Author’s Note: A version of this article appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of Lutheran Forum Magazine. For those non-Lutheran readers, I apologize for the Lutheran nomenclature in some places. Also, with it being 4 years later, it is interesting to consider that Deshaun Watson’s career with the Browns will arguably go down as one of the worst trades in NFL history.
The Case of Deshaun Watson and the Cleveland Browns
In March 2021, news broke that NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson had been accused of sexual misconduct against not just one woman but many women. These accusations had seemingly put his NFL career on hiatus until this past year when the Cleveland Browns signed him to a historic deal to be their quarterback. Despite more claims of sexual misconduct, the Cleveland Browns were seemingly undeterred from making sure that Deshaun Watson would be their quarterback for the foreseeable future, if not the 2022 NFL season. Indeed, one can argue that these are only accusations. Still, a consistent pattern has emerged with over 24 charges being filed, suggesting at the minimum that some deeply problematic behavior has occurred on the part of Watson. Behavior that cannot simply be overlooked with the signing of a handful of non-disclosure agreements and settlements. The old adage that “where there is smoke, there is fire” certainly can be applied to Watson’s alleged behavior. But still, the Cleveland Browns don’t seem to care about Watson’s problematic behavior, or it might be better to say that they don’t care enough. Instead, we can deduce from this situation that, more than anything else, the Cleveland Browns care most about winning. It isn’t that they don’t think that what Watson did was wrong; it just doesn’t matter when it comes to winning.[1]
Given that this matter involves the NFL, readers may wonder what this has to do with the church and Lutheranism. It is my contention that it is a lens or prism by which we can better understand abusive behavior and its manifestation within the church, why it continues and is perpetuated often with victims being silenced and forgotten. After all, if legalities and liabilities were not an issue, I would imagine those in the Browns organization would probably concede that Watson’s behavior was wrong, but such did not matter enough to prevent him from being their quarterback. That should give us pause.
Scandals Galore!
These past few years, a slew of scandals involving prominent church figures have rocked the church in America. Scandals centering around the abuse of power in some way. Leaders who were formerly sought out and looked up to for their guidance and wisdom were found to be sorely lacking in their treatment of those around them. Men such as Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll, Tullian Tchividjian,[2] Carl Lentz, and Ted Haggard. I should also hasten to add the uncovering of the clergy sex abuse crisis in the early 2000s by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team. Interestingly enough, in the ashes of the destructive path of these men, we have been given a window into the dynamics that fed into these abusive systems. Christianity Today’s podcast The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill documents Mark Driscoll’s rise and fall as well as the megachurch movement in the United States, the docuseries Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed looks closely at the inner workings of the Australian megachurch and the dynamics that produced Carl Lentz, the award-winning movie Spotlight tells the story of the lengths at which the Roman Catholic Church went to cover up their clergy sex abuse crisis, Netflix’s The Keepers looks at how an entire city and community was employed to both cover up and perpetuate sexual abuse. In all of these, one learns that the warning signs were there and that abusive behavior patterns were manifesting among the systems in those places. Still, because of all the purported good that was going on, such as people hearing the Gospel for the time, coming to Jesus, and being served by the charitable actions of the church, there was a willingness to look the other way or at the minimum not deal with the problematic behavior.
In essence, like the situation concerning Deshaun Watson and the Cleveland Browns, it wasn’t that these communities didn’t care; it’s that they didn’t care enough for those being abused. But unlike the Browns, these were not concerned with something as seemingly base as winning but something much more noble and good – spreading the Gospel and spreading a brand that had a transcendent element in a world yearning for meaning and purpose. And that is what makes abusive behavior within the church so pernicious, ugly, and confusing because it is wrapped up in “God” talk. In a sense, with Deshaun Watson, it is far easier to understand his abusive behavior being looked over or ignored. There’s no God element. But with abuse in the church, especially among leaders, God is implicated by way of their office, and such makes for all kinds of confusion and alienation. Suddenly, “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ…” is far more troubling than before. Chuck DeGroat writes,
Spiritual and emotional abuse have much in common, but spiritual abuse bears a particularly sinister twist, as principles and maxims of faith are wielded as weapons of command and control, and faith leaders abuse their power for the sake of feeding their own unmet spiritual needs. The victim feels just as perplexed and confused as one who has experienced emotional abuse but experiences it from a seemingly more authoritative source – a holy source.[3]
Thus, it isn’t simply abuse that is taking place but abuse that is seemingly validated by God and often the system that is used to help spread his mission, whether a synod or diocese.
How did we get here? Has this always been the case, and are we privy to such things because of the mass media age in which we find ourselves? Or are these developments reflecting something of import to us? Indeed, we would all maintain that we care about abuse in the church, but it begs the question I have been asking; do we care enough? And if our praxis reveals that we don’t care enough, what is it that we care about most?
