Anatomy of Sex and Power

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 2^nd of February, 2003

Mark Belletini, Minister, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
after a week of white snow lacing the tree,
and after the sad loss of lives in the air,
to worship, to climb high and dig deep,
to refuse to stay on the surface of things,
to let feelings and thoughts teach each other,
and to join the stories of our own lives
to that greater story called the Universe.
Thus we worship for our very lives,
to the end that we can pray each day

may our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves,
true to each other
and true to those shared visions of what we can together become…

Sequence [Next] [back to top]

Snow falls, drapes across branches,
clears the stubble off frozen fields,
scatters itself on evergreen bushes,
melts into puddles and drips into drains.
Wet are the streets for Chinese New Year.
There are children in both Shanghai
and in Columbus who dream of dragons
turning into spring kites,
who relish the scent of oranges and green garlic
wafting from the kitchen.

Snow still melts off the lawns,
but candles burn indoors on this day called old Candlemas, a day to invoke
the coming end of winter,
a day to mark the final days for necessary flames in the dark,
and to be a harbinger of spring's warm breath.
Imbolc this day is called by some,
a sound robed in ancient Celtic prayers
and the swift shadows of the groundhog.

It's a day unbound by calendars too, this Sunday in February,
a day when what might happen on any other day, also happens, the loss of human lives in the air
in a starburst of pain to the heart,
and the loss of lives on the earth, on streets
of poverty, and degradation and violence.

For the calendar days, the holidays, there
is noise and laughter, oranges and candles.

For the non-calendar day that it is,
a day of loss and mourning for all the deaths in the heavens and on the earth that hit us hard,
we can only offer our silence.
To a time of silence we go,
on the path of silence,
with wings of silence,
into hearts of silence….

(silence)

Joining the stories of our own days
to the larger story of humanity through the ages,
we enter a safe time for expressing our love,
when we are free to name aloud, or in private silence, those human beings whom we know personally, with whom our lives are bound together by love, struggle or care.

(naming)

Candlemas or Imbolc or Chinese New Year or Groundhog Day or Lupercalia or just a sad winter Sunday in February…it makes no difference the name of the day, only that it is like every other day I can think of… a day that, no matter the losses, still invites our love. A day that invites our kindness. A day that invites our nurture. A day that invites our intemperate praise and adoration. Adoration, you know, like that of a parent for a child, a friend for a friend, a lover for a lover, and like that leap of the human heart at the sublime mystery called music.

First Reading [Next] [back to top] comes from a biography of Horatio Alger, the famous American writer of popular stories for the fiscal encouragement of underclass boys and get-rich-quick manuals. There was a time when it was believed that Alger had almost as much influence on American popular culture as had Benjamin Franklin.

 Each weekend during the fall of 1864, Horatio Alger Jr. came down to Brewster from Boston.

On Sunday morning he preached the sermon and led the services at the Unitarian Church of Brewster. He visited around the parish on Sunday afternoons. During his social calls he discoursed on the state of Unitarian affairs. The parish committee found young Alger soft-spoken and likable. They voted to have him come as the settled minister, offering him a salary of $800 per year.

He did all that ministers are supposed to do…he visited the sick, and comforted the aged, and ran the May festival. He doted on the boys of the parish. Unlike other adults, he was never too busy for a walk in the woods or a game of ball. His love of boys and the boys attraction to him were well known.

In March, a year and a half later, the Rev. Mr. Alger Jr., trained for the ministry, abandoned it forthwith and did not seek a parish again. This is because the parish committee of the First Unitarian Church of Brewster had sent a letter to the American Unitarian Association, charging him with "gross immorality…with young boys."

Second Reading [Next] [back to top] comes from a long study about power and sexuality, published in the now defunct Lears Magazine. It remains, to this day, the finest article I have read on this whole subject. Unfortunately, in all my travels, I lost the original article, and this very powerful and direct section is all I have left. (However, since then David Smith has found the ISSN # by which it can be found in the downtown library, ISSN 0897-0149. It's called Incest: A Chilling Report) I am aware that this will be a more emotional subject, and thus, Reading, for some, more than others. Feel free to talk with me about your feelings if you wish, later in the week.

The victim of family incest who does tell is almost always asked, "Why didn't you tell sooner?" The answers are:

I didn't know anything was wrong.
I didn't know it was illegal.
I didn't know who to tell.
I did tell and no one believed me.
I was ashamed.
I was scared.

