This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” a friend said to me, mentioning the latest news reports on the battle over the release of the files of Jeffrey Epstein. I responded, “I wish I could say the same.”
Now, in one sense, of course, none of us has seen anything quite like this. After all, Epstein is perhaps the most notorious sex trafficker in history, with allegations that he enabled the rape of girls in webs of influence of the most powerful men in the world. With Congress having voted Tuesday to release the Epstein files and sending the bill to President Donald Trump for his approval, we are only just now entering this era.
But in another sense, we should be prepared for it. The church sexual abuse crises of the past decade should have taught us something. When it comes to justifying the cover-up of or inaction toward the sexual predation of minors, we can anticipate how these conversations typically go.
I’ve seen a predictable set of seven steps play out in bad church or ministry responses to sex predators in their midst—a pattern we can see here and everywhere the veil is lifted on this kind of evil.
Step 1: This is not a problem. In a church context, we can always find those who don’t want to think an institution they love could be vulnerable to this kind of awful behavior. These are the people predators count on to empower them to keep doing what they do. Whenever the subject of abuse comes up, some of these people say, “We all know each other at our church. We’re like family.” Or, of a denomination or another bigger system, “We are protected from this by …” and then fill in that blank with things like “having bishops” or “not having bishops” or whatever.
We are, it seems, well past this step in the Epstein files debate.
Step 2: Yes, it’s a problem, but the other side is worse. In some cases, a church or ministry never proceeds past step 1, but when denial fails—usually because those calling out the issues are persistent—the next move is to export the problem. First, a constituency accepts a dark vision of human nature. They suggest that abuse happens everywhere and is just a part of the world in which we live. Often those who don’t want any more questions asked employ language of “pearl-clutching” and “moralizing.” Moral relativism disguises itself as realism.
Then, we usually hear the next stage of this step in the words “What about …?” to point out how awful the enemies are. Once people establish an agreement of the enemies’ failures, the “desperate times call for desperate measures” rationale for ignoring moral atrocities becomes much easier.
Step 3: Yes, it’s a problem, but it’s not as bad as it could be. On this, podcaster Megyn Kelly is a step in front of the crowd. Her argument was that, no matter what we find in the Epstein files, we should remember that technically he was an ephebophile who allegedly sexually preferred “barely legal” girls as young as 15. First of all, of course, minor girls are not “barely legal.” They’re not legal at all in the sense of being able to consent to their own rape and trafficking.
When accusations were made several years ago that former judge Roy Moore allegedly sexually assaulted minors, I had to respond live on television to one of his supporters who suggested that, even if this were proven to be true, Mary was probably a teenager and Joseph an old man. There are so many biblical and moral problems with such a defense that I struggled to know where to start.
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Most people will not move to impugning the morality of the holy family, but often the strategy is the same: “Nobody is saying this is good, but here’s how it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”
Step 4: Yes, it’s a problem, but the cause is too important. When, over a quarter century ago, a scandal emerged about former president Bill Clinton using his power over a White House intern to exploit her sexually, some feminist leaders were in a quandary because of their previous definitions of sexual harassment. Some of them immediately pivoted to saying, “Well, everybody thinks this was wrong, but …” and then discussed how important Clinton was for their cause of keeping abortion legal. Many on the right denounced this for the moral equivocation it was. In the fullness of time and in the more recent era, they would use the same strategy over and over again to great success.
Church sexual abuse scandals have operated much the same way. Those who pointed out severe systemic flaws that enabled the cover-up of abuse were sometimes told that their public criticism could lead to people not giving, which would lead to missionaries not being funded, which would lead people going to hell. “We can fix all this over time,” the argument goes, “but the cause is more important than a few bad situations.”
Step 5: The whistleblowers are the problem. In church or denominational settings, I’ve seen those who point out the problem—whether survivors or their advocates—maligned as being anti-church or importing some dangerous political or religious ideology from “the outside.” Rarely is this done immediately or publicly. The game of those who quiet the whistleblowers is to seek retribution against them—publicly enough that others will see and be warned but privately enough that by the time people hear of the retaliation, it can be waved away as an “old story.”
This is twinned closely with step 6.
Step 6: Stop asking if it’s a problem, or you’re not one of us. Those who want disclosure or reform—or who simply don’t want to support those who are involved in rape or other predatory behavior, even if it’s on “our side”—are shunned. Those remaining are then implicitly warned that, to stay in the fold, we need to resist being “distracted” by those who are “trying to divide us.” That’s a powerful incentive.
We are designed to want to belong, and it’s scary not to do so. That’s especially true when a person wants to be in a group and has ambitions to somehow lead it. The threat of exile hits at a level much deeper than just rationality or strategy; it can feel to the psyche like the exclusion of hell itself.
Some people intentionally sear their consciences so as not to face rejection. But other people don’t even notice themselves doing it. A part of them seems to “switch off” any thought about justice for victims. They can be safely inside at the low, low cost of one soul.
Step 7: This is not a problem. The typical pattern is then to end up where we started: This is not a problem. The end result, the strategy goes, is to have most of those inside the tent thinking, This again? How long until we move on? the next time it is brought up.
Those are the seven steps I’ve seen play out. But they are not inevitable. I’ve seen churches and ministries break this cycle, but it required much more than most people are willing to give. Thankfully, there’s an eighth step—one we haven’t seen yet, but we will. As the Nicene Creed puts it, Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”
I don’t know what the Epstein files will reveal, if and when we ever see them. What I do know is that we can decide ahead of time how we will respond.
Russell Moore is editor at-large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
