Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Inverse podcast where we explore how the scriptures can turn our world upside down or how it
[00:00:07] Speaker B: can be weaponized to uphold the status quo. I'm Drew Hart.
[00:00:11] Speaker A: And I'm Jared McKenna and this is Inverse.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hello folks. I'm really grateful for another opportunity to have a important conversation today.
And we have with us a friend, but also a really important and insightful guest that can help us think through so much that's going on in our world today.
I'm excited to introduce you to Hilary Scarcella. She is a scholar, an advocate, and an educator who specializes at the intersection of religion, trauma and sexual violence.
I've encountered her in her scholarship, particularly especially moving in Anabaptist spaces, and how she has focused on religious systems and what it looks like to work towards accountability and repair.
She's the director of Theological Integrity for Into Account it is a national nonprofit that provides survivor centered advocacy and accountability for those harmed by faith leaders or within religion religious institutions.
She has also had an academic career teaching at Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School.
And yeah, she's written really important essays and chapters for resources that I've read and learned from. And so I'm just really grateful, Hillary, for you making some time to have a conversation with us and that we might hear some of your story and glean some of your wisdom and insights as well. So thank you and good to see you.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Good to see you and thank you. It's really lovely to be here.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Hilary, before we press record, I was saying, do you often find yourself catching up with friends in the midst of really heavy stuff? I guess it's the nature of your work, Pooji. You invite us into some of this so vitally important work that you do.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: Sure.
Well, I can't say I saw myself going this path as a young one, but in other ways it happened really organically. So I think Drew mentioned we know each other through Anabaptist spaces, at least originally.
So I grew up in Mennonite Church USA in the peace church tradition with a high emphasis on many forms of justice.
But when I was developing coming of age, when I was going through my formal education in that sphere, there wasn't discussion of violence in gendered terms nearly at all.
And then of course, well, maybe not of course for some who are listening, but John Howard Yoder was a central, central figure for many Mennonites, particularly in Mennonite Church usa. He was a theologian and an ethicist who really strongly influenced the field of peace theology, both academically and you know within the daily life, people of faith in congregational settings.
I went to the seminary where he taught, and as I was there, it was becoming public knowledge, I guess it had been in the past, but then kind of repressed. It was. It was resurfacing as public knowledge that he had been incredibly abusive toward many, many, many women, both students at the seminary where he was teaching, colleagues, people in the wider community, as well as many people around the world, where he would go to speak, where he would be invited kind of as a. An important figure. Abuse would happen in those contexts, too. So this was.
It created a kind of matrices where I was in a position to feel like, wow, I've been raised in this tradition that has been about peace. And all the while, the very same tradition has been keeping this a secret and has been intentionally not dealing with this for some decades now.
And so I also was privileged to be in relationship with some of the survivors.
I had experienced sexual violence myself, and so was also working through that theologically at the time. And all of those events kind of happened in such a way that my track became the study of the intersection of culture and religion and gendered and sexual forms of harm. So.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Amen.
Yeah. Thanks, Hillary.
Drew, I don't know if I've ever closed this loop for you, but John Howard Yoder actually came to Perth and Hillary, in terms of strange connections, he stayed with my wife's granddad.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: So, yeah.
So in terms of.
And you've written so brilliantly, particularly in response to Stanley Hawass's response.
Your article and ABC Religion and Ethics made a big impact here because there are many of us who aren't Anabaptists, but have been deeply influenced by the Anabaptist witness. And it's often come initially throughout that particular figure that you named. And so the fallout is huge.
[00:06:41] Speaker C: Absolutely gigantic.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
So it's someone that both Drew and I don't reference publicly for all those kind of reasons, unless we're actually addressing this stuff in particular, which unfortunately, terribly connects to what's just happened in the news in terms of another figure who has been another male, considered a hero of peace movement, albeit not merely theoretical, but much more practical.
I feel bad that I'm asking you to do all the heavy lifting talking about this stuff, but what's come out about Cesar Chavez and the two women who came out in this New York Times piece? And then in response to that, the other icon of the farm union movement in California, Dolores Huerta, has come out and said that Cesar Chavez, who's Her brother in law or. Yeah, her brother in law.
She had two children to him
[00:08:13] Speaker B: that
[00:08:14] Speaker A: were raised by other people, that she covered up that reality wearing baggy clothes, but didn't go public with a story because of what it would mean for everything they've fought for. I find it really difficult to even talk about this. I've had to throw out a kid's book for my 5 year old and 4 year old this week since finding out like Hilary, would you bring us into some of all of that?
[00:08:51] Speaker C: Sure, yeah. It's devastating.
It's devastating for so many, many, many, many reasons.
So the, the women who came forward in the New York Times piece, Anna Morgia and Deborah Rojas, who were children when they were groomed and sexually abused by Chavez, their parents were organizers in the movement, and so they were close in these circles.
And I believe they were between 12 and 15 or that's the age range that I think is referenced in the article so far.
And then of course, Dolores Huerta, who as you said, is an absolutely gigantic figure in her own right and co founder of the movement, who has said as well that she was raped by Chavez and that that series of encounters resulted in two babies that were born secretly and raised by others. So yeah, the.
I think for me, you know, when I heard this story, the first, like, the first thing that I felt was just this kind of like crushing in my chest. For how long these women have lived in a world where Cesar Chavez, who treated them this way, has been idolized, publicly, openly. I mean, and we know, we know why, right?
It's understandable why.
But my, my mind and my heart goes first to, oh my goodness, what is an entire life lived with the person who treated you this way, who dehumanized you, who destroyed your own life, regarded as one of the greatest symbols of human rights in modern history. So I think that very few, myself included, can really imagine and appreciate what a serious toll and what a serious harm that has been for them. And I also want to say
[00:11:31] Speaker B: these
[00:11:31] Speaker C: are the three people who have come forward at this time.
