Did Paul Blame Victims of Sexual Assault? (Part 5: The Church Today)
Consent, culpability, and coercion in the Church today
Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at what Paul’s teachings on slavery and sexual ethics in 1 Corinthians 6–7 would’ve meant for enslaved Corinthian Christians, who lacked the legal right to defend the boundaries of their own bodies.
(If you’re joining us for the first time, I recommend starting with Part 1, which discusses the cultural context that shaped Paul’s worldview. If you wanna skip the context and jump straight into 1 Corinthians, that starts in Part 3.)
We reached two conclusions:
Sexual abusers violate sacred space and invite the wrath of an avenging God. Sexual violence—by either force or coercion—is a matter of profound importance, because the body matters. The Christian is a temple of the Holy Spirit; an enslaved woman is the Lord’s freedwoman. Any attack on her is an offense against the Lord.
Paul does not condemn the victim. His counsel to the enslaved is, in essence: “Do the best you can to live chastely. But when you are coerced, know that the guilt belongs not to you but to the perpetrator—and God will judge.”
In short, in an immoral sexual act, the presence of coercion means that guilt is not distributed symmetrically—the enslaver is engaging in an offense of uncommon severity; the enslaved ought to live chastely so far as it depends on them.
So, what does this reading of 1 Corinthians 6–7 mean for the Church today? How do we think and live, in light of Paul’s words? In particular, how ought we respond to the clergy sexual abuse crisis?
(I approach this with fear and trembling. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.)
Modern Day Slavery
Chattel slavery has become a thing of the past.1 (Thanks be to God!)
Yet, tens of millions of people remain functionally enslaved worldwide. Many of these victims (mostly women and children) are trafficked in the commercial sex trade; many others experience sexual violation at the hands of their enslavers. Traffickers use various tactics to gain control of their victims—including but not limited to grooming, deception, threats, and coercive control. (Victims also often suffer physical violence, but it doesn’t usually look like the movies. Violent abduction is hyper-rare—traffickers more often take advantage of desperation and proximity.)
It looks different than the sexual exploitation of ancient slavery, but the important ingredients remain: Victims are coerced and controlled, their bodies exploited for the gain or gratification of others.
In my lifetime, as far as I’ve seen from my little corner of the world, the Church has done pretty well on this issue. We’ve mobilized to raise funds for anti-trafficking organizations like IJM. We’ve purchased en masse the handicrafts of formerly trafficked women who are learning new skills. We give former victims the microphone to share their testimonies.
And, critically, we speak about these victims as victims.
God has given us eyes of compassion for victims of sex trafficking.
(There are a couple of areas in which I’d quibble with our approach … but I’ll save those for another day.)
Overall: Well done, twenty-first-century Church. May we continue to work for justice and healing for these women and children, and to create a world where this kind of victimization ceases.
Let’s Talk About Clergy Sexual Abuse
But how do we respond when the situation hits closer to home?
Here, our track record is spottier.
Sexual abuse is psychologically complex. The dynamics of grooming, trauma responses, and power dynamics create environments of coercive control—serial abusers use many of the same tactics that traffickers use to gain control of their victims.
When we talk about sex in our churches, what does our teaching sound like to victims of sexual abuse? And how does our reading of Scripture shape how we respond to sexual abuse?
Churches and Christian institutions have often handled sexual abuse poorly. The clergy sexual abuse crisis has been unfolding for decades, documented across denominations. These stories have exposed not merely the crimes of individual abusers but the institutional assumptions that have enabled those crimes and, too often, compounded the suffering of the survivors.
By now, the grim patterns are well-worn. A pastor, priest, or other spiritual leader grooms the victim—sometimes from a young age—gradually manipulating or intimidating them into sexual talk or activity. When the abuse is discovered, the pastor may be moved by the denomination or allowed to resign quietly, only to end up working in another church where they victimize another congregant. Or sometimes there’s a restoration process designed to return the pastor to his original pulpit!
In many cases, the shame and guilt are distributed symmetrically: Both parties are urged to confess sin, the abuser and victim placed on parallel tracks of repentance as though they were equally culpable. In other cases, the asymmetry of guilt runs the wrong direction—the victim is painted, explicitly or implicitly, as a temptress who caused a man of God to stumble or as a liar bearing false witness. Often, this is worsened by status disparities between abuser and victim—the abuser is a popular, well-liked pastor, and the victim just doesn’t seem … as important of a person.
In recent years, as the scale and devastation of clergy sexual abuse have been made plain by the tireless advocacy of brave survivors, many churches have made strides in a positive direction, implementing more robust safeguards and permanently removing offenders from ministry.
Yet, the problems of individual abuse and institutional failure persist. My own denomination, the Anglican Church in North America, is embroiled in a scandal—a credible allegation against the archbishop, and evidence of an internal culture that is slow to investigate the conduct of bishops.
“A Passage That Differentiates”
In 2018, Jennifer Lyell, an executive at the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) came forward with a story of years-long abuse at the hands of her seminary professor and father figure. Within days, the professor admitted to an inappropriate relationship and resigned. When the professor landed another ministry job, she went public to protect other women.
Her disclosure sparked a reckoning within the SBC but ruined her life. Baptist Press reported her story as a morally inappropriate relationship. (The article has since been retracted.) She was painted online as a willing affair partner in an adulterous relationship. She left her job. Her health declined. In 2025, at the age of 47, she died after a series of massive strokes.
Lyell has said that some of the sexual contact was forcible, over her verbal and physical resistance; in other cases, she complied out of fear that he would be upset with her. (The professor denies forcible sexual contact.)
She has also said that the professor used spiritual manipulation to silence her, telling her to repent after a sexual encounter and warning her that, per 1 John 1:9, it was blasphemous to speak of anything you’d repented of. (How advantageous for him!)
