Episode One

Episode 1 Transcript

I came to understand how churches, institutions don't really do the right thing of their own accord, pretty much ever statistically. They don't really do the right thing until there's public pressure and or somebody suing them. That's kind of when they get it together.

This is the Wall of Silence podcast, the ACNAtoo story, an account of church abuse and cover-up in the Anglican Church of North America. Things done and left undone and why we should care about it. This is Episode One: The Thesis. 

A disclaimer from the beginning. The following episode, while not graphic, contains references to sexual assault and child sexual abuse and may be triggering to some.

Welcome to the Wall of Silence. It's not a place any of us want to be. A wall that does not speak, that does not open up, that does not crumble in our presence so that we can make our way through, so that we may seek and find healing, accountability, restoration, reconciliation, embrace, redemption, renewal, grace, and truth. My list grows long. If the mass before us stays a wall of silence, it instead becomes a wall of hopelessness, devastation, rage, grief. This podcast is an attempt to look at the wall, try to figure out why it's there, and then, hope against hope, to get the wall to speak. We're talking about a water-from-a-rock kind of experience. It's not going to come out simply because I or anybody else will it so. I pray that the Lord will give me patience not to strike it. 

In this first episode, I'm going to give you a brief background into the various leadership, abuse scandals, and mishandlings that have occurred in the Anglican Church in North America. I'm also going to give you my reason for doing this podcast, that is, my thesis statement. 

Let me tell you what this podcast is about. If you had been abused, sexually, emotionally, physically, by a church leader, or if someone you loved had been abused, how would you want to be treated? For your loved one to be treated? What kind of investigation would you want to happen on your behalf? Would you want the investigation to be unbiased, led by a third party, and that files a carefully adhered to set of protocol that seeks to protect victims even as it attempts to get to all the facts, honestly and objectively? Or would you like that investigation to be overseen by the leaders of the church you were abused in? Even if an outside firm has been hired, an investigation adhering to their parameters, and where you as the victim have been shut out of any part of how the investigation will proceed? What if it was an investigation meant by design to favor the leadership of the alleged abusing church every step of the way? Is that the kind of investigation you would want? But let's zoom out a bit. What if it were discovered that there were multiple cases of abuse, and that people in your church had been hired to do ministry work who had a criminal record, having committed violent crimes, and that basically no one in your church had ever been told about these ministers? And then, if we zoom out one more time, what if we find out our entire denomination, our national church organization, is dealing with numerous other abuse cases of both similar and unique circumstances? And how seemingly, in each case, the alleged abusers and the leadership over them are continually being favored with how the investigations and any consequent disciplinary actions are handled? If this was you, if this was happening in your churches, in your denomination, what would you do? 

This podcast is about how various people in the Anglican Church in North America have responded. This podcast is itself my own response. That is, having no idea what to do about all the abuse cases going on in my own denomination, I looked to the one thing I had the power to do: start a podcast. You're going to hear a lot from me in this first episode as I set the stage for the larger story, but much less so in the future. With that in mind, and before we go any further, let me tell you about myself. My name is Chris Marchand. I suppose you could call me Father Chris, because I am indeed a priest. I live and work in so many different settings that not a lot of people actually call me Father these days, and I don't expect it of them. Heck, my own kids don't even call me father. By the way, I am married and have four kids. Apart from my ministry work, I'm also a Christian educator, writer, podcaster, and musician. I was ordained to the priesthood in January of 2020, right before COVID hit. For 10 years, I was part of a church plant, Epiphany Church in Peoria, Illinois. I led the music and was an assistant pastor, taking on various roles, such as teaching our catechism and confirmation class. I planted the church with another priest, with him being the vicar, or head priest, of a smaller Anglican congregation, what is known as a mission. For a whole set of reasons, our congregation closed in December of 2021. 

After seminary, my wife and I moved back to Peoria, our hometown, in the hopes of planting an Anglican church. We had both grown up within broader evangelicalism. She a Baptist and me in the Assemblies of God, but we had both become fully immersed with an Anglicanism when living in the Chicago area, while I attended seminary. At the time, we were in a group called AMIA, or Anglican Mission in America. As that organization went through some leadership turmoil and the ACNA was forming, we joined the local diocese, the Diocese of Quincy. There's a lot more I could say about myself, but this podcast isn't about me. But there are a few more things I need to explain before moving on. 