The abuser keeps the event secret through threats:

If you tell, I won't love you anymore.
If you tell, you'll be sent away.
If you tell, no one will believe you.
If you tell, I'll go to jail and you'll starve.
If you tell, they'll give you to someone who will really hurt you.
If you tell, you will go to hell.
If you tell, you will go to an insane asylum.
If you tell, I will kill your dog.

Mostly, children act like other small creatures, who deal with overwhelming threat, by freezing, pretending to be asleep, and playing possum.

Sermon (in four voices): Anatomy of Sex and Power [Next][back to top]

Yes, I do know. This is not an easy subject for a sermon. It's not even an easy subject for a private thought in one's head.

Yet I have to note how often this topic has been in our newspapers this last year, tied, not to blood families, but to what even so many of us call the "church family."

Our Roman Catholic friends and co-workers may have even raised the subject themselves, expressing their disgust and sorrow at the way that the abuse of power via sex in the parish translated to another abuse of power in the episcopal offices. In Boston last September, Catholics I met were so mad at Cardinal Law for his hemming and hawing around the issue of abusive priests that I am frankly surprised they did not storm his office with torches and staves.

Many now grown men and women have had their faces spread across magazines and papers, talking in the open about things that for many years were sealed tight. The amount of sheer emotion, the cascading feelings unleashed by all of these revelations, has left many a soul feeling swamped, depressed and certainly betrayed by the powers that be, both by the original perpetrators and the bishops themselves.

But we are not Roman Catholics in Boston. Or any other town for that matter. We are Unitarian Universalists in Columbus, Ohio. We can be sympathetic to our Catholic friends, but what has this to do with us?

A lot, I think. But I will speak only for myself right now.

I have to admit that this whole issue of child abuse was the first surprise of many to ambush me in the ministry. Not once was this subject mentioned in the seminary classes I took back in the mid-seventies. Not even in counseling classes. But you have to remember that this was back in the days when no one talked about such things in public.

This was long before Oprah interviewed folks on television about this, making it a "real" topic for conversation. This was before there was a half a mile of shelves of books on the subject in the public library. And this was a very long time before some "skeptical" magazines joined Sigmund Freud himself in suggesting that, when women in particular report such things, they had the idea placed in their head by a therapist, and have recovered memories of something that really didn't happen at all, in any way, shape or form.

In my first parish, the number of folks who came in day after day to tell me stories of powerful sexual assaults when they were children or young teens simply astounded me. You have to remember I was a 28-year-old young man who was naïve as he could be, and fresh off the turnip truck. So mostly I just listened, startled and quiet, and asked clarifying questions now and then. No, once I did more than that. I actually helped a young woman move into a temporary shelter with my own hands at two o'clock in the morning.

But these stories stayed with me. They haunted me whenever I preached sermons. At my second church I continued to hear more of them. I heard from folks who were in their 80's. I heard from folks who were in their 20's. I heard them from peers. I even had one young woman brag about the sexual attentions given her by her minister when she had been only 15. I found out that one of my ministerial mentors had been defrocked, not for his sexual power over younger folks, but for his sexual power over dozens of women in the churches that he served. I began to feel feelings I had no ability to figure out, and I myself entered therapy for a few years to help me sort out all of the broken boundaries I had come to witness because of my calling. I realized that this was not the world I thought it was.

Little by little, other colleagues let me know that this was something they heard all the time too. Articles and television shows and journals described the scenarios over and over again. I began to feel less unique in my ministerial experiences, and began to respond to the women and men before me with a few greater skills and less shock.

I learned about the hidden history of this issue even in our own heritage. When all of the uproar about Cardinal Law's irresponsible decisions were filling our newspapers to the edge, I remembered the story of the 19th century Unitarian minister Horatio Alger Jr. who had done what many Cardinal Law's priests have been accused of doing. His parish board interviewed the boys and families to find out the facts. Then they sent a letter to the American Unitarian Association in Boston in the language of the day, and Alger left. Throughout the rest of his life, Alger wrote books for young boys, and became the most popular author in American history. He took many boys into his own house, and helped them to achieve some portion of success. We are not sure if he ever pressed sexual advances on other kids later in life…I tend to think he did not, myself, from the remorse he expresses clearly in a poem he wrote later in life.

