Episode Nine

Transcript

You get sucked into this vortex where you feel like, this denomination, this dioceses, is everything, right? Obviously, this is everything. And then you talk to someone, and they're like, What? What's Anglicanism, you know? And, and all of a sudden, you're like, oh, yeah, that's right. There's a whole world apart from this. And I don't need to be caught up in it. 

This is the Wall of Silence podcast, the ACNAtoo story, an account of church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church of North America. Things done and left undone and why we should care about it. This is Episode Nine, Helen’s Story, Part Two: The Aftermath.

An upfront disclaimer: this episode contains references to sexual abuse. And a second disclaimer: the views and accounts expressed in this podcast do not represent the Diocese of Quincy or the views of the Bishop of the Diocese of Quincy.

The first episode of Helen Keuning’s story ended with her resigning from the Bishop's Council of the dioceses of the Upper Midwest, and her reflections as to why she did so, she saw Bishop Stewart Ruch returning to his position as bishop despite Archbishop Beach and his Bishop's Council rejecting his request to do so, and she saw Cherin and Joanna as abuse survivors be demonized in their requests ignored by the leaders of her dioceses. This episode recounts what happened to Helen afterward--after she resigned--and what her reflections are two years on. In a recent conversation I had with her, as you ponder how Helen's ministry leaders and colleagues responded to her resignation, I offer this quote from Wade Mullen's book, Something's Not Right, a resource that will be cited a few times in this episode, from page 166.

If they have any hope of being a refuge for the vulnerable, a model for others to follow, and a source of healing, then they must first be willing to confront themselves before they confront others. They must search high and low for the abuses and abusers in their midst, encourage their people to report known or suspected crimes to the police and courageously remove the abusers from their positions of power. Only then will their service to others be communicated with clarity of sincere truth, only then will their words and actions be backed by the persuasiveness of truth and integrity.

We begin on March 14, 2022, when Helen joined what would be her last ACNA, Upper Midwest Diocese, bishops council meeting. The meeting consisted of an impromptu lecture from Canon theologian Stephen Gauthier about the uniqueness and excellence of the diocesan Canons as they concerned ecclesiastical discipline, despite the fact that they had undergone tremendous critique and criticism over the past year, and the UMD’s Acting Chancellor and members of the Bishop’s Council had encouraged a disciplinary court be composed. The Bishop’s Council meeting then welcomed two representatives from the Greenhouse Movement, a church planting organization that was at the time, one of the Upper Midwest dioceses, four deaneries. In fact, three of the bishops Council's 12 members were from Greenhouse but even these representatives had been largely frozen out of greenhouse decision-making and Governance The bishops council had long raised questions about greenhouses, leadership, structure, its relationship to the dioceses, and an investigation of its ministry and its head, Missioner General William Beasley, the results of which, still over a year later, had not been reported to the council. After a 45 minute presentation about the glowing highlights of the organization by two greenhouse representatives, the Bishop's Council began to ask questions that they had submitted but had not yet received answers to over six months prior, one long looming question that Helen raised was about Keith Hartsell, a priest who himself had reports of alleged abuse and mishandling of abuse against him, and one of The subjects of the ACNA investigations by two law firms, Husch Blackwell and Telios, the bishops council had just been told that Fr. Hartsell was now the de facto leader of Greenhouse in the meeting. Helen asked if the current investigations found Keith Hartsell had committed wrongdoing, who would be responsible for his discipline the UMD, or greenhouse at this question, one of the representatives became enraged, stating bitterly that the dioceses owed father Hartsell an apology, that he was not at fault, taken aback by his vehemence, Helen retracted her question, but that Bishop's council meeting was a turning point for her in.

I left the Monday, March 14, Bishop's Council meeting at 9:45pm, before it was entirely concluded for the evening, I got off my laptop and told my husband that I felt an instantaneous and full quote release from the Lord, end quote to leave the board. There was no point in staying on it any longer. He prayed with me, and we asked for confirmation of this release. The next day, I went back and forth in my spirit about leaving. I felt as though I had incomplete work to do. I had just started leading the child safety task force. We had just begun reviewing policies from other ACNA dioceses. I hated to abandon that project and leave those people hanging, but I also felt that God was asking me to step aside, and that my chapter on the bishop's council was now finished. 

That Tuesday evening, I went with some friends to hear Justin Giboney, founder of the (&) movement and host of the Church Politics podcast, he gave a talk on racism and the church sponsored by Transform Minnesota. His talk was about the oppression of black people historically and what they faced in the context of the power exhorted by the white majority. And he spoke about how much of this was done with white Christians looking away and pretending this never existed. He was looking at the messages that the Old Testament, prophets, Jeremiah and Amos brought from the Lord, messages about how God has a special tenderness toward the weak and the marginalized, and messages about how justice is not simply the absence of personal wrongdoing individual racism, but the active establishment and creation of systems and structures that promote protection for those that are the most weak, the most vulnerable and the most defenseless. 

He articulated in his speech about race exactly what I had been struggling to articulate since January of 2021, serving Bishop Stewart Ruch, alongside others, about the deeply rooted inequalities towards women and children and others who are most vulnerable to abuse in our dioceses, we may not be guilty of personal wrongdoing, but we have actively established and created systems and structures that provide no protection and no safety and no voice for those who are the most weak, the most vulnerable and the most defenseless within our UMD. I was so moved by his talk that I tried to type out his exact questions onto my smartphone. 

• Are we more concerned about Dying to Self or about Defending the Self? 

• Is our Posture one of Earnest Submission or Is it all about Pride in our Position, Place & Power? 

• Are we Defending the Dignity of Others or Are we Defending our Own Self-Interest? 

• Are we Engaged in Self-Examination or Are we Engineering our Self-Justification? 

• Are we Grieving the Violence Done or Are we Grabbing for Control? 

• Are we Repenting our Deafness to the Cries of the Vulnerable or Are we Rejecting Anyone or Any Perspective that Is Not in Line with Our Own? 