First, I'm a longtime podcaster, if there is such a thing. I did a lot of blogging about 10 years ago and started a podcast in earnest around 2013. It's called Post Consumer Reports and features interviews about the convergence of art and faith. I've also produced a Rich Mullins podcast called Between the Songs, a pop culture podcast called Nostalgic Future, and more importantly for Wall of Silence, the TENT Talks podcast, which was hosted by political theologian Stephen Backhouse. He'll be featured later on in this episode and in future episodes. It was through TENT Talks that I considered doing a series about the ACNAtoo story, but that podcast was in the process of winding down, and I realized that a short four episode series simply wouldn't do the story justice. So here we are. A new podcast: The Wall of Silence. 

Here's one more incredibly important point I need to make. I imagine not a few of you have already asked, does his bishop know he's doing this? Perhaps some of you have already contemplated contacting him, maybe calling me out on social media, asking him or someone who can speak to him to put a stop to this podcast. After all, surely this podcast is not respecting the ecclesiastical disciplinary process. Surely this is a rogue out-of-line priest. So, to let you in on the nature of what I'm doing here, I will explain the state of things for myself as a priest in my diocese under a bishop. My bishop knows about this podcast. I requested a meeting and he generously gave his time to me. I explained the podcast to him and what my hopes for it are, while also acknowledging the potential trouble that it may cause for myself, for him, for the diocese. He took a few days to consult with others and got back with me asking that I sign a disclaimer. 

Here is the essence of what that disclaimer says: The Wall of Silence podcast does not represent the views of the Diocese of Quincy or the bishop of the diocese. I, Chris Marchand, am the originator of this material, and thus am also responsible for it. So there you go. My bishop has not given me his blessing or approval to make this podcast, but he respects my conscience and convictions and thus my decision to make it. He's given me the freedom to do so, so to speak. On the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, some of you may be wondering if I will be using this podcast to pressure my bishop to make changes within the larger Anglican Church of North America. My short answer is no. I'm going to let my podcast stand on its own. And just as he respected my conscience in making it, I have chosen to respect his in listening to it, or not listening to it. If the podcast sparks conversation and it leads to ordained and lay people desiring to speak to him about it, then I will be grateful. The podcast itself is my work of advocacy. It is up to everyone else to figure out how to respond to it. I am a lowly priest without a parish. But as I see it, one of the ways I can fulfill my ordination vows is to serve the Church in this way. To be clear, I think a lot of people would think that I'm hoping to renounce my ordination vows by doing such a thing, by supposedly going rogue with a podcast like this. But no, it's quite the opposite. I intend to fulfill my vows in this way, as strange as that may sound to some. My thoughts about how the Wall of Silence can influence the ACNA are complex. But overall, my hope and prayer is that it brings accountability, reform, reconciliation, and much needed healing.

For me, this story begins in June of 2021. A woman named Joanna Rudenborg had gone public on Twitter about how she had been raped by her neighbor, Mark Rivera, a man with the title of Catechist at Christ Our Light Anglican Church in Big Rock, Illinois, a town to the west of Chicago. A Catechist in this case is a lay pastor, that is, a minister who has taken on a pastoral role within his church, but who has not been ordained to the priesthood or diaconate. That is, to be a deacon. When news of this broke through Twitter, what struck me was that it was happening in an Anglican Church and near Chicago. I didn't know anyone in these churches, but it hit very close to home for me. This was my denomination, and it was happening close by. In seminary, I had attended an Anglican Church in the Chicago area, Church of the Redeemer in Highwood. The experience was formative for my wife and I. Church of the Redeemer was not in the same diocese as this church, but they were in relationship with each other, most especially because the mother church to Christ Our Light, or COLA, was Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. Though I never attended a service there, in many ways Church of the Resurrection was the closest thing to an Anglican mega-church that I had ever heard of. 

