality of women, the irrationality of women, whatever, even as I was still at that point, continuing to be placed in multiple realms of leadership. They just weren’t necessarily within the church. But for me, the greatest wounds, or the most surprising wounds, I guess I would say often came from women. And I am someone that, I’m learning about myself is often out here playing checkers, thinking, if we just all saw the good thing and there’s this liberative reality, we’ll join in together. And I wasn’t seeing the deeper things. So I would be so shocked when another woman would have such rage like, well, you can’t be a pastor. You can’t preach. You need to submit you. I would be so confused by this. And often these would be older women as well. And I wasn’t seeing that for them to have a shift, a liberative shift would require so much lament, so much rage that I was such a threat to manure they had been eating for so many years to stay in right standing. And we see this happening with people like Beth Moore, folks like Amy Bird, who we recently had on the podcast, who play by all the rules and stay within systems that ask them to be the right kind of women. And then when abuse is brought clearly and explicitly, that belief that people, you kind of take them at their word, that they do care about the vulnerable that they do want to do right, and then what it exposes that, no, the system actually wants to protect power. And you’ve just exposed the powers by your truth-telling, by your invitation to the more that we’re called to. And then there’s such a profound backlash. And I think in some ways just that kind of breaking down how these, it’s not just us versus them, or like, oh, this only impacts women, or this only impacts men. No, it impacts everyone. And maybe differently. 

Andrew: The backlash is real. I mean, these women that I talked to talking about coming out or how they finally did leave, or they literally have lost their entire communities. They don’t even have friends. It’s like they were a part of a gang. I’m like, what is this? I thought this was a church. No, my old friends that I had for 15 years, they don’t even talk to me anymore. Because I did file for divorce. And divorce is they think I’m wrong. But wait, wasn’t your husband emotionally abusing you? Spiritually abusing you? Yes. But in a sense, that doesn’t matter because the divorce is the higher sin. And it reminds me of Dr. Diane Langberger when she says, I’ll quote her here, “Remember, people are sacred, created in the image of God. Systems are not.” That’s what it is. We are trying to protect the institution or the system, and yet we neglect the actual image bearer of God. And these women are being left out to dry and isolated, which is part of the theme, right? Part of the, they get penalized for speaking truth and for actually standing up to what you’re talking about.

Dan: Well, Andrew, as you have named such in one sense, such heartbreaking darkness, and some of this is so violatingly clear, but I also want to underscore that you also talk about the subtlety. This one quote, a woman speaking, I had more formal education than a job required a decade of previous experience, a supportive spouse, and even a church that said they were egalitarian. Yet, at the end of the day, every single one of my decisions was analyzed, critiqued, and checked and rechecked by the lead male pastor before my ideas were allowed to be implemented in the ministry that I was leading. So we need to talk about this as a spectrum. There are, I mean, one third of women experience some degree of sexual violation of ministry. That ain’t subtle. But we’re talking about the reality that a male pastor is critiquing, re-critiquing, checking, and she’s asking at the very end of this quote, well, what am I leading? So again, you’re dealing with a wide spectrum of how sexism cuts to the core of undermining a woman’s integrity and capacity, but power. So you’re inviting us to, in one sense, a redistribution of power by the exposure of the false power that many men take in the context, not only a marriage, but ministry. Again, back to that question of how are we to undermine that power?

Andrew: Yes, yes. The statistics, the question that I asked was, do you feel that opportunities in ministry have been limited because you’re a woman because of your gender? And 77.9% of women felt like opportunities had been limited to them due to their gender. There is a firm stained glass ceiling in the evangelical church, and women shared so many stories. I mean, Hannah said she got a master’s degree from Harvard, could not find a church in her denomination to hire. So she just had a change denomination so she could find a job. Gail said, direct quote, “I was kept from being hired as a worship leader, although I had been filling in for the role for over a year. I had a degree in music, a decade of experience. I couldn’t be hired because I was a woman, even though the leadership agreed that I had been doing an amazing job and I was exceptionally qualified. The man they hired in my place was far less capable musician, a far less capable administrator, and a far less capable music director,” basically worse at every aspect. And yet he got the job. And I would imagine you, Rachael, more than Dan and I, you know what that’s like because what I know of you is you are a natural leader. You are someone who speaks truth to power systems. And yet the little of what I know of your story, of what you grew up in that was not honored or blessed.

