Copycat

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article on, Slate, a commentary site, "How the Evangelical Culture of Forgiveness Hurts Victims of Sexual Abuse." While the title might lead one to believe that it is an examination of, well, how the Evangelical culture of forgiveness hurts victims of sexual abuse, it's really just the story of megachurch pastor Andy Savage and his congregation's reaction to his confession to "a regretful sexual incident" with one Jules Woodson, when Mr. Savage was 22 and Ms. Woodson was 17. Although it does touch on the idea that Evangelical culture overall tends to be forgiving of those with troubled pasts (at least fellow Evangelicals, anyway), it's dominated by discussion of Savage and Woodson.

A few days ago, there was an article on NPR, a news site, "Amid #MeToo, Evangelicals Grapple With Misconduct In Their Own Churches." While the title might lead one to believe that is an examination of, well, how Evangelicals are grappling with [sexual] misconduct in their churches against the backdrop of the #MeToo moment, it's really just the story of megachurch pastor Andy Savage and his congregation's reaction to his confession to "a regretful sexual incident" with one Jules Woodson, when Mr. Savage was 22 and Ms. Woodson was 17. Although it does touch on the idea that Evangelical culture overall tends to be forgiving of those with troubled pasts (at least fellow Evangelicals, anyway), it's dominated by discussion of Savage and Woodson.

Hmm.

The fact that two left-leaning sites have both discovered this story doesn't strike me as particularly odd. After all, their readership bases are likely fairly similar (although, given Slate's ability, as a commentary site, to be more openly lefty means that the overlap is likely incomplete), it seems reasonable to presume that each site's readers would be interested in something like this.

What strikes me as strange is that both sites seemed to decide that the Savage-Woodson incident is broadly applicable enough that one presume to write the headlines that the stories lead with. Granted, both of them seem fairly click-baity, and that's likely not just my impression of them. Slate I can understand. It's a commentary site, and commentary isn't necessarily intended to be an accurate reflection of reality. Just like here, where a lot of the things that I write are my interpretation of events, openly filtered through my own worldview, rather than a straight retelling of events for the purpose of informing someone who wasn't present to see it for themselves. But NPR is a new site, and the article by Tom Gjelten doesn't come across as an opinion piece. And so, even though the articles are dealing with the game overall topic, I would have expected the NPR piece to more about Evangelical churches writ large, rather than the story of this one incident by a single pastor.

Because surely, there are more incidents to include than this one. And if their aren't, then firstly, while the story is both tragic and generally relatable to the broader #MeToo moment, it's hardly a case that seems worthy of nationwide attention, because it seems to be one Evangelical church dealing with an issue in a way that, according to both articles, Evangelical churches often deal with these sorts of issues, by welcoming the contrition of the admitted sinner, and welcoming that person back into fellowship. (In this sense, the Slate article is perhaps too narrowly focused, in its desire to make this into a women's issue - the culture of forgiveness would seem to hurt anyone whom someone high up in the ranks had harmed, whether the issue was sexual abuse or not.) In a way, both articles seem like an exercise in journalistic virtue signalling, on the part of Slate and NPR, a way of putting stories out their that show that "they get it." But I'm not sure that the people who decide what goes on the sites and what goes back do get it. But maybe that's part of a broader issue - one that arises whenever oneone tries to "get" things like this, that can mean different things to different people.