What if power abuses are ultimately theological? Clergy abuse is so common, it has become a cliche. The new archbishop of Canterbury was accused of colluding with an abusive priest. In December, a federal judge ordered the New Orleans Archdiocese to pay at least $230 million to hundreds of victims who were sexually abused by clergy.
At the same time, we learned new details about the tentacles of the Southern Baptist Convention’s abuses, particularly concerning former seminary professor David Sills. Before that, it was the megachurch pastor charged with beating a 15-year-old with a power cord. Before that, it was the Idaho pastor engaged in human trafficking. Going further back, who could forget about the abuses perpetrated by Ravi Zacharias, or Sovereign Grace Ministries, or Mark Driscoll, who, a decade after his abuses at Mars Hill Church, is teaming up with Turning Point USA?
Halley Kim
And sickeningly, we learned the acting ICE field director for Minneapolis is David Easterwood, a local pastor at Cities Church. Iʼm not sure a Christian leader could more flagrantly abuse power than by directing a modern-day slave patrol to harass, assault, abduct, shoot, rape and overall terrorize human beings.
When they’re caught, abusive clergy often ask forgiveness, make a show of repentance and rely on their congregations’ compassion to be welcomed back into the fold with little more than a slap on the wrist. “You made a mistake, but Godʼs grace is sufficient. Donʼt let it happen again, capiche?” Spoiler alert: It definitely happens again.
Despite knowing power corrupts and corrupt people seek power, we keep building centralized power systems and asking the exalted to play nice.
The questions typically asked about habitually abusive leaders — Why isn’t anyone stopping him? Why does this keep happening? — demonstrate we haven’t thought critically enough about power. Despite knowing power corrupts and corrupt people seek power, we keep building centralized power systems and asking the exalted to play nice. Surprise, surprise. They donʼt.
Many theories have been floated to explain why churches — and clergy specifically — keep abusing their power.
Dan Doriani, a professor at the evangelical Covenant Seminary, rejects the notion vocational ministry attracts flawed leaders. Because of humanityʼs sinful nature, we are all flawed, he says. Convenient, but letʼs move on. Doriani lends some credence to the suggestion churches and seminaries focus on skills to the exclusion of character, as well as to the idea that hurt people hurt people — churches can be cruel to pastors, and sometimes violence is paid forward. Unsurprisingly, Doriani never flirts with a theological explanation. To do so would cost him his job.
But theology is precisely the issue. We reproduce toxic power because of toxic theology. So long as we think God dominates, is all-powerful and controls outcomes, humans will emulate that behavior.
Thomas Jay Oord
Thomas Oord, director of the Center for Open and Relational Theology and professor at Northwind Theological Seminary, agrees.
“Generally speaking, thereʼs a correlation between good behavior and good theology, and bad behavior and bad theology …. (Omnipotence) is the foundational doctrine that drives and justifies abuse,” he said.
Naturally, Oord doesnʼt think abusers and enablers consciously connect their behavior to Godʼs presumed omnipotence, but he does think they subconsciously operate on something of an omnipotence wavelength. The doctrine allows perpetrators to deem their actions as either willed by God or tacitly endorsed by God. And when Christ is preached as the all-conquering hero who pulls a sword from his throat and rules with an iron scepter, abusers have a role model.
As for enablers, Oord says their subconscious minds feed them justifications like “This must be Godʼs will,” or “Who am I to question the authority that God put into place?” or “If Godʼs in control, then this canʼt be wrong.”
Because omnipotence usually is buttressed by sovereignty — the belief God is in control of everything or God could control things — it also impacts those who witness abuse or are made aware of it. Thanks to learned helplessness, they may conclude thereʼs nothing they can do about the situation because everything plays out as God ordains.
But the problem isnʼt solely abusers exploiting omnipotence for their own twisted gain, or enablers and witnesses who are impeded by their theology when they otherwise might listen to their better angels. Victims themselves also typically believe God is all-powerful.
According to Oord, omnipotence saddles victims with either a sense of punishment — God caused this because I did something bad — or neglect — God allowed this to happen to me because itʼs part of his grand plan.
Belief in an all-powerful God leads to grief and confusion among victims because petitions to God frequently go unanswered, Katherine Spearing, a cult survivor from the stay-at-home daughters movement, writes in A Thousand Tiny Paper Cuts. Agency is swallowed up by the narrative that God is in total control. Omnipotence leaves victims with no one to intervene on their behalf — not God and certainly not themselves.