Rachael: Oh, I mean, I think about we did these, and this was in one particular, it, there was a four year period in adolescence where we were in a church that I would say, I don’t even know if it was Southern Baptist. It was kind of its own. It was very fundamentalist, like a cult. And we had to do spiritual gifts, inventories. And mine would always come back like preacher, shepherd, pastor, and they’d be like, oh, I think this means teacher. Or like, oh, I think this means administrator. Those kinds of things. But honestly, what led me to the Seattle School, which is kind of ironic because I graduated from undergrad, I’m never going to seminary. So tired of thinking about God academically I’m exhausted. But I was working in a church and I was working with the youth. Now, in all fairness, my trauma was manifesting in some ways. So I needed some healing and help. So there were certainly, I wouldn’t say character issues, but I was kind of mouthy. I didn’t always do well with authority. There were some places I could look back and go, they had said, “Hey, we’re not going to hire you on full-time staff because of this,” That would’ve been a different story. But the reason I was told at the end of a year long internship, no, we would not hire you, is basically we would hire a man because a man needs to be in this role. And the youth group was like 80% female. And even I think because the parents were saying, we don’t want to lose Rachael, could we create a more substantial job for her? And it was like, no, we would hire a man and we would hire someone who’d gone to seminary. And because basically something along the lines of a woman’s position could cause young people to stumble. But no sense that the 80% female youth group could also be exploited by male leaders who they have a crush. It’s like just this absurdity. But I remember the senior pastor talking with me, he had three daughters in the youth group at this time and saying, Hey, there’s a church down the street that’s hiring a children’s pastor or a children’s minister. And for me, that was, and again, this is what I would say, the church has lost an incredible amount of gifted talent that would bring such beauty to communities. You open your book talking about Christie and her own journey of feeling called to something and being told time and time again, you can’t be called to that. You’re not called to that. That was my experience as a 12-year-old at Falls Creek, running down a call to call to ministry and being told, well, you can’t really be called to the ministry you think you’re called to. So the number of women who opt out who say, okay, and for me, I would’ve stayed to transform. Which again, I think Jesus was like, that’s not how I made you. You’re not going to make it. And so let’s make this clear now so that you can move on to get the education I’m calling you to. But it wasn’t until I was 27 in seminary that someone, the first time anyone ever uttered the word, I think you’re a pastor. I was 27 years old. The first time I heard a woman preach life. I was 27 years old. And I’ll never forget the day I preached at my church. It wasn’t the first time, but it was one of the times. And a little girl came up to me and said, I want to do what you do. And I just thought…

Andrew: Ah, beautiful.

Rachael: Gosh. Part of me wanted to be like, Ooh, it’s a scary world out there. But also how beautiful that at eight, she had an imagination that this is something that she’s created for and meant for. And yeah, I do think that there’s a lot that’s very heartbreaking to me that so many women who actually are called to shepherd, are called to preach, are called pastor, and to lead in that way, in some ways, the spirit’s powerful and will find ways to do that everywhere, but leave organized religion or leave the church to do that in other places where they have more access. I can’t even tell you the number of women I’ve talked to as I started doing more work on spiritual abuse who say to me, yeah, I think if I were to really go back my vocational path maybe would’ve looked different. I didn’t realize some of the assault I was under, the ways in which I was taken in messages, or I was having experiences that were hostile or violating or sexual harassment. So yeah, I think it is an, it’s an epidemic. It is a grievous, heartbreaking and honestly infuriating, unnecessary reality.

Andrew: So true. Two thoughts. One, it reminds me of a quote by author Emily Joy Allison, and she says, good theology bears good fruit and bad theology bears bad fruit. Right? Simple as that. And then reminded me of the women that I talked to. So many of them had left the church, but they said, my love for God is so deep. It’s so real. It’s so true. And it has nothing to do. And yet many of them were not in the church because of the pain, and they no longer trusted, which is just heartbreaking because the church should be the safest place. And yet so many times because of blind spots, unaddressed trauma of leadership, whatever we want to name it, all these systems, it has become a dangerous place for them. But their faith hasn’t changed.

Dan: Well, as a person engages this book, and we’ve given away, at least we had the privilege of having three copies. And so…

Andrew: You got a lot.

Dan: Well, I had the great honor of endorsing. So the publisher was gracious enough that we’ve already purchased… how we got three is not important. But the point is, as we began giving to folks in our church part, we’re in a really good church and really thoughtful church, and yet one of the persons we gave the book to, it triggered appropriately. Again, we normally think of the word trigger as something unbecoming, but it triggered memories, but also helped her begin to name how this showing up in our church. And I think it’s a great church, a lovely church, but the point is, if you’re honest, you know at some level, there is an inherent form of sexism if you’re a male, certainly as a white man, a certain degree of my own racism. So it isn’t surprising that there’s no real safe church, but the church that knows it’s not safe is at least on some path toward becoming safer.

Andrew: Exactly.

Dan: As we talk about a good enough mother, we can talk about a good enough safe church.

Andrew: Yes. Well, said.

Dan: So as you’re inviting people to this good labor, what does safe enough, good enough, safe enough church look like?