The style of abuse that they have reported is the kind of style that would make us expect that there are probably more people there.
So I want to acknowledge that too, just that there are others experiencing this moment for whom this is their story too, trying to figure out how to now live in a world where what has needed to be buried down is unearthed and the topic of every conversation. So, yeah, it's just, it's a lot.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: It sure is.
I think the thing that shocked Me was seeing in the news that she's now 95 years old.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: And like, just like if you don't see somebody in the public eye for quite some time, you have this, oh, my goodness, she.
She's exactly the same age as Jim Lawson. Like, and to hold, to hold that for so long, What an incredible cost.
[00:12:50] Speaker C: Yeah. And I guess I also want to point out, I mean, you said this earlier as well, but the survivors themselves in this case have said that part of their reason for staying quiet was out of fear of what speaking this truth would do to the movement.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Movement rights.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: And that's.
I mean, I think, you know, most sexual violence is perpetrated by someone known to the survivor. So most survivors have some degree of concern about what's going to happen to the person who has harmed them if they were to come forward, whether that's a family member or a teacher or a colleague or what have you.
So it's not an out of the ordinary kind of concern for survivors to have to bear, but the magnitude of this one.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: That's right. That's right.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: The magnitude of if I speak, will this movement that so many people are counting on to survive, like, to materially survive and also to maintain their sense of dignity, like, will that movement be impaired if I reveal that the person who represents it, it has behaved in this egregiously horrible way?
That's an. That's an un. Unbelievable burden.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: I think that's what had sat with me when I heard read her story and her account of what happened and how she was processing it is just the weight of that. And I think it resonated with me especially because I've heard black women articulate the exact same thing within the black community. The black struggle, black church spaces. Right.
To articulate exact same point and how unfair it is for them to feel like they've got a hold that which, I mean, on one hand, like, obviously there are potential implications for broader movements or churches, communities. Right. So they're not making that up, but it's not fear and just the.
That their sense of self sacrifice is being manipulated and abused and weaponized against them, turned against them literally in that moment, rather than being a liberty thing for everybody within the community. It's. Yeah, it's just horrific that. That was a gut punch for me.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And it gets at something, a dynamic about sexual violence that I try to talk about a lot, which is that this form of violence really thrives on us individualizing the harm.
It is. This is. This is not a harm between individuals. Yes, there is an individual who is doing something with their body and their words to other individuals, bodies, minds.
But this is a community violence. It is enabled by community dynamics and it is stopped by community intervention.
So one of the.
One of. One of the dynamics that can enable this kind of harm is linking individual personalities with the success of an entire community. Right? So, yep, like Western US Individualist culture says, oh, this one person is our idol standing in for as a symbol for this whole entire movement that takes thousands and thousands of people, right. To make a success.
Then if something happens to the symbol, the movement is gone. Right. Like that's.
I think that, that if we could as a culture, move ourselves to understanding our own selves as networks, right? To like, to not needing. Not relying on like, single representative figures in the first place, but like redistributing that power back to where it really belongs.
The people handing out leaflets, like if we valued them the way that we value the person who is speaking words probably written by six other people. Right?
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:17:01] Speaker C: If we really, really saw and treated movements as the synthesis of many that they are, then we would be way less vulnerable to this kind of thing.
Because when the face. Or when one person was found to have this egregiously inconsistent ethic, we could say, okay, that's terrible. We are going to deal with that. However, that does not. That does not break us.
That does not break us because we have not put our whole entire selves into that person.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: And I think, I think that, like, I think we owe that to survivors to like, to reform our communities in such a way that we are not so broken when the charismatic leader who hurt them failed us too. Because that's what it is. Right. Like they're worried about how is everyone else going to react. How is everyone else's spirit going to continue to go on when they find out that their hero.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: Isn't who they thought he was.
So if the rest of us are resilient, it creates more space for survivors to be able to speak the truth sooner.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I, I love what you're saying. And I was thinking about. So I'm just thinking about the black church and things. Dynamics that I've seen in those spaces and both the.
Because I think you talk about, like, this vicarious representation, right. Of leadership that exists and that relationship between that person and the community.
And there is like. So I think, like, in the black church, like, there is a historical reason why some of that dynamics exist so powerfully. Right.
The Black pastor historically had the most freedom and space.
Their livelihood was not at stake in the same way. And so it encouraged this kind of vicarious representation.
But it is. It's so unhealthy when it comes to these realities. Like, and I've seen firsthand in communities that have been a part of just the harm that happens because everyone wants to save face for this leadership. And it allows really ugly communal practices to remain in place because they see their lives bound in the vicarious representation there. So I don't know.
I'm not.
I don't always. I sometimes feel stuck in terms of, like, how do we move and break out of these cycles.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: That we need to. When so many within the community actually adore it, look to it, and feels like it's our tradition. Right.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Like, what does it do when it's like, it feels like it's the DNA of our tradition.
And. But anyway. But I think that what you're saying is right on point. And we must. We have to find a way. And communities are adaptable and changeable. They don't have to just get stuck where they are. But it is hard just work to. To break out of that habit.
[00:20:04] Speaker C: It is hard work because you also don't want to just. You don't want to throw away the tradition you want. You don't want to not value a tradition. You do want communities to say, okay, what about this tradition feels important to us to hold onto and how can we do that in a way going forward that increases, like, our own internal ethical integrity at the same time, now that we know that this is a vulnerability. But that's hard work.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's even more telling that your formal mission in a Mennonite background, Hillary, because for those of us who are outside Anabaptist traditions, we are in danger of projecting on the tradition you grew up in is like, those dynamics don't happen over there.
That's where actually sometimes in the places where it's more prominent, there is also an awareness that can accompany it.