• Do we let the Oppressed Lead us or Do we Impose on them the Solutions that We Provide?

In the context of the past 18 months of experience in engaging with the UMD, the ACNA and the top leadership at both levels, I believed absolutely that we were all about defending self, all about pride in our position place and power, all about defending our own self interests, all about engineering our own self justification, all about grabbing for control, all about rejecting anyone or any perspective not in line with our own, and all about imposing on the oppressed, the solutions that we provide. Another statement of Justin Giboney’s that smacked me was, “When you have had power and you have had power for a long time, Justice is always inconvenient.”  

Yes, yes, that is it exactly! Canon William Beasley had had power for a long, long time in the Greenhouse Movement and then the rise of Anglicanism in the Midwest. Bishop Ruch had had power for a long, long time, not only as a bishop for a decade, but also as a powerful pastor over Rez for even longer. These issues of sexual abuse by a lay catechist and the call to transparency and reform were very, very inconvenient to both of these men. This talk was the confirmation that my husband and I had prayed for. I went home on Tuesday night and told him that I was resigning. The next night, I wrote my resignation letter between 1:30 and 4:30 in the morning, because my brain was ruminating on these issues and I could not sleep, I hoped that my six pages of writing might move the Bishop's Council to reflect and to act. 

I announced my resignation on Wednesday and Thursday with various phone calls, but was then asked by Acting Bishop John Miller and Chair Alex Cameron, to join them for a Zoom meeting on Friday morning. I told them that I would not change my mind about resigning, but they still wanted the opportunity to meet with me and hear my concerns. I spent most of my hour long conversation with these two gentlemen, telling them again about my complaints of being a female on the Bishop's Council and of the power disparities that are inherent in the church systems that we have currently set up as it is, males hold all the political and spiritual power. I was not arguing for women to be ordained, but I was arguing that women need to be heard and to be believed. I told them of my concerns that many women, Cherin and Joanna, and many others like them, were not being given avenues to hold men accountable, and even though I had been given a seat on the Bishop's Council, I had felt marginalized, shamed and shut down. Whenever I tried to speak out against the system or to raise concerns about any male leader, they listened very compassionately and attentively. They thanked me for my service, repeatedly said that I was very much respected, and told me that I would be missed. Then I sent off an email with my attached resignation letter to the entire council. 

Next, several pivotal events occurred. Five days after my resignation, I got an email from a woman that I had referred to the investigation law firm Husch Blackwell, telling me that the firm could not guarantee that her name would remain confidential. They would be reporting back to the ACNA the full name of each person who participated in the investigation. The same day, I received an email from Father Steve Williamson, correcting some facts that he originally told me, I responded, pointing out some of my key takeaways from this entire experience. Here are my words:

Regardless, though, I think the vehemence with which +Stewart argued his position with +Alan & Archbishop Foley (in his letter) shook my faith in our bishop’s humble and patient waiting. It seems to me that there is much talk about submission to authority . . . until one actually has to do it . . . and under difficult, demanding, demeaning circumstances.

Yet, this is the exact position that women in general — not only victims or survivors — find themselves in with the church. How does one submit to authority that one feels neither has her best interests at heart or is even aware of his own callousness?

There is a double-bind of us being told to “submit” in general to men (our husbands, our fathers, etc) and, specifically, in the church to priests, bishops, and archbishops. And, I wonder if raising questions or concerns or even expressing feelings of hurt/vulnerability are often taken to be forms of nonsubmission? Anyway, while I don’t accuse anyone specifically of sexism and I don’t support the ordination of women to priests, I do wonder about the systemic structures that keep women in their place in the ACNA/UMD and I do wonder how these underpinnings allow females/children to be vulnerable to various types of abuse in our churches?

Anyway. While I don't want to accuse anyone specifically of sexism and I don't support necessarily the ordination of women to priests, I do wonder about the systematic structures that keep women in their place in the ACNA and UMD and I do wonder how these underpinnings allow females and children to be vulnerable to various types of abuse in our churches.

Preachers expound warmly upon the art of women submitting to men. But in the ACNA, when the male priest is asked to submit to the Bishop's Council, or when the male Bishop is asked to submit to the archbishop, I have yet to see them follow their own advice.

The next day, an email would arrive from Dawn Jewell, the communications director at Rez and for the UMD, in which she explained how she came to a different conclusion about Bishop Stewart's motives for wanting to return to power. Now, I admire Dawn greatly, and she has been a huge joy to work with on the communications team in the Bishop’s Council meetings. However, it baffled me to realize she had complete access to Bishop Stewart's ultra-secret, totally locked down letter to Archbishop Foley from January 14, and she had access to what I thought was a confidential resignation letter from me to the bishop's Council. An ACNAtoo contact friend that I had was visiting her family in Minnesota, and I met with her briefly the following day and told her that I had stepped down from this Bishop's Council. I did not tell her specifically why, but I did say that I could not stay on the council with a clean conscience. 

Just four days later, Minnesota acting dean Paul Calvin called. He was calling to tell me, in a very sorry and regretful tone of voice that the bishop's council had met the previous night, and there had been a request made from Fr. Keith Hartsell, via Fr. Jens, that I write an apology for using Keith's name inappropriately in my questions regarding greenhouse and its disciplinary policies during the last March 14 Bishop’s Council meeting, Father Paul said that he thought that this request was somewhat ridiculous, but he had volunteered to contact me to see if I might possibly help the Bishop’s Council out by smoothing some ruffled feathers and appeasing the greenhouse folks, so I did. I typed out an apology to Fr. Keith Hartsell right there on my phone, and then went on with my day. 

The problem was that I kept getting more and more angry throughout the afternoon.  When I found myself yelling at my young daughter for dropping fishy crackers on our kitchen floor after school, I realized that I needed to take some time and do some self-reflection.