In Joanna Rudenborg’s original tweet thread, she goes on to detail that she was not Mark Rivera's only victim. A nine-year-old had also come forward. To quote, “in 2019, a nine-year-old in Mark's Church told her mother Mark had been sexually assaulting her. A teenage girl also alleged assaults. Stories surfaced of predatory behavior spanning decades. The mother of this nine-year-old was Cherin. She sometimes goes by her middle name as well, Cherin Marie. Her family attended Christ Our Light Anglican and as we'll see in future episodes, her family was deeply embedded into the culture of both that church and Church of the Resurrection. Cherin's story and Joanna's story will be our focus throughout our initial episodes, even as we extend our gaze outward and look at how Church leaders responded to the allegations coming out about Mark Rivera. He was removed as a leader from his church and went on trial. 

A former lay pastor at a church in Big Rock about 50 miles west of Chicago has been found guilty of sexually assaulting his then nine-year-old god-daughter. Today, the Kane County State's attorney announced Mark Rivera was found guilty of five felony charges. At the time, Rivera was a lay pastor at the Anglican Church in North America. CBS2 was first to tell you about the charges against Rivera as the mother of the victim called for other alleged victims to come forward. Rivera will be sentenced on February 10th and must register for life as a sex offender. 

To quote a New York Magazine Intelligencer article from 2023, 

Rivera was convicted in December 2022 and sentenced in March of 2023 to 15 years in prison after finding him guilty of two counts of predatory sexual assault of a victim under 13 years old, and three counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim under 13…Then in April for Joanna Rudenborg's case, Rivera pleaded guilty to one count of felony criminal sexual assault and [was] sentenced to an additional six years behind bars. Including Rudenborg, around a dozen women have identified themselves as victims of Rivera. Their claims range from rape to sexual harassment, though Rivera has only been tried for crimes against Rudenborg and Cherin Marie's daughter. 

Rivera will get credit for time already served in jail and spent under electronic monitoring and will be eligible for parole before completing his full sentence. Cases of sexual and emotional abuse are horrifying and devastating enough on their own, but they never occur or have consequences within a relational vacuum. Therefore, as you may have already noticed, Cherin and Joanna's stories immediately relate to the communities they were connected to. 

In this episode, I hope to set the broader church context their abuse case was handled within. The first layer was their friends and family. In Cherin’s case, it was also her local church, the community of believers, who were her spiritual family. Though not attending that church, Joanna lived in proximity to it and knew most of the families within it, with Rivera being her neighbor. But then there was the diocese and the mother church or cathedral church, which had oversight over their small congregation. Again, Church of the Resurrection. This church has its own set of pastors and ministers and is headed by Bishop Stewart Ruch. He is the captain, or perhaps admiral, of a massive ship or perhaps a fleet of ships. A diocese, so you know, is a grouping of churches in relationship with each other, and led or served by a bishop, the shepherd of those churches. How did the bishop, his diocese, and his church staff handle what happened to Cherin and Joanna? From there, the next layer out is the province, the Anglican Church in North America. This is the national denomination or church organization. How were things handled at the provincial or national level? Another related layer are what are known as third-party groups that were hired to investigate the case. These are law firms or independent groups that are equipped to interview victims in an objective manner and in a way that protects victims in the process. In this case, the diocese at first hired their own firm and eventually the ACNA hired a firm as well. Well, what firms were hired? What were their qualifications? Were the requests of the victims listened to in the decision to go with one firm over another? Finally, though it will not take up much focus in the scope of this podcast, the local civil authorities are also one of the related layers. How did DCFS, local and state law enforcement, and the court system handle Rivera's case as an alleged and convicted perpetrator, as well as Cherin and her daughter as victims? 