And so there's this recognition which seems counterintuitive because you think there'd be more blindness, but because it's more public, there's. Sometimes there's checks and balances in place as well. While in places where you think it doesn't happen, this, not with us, actually creates a cover where it's more so likely to happen. Which is part of the reason why churches generally. This is some of the stuff that came out of the Australian Royal Commission into child abuse in churches, is that it was thought that it couldn't happen in these spaces.
So predators actually were attracted to these spaces because people were naive about who was in those spaces to begin with. And this is some of the stuff that the Royal Commission actually said actually perpetuated these dynamics.
So the level of. Well, and maybe.
I know we've barely got into the questions, Hillary, but I'll give a.
We'll do a disclaimer up front for a disclaimer. For me personally, many people, and I've talked publicly about my own story, so if I weep throughout this, I'm fine.
It's just as somebody whose testimony meant that somebody served a jail suit sentence because of what they did to me as a minor, this isn't abstract. This is stuff that I carry in my body. This is stuff that shows up in my dreams. This is stuff that either I deal with or it deals with me. And so part of the reason why I'm so deeply appreciative to yourself and people who do this work day in, day out is because I know the life saving effect that it has. So thank you.
[00:22:50] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: All right, here's some questions.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Drew, is it beautiful?
So let's start off by just grounding our conversation with the biblical texts. Can you read your chosen biblical text that can come, maybe set some context for a conversation we'll have down the road?
[00:23:16] Speaker C: I sure can.
I chose Luke 11:5 through 10.
This is coming right after the Lord's Prayer.
Then Jesus said to them, suppose you have a friend and you go to him at midnight and say, friend, lend me three loaves of bread. A friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have no food to offer him. And suppose the one on the inside answers, don't bother me, the door is already locked and my children and I are in bed. I can't give up and give you anything. Which as a parent of small children, let me tell you, I relate with.
I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity, he surely will get up and give you as much as you need. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks, finds. And to the one who knocks, the door will be open.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: I'm so fascinated that you chose that text. I'm looking forward to this.
Hillary, when do you first remember encountering the Scriptures
[00:24:31] Speaker C: in the womb? I don't know.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: I don't remember a time when I did not encounter the Scriptures.
My. Yeah, my family, actually, my dad's side of the family is Italian Roman Catholic, but my dad left that tradition and married into my mom's family, which is German Mennonite, back to the Reformation and all about the Bible.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: So.
[00:25:03] Speaker C: Yeah, my earliest memories include going to church and Sunday school. And we had those, like, felt. You know, those, like, felt born.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: I don't know if those are planograph.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: We had those.
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So, you know, like, read the Bible stories and, like, move the little felt camera.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:25:25] Speaker B: So as you think about, you know, these early encounters with the Bible, I'm curious, like, did you experience the Bible as oppressive, as liberating, harmful, healing, Something in between?
How were you encountering the Bible at that time?
[00:25:45] Speaker C: All of the above, at different points in life.
So when I was real small, I.
I would say that I absorbed the ethos that the adults around me were offering it to me within, right? So, like, they were telling me, like, this is love, this is goodness, this is care. And so everything that I knew about the Bible I received as that.
As my critical skills grew, I was in a congregational context where kids were encouraged to really ask hard questions of the Bible. So, like, in my middle school, Sunday school class, we would read it, we would act it out. It was really fun, very silly.
And then we were just given kind of, like free rein. Like, what do you think about this? What's weird about this? What's off about this? What do you like about this? And so there was no feeling of, like, anything being off limits.
So I really. I would say middle school and high school congregational settings. I. I had strong support for learning how to interrogate the text.
Okay, Now, I said that there was nothing off limits except there was something that was so off limits that it would never have occurred to me to even, like, think it or see it. Right.
And I think the easiest way to describe this is to tell you that we had these youth advocate breakfasts where, like, youth were paired with an adult in this intergenerational, kind of conversational monthly thing.
And at one of our youth advocate breakfasts, we were practicing nonviolence. And what that meant was we were role playing an intruder coming into our homes and threatening to kill our families with a gun.
And we were role playing how we would respond.
Nobody tried to kick the person, right? Like, nobody tried to bat a weapon out of their hand. Nobody, like, football tackled them like that.
That was. That was what was off limits, like you cannot use your body, you cannot use. Was any.
Any. Anything that could conceivably ever be interpreted as force to defend yourself or your family. The point of the role play was figure out what it feels like now to let your family die in front of you and to let yourself die. Because if you're put in that situation at any point in your life, that's what you're going to have to do.
So we could not.
We could not interrogate nonviolence. We could not.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: We could not ask about what peace was. And it wasn't that we would have been explicitly shut down. Is that it was not in the imagination of the community to be asking that kind of question.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: That.
I thought that was liberating for me.
I realized at a certain point in my young adult life that. That. That had incredibly oppressive impact.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:29:04] Speaker C: On me.
[00:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:06] Speaker C: One of them being, obviously what that does to someone experiencing gendered violence or sexual abuse in any gender configuration, which is that when you have a person who is abusing you, you cannot resist them.
You can't. You can't.
You can hardly even say no.
Like, you can, and you definitely can't.
Oh, the other part was loving enemies. Right. Love your enemies meant think about what it's like from their position. I remember when 911 happened, my first instinct was, I wonder how bad the lives of the people who did this were.
Like, I wonder what we did to them that was so bad that they thought they had to do this.
Now, I'm not saying that that's not a legitimate point of interrogation. Like, it's a fine question to ask. It's a fine thing to think about, but it was the first one. It was the first and the only thing in my mind watching the towers fall. Right. Because I was trained that loving enemies means identify the enemy. Now think about what you did to make this happen.