Theologians aren’t the only ones who believe how we think of God determines how we think of evil. As sociologists Paul Froese and Christopher Bader explain in America’s Four Gods, most Americans perceive God as either authoritative, benevolent, critical or distant, and a personʼs “God type” says more about the person than it does about the Divine.
People who endorse an authoritative God — a deity who is both judgmental and has the power to intervene in human affairs — are less likely to support LGBTQ rights and more likely to be Christian Nationalists
For example, people who endorse an authoritative God — a deity who is both judgmental and has the power to intervene in human affairs — are less likely to support LGBTQ rights and more likely to be Christian Nationalists, data that has been replicated by the Baylor Religion Surveys and other research. On the matter of why bad things happen, Froese and Bader write: “A personʼs interpretation of the cosmic meaning of disasters … follows logically from her image of God. Naturally, Americans with an authoritative God are the most likely to state that God causes a disaster; the idea that God is both engaged and judgmental leads logically to the conclusion that bad things are a sign of his wrath.”
As I’ve observed and as Oord also endorsed, 99% of churches either teach an omnipotent God is in control or an omnipotent God is at least in control of whatʼs most important.
“As long as you’ve got that all-powerful deity there, you’re going to continue to assume God acts in a particular way, or has a particular kind of power,” Oord says. This is not an abstract theological concept detached from our lived reality. It is the building material of much of our lived reality, the operating manual for how humans use power.
As Froese and Bader connect an authoritative God to Christian Nationalism, so does Oord connect the problem of omnipotence to MAGA.
“Right now in America, there is a seriously powerful contingency of people who think that God wants the United States of America to be a Christian nation, to be a light on a hill, and they have a particular notion of what this God wants from them,” Oord observes. MAGAʼs narrow theology drives their behavior. Just as abusive pastors mimic their vanquishing deityʼs example, so do religiously motivated political zealots, massively hurting our country in the process.
“The theology that God is all-powerful, and that certain people — often straight white men — are divinely appointed to lead creates a world in which abuse is rampant because one demographic has the God-given right to treat anyone the way they want and ignore the outcry of the ‘lesser’ species, such as women or people of color,” Spearing said. It doesnʼt take more than a glancing pass at the national news to know sheʼs right.
Ask many Christians why leaders abuse others, and they’ll essentially say sinners sin, and Godʼs got to respect that.
“Most of the time, we’ve thought about abuse from the perspective of the free-will perpetrators,” Oord noted. “Weʼve said, ‘Oh well, God wonʼt control free will creatures, so God didnʼt stop that abuse.ʼ But I think we should start from the perspective of the victims, the survivors. If we start there, then we have to ask the question, ‘Why wouldn’t a loving God have prevented the harm, abuse, the tragedy the survivors have to deal with?’ If we start there, then I think we really should end up throwing out omnipotence, if we’re consistent.”
It’s either that or throwing out Godʼs love.
Thomas Paine said belief in a cruel God creates cruel men. Likewise, belief in an omnipotent God makes wannabe-omnipotent men who overpower and control others, all with divine permission.
Given the monkey-see, monkey-do nature of theology, itʼs high time we ascribe qualities to God that would benefit humanity instead of endangering it.
Given the monkey-see, monkey-do nature of theology, itʼs high time we ascribe qualities to God that would benefit humanity instead of endangering it. Belief in a gentle God will make gentle people; belief in a feminist God will make feminist people; belief in a safe God will make safe people.
People possess little cultural imagination for a worthwhile God who isnʼt all-powerful and controlling. It strikes them as weak. But this is a deeply ironic position for Christians, considering their purported belief that Jesus did not come to conquer Rome, but to be killed at Romeʼs hand. We behave as his disciples did, asking who can sit on Christʼs right and left in glory, instead of recognizing glory was never the goal.
Our insistence on omnipotence and sovereignty has taken us away from the person of Jesus, whose life and death made it pretty clear heʼs interested in power with the oppressed, not power over them.
Despite the theology taught in scores of seminaries and churches, etched into the popular conception of God and undoubtedly fueling the Christofascist takeover of America, the Incarnation tells a different story.
We can have an omnipotent, sovereign ruler, or we can have a Christlike God, but we cannot have both. If we are serious about stopping the epidemic of abuse — not only by clergy but also within our government, the private sector and families — we must choose the latter.
Halley Kim writes about spiritual, political and social justice, and she is working on her first book. Her work has been featured in Feminism and Religion, Tears of Eden, and other outlets. Her theology about omnipotence has been featured on the podcasts The Heretic Happy Hour and Shit No One Talks About, with upcoming episodes on several others. She lives with her husband, three school-aged children and a very spoiled dog in St. Louis, Mo. Connect with her on Instagram or Substack.
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