There is a time to be silent and a time to speak. (Ecclesiastes 3)

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It’s a hashtag and a campaign launched by Christian women leaders. It calls churches, particularly evangelical churches, to end the silence and stop all participation in violence against women.

It’s a twofold call, for churches and church leaders:

• to provide a safe haven in which women who have been abused can speak up;
• to speak up in behalf of the abused, and against whoever and whatever promotes violence toward women.

It’s an ambitious campaign, and a worthy one. And yet I have three wishes …

I with this hashtag were broader.

I wish the #SilenceIsNotSpiritual statement addressed coercive control and psychological violence against women as decisively as it does physical and sexual violence.

If victims of rape and physical battering have trouble coming forward because of not being heard or believed or helped, how much more the women who can’t produce a rape kit or any visible scars?

In his landmark book, Coercive Control, Evan Stark explains that this form of abuse is epidemic, that it destroys personhood, is insidious – and is gender-specific.

“Without an ‘audience’ for their victimization, the 8 to 10 million women experiencing coercive control in the United States remain in a twilight zone, disconnected and undocumented. This exclusion process reinforces the secrecy and isolation that are core tactics in coercive control.” (p. 110)

I wish this hashtag came with a warning.

As Rachael Denhollander said in her interview with Christianity Today:

Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counseled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim. There is an abhorrent lack of knowledge for the damage and devastation that sexual assault brings. It is with deep regret that I say the church is one of the worst places to go for help. That’s a hard thing to say, because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth. There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.

I’d prefer that the #SilenceIsNotSpiritual statement said in bold print,

If you’re a Christian who has been abused and you’re looking for a safe place to tell your story, proceed with extreme caution. This campaign is needed because the church has not yet repented. By and large, the visible church doesn’t believe it needs to repent. While there are exceptions, even a church that presents itself as ‘different’ and ‘safe’ may do exactly what the religious leaders did in Jeremiah’s day.

“They offer superficial treatments for my people’s mortal wound.” (Jer. 6:14 NLT)

I explore how this superficial – and thus very dangerous – “help” may look in the post, “Beware the illusion of refuge: Abuse in the church.”

In the meantime, if you’ve been mortally wounded by people you trusted, I encourage you not to be enslaved to secrecy. But also keep in mind, “There is a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Eccl. 3:1, 7). Spirit-to-spirit, let God teach you which is which.

I wish the hashtag were less dogmatic.

By itself, #SilenceIsNotSpiritual can be read as an indictment of abuse victims who do not immediately come forward – especially in the current context of the #metoo and #churchtoo movements. Thus, the hashtag can shame abused women, unwittingly accomplishing the opposite of what this campaign is sincerely meant to do.

While the three-page statement that explains the hashtag calls churches and church leaders to break the silence with regard to violence against women, it doesn’t clearly state as much until well into the second page. Nothing in the document clarifies what the hashtag means for abuse victims themselves. And my guess? Most who have seen the hashtag haven’t read the statement.

It’s true that:

• Silence is not spiritual for those who get a report of abuse, and who ignore it, and tell the one speaking up to be quiet.
• Silence is not spiritual for those who know of abuse and do nothing to protect the abused, to stop the violence or to call the abusers to account.
• Silence is not spiritual for those who cover up abuse, and so collude with it, in an attempt to protect themselves, their leaders and their institutions.

I’m an abuse survivor. I firmly believe in breaking the silence of secrecy that abusers impose. Yet I also believe that silence at a particular time, in a particular setting, in the presence of specific people isn’t always a wrong choice. For a survivor, in fact, judicious and purposeful silence is sometimes the most spiritual choice.

Remember Jesus. He himself experienced abuse. Sometimes, he spoke out; other times, he was purposefully silent.

Consider Rachael Denhollander, the woman who spoke up about her abuse at the hands of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Ultimately, Rachael and “an army” of Nassar’s victims brought about his conviction for his 30 years of sexual crimes.

But a decade-and-a-half passed between the time Nassar abused Rachael and the day she first spoke out publicly. During that time, she got a law degree. She gathered evidence that what had happened to her was, indeed, abuse. She dealt with the enormous mental and emotional fallout of sexual abuse at the hands of a trusted person. She gained strength in the face of fear, self-doubt and powerlessness.

When she did speak up, she called it “a shot in the dark.” She had no idea what the response would be. And yet, her “shot” wasn’t a wild one. Rather, it was well-aimed. Rachael emailed a newspaper that had just published an exposé of abuse and cover-up. What’s more, the exposé addressed similar abuse in the same setting as Denhollander had experienced.

So she spoke up to an audience that had given evidence it might be “safe.” She broke her silence in a setting where she just might have a hearing. When the way opened for her to elaborate, she took with her all the evidence she had so painstakingly collected.

Other women began to come forward to tell of their own abuse by Larry Nassar as they too realized they would be heard and believed – and that their abuser would be exposed and held accountable. They would have a part in bringing a predator to justice, and would be treated with compassion and honor in the process. Together, these women took a giant step toward healing.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t cost them. They had to relive trauma and betrayal. Further, many people did not support them or honor them for speaking up. I suspect every one of them would say the cost of coming forward has been huge. The cost of speaking truth when great shame and pain has been forced on you is always huge.

Of course, no abuse victim has to get a law degree, or wait a specific amount of time, or take the steps Rachael Denhollander took, before speaking out. What’s more, no one has to speak up as publicly as she.

Prudently choose. The right way for a woman to break the silence may look very different from the way Rachael did. The right time may be in the moment a woman realizes she has been abused – or it may be much later (if at all). Every victim needs to feel at liberty to prudently choose if and when and how much to speak up about the abuse she has suffered.

To suggest to victims that not speaking up is ‘unspiritual’ is to hand them false guilt and false responsibility, both of which they have been groomed to accept without question.

At worst, suggesting to a victim that Silence Is Not Spiritual is to needlessly endanger someone who sincerely wants to follow God.

If a woman is being abused and wants to follow God and believes that, to do so, she must speak out, she may go to the very ones most likely to silence her, or punish her, or collude in further abusing her.