Think about your part in that.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Think about their humanness, how broken they must be to have caused this amount of harm. And now your job as a peacemaker is to come in and support them so that they can heal back into good people.
Divert that to abuse.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Speaker C: Divert that to any interaction ever where, like, even something remotely patriarchal or sexist is happening. Like, your job is to figure out what is wrong with this person who's hurting you and to support their healing and to understand that if they're hurting you, it's either because of something you did or because of something somebody else did to them that you are responsible for healing.
So, yeah, it Was. It was in my. I would say, very early 20s that I came kind of to awareness that this had become extremely oppressive in my life and needed to be radically rethought.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: I really appreciate, you know, it was as someone who did not grow up in Anabaptist space, but then, like, slowly in adulthood, creeped in and had a foot in that world. Like, I. I think that's part of the reason. Like, so when I first got introduced to Anabaptism, like, I was like, I want no part of this.
And some of it was because of how I was hearing white Anabaptists articulate their peace theology. I was like, this is, like, this is terrible, right? Like, danger is not good news. It didn't even make sense. It could not compute. And the only time it began to compute was me hearing what they were teaching at least some things and recognizing, oh, Jesus does care about peace. Right.
But then rejecting their ethical system and how they believed it should be modeled. And I looked to. Honestly, it was in the black space, it was King and others in the movement that helped me to begin to think about other ways of thinking about it. Because I was like, what is this? It didn't even make sense to me. Right. And so as I went on, like. Like I've encountered. I mean, I wonder what. I've always wondered, like, what was the. It's really fascinating for me to hear you share that story because I'm like, what is the socialization process where people imagine that any kind of force at all is this horrific, sinful violence that they're engaging in? But I've heard that articulated over how they couldn't. They wouldn't raise a hand up. And they. They were very proud of that. And I just couldn't fathom, like, what was going on.
And. And how do you get a community to embody that practice? It's just wild. So hearing even just these little practices that you encountered is fascinating to me.
[00:33:20] Speaker C: You role play letting your family die. That's.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: That is horrifying. I don't know. I'm laughing right now, but I'm probably crying. I know.
[00:33:27] Speaker C: Me too.
Me too. And the other thing.
Can I name one other practice that I think was really central to this that I've done some of my academic work on as well?
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:37] Speaker C: Is Communion.
The story of Jesus's crucifixion was interpreted as the ultimate, like the. There's many ways to narrate what happened in crucifixion. The narration that I grew up with was a perfect person who cared deeply about the world, was persecuted because of his politics and because of his insistence on the well being for everyone in the world. He was persecuted for that. He was killed, he was murdered, he was tortured, he was made to suffer.
But he allowed that to happen as a way of caring for the people who did that harm.
He allowed himself to be tortured, maimed, humiliated and killed in order to save people who didn't deserve it.
So when we participated in communion, we were not trying to receive the grace of Christ. We were not like what communion was for us was a commitment to model ourselves after Jesus.
Just like he did make your own body vulnerable to like submit your own body to that kind of harm. Like, that's how committed you have to be to Jesus. That's how committed you have to be to non violence and to peace is that when you take this body and blood, you are making yourself into the Jesus who let himself be mutilated for people who did not deserve it.
So again, if you're in an abusive relationship and you're going to church and you're like, I can't tell anybody what's happening, but I need some guidance here. And you take communion you are doing with your body, you are literally submitting to your abuser in your body and calling it Christian.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: It was not too long, it was probably about a year ago. We had a guest speaker and I can't even remember exactly what they were talking about, but they were talking about discipleship in the way of Jesus in some form or whatever. And there's a young woman, maybe she's not that young. She probably like my age. I think everyone's young except for me. I'm the old person in my mind.
Side note from like when I was in my 20s, people would say I have the spirit of like a 70 year old man. So anyway, anyway,
[00:36:04] Speaker A: until we get you out on the court, until you get
[00:36:06] Speaker B: me out on the court, then, then I revive myself again.
But on a serious note, this young Latina woman in our church, her, her question was during our, if we had open after the sermon, like we have space for dialogue and conversation and she's asking a question on whether or not like she should remain. She's new to. It was an Anabaptist ish, like kind of like black church, Anabaptism, meet each other kind of space and she's hearing this message and she's like wrestling with like, what does this mean for Africa? I, I never pressed her all the way to flesh out because I felt like it was her business. But she was wrestling with like, does this mean like submitting to an abusive. Like that's what she was hinting at. Right. An abusive relationship. Like, and sometimes I think we say things and we don't imagine what people are actually going through every day.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Right. They're, they're.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: As soon as I got home from that meeting.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: Right. And so without any kind of. And so, I mean, I just really quickly from the congregation, like put some boundaries and reining in some things, you know, but, but I, but I do think, even when we're not, like, I do think there are, at least for me, there are ways in which I can find Jesus's self sacrifice meaningful for willing to resist and speak up and accept some consequences for that. Like, there are times when I think that that is really meaningful work. And there's also times when that is weaponized and is dangerous. Right.
And I do think we need to be a lot more careful in our practices in the way that we invite people into something to remember all the different lived experiences that people are bringing with, that they're carrying with them every day that are so critical to how they're going to be processing these stories and how they're going to embody them and, and hold on to them.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: Yeah,
[00:38:15] Speaker A: that's. Sorry, Killer.
[00:38:17] Speaker C: Just what I typically tell students is Jesus saved himself three times and he died once.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
[00:38:25] Speaker C: From the crowds, they tried to drive him over the cliff. Like. Yeah, don't tell this, don't tell this man's story. Like, like he was on a mission to die.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:38:37] Speaker C: This is, it's context and choices and, you know, what's going on and why are you doing it and what is like making a situation holy or not. And like sometimes the choice is save yourself.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: And sometimes it's something else. So.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Yep.