In a deposition, the professor said, “I would defy anyone to find in the eyes of God in the Bible a passage that speaks—that differentiates between sexual sin and sexual abuse and then tells us this is why this is sexual abuse and not just sexual sin.”
The professor’s claim seems … convenient. Yet, it reflects an interpretive tradition that reads Paul’s sexual ethic teachings as flat prohibitions, distributing guilt symmetrically among all parties regardless of interpersonal dynamics (often with the exception of truly forcible sexual contact). The abuser and victim dissolve into the single category of sexual sinner, and the greater burden of social shame falls on the person with the least power to resist it.
But 1 Corinthians gives us a textual basis to differentiate between sexual abuse and other sexual sin. Paul’s teachings on sex reflect an ethic of mutuality and self-giving love (1 Corinthians 7:1–4), an ethic that assigns guilt in relation to culpability and consent, an ethic that honors women who have been treated as expendable.
That the Church has often failed to see this is not merely a failure of policy or institutional courage—although it is certainly both of those things. It is a failure of theological imagination—a failure to read the Bible with someone like Prima in mind. When we read 1 Corinthians with only the freeborn in view, we risk producing a framework that can be weaponized against the vulnerable. But when we read the letter with an exploitable, dishonored, coerced character in view, a different picture emerges.
The God of the Bible is not neutral about what happens to vulnerable bodies. He saw Hagar weeping in the desert. He heard the cries of the enslaved in Egypt. He will, Paul insists, raise abused bodies to life just as he raised the pierced and broken body of Jesus. He clothes the dishonored with greater honor. He names the vulnerable slave as his own freedwoman. And he judges those who use their power to violate those who were bought with a price.
If you’ve experienced—or are experiencing—clergy sexual abuse, I am so very sorry. God sees your suffering.
If you don’t have a safe person in your life to reach out to for help, you can find resources here.
Addendum: Addressing Objections
I want to preempt three objections that I’ve seen play out in online conversations.
Imaginary interlocutor: Are you suggesting that the person with less power could never sin sexually?
Of course not. The world is more complicated than that. I don’t think consensual sex is impossible whenever a power dynamic exists.
But we’re on safer ground if, when these cases come into the light, we view such power dynamics with intense suspicion. We have a vested interest in more strictly policing the sexual behavior of those with spiritual authority. We must protect the flock.
Jennifer Lyell said that she’d engaged in some level of sin in her situation, in some moments. When I hear her story, I have a hard time imagining her as culpable at any level, but maybe she was right. Or maybe she hadn’t yet worked through the layers of self-blame and was carrying a burden that she wasn’t meant to carry. That’s a question that strangers on the internet can’t answer—and we probably shouldn’t try. I leave those judgments between victims and God. Ideally, survivors can sort that out over time within a godly, trauma-informed community that loves them fiercely and that—and this is important—is not in any way still attached to the perpetrator. When survivors don’t have that community, the tragedy is compounded.
Also, when we hear of situations like Jennifer’s, we shouldn’t armchair-quarterback all the things she could’ve done. That’s not our job. Why heap shame on our suffering sister? She has been wronged, and she most assuredly is already living with many, many what-ifs.
Imaginary interlocutor: But there’s a difference between an enslaved woman in Paul’s day and an adult woman targeted by a pastor today. Psychological manipulation isn’t the same thing as the threat of violence.
Sure, but Paul doesn’t set out to define coercion. He speaks to a particular situation of coercion.
Remember the story of Lucretia from Part 1 of this series? Even in Paul’s day, sexual coercion wasn’t limited to threats of physical harm—Lucretia was coerced not with physical danger but with the threat of postmortem disgrace. That’s psychological coercion.
And today, we understand and recognize additional dynamics of coercive control and trauma—including that trauma responses can look very different from person to person—so we’re able to apply Paul’s underlying principle to an appropriately broad range of situations. We already do this with trafficking victims. We should bring that same instinct to clergy abuse situations.
Imaginary interlocutor: But what about grace? Shouldn’t we try to restore the perpetrators?
We should pray for their repentance and welcome all who are penitent back into the fellowship of the Church. (Unfortunately, serial offenders rarely demonstrate long-term repentance. I wish it were otherwise.)
This should almost never mean restoration to a leadership role. It should never mean restoration to the same kind of leadership role in which they perpetrated abuse or one that gives them access to or spiritual authority over people who are similar to their victim.
It may also require the penitent person to accept and live within certain boundaries (including staying away from the victim) for the sake of their soul and the safety of others.
If you’d like to participate in the work I’m doing, here are the links!
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As of early 2026, it may be making a comeback in Afghanistan, but has otherwise been banned in every country worldwide.
ICYMI
It Is Right to Give the Children's Bread to the Dogs
Remember that time Jesus called a Gentile woman a dog?
I’m in the ACNA, too. I didn’t know about that scandal. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I don’t follow closely the news from the high levels of the denomination. I’ll ask my pastor and a couple of folks I know who are more involved in denominational issues than myself about it.
I appreciate your care in writing this article. Especially what you wrote about the asymmetry of responsibility is well taken. I was raised in a sect that used all these tactics to suppress and push responsibility on families and victims rather than leaders. Scripture was used to guilt survivors for their activity (causing godly men to fail was a big one, yuck) or push them to forgive and reconcile. When victims went to the internet they were condemned for not “going to their brother” first. I think it is huge to point out that Paul’s sexual ethic, like Jesus, was protective of the vulnerable first.
I recently had a thought that in God’s kingdom the vulnerable are covered and power that exploits the vulnerable is exposed. When that is inverted, especially in church circles, it is operating like a worldly kingdom.