The Gospel, the Fetishization of Success, and the Rise of Narcissism?
When I entered seminary in the mid-2000s, we were required to read the books of Bill Hybels, and Rick Warren, and the works of those whose ministries had proven numerically successful. Toward the end of my time in seminary Mark Driscoll began to gain prominence, and then in the early to mid-2010’s I started hearing about Tullian Tchividjian and later Carl Lentz. The one consistent thread with all these men is that they led large churches that they had grown, were growing, or using as a means to bolster their credibility as preachers. Invariably, there was an image of success in the worldly sense, and maybe that’s what we ultimately care about most. American culture is a success-driven culture where credibility and legitimacy are given to those who materially have or, at the least, claim and appear to have. Our orientation towards worldly success is also connected to the fact that we are a narcissistic culture where image reigns supreme.[4] We might say that Carl Lentz was an excellent representation of this truth, hanging out with celebrities and exuding a personal brand of coolness. Ultimately, we have fetishized success and image, and the church is not immune to this cultural reality. In fact, we swim in this reality daily, as a cursory view of any social media platform reveals. Such is, in part, why men like Hybels, Driscoll, Tchividijian, and Lentz got passes for their abusive behavior. What mattered most was that people were encountering the Gospel through them, even though a path of destruction lay behind them. Moreover, it could not be denied that despite claims of abuse, these men and their ministries had done much good and would continue to do so consistently in various ways. What is the old adage? “To make an omelet, one must crack a few eggs.” or “the end justifies the means.” I suppose these points are fair until we recall the words of Jesus Christ, “You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?”[5] Our praxis matters more than we’d like to believe and should transcend any cultural notions of success at all costs. But here we are, and I do not doubt that more scandals are coming.[6]
Uncoordinated Mission and the Implications of the Constantinian Shift
In The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, Alan Kreider argues that for the first three centuries of its existence, the church was mostly unconcerned with what we would call mission and evangelization strategies.[7] Instead, the growth during that period was primarily unorganized, uncoordinated, and unpredictable.[8] Kreider uncovers through the writings of various church fathers such as Cyprian, Origen, and Tertullian that living the faith was what they cared about most. It was this that attracted non-Christians to the faith. Kreider writes,
It was not primarily what the Christians said that carried weight with outsiders; it was what they did and embodied that was both disconcerting and converting. It was their habitus – their reflexes and ways of life that suggested that there was another way to perceive reality – that made the Christian interesting, challenging and worth investigating.[9]
Kreider notes that a change occurs in the emphasis on living the faith with the Constantinian shift and the development of Augustine’s theology in the 4th and 5th centuries. A change that may enable us to understand our current predicament better. Constantine sought to Christianize the Roman Empire but not by the patient and uncoordinated means of the church of the previous centuries. Instead, he did so not as a baptized believer but as a Roman administrator and emperor. He did so by exempting clergy from taxation and public services, ordered a weekly day of rest for all workers to worship God, and provided provisions to the poor so they would be drawn to Christianity. Such would result in more Christians but of the less rigorous and virtuous variety of the previous centuries. Kreider writes, “But under Constantine there was a change. Constantine saw hypocrisy as a necessary by-product of a new form of mission that valued numbers more than lifestyle, rationality more than habitus.”[10]
Following the Constantinian shift, we witness the rise of arguably the most significant western theologian – Augustine of Hippo. Seemingly providential, it was as if Augustine came to put the theological rubber stamp on Constantine’s developments that normalized Christianity throughout the Empire. Augustine successfully took the focus off the actions of those of the faith and placed it on their inner motivations.[11] It was a marked shift in thinking from his north African forebears, such as Cyprian, who emphasized: “a life that trusts God and therefore does not control things, is not in a hurry, and does not use violence…”[12] Augustine, ever a man of his time, was consumed with repudiating the Pelagian heresy throughout the Empire and fighting pagans and Donatists.[13] This resulted in his behaving like a pagan, using 1 Corinthians 13 “to justify strong armed policies – state imposed fines, confiscation, and exile – that seemed urgently necessary to him.”[14] According to Augustine, such behavior is justifiable according to one’s inner motivations, even if such behavior looks unChristian. Kreider helpfully writes,
Of course, the shift from action to intention was useful to Augustine’s immediate missional objective. Augustine wanted the aristocrat Volusian to know that he could take the plunge without hesitating. He could become a Christian without changing his habitus. After all, love (whatever in his estimation does good for other people) trumps patience, and the Christian can execute punishment with “a certain kind harshness” if his interiority, his inner disposition, is loving. The implications of this for the history of mission is weighty.[15]
Indeed the implications are weighty in that we are still dealing with them 1700 years later. What makes us vulnerable to such things is that our leader was an Augustinian monk who rediscovered the doctrine by which we Lutherans claim the church stands or falls. Luther’s rediscovery of justification by faith hugely impacted the trajectory of Western Christianity and, in particular, American Christianity. An emphasis on faith, not works, was radical for its time and a much-needed respite from a church obsessed with the ways and means by which an angry God could be appeased. But still, it didn’t take much time for Article IV to become the means by which bad behavior could be glossed over and ironically justified under the guise that all is grace. We human beings have a remarkable ability to use anything to our sinful advantage, even the freeing Gospel!