It astounds me how we continue to use the term nonviolence to refer to things that don't interrupt violence.
[00:39:03] Speaker C: Amen.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Like what are we doing? What are we. I.
A story for another time. In fact, Hillary, so many of the things that you're saying, I, I want to, I want to say things in response and I'm trying to put a seatbelt on and be behaved and make this time not therapy.
We should catch up another time. But my, my 4 year old and I think I might be writing something about this and probably it'll end up on substat, but my kids visited another Sunday school program and it was horrific because my 5 year old has level 3 autism. I was in the class, had to interrupt the class because it was so bad.
And I won't go into details, but Monday, driving my kids to school and little Gough, he says to me from the back, back sea Jesus got stabbed.
And it's just out of, it's out of nowhere. And I'm just like.
And I'm like, oh yeah.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: He.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: And I was like, yeah. And then he's 4 years old, he's like, if I love people, am I gonna have to get stabbed?
[00:40:19] Speaker C: Oh, my heart. I know.
[00:40:24] Speaker A: And I'm like, coffee, you should not want to get stabbed.
[00:40:27] Speaker C: Like, no,
[00:40:31] Speaker A: but it's like one bad Sunday school. And that's what shows up for him in the silence as, as we're driving down the hill, right. It's like, oh my goodness.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: I'm really appreciative that you shared that because I often get people saying to me, oh, but that's a misinterpretation. They're just, they're getting it wrong. They're getting the message wrong. They're not hearing us right now. If a four year old.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:56] Speaker C: Came away with that, then like, I don't think, I don't think it's the hearers who are hearing incorrectly. I think it's the narrators who.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: Oh my goodness, yes.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: Willfully ignoring the implications of what they're saying to people who are in vulnerable positions.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: I, I mean, I'm going to go to the next question because I'm tend to spend four hours on what happened on Sunday. It was so. But.
[00:41:25] Speaker C: Next question.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: Hilary, the next question is from your own story and experience.
What has shaped your lens for reading the scriptures and in particular around that? I guess it's like, what would you offer to listeners as a meaningful gift as they struggle with these sacred texts for themselves that you would offer them as they open up the scriptures from your own life experience?
[00:41:55] Speaker C: That is such a good question.
I have a few things.
The first one, I am not fully sure what I'm offering through this, but it's just an image that keeps coming back to mind for me.
And I'll tell it through a story.
When I was in seminary that I.
And I was doing a lot of this processing work and you know, reformulating and figuring out like, what is this thing that I came from and what am I going to do with it?
There was a moment that is really difficult for me to know how to describe because it happened all kind of like in a flash, like there was no time.
But it also Like, I can't tell it without it seeming like there was time. So just keep that in mind.
So I was sitting in my kitchen, and I had an image of myself and Jesus in the desert, and I was mad.
Like, it was a moment of, like, get away from me.
Like, you. Like, you are. You are too close.
You are too much.
You.
You have been used to ruin so many things in my life.
I've got all of these people and profess, like, coming down my throat, telling me that I'm reading the Bible wrong, that my concerns are wrong, that I'm overreacting to this and to this and to this. And, like, you are just not what I need right now. Like, I need you to back up.
And I drew a line in the sand and just kind of, like, stared into, like, I dare you to cross it sort of way.
And this Jesus of my in my vision and imagination just, like, couldn't have cared less. Just sat down and was like, all right.
And I just started, like, weeping because it wasn't a big deal.
Because, like, this Jesus in my vision was like, yeah, that's cool. Like, I support you. Like, I will stay on this side of the line. You drew a boundary. That's great. I know how to respect boundaries, Grace.
I will be here. I'm gonna do my own thing. You go have fun. Figure it out. Come back when you want to. We'll chat. Tell me when I can cross the line. If it's never, that's fine, right? It was, like, this experience of, Like, Jesus believing in me and trusting me and being willing to, like, give me my own space and not, like, force a certain ideology or whatever.
Okay, so what does that have to do with reading the Bible?
That opened space for me, I think, to bring myself to the text and to have a real relationship with it. So I wasn't coming to it. Like, what does it really say? What is it supposed to say? What am I supposed to get out of this? Like, that was the beginning of me coming to the text saying, I don't know about you.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: You.
[00:45:12] Speaker C: Like, I don't. I don't actually fully trust you. I don't know if every one of your words is giving the right message.
So it, like, it opened up opportunity to reformulate, like, the kind of relationship I was going to have with the text and with Jesus, to be honest, to begin with.
And then I think what my relationship with the text has become is that it. It works kind of like a sharpening blade for me.
So I view it simultaneously as a source of Wisdom. And as evidence of wisdom's distortion.
And I kind of think it's all. It's. It's all wrapped up in there. And, like, the. The job of reading is the job of discernment.
So, like, I come to the text and I read it, and I let myself have every thought and feeling that I possibly could about it, and then sit with it and interrogate and, like, just let that process sharpen my own sense of wisdom and my own sense of ethics, my own thoughts about what the text means or doesn't mean, sharpen my feelings about it. Like, it's a. It's like a clarity tool, which is not just like, yes, I do think that there's wisdom there. I am trying to find the wisdom there.
But it's much more about, like, who it's helping me to become in the process of engaging with it, and much less about drawing from it, some kind of magical content that will tell me how to live a good life.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: Like an extractive process.
[00:47:01] Speaker C: Yeah, if you're mining, right. Yeah. Not extracting, like, moving through it. Like, having a real relationship, like, with a person. Interacting, engaging, figuring out where we agree, where we don't. What I can learn, what I can discard.
I don't know. Have I answered your question at all
[00:47:20] Speaker A: so well, so beautifully? I was just thinking to myself, drew, I think this is one of the first episodes after years of doing this, where we've actually gone, like, inside in terms of those who were committed to nonviolence and let's name the shadow side really clearly of this tradition.