Andrew: Yes. That’s a great question. And there’s a lot of different, some of those practical stuff I’ll get to at the end. But lemme start a little bit, say some of the things. One, you have to find a church that just has the conversation, right? How many sermons have you heard on domestic violence? How many sermons have you heard on sexual abuse? Is your church talking about this? Is your church open to you starting a book club? Are you having the conversation? Is there dialogue around these issues? Because if one in three women have suffered some form of sexual abuse, one in four have experienced some form of domestic violence, this is in our church, this is real. This is now. And we can’t just talk about the beauty of the resurrection without the horrific reality of the crucifixion. So we have to find a church that talks about that, that has the conversation. Two, you got to make sure your church uses trusted and researched resources. There’s so many terrible resources out there. There’s so many awful, Sheila Gregoire does such a great job at that. But you got to find trusted resources that are actually vetted. So those are a few just practical things. Also, and this is a hard one to determine, but as far as the leadership doing their own internal healing, something that you taught me, Dan, was you can’t take people further than you’ve gone yourself. That’s as true as it is for a therapist, as it is for a pastor. And you cannot be spiritually healthy if you’re not emotionally healthy. They’re tied together. And so emotional health is just as vital because they’re so intertwined with spiritual health. So before you develop, implement safe church policies and safeguards, do you have a pastor who’s willing to do the hard work self-reflection? Of the hard story work? Willing to grieve his own losses? And if that is the case, then we get to the more practical safeguards and policies of the yearly abuse prevention training. Obviously criminal background checks, gosh, that’s a tough word, familiarity. You know what I’m trying to say. With policies and reporting procedures, open dialogue back to the conversations starting where they’re not trying to shut dialogue down, but they’re actually inviting difficult conversation. And then actually, what do you look for is increased diversity in leadership positions. Race, gender, diversity adds so much goodness and actually helps limit abusive structures and power grabs and issues of power and control with leadership. So is power shared rather than hoarded.

Rachael: In the book, you mentioned a letter you received from a pastor, because I want to name this right, because I think we saw this with the Me Too movement and universities like, well, what about false reporting? What about false reporting? And certainly there are cases, people bringing false accusations, but I think in churches you know, the pastor was asking, I want to do this wisely. I feel like my job is to stand with the more vulnerable person, the person who is feeling victimized. But I also have this experience of someone being falsely accused and it really ruining their life. And how do I approach the Swiss wisdom? And I thought your response was so great, and I’ll let you speak to it, but it’s like we have so many more cases, especially in the church. I mean, we are seeing, it is a reckoning right now with leadership and people who have tremendous power, who have harmed, and they’ve been covered and they’ve been protected, and they’ve gone to another community without someone saying, Hey, there’s some problems here. You need to protect your people. So we actually have seen way more of a failure to actually address harm. Seriously. And again, as Christians, we get to have a more restorative justice imagination that doesn’t ever mean, then I think the way that, again, forgiveness gets weaponized, minimization of harm, lack of accountability, or some like, well, this person’s new testimony, look what God has done. They get to keep having this leadership without any true as you’re speaking to work of transformation. And so maybe you could just speak a little bit about how you would engage those who say, yeah, but if we put these policies in place, if we attempt to be more informed, more transparent, basically we’re just kind of setting up our leadership to be falsely accused.

Andrew: Right? Yeah. I mean, some of the statistics from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center says anywhere from two to 10% are false claims alleged victims falsely accused. So two to 10%. So I mean, I say I’d way rather take accusations too seriously than not seriously enough. So if I’m going to fail, I would rather take it too seriously than not taking it seriously enough. And so much of leadership, I think it was, what was it, 87% of church leadership was male-led, right? And so that being the case, that creates blind spots for us as men, if we’re honest enough, there’s blind spots. And then with the research of safe church, like, okay, this is becoming more real. So let’s be honest, there’s a problem that we’ve created as men with women. And so sexual assault happens all the time. Sexual harassment, 33% in the church all the time. So this is normalized. Do your research, do the due diligence, take the stories, do the work. If you are a church leader, please take this seriously. And I truly believe God is truth. And so the more we live in truth, the more we will experience God. And so I think the faults, if there is one of those two or 10% that will come out, but we’ve got to take this super 

serious because if 90% of them are true, then let’s err on that side.

Rachael: Amen.

Dan: Well, the complications are, look, if there weren’t complications, this issue would’ve been addressed a long time ago. And if we weren’t dealing with a fundamental sense of entitlement, that in terms of dealing with trafficking laws for how many decades, centuries, were those caught in prostitution, given, shall we say, extreme consequences compared to the men who were purchasing? And you just go, look, it’s just not a surprising thing. Do you remember third grade recess? Who had power? And what did the bullies do? And how did they create a context where even good hearted people felt too much of a threat to just point out the bully or stand against the bully? And often this is the heartbreak. Often it’s the courageous woman who smacks the bully.

Andrew: Exactly.

Dan: And you go, what you’ve done is you haven’t just given voice to those who have been violated. You’ve given voice to heroic women who many have remained in a context of wanting and desiring to tell the truth. And that is, I think one of the things that, again, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard when I have traveled, Rachael, that your place in the kingdom has been so honored that you have remained deeply willing to wrestle not just with systems, but with Jesus in the midst of it. And I think you, Andrew, have given voice to many women the opportunity to say, hell no. Hell no. This is not of the kingdom of God.

Andrew: That’s right.

Dan: This is of the kingdom of evil.

Andrew: That’s right. 

Dan: And for us to be in the position of being allies, but even more so at one level, giving the priority of voice is part of what it means to hold power well together. And that feels like one of the gifts that you’ve given. So we want this book to be sold wide and far. But more importantly, as you have said many times over, it’s more important that one person church grapple with this. May it be sold, but may it indeed be brought into the life of the believing community. So thank you for life and your labor.

Rachael: Yes, thank you.

Andrew: Yes, well said. Thank you all for having me on here and being a part of this important conversation.