LAST YEAR, on Maundy Thursday, Fr Robert Thompson, the priest who leads our Open Table community in West Hampstead, north London, received news of a Clergy Disciplinary Measure following his advocacy for a young woman in her claim of homophobic abuse in another parish.

The complaint was dropped in June 2021. Here he reflects on the impact of that experience, and how the young woman’s story is not an isolated case:

Just this week I have had three conversations with different people about the abuse that they have also experienced in different church contexts. These have impressed upon me how the church so dreadfully slow is to change and to take the voice of victims seriously.

This coming Holy Week, as we begin our final footsteps with Christ right the way to Golgotha, the place of crucifixion, it is my ardent prayer that, as we attempt to stay with this individual victim of systemic political and religious abuse, we remember all who suffer similarly in our own church and society even today.

I offer for those who are in the midst of the pain and suffering of abuse this moving Common Hymnal worship song, which reminds us that, although the church can be, and is, abusive, and though all of us can be abusive of others often, God is not abusive.

Rather God stretches out the divine arms of mercy, justice and peace on the cross, and holds those wounded hands out in his risen body to forgive us, Christ’s pitiful but precious disciples.

May we all die and rise with Christ.

God is not abusive

Written by Brittney Spencer (BMI), Ben Hardesty (BMI), Isaac Gill (ASCAP), Latifah Alattas (SESAC)

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