I think, Hillary, this is brilliant. Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: So, Hillary, in light of how you engage both, not only looking for wisdom, but allowing, as you engage the text, to bring out the wisdom within you, can we return back to Luke and have a conversation around how maybe that approach and lens might help us engage and read these texts more liberatively?
[00:48:11] Speaker C: Yes.
So the reason that I chose this text is because.
I'm thinking about sexual violence.
I'm thinking about many intersecting forms of abuse in the world. They don't just come, you know, in one form. It's usually many together.
And these days, what I spend most of my time thinking about is
[00:48:43] Speaker B: what
[00:48:43] Speaker C: kind of a world is free of this?
What kind of a community does not have abuse in it?
I don't know of any.
But I think that the work of creating them starts with believing that they're possible.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:12] Speaker C: That belief feels audacious and shameless and asking for it. Right. Believing that it's possible and asking for it even Though there is such a current against the idea that it's something we could ever have. Communities without abuse.
So I chose this text because it is inspiring shamelessness and audacity in me these days.
The idea of going to a friend at a very inconvenient time, right? Like, this is not a good friend. Like, you, you needed bread. Like, ask me for bread at dinner time.
Don't come in the middle of the night. What are you doing?
I don't, like, I don't think that the, the person who says no, like, is not doing anything necessarily wrong. Like it's okay to, to have your own boundaries and say, you can't come into my house in the middle of the night. We are sleeping.
But yet this friend comes and knocks. And isn't it true? Like, I can imagine myself doing this. I can imagine someone calling, right? Like somebody who's on my list that can get through my do not disturb calling and me picking up and being like, it is 1am like, go to sleep, talk to me in the morning. Hang up, they call back. They hang up, they call back. Hang up, they call, fine, I'm awake. What do you want?
And that shameless audacity to persist and to keep asking for something that you really don't have a right to ask for. Or like you do, you need it. But like, it's not, it's not an obvious ask.
There are good social reasons why we are not asking for these things at this time in this way. And I think that asking for communities, for a world that does not have abuse in it, like we don't do that anymore, that feels like an audacious, shameless ask. Like, if that were possible, wouldn't we have it already? Do you really think that human nature is such that we can even go there? Like, what a silly thing to ask for. Ask for something practical. Ask for something that could be given to you.
But what's coming to me lately is we've tried it and none of it's good enough.
Yeah, I don't want to ask for people who are abusive to be held accountable afterward. I mean, we can't even get there. So yes, let's keep asking for that too. But I want, I want communities that are so, so grounded in consent based practices of mutual respect that there is not ground where abuse can grow. Right? Like, and I have an ecological metaphor for this in my mind. You know, if I'm, I'm, I'm very, I love to spend my time digging in the dirt, much to my 3 year old's chagrin.
And if you like, in a. In a working, healthy ecosystem, what is good for the ground grows. And it grows in a balance that supports its own life and the life of the plants and the animals and the insects and the people.
And in an ecosystem that is injured and harmed, things that damage the environment, that hurt those people, that. That cause all kinds of problems, like, those things start to take over. I think we're living in an ecosystem where incredibly damaging patterns and habits and ways of being have taken over. And we've been living in that ecosystem for so long that we do not know how to grow an ecosystem where this kind of harm can't.
I'm not saying we can never get rid of, like, we can get rid of every single instance of abuse ever, but I'm. I'm going for a world where when an individual instance of abuse happens, the ecosystem is such that that's it.
Right?
[00:53:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:32] Speaker C: It happens. And then the survivors can come forward and they. They can say, I'm worried that this is going to affect the movement, but Cesar Chavez just did this to me.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:42] Speaker C: And they will be believed, and the community will know what to do about it. And it won't kill the movement. Right. They will be nimble enough to shift.
And so even though that one thing has happened and we have to care for those victims to whom that happened and work at accountability for the person who perpetrates the harm farm, the wider ecosystem can handle it and can make sure that that can't take over. That, like, that plant can't just wipe out everything else that is there. So, like, that's the world that I want. And I'm holding this text as kind
[00:54:18] Speaker A: of
[00:54:22] Speaker C: as permission, right. To ask for it. Like, we will not get it if we don't seek it. We will not get it if we don't ask for it. We have to imagine it first.
We have to try in order to do those things, we have to believe that it's okay to be shameless and audacious in our requests.
[00:54:41] Speaker B: That's so good.
Oh, man. I
[00:54:47] Speaker C: like.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: You're speaking to me, Hillary, right now. You're speaking to me.
I.
Maybe I'll say this confessionally, Jared. You will have noticed probably over the last.
So a lot of times when we start off an inverse podcast episode, many times we pray for guests almost all the time, Jared. Like, do you want to pray or should I pray? And 99% of the time I say, jared, you pray.
[00:55:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:55:16] Speaker B: That's just kind of been our habit right now. And in some of the. It is. I think I'm in this little funk, right?
And I do think it, like. Like there. I don't know, like, there's a little Afro pessimism growing inside of me, right? Like, this is just the way it is.
It cannot change.
And we've just got to learn how to live on the underside of it, right?
And so this challenge and invitation to not stop asking, dreaming, pursuing, knocking, being persistent of, for persevering to create this different kind of community, right, where these kinds of assaults no longer exist. I mean, that's the message I need to hear. I need to let it seep all the way in. I think I've been wrestling with that.
And no, I really appreciate the audaciousness, right? Not to just be pragmatic about the little tweaks we can make along the way, but to envision and seek after entirely new community communities that really are thriving and flourishing or have the practices and accountability measures all built in, right? So that it can't get out of control within those spaces. That's. That's powerful.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: I'm so.
You got healer? Sorry.