I went upstairs to my bedroom and began sobbing.  I realized that my anger was not actually about the apology to Fr. Keith Hartsell.  I grew up as a Chinese American immigrant and I also grew up as a female Christian in the Evangelical world.  I can apologize to men all day long.  I have both the heredity and the training for it.

My anger was at the Bishop's Council. I was hurt, so very hurt. I felt betrayed after all the statements that I had repeatedly made about how difficult it was to be a woman in this role, after my passionate resignation letter, after my hour-long teary explanation to acting Bishop John Miller and Chair Alex Cameron, after all my five years on the Bishop's Council and the months and months of intense, unrelenting service, this was the proverbial slap in the face. 

It was the Bishop’s Council telling me that they would rather sacrifice me and my self-respect than to upset father Keith Hartsell or any other person from Greenhouse. 10 days after my resignation, they wanted me to apologize for asking questions of a male priest, questions that I thought were, in fact, very appropriate questions that involved a priest who had been named online and who I had received email testimonies from women in Greenhouse that I didn't even know personally, questions that I had asked to protect the diocese that I loved in my role as one of the members of the UMD ecclesiastical authority, none of this seemed strange to the bishop's Council. Soothing the male ego and silencing the female who asked too many questions seemed to be usual and customary for them. This confirmed the suspicion that had been growing ever stronger within me during the past 18 months, the Bishop’s Council and every other set of institutions within our UMD will side with the male and the priest against any female. I realized afresh that this is exactly what happened to Cherin and Joanna if I was not protected or listened to even in raising a single question by these folks whom I had served alongside for all these months, and by whom I had been told that I was greatly respected and valued, then there was no protection for any other woman in our UMD.

Two days later, I had a late evening, Zoom meeting with Gina Roes, Christen Price, and Autumn Vandehei, the three women who had resigned from the Provincial Response Team (PRT) back in February, and we compared notes about our experiences at the UMD and the ACNA levels. We noticed eerily similar patterns. They urged me to consider going public, as they had, in order to shed light on all that had transpired in the dark. 

One of my lessons learned from these past 18 months is that Jesus spoke the truth when he said “for it is the least among you who is the greatest” Luke 9:46-48. The leaders at the bottom, the deacons, have been the most faithful of servants and the most desirous of both mercy and justice. Many priests have done this as well. But the higher up you go in the chain of command, and the more powerful the person, the less concerned there is for the damage done to others, and the more concerned there Is with self-protection, institutional protection, and proper optics. 

On page 29 of Something's Not Right, Wade Mullen has this to share about the types of people church leaders often choose to place around and under them to serve in their churches, to quote: 

The choices for leadership positions within a tribal culture thus become further calcified in a crisis, family members and close friends are chose because they will be able to keep secrets and have their secrets kept the abusive organization will slowly shift more and more power to the top as a way to protect those most important to the tribe, And as the tribe becomes more protective of insiders, they become less trusting of outsiders, resulting in an even higher potential for abuse of authority.

It reminds me of the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings stories: our souls are not meant to carry the weight of power, prestige, and praise.

The following week, Helen and her husband met with the rector of the church that had been their home for 13 years. Fr Christian Ruch, who happens to be Bishop Stewart Ruch’s brother, confronted Helen about her resignation, suggesting that she should have approached Bishop Stewart directly about her concerns. Helen responded that she no longer trusted Bishop Stewart and did not feel safe going to him one one-on-one. She also explained that she and her husband had made the heartbreaking decision to leave and resign their membership from the church. A few days later, Helen met with members of the Minnesota deanery-- a goodbye meeting of sorts. Helen shared how she felt about the request that she got from the bishop's council to apologize to Fr Keith Hartsell, acting dean Paul Calvin, apologized for acting on that request, and Helen forgave him.

The other Minnesota lay representative then informed me that while the Minnesota deanery had asked that the concerns raised in the letters of my resignation, my own and that of another woman member who was also resigning simultaneously be discussed at the next Bishop's Council's meeting. Nobody on the council seemed to really want to focus at all on the substance of the complaints in those letters. Instead, their focus was on the steps to bring on two new members. 

Finally came a letter from Bishop Stewart Ruch. In it, he wrote: 

I am sorry that you did not come to me directly with this concern. I would certainly have understood if you had asked to meet with a third party like Bishop John Miller. Furthermore, I would have sought to hear your concerns as you articulated them in your letter. I can only assume that you have listened carefully to the perspectives of some in ACNAtoo and also of the leadership in ACNA. Would it not have been a clearer, more just, and more biblical process to have also heard Katherine’s and my perspective? Certainly, you may have heard our biblical, canonical, and logical reasoning and ultimately disagreed. Disagreements among Christian leaders are to be expected, especially in times of crisis such as now. Yet, we would have heard one another; we would have had the opportunity to be Christian family to one another.

Please know I would still welcome that opportunity to talk these matters through with a third party. In my perception, that would be doing our best to follow Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18. If I understand your letter accurately, we are now in a kind of unreconciled relationship as a brother and sister in Christ. I appreciate that you may need time and space before you want to engage in a Matthew 18 process, but please know that I am ready to do so whenever you may be ready.

Yours in Christ, 

Bishop Stewart

I asked my husband to write back on my behalf, and he wrote:

I agree that broken trust between fellow Christians is a sad thing, and one to be mended when possible.

However, I do not think that this falls neatly into the teaching Jesus gave us in Matthew 18.  That passage opens with, "if your brother or sister sins...."  In reviewing Helen's resignation letter, and in discussions with her, I do not believe that in it she has accused you of any sin, nor does she hold any against you in her heart.  Nor do we think she has sinned against you in writing to the council her reasons for resigning, even though some of those reasons touched on you and were undoubtedly painful to read.

I do not believe, and Helen agrees with me, that our obedience to Christ calls for a "Matthew 18 process" meeting in this matter. And as much as she admires and has benefited from the leadership you have shown in our diocese and on the council, and as much as that time has meant to her, she is not in a place where she can work on your relationship right now.