Such has often been a struggle for Lutherans. History bears witness that we need not go very far to find examples of such applications. We might recall Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writing on cheap grace and costly grace in his pinnacle work The Cost of Discipleship, and how he struggled against a complacent church that gave legitimacy to the Nazi regime. Or we may recall the “Battle for the Bible” that led to the fracturing of the Missouri Synod wherein heterodox actions were employed on all sides to maintain theological orthodoxy.[16] At least all sides could say they were being faithful to our forebear St. Augustine, though not necessarily to the habitus of our earlier forbears who patiently held fast to the words of their Lord Jesus Christ.
I recognize that I am painting with a broad brush a whole swath of church history. I will even admit mild uneasiness concerning Constantine and Augustine as they are easy to criticize, especially as a Christian in the twenty-first century. Hindsight can afford us many privileges, and criticism is undoubtedly one of them. At the same time, it’s a compelling consideration, especially when we consider our aversion to anything that bespeaks works’ righteousness and our understandable desire to err on the side of grace often.
Back to Where We Started
Going back to where I started with the example of Deshaun Watson, something we must not overlook is the predatorial aspect of his behavior. Such abuse does not simply happen on a whim or in a moment of weakness. It is born out of a particular habitus and hardness of heart developed over time. That is what is also uncovered in the abuse of Hybels, Driscoll, Tchivijian, Lentz, and so many Roman Catholic priests. These men preyed on those given to their care and built systems that enabled their abuse to continue unabated for some time. Often it was allowed to continue in the name of a greater transcendent cause. It is that predatorial aspect that needs to be reckoned with, which should require us to grapple with our shadow sides. Such demands courage to look at the less than seemly aspects of our personalities and institutions, but I fear we don’t have it, especially our leaders. The church’s rapid numerical decline makes it vulnerable to such predatorial behavior as desperation to grow at any cost settles in. The power of being drawn to the soothsayers and narcissistic personalities will only grow, especially in a culture that has normalized and even awarded narcissistic behavior.[17] Its normalization creates an unhealthy and assumed dependency on the abuser, who makes the abused believe that they could not go on without them, and the cycle of abuse continues. Thus, “the leader relies on the adoration and respect of his followers; the follower is attracted to the omnipotence and charisma of the leader.”[18] Nonetheless, the fear of loss looms larger than the call to a patient and adventurous faith. Strangely, validated by a gospel reductionism that does not account for the words of our Lord that, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!”[19] Such is what enables us to claim that we are there to help with sentimental gestures filled with gospel platitudes that go nowhere while doing nothing for the victims of such abuse. It’s what compels us to encourage the abused to be the bigger people while doing nothing about the abuser and seemingly siding with them out of pragmatism rather than faithfulness. It’s what compels us to use the eighth commandment as a weapon against those who would speak out exhorting them to speak well of all. Such behavior serves to validate the words of Bonhoeffer, who wrote that “In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.”[20] Instead, we operate as a not-for-profit that bears no distinctive marks from the world other than talking about Jesus from time to time. Where grace “is sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares.”[21] Though, we convince ourselves otherwise.
Without a doubt, Lutheranism has offered the world much and will continue to do so, especially with its emphasis on the pure Gospel. That is, “Jesus Christ for you.” Luther’s rediscovery of the Gospel turned the world upside down and set in motion many positive things of which we are inheritors. Yet, our dogmatic and doctrinal rigorousness has sometimes blinded us to what the Gospel narratives actually communicate about the Way of Jesus. We can become so consumed with “Christ for us” that we fail to recognize the very abusive dynamics that led to Jesus of Nazareth being nailed to a Roman cross which affects how we deal with abuse within our midst. We can become so consumed with reading the Gospels through the prism of works’ righteousness versus Christ’s righteousness that we fail to grapple with the call “to follow” Jesus. In so doing, we also fail to discern the abusive dynamics that led to Jesus’ death. I contend that this hinders us from discerning and combating it in the present. Thus, we miss that Jesus’ death on a Roman cross was about so much more than just our justification. After all, the high priest Caiaphas believed he was doing a good thing when he recommended that Jesus be put to death rather than a whole nation perish.[22] And those in that room agreed with him and understood that they needed to do this one bad thing to ensure that their nation would survive. This is often how abuse and evil are perpetuated, under the guise of a noble end. How often have we justified doing the one bad thing under the guise of a noble pursuit? Furthermore, a Roman cross served to delegitimate the ministry of this man that had become such a threat to their way of life. “Cursed is he who hangs on a tree”[23] would have been impressed upon onlookers with their messianic hopes for Jesus disappearing as he hung there. The Cross was a public information campaign against Jesus’ messianic legitimacy. The tactics of these religious leaders are not much different from the tactics employed by the aforementioned church personalities and leaders in their efforts to cover up their abusive behaviors, attacking the victims’ credibility and seeking their silence.
