When Karen Hinkley decided to have her marriage annulled, she had no idea it would lead to a public shaming from one of the largest megachurches in America.
After learning her husband was entangled in a decade-long child-porn addiction, Hinkley decided to call it quits. But as a member of The Village Church (TVC), a congregation of more than 10,000 people outside of Dallas, Texas, she was then subjected to disciplinary action that included formally airing the details of her marriage to the entire church body.
While there are no reliable figures, some church followers think the number of congregations using “church discipline” is growing among conservative congregations. As more cases come to light, they raise questions about the biblical basis and legal implications of such practices. Are these church shepherds just doing their best to care for their flocks, or are they crossing a line by shaming and shunning their so-called sinners?
Jonathan Leeman, author of “Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus,” runs a Washington-based ministry called 9Marks that believes rigorous church discipline is one of the nine central components of a “biblical church.”
If a church member is found to be participating in significant sinful behavior, the congregation should enact discipline, he writes. This may include excommunication or public disclosure of the situation, but usually it only requires personally confronting the sinner.
“In one sense, 99 percent of the discipline that happens in the church never reaches the whole church,” Leeman said. “It should be two loving friends talking to each other.”
The purpose of church discipline, according to Leeman, is to protect Jesus’ name, show redemptive love for the sinner and warn the broader church against a greater judgment in the afterlife.
Between 3,000 and 4,000 congregations nationwide are affiliated with the 9Marks ministry, which hosts conferences around the globe and operates on a nearly $1 million annual budget. TVC is one of those churches. Many similar ministries, including pastor John MacArthur’s $19 million-a-year Grace to You ministry and the 500-church Acts 29 network, promote similar teachings and are thriving too.
But Leeman also readily admits that church discipline can become authoritarian and abusive.
Abuse of authority
Former Seattle-based pastor Mark Driscoll oversaw the public shunning of members who were deemed to be sinful, a practice that contributed to his later resignation, for example. And Chicago-area pastor James MacDonald was recently forced to apologize for disciplinary actions that included labeling three church leaders as “false messengers.”
Leeman said, “The abuse of authority, we believe, is a particularly heinous sin because it lies about God and His good authority. [But] you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because someone has been a part of an abusive situation in the past. … We should look to the Bible and ask how to practice it in a healthy and balanced manner.”
Those who promote rigorous church discipline say they have history on their side. And they are partially correct. But when Christians speak of church discipline today, they may not be referring to the practices of yore. Even the most stringent adherent would not condone behaviors reminiscent of American witch hunts or the Spanish Inquisition, for example.
Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and author of “The Making of Evangelicalism,” said, “The Puritan model is to put people in the town square or the village green in the stocks as a way of shaming the individual.”
But stocks — devices used to partially immobilize people for the scorn of passersby — have been moved to museums. Public behaviors now have legal implications.
After Hinkley’s church shamed her by publicly disclosing details of her personal life, some argued she should lawyer up and sue for slander or defamation. Others said she should have seen it coming.
When she and her husband, Jordan Root, joined TVC a few years earlier, they willingly signed a five-page membership contract. By so doing, the couple agreed to submit to the authority of the church leaders and receive any discipline administered if the couple sinned in the leaders’ eyes.
Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, Law School, said the law protects congregants from discipline by religious institutions when the case involves battery. But religious groups are free to expel people or even shun them by urging other members to disassociate from them.
In Hinkley’s case, the fiasco brought about an apology from TVC’s pastor, Matt Chandler. In a sermon on forgiveness May 31, Chandler went even further, asking his congregation for forgiveness for instances where leaders overstepped their authority.
Possible self-critique
TVC is but one example that suggests church discipline proponents may need to engage in more rigorous self-critique. Jesus taught that one could judge the goodness of a tree by the fruit it produces. There are too many instances where current church discipline practices lead to abuse and pain rather than love and peace.
Augustine taught that one could tell whether a Bible interpretation is sound by looking to see if it leads to greater love for God and others. If an interpretation is not leading those who hold it to love others more, then perhaps the interpretation itself needs adjusting.
Church leaders are to be shepherds of grace and love who lay down their lives for their flocks. When shepherds become shunners and shamers instead of servants, they are no longer walking the way of Jesus.
(RNS)
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