But this is hardly some new event in history, some new phenomenon caused by sexy advertisements on television and ravishing naked beauties on the screen, as religious conservatives would like to suggest. This has nothing to do with freer sexual mores hammered out in the sixties, or with gay or lesbian life, or the brokenness of some heterosexual marriages. You can find this theme explored thoroughly even in the Bible, in the Hebrew scriptures.

Here, in words written over 2500 years ago, the story of Tamar and Amnon and Absolom forms the central shaping narrative of the whole Hebrew testament. It's not read much in the pulpit or even privately, but I assure you, it surely is the most modern sounding story in the whole of the western scriptures. Here it is.

Amnon is the crown prince, about 20 years old. He is hot for his younger half-sister, who is at most eleven or twelve years old. One of his friends urges him to come up with a scheme to get her. He pretends to have a cold, and asks his father King David to send Tamar into his room to cook some healthy food for him. She comes in, tentatively, almost as if she fears what will happen. He feigns weakness in his bed and asks to be hand fed. She comes closer and he grabs her and overpowers her. She protests clearly and says, "How can you do this?" But the text says soberly, "But he would not listen to her voice, and being stronger than she, he overpowered her and lay with her."

Then it says the following amazing thing. "Then Amnon hated her with unutterable hatred. 'Get out!' he cried." She would not, but he has his slave come and throw her out. Later her full brother Absolom saw her tattered condition and her torn sleeve, and immediately guessed what happened. He counseled her, "Be quiet about this. Don't take it personally…he is your half-brother after all."(I Told you this sounded modern!)

King David heard about it, and was angry, but did nothing about it. Eventually the brooding Absolom, biding his time for over a year, took revenge against his sister's attacker, kniving Amnon, the crown prince, in his throat. Later Absolom, still angry, declared war against his father, and died in that attempted coup. Thus, not only was a young almost-teenager violated, the whole Davidic dynasty basically crashed and burned because of this event. This makes it, by my lights, the central story of the whole Tanakh. Complain as you will about the Bible if you are not fond of it…the families portrayed within its covers reflect every single thing I have encountered in the ministry, without flinching. It is a sad, but unfortunately honest, collection of stories, as far as I am concerned. If you want to read the story for yourself, it's found in Second Samuel, chapter 13.

You can see in the Biblical story of Tamar all the elements that experts on this subject will describe to you in these later days:

1. the overpowering of the younger by the older and stronger,
2. the caution to be silent, to say nothing,
3. the shame,
4. the real misery, so often not believed or acknowledged, or minimized.

In some cases there are threats, as the reading from Lears suggests. Most often these threats are never carried out…the shame and fear stifle any expression. This happens to boys as well as girls, and women perpetrate such actions as well as men, although rarely as many times. This is not about what sex or gender you are, after all. It's about what power you have or don't have. It's about the abuse of power and the confusion of sexual affection and power. It's about the false power of those who count themselves powerless.

I am not talking about power games in the variant forms of sexual practice enjoyed by some consenting adults. There is nothing consenting about this at all, although I certainly admit that teen boys and girls have a real and powerful sexuality which they are exploring and trying to understand. I think adults should encourage them not to be afraid of their sexualities. And I well understand that there have been cultures, such as in ancient Athens, where there were culturally accepted forms of moderate intergenerational sexuality which were often, if not always, consensual.

But this is not ancient Athens.

It is true that sometimes the young people subjected to sexual abuse enjoy the attention they get around the act. They sometimes convince themselves that the act is something they can put up with for the greater good of close connection to a beloved adult. But again, this greater good does not make the abuse itself a good thing.

And I also understand that there have been mistakes and exaggerations and even misinterpretations in regards to such things too. No human reality I can think of is untouched by fallibility, error, tragedy and sadness. I wish it were otherwise, but I am too realistic to actually hope to live to see the end of human errors.

And I do not think that every clergy person, boss, parent, uncle or aunt, grandparent or older sibling who has done such a thing is a pedophile, that is, someone who fantasizes about sex with children. There are such predators who are very fractured people, like some of the priests sheltered by Cardinal Law. But there are some folks who have just had fractured situations in their lives, when they were vulnerable to the breaking of sacred boundaries in a singular way. In both cases a child is abused, but they are very different things, I think, for the perpetrators.