This is the arc of our first set of episodes. We'll tell Cherin and Joanna's story as it relates to Mark Rivera. This then relates to Mark Rivera and the church community and leadership at Christ Our Light Anglican Church or COLA. From there, we'll look at Bishop Stewart Ruch and his leadership at Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois and the Upper Midwest Diocese or UMD. After that, we will look at the Anglican Church in North America as a whole and their response on a national level. Along the way, it will become more and more clear why those who are now in ACNAtoo saw the need to form an advocacy group. Later on in the same Intelligencer article referenced above, journalist Sarah Jones describes their origins this way: 

Dissatisfied with the church's response, Rudenborg and Cherin turned to social media to outline their interactions with church leaders. It's a demand the investigation follow recommended parameters, including that it be independent. In July 2021, weeks after Rudenborg tweeted her first thread, Ruch [that is Bishop Stewart Ruch], announced a leave of absence after admitting he'd made errors in his handling of the investigation. ACNA too, which had just been formed, then wrote an open letter to the most Reverend Foley Beach [the Archbishop of the ACNA], “demanding to know whether Ruch's leave was paid or unpaid, and asked further that Ruch be permanently removed from office if an independent investigation verified their conviction that he'd mishandled abuse. They also wanted to know the disciplinary status of the Reverend Rand York, who led Christ Our Light Anglican Church until the church shuttered, and asked that two more church officials be placed on leave pending the results of the investigation.

Reverend Rand York and other ministers from COLA will be discussed in future episodes as well. 

Our story is ongoing. As this first episode is being recorded, Stewart Ruch is still the Bishop of the Upper Midwest Diocese. But there is an ecclesiastical, or court, trial looming regarding his handling of Rivera's abuse case, as well as a number of other cases in his diocese and church. One of the terms you are going to become familiar with over the course of this podcast is what's known as a presentment. Currently, Bishop Stewart Ruch is under a presentment. Here's a definition of it. 

When a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon is thought to have committed a wrongdoing, a complaint or accusation may be brought against him or her in the form of a presentment. A presentment is an Anglican term for a written accusation with supporting facts, which is signed and sworn to by the accusers and delivered to the Archbishop or College of Bishops. In the ACNA, a presentment against a bishop can be initiated by one of two ways: three bishops of the ACNA, or a group of six laypeople or clergy from within the diocese, and four from outside the diocese, with at least one priest from within the diocese. Bishop Stewart Ruch has had two presentments made against him. Here now, I want to allow the words of one of the people who wrote and brought Bishop Stewart Ruch's second presentment to the province. Her name is Megan Tucker, and I find her words particularly inspiring. 

I came to understand how churches, institutions don't really do the right thing of their own accord, pretty much ever statistically. They don't really do the right thing until there's public pressure and or somebody suing them. That's when they get it together. When our current children's pastor read the presentment, there's a line in there that says something about how can the UMD churches be a safe place as it stands? How could they be a safe place? My children's pastor heard that. It kind of caught me off guard. I just was not thinking about it, how she ended up receiving it and feeling it. She really felt that deep in her heart, and she felt like I, it wasn't even just me, but maybe I was saying that our church isn't safe. That was really heavy and emotional for her.

I'm a big hyperbolic speaker. I'm very comfortable saying really bold things. I've realized not everyone is like that apparently. In my mind, I am so proud of our church and her and our children's leadership team. Because earlier on, all of this was exploding and we were realizing we little church plants are trying to get our child protection policies in order. We're having to figure that out. We're having to figure that out. It's not even in existence from our diocese. We can't just take something good that they did. It doesn't exist. We had to do it ourselves. Our little Minnesota churches, the different children's pastors, all worked on that together a lot. They put together a policy. I had a little part in that just getting to be one of the reviewers and work it out and give some feedback and stuff, but just so much work and care went into building those things from the ground up. We, the little local parish. And then they even tried, I think they presented it to the bishops council during when Stewart was on leave. I don't even remember what happened if anything happened. It should have just been an obvious, we were advocating for them to adopt it and make this the diocese of the Upper Midwest official policy. I don't even remember what happened there, but I don't think it went anywhere. She and I ended up, my children's pastor and I, ended up having a really good talk about all that and clarifying some things. I just want to highlight that, because it is so messed up that that was ever, this huge burden ever had to rest solely on her shoulders or our shoulders. It just should not be that way, but I also want to just, like I told her that, I'm so incredibly proud of her and our little Minnesota churches who worked so hard on that. We did do a really good job and we're so committed to keeping our kids safe and figuring that out and taking that so seriously.

