For Our Daughters - Review

Okay, I just watched For Our Daughters, and it is stirring, alarming, and infuriating. Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Carl Byker have produced a moving 30-minute documentary about the victims of sexual abuse in churches and how their abusers were protected and even applauded.

Here are my thoughts and comments.

First, you need to mentally and emotionally prepare to watch this, as you will experience profound grief and spleen-splitting rage. People who have experienced sexual trauma should particularly be prepared to hear victims tell their stories as this might prove difficult to watch.

Second, props and praise to the courageous women who spoke up, told their stories, and named names. It took guts to put their faces on camera!

Third, men need to watch this! It is not just for women to grow in empathy with other women. Men need to watch this to see how women can be exploited by pastors, how predatory pastors can be protected by weak and self-interested men, and how men can find their first inclination to cover up and protect perpetrating pastors.

Fourth, churches are soft targets for predators, they spend years grooming victims, trying to get into places of influence and power. So a prevention and reporting strategy is needed. Making sure every pastor, leader, and anyone who works with youth has a police background check and has done a course on preventing sexual abuse is not hard. This is standard in Australian churches. My college, Ridley College, is developing a free, online unit on how to prevent sexual abuse in churches, watch it when it’s out!!!

Fifth, key SBC leaders like Jerry Vines and Paige Patterson come off particularly poorly in this doco. This should be mandatory viewing for all SBC pastors and people in SBC seminaries. Not as an SBC bashing exercise, but as a morality tale about what happens when pastors side with the wolves over the sheep. The SBC needs a one-strike policy on sex crimes. You commit sexual sin, like adultery or assault, game-over, you are done and dusted, no crocodile tears, no “mistakes were made and lessons were learned,” no “I’m undergoing a period of restoration,” you are finito! Never again can you be allowed to lead a church or be part of its leadership team. Here’s my word for the SBC: The behavior you tolerate is the behavior you promote. So have a zero-tolerance policy on sexual predation!

Fifth, complementarians need to pay particular attention to sexual violence in the church and put extra effort into tackling this problem. Most complementarians I know are not sexual predators (well, as far as I am aware). Being complementarian does not necessarily yield sexual predation, but it does enable it, adherents are far more likely to cover it up, and can be inclined to side with the perpetrator rather than the victims. If you don’t believe me, watch some of the complementarian responses to the doco, it proves my point tenfold. The way to make complementarianism look good and attractive for women is not by punishing and humiliating the women who speak up about sexual abuse, but by a figurative flogging of the men who exploit your mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. Sure, presumption of innocence, due process, independent inquiry, file police reports, etc. But after that, if the man is guilty, get metaphorically medieval on the son of a motherless goat who did that thing, do it publicly, and scare the poop out of anyone who is similar. If the wolf is gonna wolf, then shepherd’s gotta shepherd, even if the wolf is your best friend, favorite elder, or senior pastor. So make an example of the first wolf you find among your flock, make a mess, and send a message. The other wolves will figure out that your church is not a safe place to hunt.

Find below another Birds of a Feather episode where Aimee Byrd and I discuss our reactions to For Our Daughters.