For example, I know one man in a Unitarian Universalist church out east who was jailed for a time for abusing his daughter, but who confessed this truth to the church, as soon as he started to come to services. He talked to the minister and board chair first, and convinced them that this had been a singular event in his drinking days, and that it would not happen again. He wanted the church to know and set whatever limits for him would make them feel comfortable with him in the church, even if that meant sending him away completely. And then the minister and board chair went, with his permission and encouragement, to the Board and Religious Education council. It was agreed that this man would not ever teach, or work in the classroom wing of the building. It was agreed that he was to have nothing to do with the children of the church, but that he could become a member.

He joined the church, and became, not just a member, but a magnificent member, helping and serving on several committees, working on the church gardens on Saturday, and bringing some joy and energy to the church. He was restored to his daughter, and had, and still has, a good relationship with her. He eventually served on the most important committee in the church, elected by the congregation, so great was the trust that he built. He was, and still is, an extraordinary human being, and an active member over decades.

There are many folks like this man. And yes, there are many folks who are not like this man. But often through no will of their own, I must hasten to add. Statistically, a very large percentage of adults who abuse children were abused themselves. Such behavior is often re-enacted, if you will, from generation to generation, the perpetrators often picking kids the very same age they were when they were abused. But some one has to stop the flow of the abuse through history. Decisions of will have to be made. And it can be done, for most men and women, even if not for all, with proper support and good therapeutic help.

Predators sometimes obsess about what they will do with a young teen. Some of the accused priests, like Fr. Shandley, seem to fall into this pattern. But non-predator perpetrators, which are the largest number of those who do such things, abuse young ones during certain situations only. And for all sorts of reasons. Some may even confuse it with their very real love.

But in every case, no matter the struggling reasons, it's an issue of power over, not power with. No child, and yes, no fifteen-year-old, can be expected to make an informed consent about sexuality with a grown up, even though, yes, I know many teens these days who are smart, educated and sophisticated beyond any one I knew when I was a teen, myself included.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I see several religious responses to this reality that lives among us all in this world, regardless of class, ethnicity, culture or religion, as every statistic affirms.

First, safety for our children is first and foremost…the worth and dignity of every person that we proclaim is especially resonant when we speak of children. Their capacity to feel their feelings and express their feelings must be safeguarded by all of us, for it is only such a strength, the strength of feelings, which can make its way across the wilderness of silence and shame that surrounds this subject. Many of them will still not speak of this until they are adults, twenty years later, as the statistics support. But it seems to me we have to be ready to listen carefully and with care to our children.

Second, the man or woman who abuses, even the most broken, is also a human being with inherent worth and dignity. If they were abused as children, and grow up to do the same, our compassion reminds us that their inherent dignity was distorted by their own upbringing. Limits need to be set, certainly, but help and sympathy need to be offered, even if it is at first rejected. It's an awful lonely road to health without companionship.

Third, our own feelings need to be safeguarded, and honed, so we can actually understand the stated feelings of our children and respond to them without fear or denial. How often women and men have come into my office more frustrated by the reception they got from friends and family than from the actual event, terrible as it was.

Fourth and last, this is a subject that does not need any more shame heaped upon it. There has to be room to talk about this, and that room has to be offered by everyone in this room in order for safety to be present. Please do not think for one second that what Cardinal Law did is something a congregation of people cannot do. Perpetrators can be sheltered in all sorts of silence. Yes, of course, some silence is good. No one, for example, goes up to that church leader on the east coast I told you about and throws his singular behavior back in his face. It would be inappropriate. But it does not require either celibacy or a pointed miter on one's head to keep secrets that harm the larger good. And so, in the end, we are reminded that in this, as in everything, we are all in this together. No one is left outside. No one is outside the embrace of the tough but embracing love our Universalist heritage has proclaimed, without shame, for two thousand years. No one. No one. No one.

Offering [Next][back to top]

We are a community of people who come together to worship, to learn, to connect, to recognize, to help, to face, to sing, to enjoy, to give, to support, to bless, in the name of that Love which is greater than any of us can offer alone. To this end, we collect our offered support for the institutional needs and programs and outreach of this, our beloved congregation.

Prayer of Healing [back to top]

O Love and Truth Unbroken
Let hearts be open.
Let peace shape our circle.
Let feelings be gifts for the living of life.
Let fear not press us to be who we are not.
Let the dream of wholeness
become the process of growth and letting go.
Let the past release the future,
and the future release the past,
so that fate shall perish and life is free again.
Let our separate lives be like you,
O Love and Truth: Unbroken. Amen.

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Last update: 02/16/2003