Here is Helen's own response to Bishop Stewart's letter to her, which she recorded in a conversation with me recently:

The ultimate answer that I came to, or that I made my peace with, and I said in my post, is, he is not my judge. You know, I I stand before someone I definitely do, and I don't think I did everything right, and I don't think I know everything, and there are many things that are hidden still that I don't know, and there are many things that I may have seen incorrectly in my limited vision, but I try to listen to the Lord as much as I could, and he's the only One that I feel like has the right to judge my actions, because he knows me through and through. That's the easy answer. 

In some ways the hard answer is, honestly I don't know, because yes, you do trust your bishop, your priest, at least I did in on a very deep level to be like these godly men, not perfect, but like very, very filled with the Spirit and very much spiritual fathers and mothers, neither of which I had. And so I look very strongly to the church for that. And it is crushing in a way, to be like, wait, what you're telling me is not what I'm hearing from the Lord, and what you're telling me is full of shame and judgment and anger. Like I was really, honestly, I was scared at some points to meet him or to I just, I was like, I don't know who this person is anymore, so I don't know how I'm supposed to respond. I don't think I felt shamed about being a bad Christian in that way, because it never struck me as being an honest, true interpretation of what that reconciliation passage means. And it also struck me as hollow, because I thought, yeah, you know, if I had something against you personally, or you had something against me, like you lied to me about me, or you said something awful about me, maybe we could have a conversation about this, but I'm calling you out in public, or I'm calling our leadership out in public because of things they failed to do in public, and because of things they said in public about Joanna or Sharon that should not have been said or that they knew wasn't true.

And so to me, this was not a one-on-one sort of reconciliation situation. This was a public I think I said this in my post too, like it's a public sin and there needs to be public reckoning for what was done or what was not done, and that's all I'm asking for, and that's all the survivors have asked for, is actual truth and actual transparency. I didn't feel like I needed to do the Matthew 18, and that's why I asked my husband to respond for me, because what I found out in this church setting, it's like the husband is much more, I don't know, respected. Oh well, he's the spiritual head, so he can answer for me, which was a good thing. It was, it was a very loving thing for Tim to do for me, but we both had talked about it and had said, “No, I don't think we need to meet with them at all.” 

And it's interesting, it wasn't just the bishop's letter. I don't think I got into this in my post, but we had a meeting with Christian and Molly Ruch, who I'm even much closer to, or was at the time, like we had done homeschooling together. We're good friends. They're, they're my pastor and his wife, whom I respected tremendously. And we had this, you know, four-person meeting: me and Tim and Molly and Christian. And I could tell this was even before my coming public. It was just my resignation from the bishop's Council. I could tell they were upset. I could tell we were called in, let's just say, and it, and I it felt like, oh, the principal is calling me in because I'm in trouble. That was the feeling, right. And I think Molly said to me at one point, “Helen, I don't understand, you are a mature Christian, like, why wouldn't you go and talk to Stewart about this directly, and it was, it was the same kind of thing.” 

And I thought, I don't, I don't know how to--it's like talking to people who've drunk the Kool-Aid or something. I'm like, I don't know how to explain this to you, but like, I don't-- 1)  I don't trust Stewart, and maybe I'm wrong, but I'm like everything I've learned so far, I don't internally, my stomach flips if I if I think I have to be alone in a room with him. 2)I don't feel like I've sinned against him, or necessarily that he sinned against me, you know, so I'm not sure what we would have to discuss. It's me bringing forward the story of what I see happening because I'm on the Bishop's Council, which he hadn't been on since he was asked to step down for a bit. Supposedly he wasn't on, but he seemed to know everything that was happening. 

It was like, this is my experience in the past year that he hasn't been on the bishop's council with the other members on it. It's my experience with the greenhouse people. It's my experience talking to the victims and survivors. So it really has nothing directly to do with him, and I don't think me meeting with him will do any good for the church or for me. All it will do is intimidate me into not speaking is how I felt. It was very hard to answer that question, and I will say we left on a good note, and I gave her a hug, Tim and I walked out of that meeting, and it went as well as it could. I would never want to say anything bad about either of them, but I did feel like man, they knew ahead of time their position and nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing that Tim and I were going to say or explain or share or nothing was going to change that, right?

That's kind of how I felt ever since I made any indication that I wasn't 100% aligned with the UMD or with Stewart. It felt like, all of a sudden, everything we did said, every move we made was suspect, and not just by the leaders of the church, per se. I mean, I think that was the hardest part is like, you know, people that we were super close to all of a sudden, would not meet our eyes when I passed them at church, would not say hello. You know, would never come out and say it, maybe because this is Minnesota and everybody's fairly passive-aggressive here, but you could just tell, like even even my youngest kid could tell. Like we go past someone, and she's like, just would ask me a question about it. And I'm like, “Yep, we're not the most popular people right now.” You know that's just how I would explain it to her. And that's what really hurt, I think, because, and this is what I took to the Lord. I'm like, home. What is home like? Welcome home. And Christians are always like, Oh, we're one big, happy family, you know. Or like, we welcome to the family. And we're, you know, so much more than an organization. We're like, actually, you know, brothers and sisters and all that.

And I thought to me, a home is a place where they can't turn you away in some sense, not that there aren't standards, not that there aren't accountability, but like a home is where they always have to accept you right to some degree, like I would never, ever reject my children, even If I'm super angry at them, even if I'm super disappointed, they would always have a home to come back to if they needed and I felt like it was such a joke in the church, I thought, oh, so I have a home, so long as I make other Christians happy, so long as I toe the party line, so long as I'm the model minority Asian female lay leader, you know, so long as I fit that profile, I am loved and welcomed and accepted, and the moment I dig my foot in or say anything that defies the leadership or questions even questions the leadership, then no more. That was the part that made me really wonder, what is it that the church offers that's different than the regular organization, religious institution. Is there a really, a family aspect to it, or is that just something we say to fool ourselves, because I've experienced it individually in the church. There were there, I mean, in different people, I would say, but the church as a whole, definitely a lot of coldness and rejection after I voiced my concerns

In a recorded lecture from Wade Mullen, he mentions the role silence plays in the denying or covering up of abuse, and Helen continues her story by laying out why she could not stay silent, but had to, instead, bring everything that happened out to the light.

