Critical review of “Christianity and child abuse – the survivors’ voice leading to change”

In the article “Christianity and child abuse – the survivors’ voice leading to change”, Kennedy (2000) argued how children’s Christianity background can cause additional concerns in the issue of child sexual abuse. Kennedy justified her argument by presenting the fact how spiritual concepts like “the evil/sin of being abused” (126,127,129), “God’s will” (127,129), “sources of God’s grace” (128) have been wrongly used to warrant perpetrators’ inhumane acts. Moreover, she pointed out that both the subliminal messages children perceived of these concepts (128) and “silencing factors”, such as “the doctrine of forgiveness” (131) and no pre-marital sex (130) in Christian context, lead to further shame and guilt in children (131,132,133,134). Apart from the spiritual side, Kennedy also criticized Christian churches’ intention of protecting its own reputation rather than solving the issue (133). Christian communities practiced an unjust demand of forgiveness from the victim and a patriarchal culture (135). Also, Christian communities failed in offering objective policy guidance (136) and ensuring active implementation of the policy document (137). Kennedy ends the passage by prompting the idea that state and church should tackle the problem hand in hand (139), and the engagement of more practitioners with sound religious and psychology understanding (139).

On the contrary to orthodox consensus, Kennedy sees the doctrine of forgiveness as one silencing factor that caused further emotional trauma on abused children (131-4). However, I think the Christian concept of forgiving is indeed a double-edged sword rather than a paradox in child abuse issue. In other words, it could either offer spiritual support or it could worsen the victim’s e...

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... in extreme context like child sexual abuse, but also in everyday life. The most harmful effect is “the tendency of children to ‘believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you’”. Indoctrination of religion is the kind of education that does not teach children to question but to believe. What is worse is that the rationality and validity of many religious concepts that kids are indoctrinated with still remain controversial. Thus, it is important to keep children free from religious indoctrination when they are not yet mentally and intellectually mature. To keep children free from religious indoctrination is not to be anti-religion, but to provide children with a mutual environment where they can develop critical thinking and form a relatively objective way of seeing this world, so when they grow up they have the ability decide their own religious faith.