An Open Letter to the “Good Men” in the Church

*Content warning: sexual violence against women. Please note that the word “woman” in this post includes our trans, femme, and nonbinary sisters.

It is hard to write a blog post when you are angry. At least, it is hard for me. It is a frustrating task to organize my thoughts and feelings enough to put them in writing and make them palatable for readers. I have tried to do that here. 

Two decades after the inception of the #METOO movement, a nation of enraged women are crying out for justice on behalf of Jane Doe. For those of you unfamiliar (though how can you be?) with the story of the Cornell 7, it caught national attention last week when The New York Times published an article about a lawsuit filed against seven Cornell University students by one Jane Doe alleging gang rape.

I will not address the details of this lawsuit, the accusations, or the reported circumstances surrounding this case. In this age of the internet and social media, I do not need to. What I do want to talk about is the righteous anger of women and the responsibility of good men within the church.

Women are angry—and rightfully so. To identify as a woman is to know, without a doubt, that you are hated. Our rights are being systematically suppressed, our legal protections destroyed one by one, and consequently we live in daily fear. Jane Doe’s accusations do not surprise us. Many of us have faced or will face sexual harassment, abuse, or assault at least once in our lives. It is disgusting and disheartening.

One of the things that hurts me the most is the deafening silence from many male-led churches and other Christian organizations when it comes to violence against women. For centuries—in society and especially in the church—the burden of responsibility for preventing sexual violence has rested squarely on the shoulders of women. We must be careful about what we wear, where we go, what we consume, who we are with, and how we are with them. A failure in any of these areas, we are taught, can lead to the temptation of a man. If he gives in to that temptation (and who could really blame him if he does?), it could lead to his disgrace. 

This warped logic is on extreme display in fundamentalist faith traditions, where women are often portrayed as the great temptresses of sin and men are simply the victimized targets of our wiles. My formative teen years were spent in the youth groups of fundamental Baptist churches where the girls often went on “purity retreats.” The speakers and mentors would compare our chastity to flowers: if we didn’t protect our sexual purity, our petals would be plucked before we could be properly appreciated by God’s chosen mate. If that analogy weren’t bad enough, they would then liken our bodies to pieces of chewing gum. If we engaged in sexual activity all the flavor would be consumed, leaving behind nothing but a useless and distasteful piece of trash to be spit out. “Who wants an already chewed-up piece of gum?” 

Bad theology was weaponized to frighten young women. The young men received their own warped religion: while we girls were taught to be chaste and to cover up so as not to tempt the opposite sex, they were taught to be warriors, the future rulers and heads of their homes. But they were rarely if ever taught the lessons they desperately needed to learn, things like the definition of consent or the importance of self-control or practical ways to prevent violence against women. They were taught to put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) well before they were encouraged to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). 

I escaped fundamentalism years ago, but TikTok tells me they are using the same playbook. In a recent video, a young preacher stated that women are leaving churches en masse because we are easily deceived and need to be managed with a firmer hand. I wish this were just the ranting of one random pastor, but his sentiment is shared by fundamentalist Christians across the internet and the nation. I would counter his statement with my own personal experience. When I deconstructed my evangelical faith and turned to other methods of spiritual practice, it was not because I was deceived by those outside evangelicalism. It was because I was so readily devalued by those within it. 

Women, especially in the church, carry a hope that the men they worship with, the men they revere, the men who lead them will do more than avoid the active abuse of women. We hope and pray that they will speak up loudly from their pulpits and platforms. That they will rail against the violence committed against all women. That they will not just deliver a passionate and quotable Sunday sermon but will get into the trenches of their own congregations and elder boards and Sunday school classes and youth groups and town hall meetings. That they will implement programs to teach young men about consent and how to protect the vulnerable around them. 

It is not enough to not be an abuser. 

The bar to be characterized as a “good” man, a good pastor, a good citizen, must be higher than simply not participating in violence. Abstinence does not equate to holiness. Good men in the church have a responsibility to act against these assaults. Because when these good men remain silent, women are left to wonder whether they are really good after all.