That outright denial might take the form of silence. Silence is a type of deception when it gives others the appearance that there is nothing to be said or made known, and it is sometimes an active attempt, a strategic PR response to deny that certain truths exist, and sometimes the pursuit of truth ends right there, sadly, because there's nothing left to do.

I stepped forward as a whistleblower to tell the pieces of this story that I personally knew from my time serving in UMD leadership, after trying so hard to work within the UMD system and within the Bishop's Council, I felt absolutely powerless to make any difference without coming forward publicly.

I had nothing to gain personally from going public after everything that I had witnessed these past couple years. I simply wanted to submit my Bishop's Council resignation letter, walk away and leave this entire mess behind me. But I believe the Lord stopped me from doing so. I believe he asked me to give my public testimony, to be a witness to all that I have seen and heard and experienced. I don't need to be believed, but I do need to speak.

Number one: I need to speak out on behalf of Joanna and Cherin and the other survivors — both those who have come forward and those who have yet to come forward.  I believe in a God who SEES Joanna and Cherin and all that they have suffered — not only at the hands of Mark Rivera, but also at the hands of our churches and of our religious leaders.  I believe in a God who has a soft spot in his heart for the foreigner, for the slave, for the single mom, for the immigrant child, and for all who are oppressed and powerless.  I believe in a Jesus who tells the adulterous woman that he does not condemn her, but releases her to go and sin no more.  I believe in a Holy Spirit before whom “all hearts are open, all desires known, and from [whom] no secrets are hid.”

Number two: I need to speak out on behalf of my own two daughters. My elder daughter is now 20 years old, and needs to know that the Lord has granted her a voice, an inner knowing and a choice. This daughter kept abreast of these issues and offered me keen insight into them. My younger daughter, now 11, needs to know that she will be believed by any church or denomination that we choose to become members of in the future. Since meeting Cherin over Zoom, this little one has been a visible, embodied, and daily reminder to me of the devastation that occurs when an innocent child is not only violated by a molester, but then is also disbelieved, ostracized, censored, and criticized by the very churches that her family turned to for consolation.

Number three: I need to speak out on behalf of Church of the Cross and the other Minnesota daughter churches you have all been the most beautiful church, home and family that we could have ever desired. Leaving you is a death that I will grieve for a very long time.

We did not leave because of anything that was inherently wrong with the Minnesota deanery or within our own set of churches, but we left in order to warn you of the failings of our UMD and to encourage you to build stronger, more humble foundations so that you and your people can flourish. One of the abuse counselors that I spoke to last summer said to me something along the lines of this, “churches invite sheep in. We are therefore responsible for their safety. Where the sheep are is where the wolves automatically go. How can we say we are protecting the sheep or the lambs if we don't truly believe that our church will be one in which a wolf will ever attend, even a wolf dressed very cleverly in sheep's clothing.”

May those of you who care and who listen and who believe continue to do the work of pulling back the curtain, of revealing the things hidden, and of testing what you hear and see in the weeks, months and years to come. It is my hope and prayer that perhaps someday my daughters might bring their daughters back to an ACNA church and find it to be a safe place for them to worship.

Helen's story parallels a quote from Wade Mullen's book where he says “abuse is not someone else's personal and private matter that we can ignore out of a concern for minding our own business, nor is it a matter to be only attended to by a select few in leadership positions. Abuse is a community concern.”

Therefore, the question must be asked of each of us, in what ways am I perpetuating an abusive culture through my silence or tacit endorsement of those who are in the wrong, it is not a question of simple beliefs or values, but a question of practice. Practically speaking, what kind of people should we be once a secret is out? Do we ignore what is behind the curtain? Because we want the show to go on, how long do we continue to provide abusers with the very things they use deception to gain? Do we keep handing them our money? Keep sitting at their feet, keep following their lead? Is all the grief over the abuse simply to end in strong statements of condemnation, conferences and prayers. Is there nothing that can be done as well as said?

What can we expect beyond words that can assure us of the sincerity of the community's newfound resolve to end abuse? One action might surpass them all, and it is this to open all the windows of the darkened house until every nook and cranny is covered in light so that all the damage can be seen. It is to surrender that light, even if it means there will be no possibility of retaining or regaining legitimacy. It is to put every possible contributing factor on the table for inspection, even the system itself, and to be willing to recognize that perhaps it cannot be fixed and that something new must be created in its place.

Those of us who come to learn of the plight of the victim must consider our own responsibility in that moment when we hear the cry of the victim and the deceptive pleas of the abuser. Are we honest and sincere about who we choose to gather around and why our response reveals whose voice we honor more? 

Consider these words of Judith Herman: “It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.” Again, that quote can be found in Wade Mullen's book, Something's Not Right.

Helen was faced over and over again with the plight of doing nothing, of staying silent, simply going along with the process of the more prominent voices in the dioceses of the Upper Midwest bishops committee and beyond. But she kept persevering, seeking new approaches to helping Cherin and Joanna's voices be heard, even to the point of being misunderstood on both sides. She kept trying until she realized she couldn't work within that system anymore to affect lasting good, not without it taxing and damaging her emotional health further than it already had. In a recent conversation I had with Helen, I was able to ask her about walking away from her role in Bishop Ruch’s diocese, and what she has learned since that time.