[00:56:39] Speaker C: No, go ahead.
[00:56:41] Speaker A: I was gonna say I'm so struck by.
Australians are incredibly isolated compared to Americans, have a thickness of social relations that they might be surprised isn't shared in other places. Because I think sometimes American experience other cultures where it's even thicker and they're like, oh, compared to.
But Australians are incredibly isolated. I'm convinced that's why we have the highest rate of. Of male suicide in the world, is because the isolation that accompanies the kind of misogyny that breeds this kind of violence towards women.
And part of where you started in talking about believing that community could be a place where. And I was just struck with believing in community. I was like, man, but. But actually, like, I'm not even. I'm not even. Because particularly those of us who are on the other side of harm, I think we get to a place where we can believe that that won't happen again, and we put things in place. But some of the things we can put in place is isolation and how difficult it actually is to create spaces where we don't have to choose between rich community or safety.
And to dare to actually to want that and speak that. And it's not that we're not experimenting. Like one of the practices at Steeple Church, where I, part of the pastoral team in Melbourne, we have a safe church announcement every week, and people put up their hands, and these are safe church people this week. And there's always at least three people around the sanctuary who put up their hand stand.
So if you see if somebody spills something and it needs mopping up or if there is a dynamic that happens. So we go through the safety stuff in terms of if a door is left open, it might be. But if there is a dynamic that makes anybody feel uncomfortable that they want to raise or where they, or they think that somebody might not feel safe, please let us know during the service. And it's little things like that, which if nothing else, it just scares off people who have been creepy.
Which is a great place to start.
But like I'd like to have more to point to in Audacious dares at Community Better safety.
[00:59:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You're just reminding me that one of my go tos for that kind of scare tactic is, you know, if I leave my kids or especially the, the one that can talk with new people, just saying like we're learning parts of the body. So if they talk about, you know, their genitalia, just like, like, you know, under understand that like we use the regular words because I'm helping them learn how to like be comfortable talking about these parts of their body. So just don't be alarmed by that. Right, like that's right, that's, that's code. Right? That's code for like my child, what these things are and has communication with their parent about stay away.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:00:26] Speaker C: But yes, having community in the first place, that is huge.
But what I was thinking about while you were talking was that, you know, a lot of my work in professional advocacy for survivors, particularly survivors who are in some kind of Christian setting, has been interfacing with congregations, with Christian schools, with all of, with all of these communities. Right. That are trying to figure out what to do with varying levels of integrity and sincerity in the process.
But what I have come to see over this last decade is that policies are important and they're not going to do it.
Yeah, they will not do it.
Because I don't care how well your policy is written, crisis happens. People can get around it like, because words are interpretable and nothing is perfect and no instance of harm is the same as another instance of harm. And so like, like you cannot, you cannot stack prohibitions on top of prohibitions and expect that to result in a safe community.
Those are tools that we can have. But like we have to start which is, this is the direction I'm going now is to really focus on helping people develop consent based survivor centered practices and communities. So this is not, you know, what do you do when abuse happens? This is. How do you help children negotiate when they do and don't want to hug someone?
[01:02:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:02:07] Speaker C: What?
Like how, like when there, when there's conflict over which hymns we sing, like, how do we navigate that together? Like, it's. And also helping people. Another thing that I think brings us back to Chavez, like, helping people getting really comfortable with the idea that, like, we are a community of trust and we will always be betrayed.
Like, and, and really process as a community. Like, harm happens because there was trust to begin with.
So, like, let's, let's figure out what relationally we are going to do when betrayal occurs, because the policy doesn't tell us that.
[01:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:50] Speaker B: Never mind. So, and I'll just mention for our listeners that your substack was, I thought, really thoughtful and brilliant in terms of just walking through this. And there are a few, many things that you said that were really helpful.
And this kind of connects to where we started when we were talking about, like, the vicarious leadership stuff. But you were in your substack.
I mean, it's one of those things that it's like, once you say it, it's like, duh, but it just needs to be said. But you made the point that there's less resistance when somebody actually embodies the ideals of that community. Right.
And I.
And as I was reading that, I was like, like, that's just a really precise way at getting at, like, what I've seen so often, right.
Is that actually some people, we actually are quicker to hold accountable. Some people actually are. The mechanisms will work quite well. Right.
But there are ways in which when we actually best embody. And maybe I had a. I don't know if you know, Elena, what's it, Dobkowski, I think her name is. She's in Grand Rapids, Mennonite past. I don't know if you know a little bit. I. Recently, we connected at AMBS. Recently. I hadn't seen her in, like, over 20 years. Like, we connected briefly right after college. So we ended up sitting and chatting and I was just going over on. Because I'm sometimes just a tortured soul. So talking about my little dilemmas in my community about, like, how to show up. Because I, I, my conversation with it was like 10 years ago. I didn't have this problem. But once I got the PhD and people started knowing me, like, I started realizing people treat me differently in certain spaces. Right. And so before it was like, oh, I'm this black man that needs to step forward and create space for myself. And now all of a sudden in my community, I'm like, they always go with what I say.
Right. And I do think I am by. And so, like, I'll put checks on myself that the community is not. Because the community actually doesn't know how to.
And there's. So there's no resistance. Right. And I just don't think that that's healthy. And so anyway, I think that gave me even some language for, like, why internally, I've been like, torturing myself over things that probably most people be like, oh, that's wonderful. They just want to go with what you say. They think you're, you know. And like, for me, that's a kind of power that's unnamed. It's a power dynamic that's unnamed within the community.
And we don't have something in place to kind of engage that. And so I'm just stuck in my head working through that. Rather than us having the muscles as a community to actually kind of. I don't know exactly what do you.
So how does a community, like, what practices do you invite communities into to kind of deal with that tension between the ideal person embodying the ideals of the community and then that lack of resistance that creates. That it creates.
