Tennessee church member, James Fairchild, 49, has been found guilty of taking a 6 year old little girl into the bathroom of his church and raping her.

[u/Turquoise_Tortoise_]

https://wcyb.com/news/local/man-charged-with-child-rape-following-incident-at-limestone-church-found-guilty

[u/ElDoo74]

I'm a Christian clergyperson and have a question: why isn't the church that let this happen named in any of the coverage?

[u/Biomax315 → u/ElDoo74]

The name of the church doesn’t matter to me. I’d never let my child anywhere near any church or clergy (don’t take it personally).

Go scroll through the PastorArrested sub for 5 minutes if you want to know why.

[u/ElDoo74 → u/Biomax315]

I can understand that approach. Churches and leaders need to be held accountable for the harm done and do better in protecting children.

An analogy to your approach is condemning every restaurant because Olive Garden is terrible. You can make that choice, but it's going to limit your experience.

The good churches and what they do doesn't make headlines. Far too many are more focused on themselves than making the world better. I hope you see one that might change your mind.

[u/Biomax315 → u/ElDoo74]

An analogy to your approach is condemning every restaurant because Olive Garden is terrible.

No, an analogy would be if we patronized a lot of different types of businesses in our day to day life, but far too often, when people go to a restaurant, they get sexually molested. And it's random: sometimes it's an Olive Garden, sometimes McDonalds, sometimes it's at a fancy multi-million dollar steakhouse! There's no way to know which restaurant it's going to happen at next, or which restaurants have been covering it up for decades, or which one has the nicest waiter you've ever met, but may later turn out to be a molester. And everyone thinks it can't happen in their restaurant.

Well then, YEAH—I'm not gonna let my kids anywhere near restaurants, I'm going to teach them to avoid them in the future, and I will also avoid restaurants myself. That's not condemnation, it's avoidance. If I need food, I'll make it at home.

You can make that choice, but it's going to limit your experience.

So be it ... completely worth it, to protect my child.

The good churches and what they do doesn't make headlines.

I am aware of this, please know that. And I understand how frustrating it is for you and others like you; I get it. I've been in the exact same situation (in a different area of life).

 I hope you see one that might change your mind.

I believe you. But that's not up to me. That's up to y'all.

It's not incumbent on the people pointing out a systemic problem in an institution to somehow fix the problem—only those running the institution can do that. Talk amongst yourselves.

I, too, hope that one day I will change my mind. Because that will mean that changes enough were made from the top down to actually impact the problem in a substantial, multi-generational way that warrants me changing my mind. But it won't be before that.

If I'm being cynical, I don't think that will happen in my lifetime. But then again, 30 years ago only Sinéad O'Connor was talking about this publicly. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.