So it's been just over two years because it was Easter of 2022 the last thing we did at church, my husband and I was performing the Easter Vigil, which is kind of ironic. And we were Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden. So I also find that very, I don't know, just strangely fitting. I think for me, there was, like at least a year of grief, just deep, deep grief, because this had been a church family and a denomination and a dioces that I truly loved and felt at home in and felt like we were going to be there forever, you know, or as long as we lived. And so it took me a long time to wrestle through that with the Lord, and I still don't have all the answers. 

For example, the very first Sunday we went there, I felt like the Holy Spirit said to me during the service, like, Welcome home, right? And then I turned and asked my husband, How did you how did you feel? And he said, The only word that comes to mind is, this is our home. And so he didn't even hear me say it, and it was like reflected in him as well. And that was the very first Sunday we went there. And that was after we left an evangelical church that had many, many problems, and we had been there for 10 years. So we were changing to Church of the cross with two young kids. And I, I use this metaphor. It felt like with the E Free Church. It's the one that Tim grew up in, and we had been both gone to Trinity College, and I'd been to Trinity seminary. It felt like with that church, kind of like the analogy that you've been dating someone for a long, long topic, 10 years, and you keep thinking like they're, they're keeping issues and really significant issues, but you keep thinking, No, I really will make this work. You know, this can work. You know, it's, it's not them, it's me, you know, like just trying to grow and roll with it, and then, and then finally, you're like, nope.

This is too bad I can't do this anymore, like we're just going to break up. And we did, and then it felt like the very next month, kind of meeting the person of your dreams and being like, wow, I never knew you existed. And you know, like, this is awesome. So I felt that way when I came to the Anglican Church. And this time, it kind of felt like, you know, we had like a 1415, year marriage, almost, with this church, and you felt like we're going to be in this till the day we die. And like, I know these people, and I love these people, and they're my family. And then to me that the whole experience with the ACNAtoo debacle and finding out how much suppression of truth there was and how much stonewalling of the survivors there was. It was such a eye opening feeling of betrayal. I mean, I would liken it to coming home to this, you know, whatever, perfect marriage, and finding your husband in bed with another woman or something. It was, it was like that sort of I would never, ever have thought this was possible. And so I say that not because I've experienced that in my actual marriage, but I feel like so much grief and so much feeling of betrayal the first year and so much feeling of I don't think I can ever trust church again. I don't think I can ever trust a priest again. Like to be a spiritual father or leader, because it was so it was, it was just seismic in its impact on me. That's where I was for a while, but it was interesting. 

I will say like I'm deconstructing, sort of the theology of church and what church means, and what being in the body of Christ means to me as a Christian. But I haven't deconstructed my faith in God, or my belief in his love or or any of the central doctrines I think, to Christianity. And I I would say, I know the church is important, just like, just like someone who's been cheated on and divorced or whatever, would say, you know, I believe in the institution of marriage, like, in my head, I believe in it, but like, because I've been betrayed or whatever, that I can't personally enter into marriage again, that's kind of how I feel with the church. Like, I'm glad people have great experiences of the church. I'm glad that there are still people in various churches, you know, evangelical, Anglican, Presbyterian, whatever. And I, and I hope those are good for them, but I don't know that I personally can enter in the way that I did. So on the one hand, that's kind of feel that kind of feels dark and maybe bitter and maybe much more skeptical than I've ever been before. On the other hand, the thing that struck me also the first year, and maybe you felt this too, is God's incredible tenderness and closeness and incredible love like I felt, in some ways closer to the Lord than I have in years, even though I hadn't been in church, you know, for a long time, and actually had tensions with the church and with its leaders. 

And that led me to reflect a bit on my sort of faith journey, I guess, you know, I came in to the church kind of young. I was really hungry. My parents were atheist, agnostic, so I loved going to church. I begged them to go to church. I bummed rides off friends so I could go to church. I mean, it was, it's kind of exactly opposite of my own kids right now, but I found something at church that, you know, I didn't find in my home. I feel like that was God's grace to me from a very young age. I remember every night turning in my bed, wherever it was, turning to face the wall and just talk to God about my day and about how I was feeling and and just feeling his presence there, like between me and the wall right, like there was someone there. I look back and I was like, I was driven to read the Bible, and I was driven to go to church, and I really, I just had such a craving for him and for spiritual things, and that wasn't necessarily because of me. And I felt that sort of come back, in a way, because what I realized was grown up in this non-Christian home, gone to an Evangelical Free College, which was great. I learned about the Old Testament, New Testament, Bible Survey, and, you know, took a class in the Psalms, and then went on to seminary and did all of that. 

And there was so much good food there, and yet, at the same time, there were all these like, Okay, if you want to be a good Christian, you know, you gotta learn how to pray in a concert of prayer or with other people out loud, if you want to be a good Christian, you have to exegete the Bible correctly. If you want to be a good Christian, you have to, like, join a missions team. And I mean, there were all these things that I was like, oh, okay, so this is what it means to be a Christian, right? So you add those, like, layer by layer. And then we got married and moved to Minnesota and started our family. And then I feel like, especially for female Christians, and maybe it's in the Midwest, maybe it's everywhere, there are, again, layers and layers of expectations, right? If you want to be a good Christian wife, this is what you must do, and if you want to be a good Christian mother, this is what you must do. And I realized that over decades, I feel like these rules and these sort of expectations kept piling on, and I kept being like, yeah, yeah, I want to be a good Christian, yeah. Tell me how you know I want to do these things, and I really want to love the Lord. And if this is the way, then I don't know any better. I have no family members who are believers. I'm just listening to the people that I know at church or in my husband's family or whatever. 

