Protestant Church Faces New Sex-abuse Scandal As Victims Defy Threats, Censorship to Speak out

Democracy Now
June 27, 2014

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/8/protestant_church_faces_new_sex_abuse?utm_source=Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Copy+of+Blog+Announcement&utm_campaign=Blog+Announcement&utm_medium=email

Is the Protestant world is teetering on the edge of a sex-abuse scandal similar to the one that rocked the Catholic Church? We are joined by reporter Kathryn Joyce, whose cover story in The American Prospect profiles Boz Tchividjian, a law professor at Liberty University — a school founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell — and former prosecutor who worked on many sexual abuse cases. Tchividjian used his experience to found GRACE — Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment. GRACE made headlines in February when the famous evangelical school, Bob Jones University, hired it to interview faculty and students about their experiences with sexual assault, then fired it before the it had a chance to report the results — only to hire it back after a public outcry. Tchividjian is the grandson of the famous evangelist, Rev. Billy Graham.

TRANSCRIPT

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JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to a new expose that asks if the Protestant world is teetering on the edge of a sex-abuse scandal similar to the one that has rocked the Catholic Church. The person trying to address the problem may surprise you. As sex-abuse allegations multiply, it is Reverend Billy Graham’s grandson who is on a mission to persuade Protestant churches to come clean. Kathryn Joyce’s cover story in The American Prospect profiles Boz Tchividjian, a law professor at Liberty University, a school founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell, and former prosecutor who has worked on many sex-abuse cases. He used his experience to found an organization called GRACE: Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.

AMY GOODMAN: GRACE made headlines in February when the famous evangelical school, Bob Jones University, hired it to interview faculty and students about their experiences with sexual assault, then fired it before it had a chance to report the results, only to hire it back after a public outcry. Well, reporter Kathryn Joyce joins us now to discuss this major expose, "By Grace Alone: As Sex-Abuse Allegations Multiply, Billy Graham’s Grandson is on a Mission to Persuade Protestant Churches to Come Clean." Kathryn Joyce is also the author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

Kathryn, welcome to Democracy Now! Why don’t you begin where you began your piece?

KATHRYN JOYCE: Sure. Well, in 2012, there was some pretty remarkable news that came out of Bob Jones University, which for decades has been the flagship school of fundamentalism in this entire country. In a lot of ways, Bob Jones is more than a school. It’s the center of a nationwide network of Bob Jones-affiliated churches, feeder schools. They ran a curriculum business, a music publisher. It was really just a foundational institution in the most kind of extreme conservative Christianity that we have schools for in this country. But in 2012 they announced that they were hiring this organization, GRACE, to come in and do an assessment of how they had handled allegations of rape, of sexual assault, of sexual harassment that had happened on their campus. And it was really surprising, not just because Bob Jones has been such a remarkably insular institution, with people kind of being born at the hospital on Bob Jones campus and living their entire lives within this kind of total institution, but because they were reaching out to Billy Graham’s grandson, Boz Tchividjian, because Billy Graham and Bob Jones Sr., Bob Jones I, had just a historic falling out, that really led to the schism that we see today between evangelicalism and fundamentalism.