by Hilary Jerome Scarsella, Director of Theological IntegrityUPDATED the evening of 10/21/19 The Mennonite put out an article today on details emerging around the AMBS search committee’s decision to appoint David Boshart the next president of the seminary. We’ll have more to say on the subject shortly, but today I’m keeping it quick and dirty. … Continue reading Boshart’s appointment: Takeaways from today’s article on emerging details
We want to know what happened in the course of AMBS’s work with FaithTrust Institute. We want to know why the press release says nothing about this work.
Yours is not the first community he has groomed to tolerate him; your church did not produce his first pack of ardent defenders.
Dear readers who care about Mennonite colleges, what happens next is largely up to you.
Hilary's successful process with AMBS must not be co-opted into an institutional narrative that erases the trauma of other survivors, that asserts a false peace while silent suffering continues, and that elevates Hilary as a chosen survivor on the backs of people who do not fall within Dave's narrow-minded understanding of the body of Christ.
Labeling a victim as "powerless" and a survivor as someone who has more “power from within” is a way to pit victims and survivors against each other so that the church can control the narrative about sexual violence.
Rosemarie and Stephanie discuss a devotional essay written by the wife of a sexual predator.
Rosemarie Miller talks to Stephanie Krehbiel about the prevalence child sexual abuse in Plain Mennonite, Amish, and other conservative Anabaptist communities.
If we truly wish to help someone who has experienced sexual violence, then we need to come into their circle, not expect them to come into ours.
The goal is simple: Empower victims to speak, and encourage the kind of transparency that makes abuse harder to hide or ignore.