And so that year away from church, away from all of that input, I mean, any Christian input whatsoever, I just kind of stepped back. I was just like, I can't even tell what's true and what's not in the Christian world anymore, and it's all sounding very fake to me. So I'm going to take a step back, and what I found was I could talk to God again in that same he was still there. I could still turn to him at night, and he was so close, and he was so near, and it was like he was saying to me, this is it, Helen, this is all I've ever wanted, is this, is this relationship with you, you didn't need to do all the other stuff. You know, not that it wasn't good or didn't help mature or grow my understanding or whatever. But it was, it was coming back to that basic, basic relationship and grace and mercy. And somehow in that, I found so much freedom. I just feel like a lot of what every church, every small group, every Bible study, kind of did not purposefully, but I felt like had put weights on and had put restrictions on, and was like, Well, God has to be like this, and you can't see him like that, and you gotta do this, and you can't be quite this other way, because that's not the way that you know you're supposed to be as a believer. And I didn't get any answers from the Lord honestly, but what I received from him was a lot of love, a lot of freedom, a lot of just gentleness and tenderness and like he could hold me while I cried, he could hold me while I railed whatever It was I needed. It's ironic, but in a sense, like I felt closer to the Lord than I had ever since I was a child, and yet I was farther away from the actual church, I guess, than I had been, because I had thrown myself into it pretty much teenage years on.

A church community as an unfaithful husband. Over the course of this podcast and even this episode, there will be many parallels and metaphors used to help us describe and come to terms with how it feels when abuse, deception, incompetence or betrayal happens to us in a church setting. I liked Helen's comparison to an adulterous husband, but I wondered if instead, her situation was more like coming home one day and discovering that all this time your husband was a mafia boss working within organized crime, the marriage itself was faithful, but for decades, this man had been hiding a secret business from you that you found immoral, dangerous and criminal, and in this sense, the idea of home would be destroyed for you. Here is Helen's response to my suggestion.

Yeah, there is where you believe that the marriage stands for something honest and pure and noble, and where you realize, oh, this has been going on all along, and I didn't even know it. Church is a strange animal for me right now, because in some sense I miss it, and I wish I could belong to it. But I also feel like every time we step into a church, we tried for six months early on, like we had jumped from the E Free Church to the Anglican Church. And I thought, okay, we're just gonna tough it out and visit all these churches and figure out one. I wasn't thinking that we'd be super we wouldn't jump in and be leaders in, but I was thinking that at least how old was Liv back then, 9-10, that she would go to Sunday school and have a little community of her own, because I thought that was important for her. But every time we went, I could barely make it through a service without sobbing uncontrollably and having to leave and feeling foolish, and I thought after a while, I was like, I do not want this to be my daughter's view of church, the place where mom is completely traumatized. Each and every week. I was like, I don't think that's going to be a good sort of example for her, or memory for her of what it means to be spiritual or what it means to seek God. And so we just talked about it, and we just said, let's, let's take a break for a while. 

And that was actually a really good thing, because it kind of felt like the year before I had injured my ankle, sprained it for the first time in my life. You know, you keep thinking, Oh, I should be able to to walk, or I should be able to hike or run or whatever, pretty quickly, this isn't that bad of a deal, but one of the physical therapists had said to me, no, you need to not step on it, because every time you're using it, it's just causing repeated harm and you're not actually healing from it. And that actually spoke to me of the church experience too. I thought, Okay, I need to give myself a break from trying to do church, because church feels so painful and so harmful to me, whether it is or not, it's how it feels in my body and in my heart and in my soul. And I just need to walk away for a bit until I'm until I'm a bit better. And I don't think I'm completely there yet, but we spent a month out in the New York, New Jersey area, and there's a childhood friend of mine who has an Asian American church out there, more evangelical type meets in a YMCA. And I went there, and it was encouraging, because I, as I told him, it was the first time I ever wanted to be part of a church and we can't be, obviously, because of distance, but it made me hopeful, like, oh, like, this is the first time since I've left cross that I've really, at My core, even wanted to be part of a congregation, and I think part of it is, is because I trust him as someone that I grew up with and know he and his wife and his family, but also it was a very young church. It felt very transparent and very open and very dialog-filled. I'm not painting it to be like the perfect place, but it just gave me hope that maybe there's something out there that God would plant us in in the future.

The story of the UMD continues. But where do we leave Helen? Is there a resolution for her? If you want to hear more of her story, how this experience has affected her relationship with God, and how she's found a way to minister God's love to people outside of the church walls, a bonus episode for Patreon backers will be released after this episode, but as a way of wrapping up Helen's role in how Bishop Ruch and the dioceses of the Upper Midwest handled Mark Rivera's abuse case and the abuse survivors bringing it to light, here she describes her present way of living in the world as a follower of Jesus after all, she has experienced over these past years.

I am still just learning. I think that that's one of my biggest lessons, was, is just like starting over again and asking the Lord, is this really from you? Is this person, someone I can trust and depend on? Is this doctrine actually what you said? I'm much more dependent on the Lord, and I think I'm much more cognizant of my own limitations and frailties, and I think that is also such a gift.

I don't, I just, I just realized he doesn't need me for that much. You know, he wants to give to me and he wants to love me, but he doesn't. It's not like he doesn't have a million ways to get his kingdom built. And so I can just, I can just rest. I hope it's made me a better listener. I think, you know, I used to think I knew a lot, and then I went through this experience and was like, Oh, I really don't know much at all, and I just need to shut up and listen. 

I'm hoping that makes me into a better friend in the coming decades, and just a better person to be around, instead of always feeling like I'm the Christian with the answers and I must meet everybody's needs and I must have all my Bible verses in a row. I mean, not that I was ever too much like that. But that's kind of, again, the feeling you get in certain church circles that you have a job and you better be good at it. And I don't. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like God's like you're my child and you are loved. And if you live in that and out of that, that's all. That's all it takes.

To conclude, Helen offers me her own personal insights as someone who has spoken up about church abuse and ultimately decided she had fulfilled her role. Myself, as I produce this podcast, I am constantly asking myself, if I can even keep going producing the episodes themselves is emotionally taxing and incredibly time-consuming. Along with that, I have faced opposition from my own Bishop and what I assume are other leaders, perhaps other bishops in my province. How much of the story should I tell? When have I done enough well speaking out about abuse and abuse mishandling in my own denomination affect any lasting good? Here's what Helen had to tell me about my searching questions.