[01:05:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
Really good. Really important question.
First of all, I think community should be discussing this openly and intentionally. Because a big part of the issue is if we're talking about it, that means we don't trust our leadership leaders.
[01:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:06:11] Speaker C: If we're talking about what do we do if this person, you know, it comes into some kind of situation, then like, that communicates to that person that, you know, like, there's an allegiance issue.
So I think, like, an important thing for leadership is to model. Like, it is not only okay with me that we are talking about this, this is part of how we embody our ethics as a community is to talk about this and to model like. Like, the fact that we're talking about this does not threaten me. It does not make me feel judged. It does not make me feel like I'm not trusted. The fact that we're talking about this makes me feel like we are a community who is really learning how to hold complexity and how to develop the kind of trust that also has the. The ability to move into accountability when needed. That, like, we really understand conflict. We understand conflict so well that we really get that we don't know where it's going to come from. And since we don't know, it's really okay to talk about it coming from any angle.
Yeah, like I think about this with myself. I think, like, I have become a voice who talks about abuse and sexual violence. It is very important to me to hold myself to incredibly high standards when it comes to, like, ways of interacting with people. Right. Because it's. If I, like, if I were ever to cross out, like, what. What a horror. What a horror show, that would be. Right.
And so at. Into account at my organization too, we talk about, like, because we are leaders in this field, because we have this authority and respect, we have to be held to incredibly high standards. We need our own system for people reporting against us that is so strong that we can't undermine it with our own power if we wanted to.
[01:08:03] Speaker A: To.
[01:08:04] Speaker C: Right.
And it's because of our ethics that we will create that for ourselves. So I think it comes down to being able to hold complexity, like having communities that see it as a virtue that they have put together plans for addressing this with the people who they actually do and continue to trust the most with rightful cause. Right.
So in practical terms, that means, like, there need to be. There need to be people to talk to who won't come back to you. Like, there need to be ways of reporting that, you know, for me, right. There needs to be ways of reporting something about me that I would never know about and that I have absolutely no power to engage whatsoever.
[01:08:57] Speaker A: Ever.
[01:08:59] Speaker C: So. Yeah, like removing leaders from the equation.
[01:09:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:09:04] Speaker B: And we have. It's interesting. So my community, like, I think we have those things for our pastors.
[01:09:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:11] Speaker B: And we have pastors that actually do. Like, they're the ones who are, like, we haven't been reviewed by the community in a while. Like, let's do that. Like, they're. They invite that. That interrogation and, And. And see that as a practice of. Of who we are as a community. And then there's me, who's not officially a pastor, but in some ways, like, my. Just my presence there in this community inherently is of a different nature than anybody else who's attending because of who I am, because of my education, because in many ways people see me as the embodiments. Right. Of the very things that we're working toward. I'm usually helping our community work through and imagine different pathways forward.
And so it's that dynamic that the unofficial leader. Right. Is actually, I think, the danger point. I think for me, in our community, it's not actually the. I mean, there's practice we need to always, obviously, still. But. But I do think that those are some gaps that I think we need to talk about as Community together. So I think that what you said is really helpful. Yeah, that's helpful.
[01:10:15] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's really right and insightful. I would love to hear what you know, if you think about it more, I'd love to hear what you come up with as what you would really value in your situation.
[01:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:28] Speaker A: What comes to mind is St. Francis going to play on the seesaws. Like when people started to think too much of him, he literally went to the kids playground and people were just like, he's an actual idiot. It like. And the importance for leaders to like hand back projections constantly, like to be aware of that, the kind of stuff that you've just been naming and even saying on a public podcast, I think is really important.
It doesn't replace the importance of good policies or community awareness or ongoing education or a constant awareness of not talking about power merely as power over, which is part of the problem with how we conceive of pastors anyway, but talking about power as consent.
What it is to be in a shared vulnerability of safety where things can be raised and raising things is celebrated rather than shut down. All those things are necessary. And those of us, despite all those policies and practices and community held values also need to make a habit of confessing. And not in our acts of charity should happen without our left hand knowing what our right hand's doing. But everything else should be pretty public.
Like we should be able to confess our sins in public but also just act a fool. Like I think that's really important that some of the importance that we place upon ourselves, that we make sure we're playing with that and we're aware of that and it's part of the awareness that I think creates safety as well.
[01:12:27] Speaker C: I really loved in class when I was teaching, like some of my favorite pedagogical moments were just saying I don't know to a student's question or coming to class and saying, I'm underprepared today because this thing happened in my life, life, you know, not to not take responsibility for my responsibilities as the teacher, but just to model that like we are all human. It is okay. We, nobody should be pretending like we are otherwise and we should be naming our shortcomings and not, you know.
Yeah. I think another thing, another practice that could be very helpful is just being always mindful of redistributing space and power. Yeah.
So as leaders have more reach with our voices, being more mindful to invite others to speak, to not take all of the invitations, but to invite other kind of like up and coming people to take some of the invitations. It would still be fun to do, but like no more that we can.
That's part two of the making sure we don't get into situations where we have one person representing of movement so clearly that their revelations about their unethical behavior can undo the whole thing.
[01:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's really good. So great.
Hillary. This has been fantastic. Like, so important. If. If people are hearing this and like us going, oh my goodness, Hillary's amazing and want to endanger you of our projections, where can they find you to project onto you all the things that you'll lay to hamper back?
[01:14:15] Speaker C: Absolutely.
I think my website is probably the easiest place. I think it's Hillary J. Scarcella and
[01:14:23] Speaker A: we mentioned the substack.
[01:14:25] Speaker C: Oh, Substack. Substack is a good place.
[01:14:27] Speaker A: Article was fantastic.
Thank you.
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