Women thought the PCA, with its robust system of governance, might provide some accountability. They found that was not the case.
With a robust governing structure and a 400-page Book of Church Order (BCO) that requires strict standards for those in church leadership, the Presbyterian Church in America should be a denomination that’s good at handling abuse.
“I told friends I picked the PCA because I know I have somewhere to go if something goes wrong,” Kristen Hann, a former director of women’s ministry at Surfside Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, told CT.
She and other women in the denomination have found that was not the case.
The denomination meets for its annual general assembly this week and is marking its 50th anniversary. Over those decades, it has not experienced the reckoning with abuse that has occurred in the Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church.
But survivors within the PCA say the denomination’s problems with abuse are just unaddressed. The denomination has not commissioned an investigative report like the SBC on its response to abuse cases.
At its denominational meeting in Memphis this week, PCA elders will consider a significant number of overtures (church legislation) related to abuse. Among them are two different proposals allowing anyone to be a witness in church courts for abuse cases—currently only those who believe in God, heaven, and hell are allowed to be witnesses. Another overture would require criminal background checks for new ministers and ministers transferring presbyteries or denominations.
Ordained male elders vote at the PCA meeting, while SBC messengers can be men and women.
The PCA, with its ostensible system of leadership accountability, may demonstrate how every denomination needs to have a reckoning with abuse from the outside. The denomination has the structure for …