I don't know exactly Chris, I wanted to quit many times, many more times than I actually did quit at the end, and and yet I felt pulled to continue and continue and continue until I felt the release. And I'm very, very grateful that I felt the release. I think that we all play different roles. So my I felt like my portion was done once I published everything, and once I left, I felt like my role was done. I cannot speak to anyone else's, including yours, but I will say two things. One, it's it's the spirit in which you do it, like if you take it on as this is your burden to tell the story, right? And to make a difference and to make an impact, and you are carrying all of that, I think that is too heavy a weight to carry. I think there are times where you could be like, This is what I can offer. This is what I feel like you are asking me to offer Lord and I can work hard at this, but whether it results in anything or not, that is up to you.

That attitude helped me a lot when I wrote those pieces, I know the ACNAtoo people were pretty excited, and it's not that it didn't get some traction, but I wasn't really convinced that it was going to make any difference whatsoever. I mean, in terms of, you know, the larger behemoth, but I was like, That's not my problem. My problem is to share my story, right? And that's, that's hard enough, and that's enough for me to do how it impacts people, what repercussions it has down the road that is for the Lord to decide. There definitely is work that we join God in doing, and it is taxing and wearing, and I'm not dissuading anyone from doing it. But I think, one, are you the are you the right person for this work? Two, is this what God is actually asking you to do right now? And three, can you leave the results to him? Can you do it and not and not weigh it down with your expectations? That has been key for me, because I could write it and release it and it, I didn't know, you know, it could get 1000 hates, it could get 1000 likes and it, it, it wouldn't really impact me. Is how I felt when I released it. It's kind of the picture comes to mind. 

I think I had, I had sent this to some of the ACNAtoo people that it's kind of like cutting granite from a mountain or from a rock. I mean, every sort of slice hammer that you pound down on doesn't make the entire slab fall off, right? It's the last one that does it, but there might be a thousand or a million poundings before that last one, and they all contributed to that. And so that's how I feel. Maybe mine is just one pounding, and maybe I won't see it in my lifetime or in these decades. But yes, I do think that this is something that God's Spirit is moving in the church to come to terms with its own abuse of power, its own subjugation and degradation of females and children. I think it's something that if the church in America wants freedom and wants to grow, it has to come to terms with it, because it's like with slavery or anything else. It takes a long time to change the culture, but something has to be set. Something has to be done. It can't just be let to go on like it is. You're one. You're one of the many poundings it's taking. And maybe someday that slab will fall off, and we'll see it happen. 

So what do you think? How was Helen treated in this process, as someone who had served her church community faithfully for years, and who her colleagues and leaders seemed to praise at every turn. Did she receive the respect she deserved? And if she was disrespected, why do you think that is was it because she became a continual bothersome, squeaky wheel who simply wouldn't go along with the consensus of the group? She had to keep speaking up, raising up the viewpoints of the survivors. Had she become too much of a troublemaker, or was it that despite the seeming mutual respect between members of the Bishop's Council, there was a definite hierarchy between ordained clergy and laypeople, that no matter the disagreement, the decisions of the priests would always take precedence over those not in ordained ministry, or was it simply that Helen is a woman, though most likely no one would be willing to explicitly admit this. Did Helen's voice have a lower status on the council simply because she's not a man? What other potential factors might I be missing? Perhaps you think she wasn't disrespected at all, that there are always two sides of these types of disagreements and that this is more of a misunderstanding. Perhaps we listened to two very different stories, depending on the filter through which we view reality.

Helen said she and her husband felt it was like home when they first came to Church of the Cross. But over time, as problems began to arise, that feeling began to fade, diminishing altogether by the end, this kind of sentiment rings true with my own family history, if I could make a parallel to me, home has always been a conflicted, ambivalent place. Home was not safe for me growing up due to the dysfunction of my own father, the weaknesses of my mother and the larger, ongoing and undealt with dysfunctions that both sides of my mother's and father's families were dealing with. 

For me, home was this place where I longed for peace and safety, but I had to come to terms with the fact that unhealthy and harmful behaviors had been there the whole time, like the seedlings of weeds unknowingly growing up right alongside and within the vegetable garden I've just planted my adult life in my marriage and in raising children, has consisted in acknowledging this as simply the state of things working on my families and thus my own dysfunction is not something I can blissfully pretend is not there. I have to continually and intentionally be weeding through the state of my own life. Otherwise, I won't be getting vegetables this summer. At the very least, they'll be much smaller than I want. They're potentially squelched by the all-pervasive weeds when it comes to our church life and culture. 

Perhaps it would create a vast costly, more fruitful environment to approach our life together like this from the outset that weeding, given the dysfunctional states of so many of our own families, will be a natural task in our church life as well, and if we refuse to admit we need constant weeding because the PR optics aren't good for the church institution, we do so at our own peril. We can't pretend the weeds aren't there. We can't go about telling people that weeds don't grow in our garden because we are different. And we certainly can't tell people we've pulled all the weeds and have been pulling weeds while all along we've let the weeds keep growing, even to the point of trying to convince everyone that the weeds will actually produce vegetables.

Thank you for listening. More episodes are coming in the new year and we hope you’ll join us as we continue the story of ACNAtoo and the Anglican Church in North America. If you believe in what the Wall of Silence podcast is trying to accomplish, please consider supporting us through our Patreon page at patreon.com/wallofsilencepodcast. This month, I will be offering an extended segment of my conversation with Helen Kuening. You can find it on our Patreon page. I appreciate you helping to make this show a reality as we lift up the voices of church abuse survivors. 

The Wall of Silence podcast is produced and edited by me, Chris Marchand. I also do the music and our artwork is by Alice Mitchlick. You can find her other work or commission a piece through her Instagram account, @mouthful.of.stars. Please rate and review the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast service you listen on. You can find a link to the transcript of this episode and through related links in the show notes. Thanks again for listening.