It was similar for Pontius Pilate, too. It wasn’t Roman justice that motivated him but the dynamics of realpolitik and the need to keeping certain parties happy if he was to rule effectively. In his mind, Jesus he could do away with, but he would have to work with the high priest. Indeed, Jesus’ trial and crucifixion are an indictment of our ways and the world that we have created within God’s world. Our true cares and values exposed for what they are rather than what we claim them to be. Such is why Paul apocalyptically writes that through the Cross, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.”[24] It’s all there if we have eyes to see, but the question remains: do we and do we care enough to have them?
Based on the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ dialogue with Pontius Pilate, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus could have found a way out of being crucified if he had cared to or tried. But he doesn’t, which is what makes him such an anomaly to Pilate. He stays the course, remaining faithful to his mission of bearing witness to God’s life-giving ways, and it costs him his life. We confess that three days later his Father in heaven raised him from the dead, vindicating all that he said and did and triumphing over the powers and principalities. Lest we forget, it is into such a death and resurrection that we have been baptized. In so being baptized, we are called to live accordingly, to resist those things that Christ resisted, and to care about those things that he cared about, even if it means disapproval, rejection, and death. We are called to confront our own narcissism through Christ’s self-emptying example. Of course, we will stumble, we will mess up, and we will die only to rise again, but transformed and renewed in the crucified one, we can learn to truly care and to push back against abuse both within and without knowing that “we are called to a higher destiny; we have higher orders to follow and we stand under a greater Protector. No powers can separate us from God’s love in Christ.”[25]
Featured image of Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” by Daniel Medina.
[1] For a timeline concerning Watson’s legal troubles please see: Aaron Reiss, “Deshaun Watson timeline: Browns QB faces new lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct,” theathletic.com, accessed October 18, 2022, https://theathletic.com/2496073/2022/10/18/deshaun-watson-sexual-assault/
[2] Tullian Tchividjian is an interesting example as he found great support among some Lutherans when news of his sexual misconduct became public. Those supporters were quick to point to his being forgiven in the gospel while not giving much thought to the victims or Tullian’s own habitus. Christopher Jackson has written a helpful piece on the theological issues with Tullian and his Lutheran supporters at the time. Please see: Christoper Jackson, “A Radically Toxic Combination,” firstthings.com, accessed October 20, 2022, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/07/a-radically-toxic-combination
[3] Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2020), 125.
[4] In his now classic work, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations,Christopher Lasch writes, “Our society is narcissistic, then, in a double sense. People with narcissistic personalities, although not necessarily more numerous than before, play a conspicuous part in contemporary life, often rising to positions of eminence. Thriving on the adulation of the masses, these celebrities set the tone of public life and private life as well, since the machinery of celebrity recognizes no boundaries between the public and the private realm. The beautiful people – to use this revealing expression to include not merely wealthy globetrotters but all those who bask, however briefly, in the full glare of the cameras – live out the fantasy of narcissistic success, which consists of nothing more substantial than a wish to be admired, not for one’s accomplishments but simply for oneself, uncritically and without reservation. Modern capitalist society not only elevates narcissists to prominence, it elicits and reinforces narcissistic traits in everyone (231-232).” For more please see: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979).
[5] Matthew 7:16
[6] In his work, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, M. Scott Peck writes, “Since the primary motive of evil people is disguise, one of the places evil people are to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? In India I would suppose that the evil would demonstrate a similar tendency to be “good” Hindus or “good” Moslems. I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them (76-77).” For more please see: M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).
[7] Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 9.
[8] Kreider, The Patient Ferment, 12.
[9] Ibid, 51.
[10] Ibid, 268.
[11] Ibid, 282.
[12] Ibid, 283.
[13] For a detailed account of Augustine’s life readers might consider exploring Peter Brown’s, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (California: University of California Press, 2000).
[14] Kreider, 283.
[15] Ibid, 291.
[16] For a detailed account of the problematic behaviors employed in the cause of upholding theological orthodoxy please see: Jim Burkee, Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict That Changed American Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011).
[17] Please see footnote 4.
[18] Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church, 23.
[19] Luke 11:28
[20] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959), 43.
[21] Ibid.
[22] John 11:45-53.
[23] Deuteronomy 21:23.
[24] Colossians 2:15.
[25] Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers, ed. John Howard Yoder (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press. 1979), 39.
A Foolish Way 