But I just think, for what Anglicanism is supposed to be, the structure in the hierarchy is supposed to be, I wish that not just the diocesan level, but the provincial level: why is this not everyone's top priority? If I could just snap my fingers and have my utopian version of the ACNA, I would expect that to be like all of the College of Bishops and the Archbishop and everybody gets it and gets how huge a reality and a problem abuse is in the church and reckons with the fact that it is so anti-Jesus. And then like not just, because churches nowadays do the bare minimum, they do what they have to do for liability, which like cool, do what you got to do for legal protections and stuff. But my utopian vision of the ACNA and the church as a whole is don't just do the bare minimum. Be a leader, make our churches actually safe, and actually safe haven for sheep and for the vulnerable. Blaze the trail and lead the way. You know, have an imagination for how we can solve this problem and actually lead the way on it. Why is that not everyone's vision? It's some people's vision, but why is it not the heartbeat of every single leader in the ACNA? I think it should be.

Relatedly, the ACNA is currently in the process of changing its canons. That is, its governing documents, which are the equivalent to a constitution for a church organization. And many of these proposed changes are a direct response to abuse and abuse mishandling in ACNA churches. These new canons are being proposed and thus potentially voted on at this summer's 2024 Provincial Council, a gathering of the ACNA's leaders. All of which is to say, the Wall of Silence podcast is going to tell the story of abuse and mishandling in the ACNA, and to do so, we first need to do a recap of the last few years. What has happened so far and where are we at now? But from there, the goal is to give voice to other abuse victims, as well as to give updates on the ongoing stories we've already told. 

Before we proceed, here are two issues that need to be raised up. One: this story is gargantuan. There's so much to it. And that's only this one story that we'll be focusing on that is about Mark Rivera and the Upper Midwest Diocese in the ACNA. I've been working on gathering interviews over the past year, and I've read numerous timelines, emails, and documents. I find myself constantly retracing my steps and asking, wait, who is this person? Or when did that happen again? Because of this, I believe it's important to acknowledge that, number two: I'm not going to be able to tell all of the facts of every aspect of the story. For that, I would commend you to look at the ACNAtoo website, ACNAtoo.org. I will post links to their foundational articles and the show notes for this episode. In fact, I will be constantly posting links to their articles whenever they will be relevant, which is often. The fact is, a journalistic podcast or a documentary is basically the equivalent of a novel in the film version of that novel. As much as I love Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, anyone who's read J.R.R. Tolkien's work knows how much Jackson had to leave out. One major difference that I want to make clear is that unlike Jackson, I won't be changing any of the facts for this podcast. The point I'm trying to make though is that if you want something completely comprehensive, you should always seek out ACNAtoo’s parallel articles and their earlier sources, such as they have a timeline of the first couple of years of the advocacy of Cherin and Joanna. You might perhaps be predisposed to not want to look at anything ACNAtoo has done, but I commend them to you. Take a look at their timelines, take a look at how they verified and fact-checked and have kept their paper trails clear and accurate. 

You know, in light of all this, I'm compelled to make two more points. First, even though I imagine there will be some new revelations come to light in the midst of the episodes we release, nonetheless, I want to be very clear that basically all of the major information contained in this podcast has already been released by ACNAtoo. Some of it for nearly three years now. I don't have a major bombshell. At least I don't think I do. Instead, I believe the benefit of a podcast is that you get to hear the story and the voices of the victims and advocates. You get to hear them speak personally, directly to you. There might be less overall information, but I'm hoping this medium allows their stories and the basic facts to hit home in new ways. Here's one last point. As I've been preparing for this podcast, one ongoing concern that has plagued me is that my method is not true journalism. I want to be clear about that because I've had to make that decision as my method, as my approach. I want to acknowledge that I understand what I'm doing here. So, as an example, in this podcast, there will not be the typical, “we contacted Bishop So and So for a response, but have you had to hear back from him or his team yet.” What this signals to an audience is that the reporter has done their journalistic due diligence, that they've contacted the other side in an attempt to get the account of those who are being accused or being criticized. I actually had something of a freak out moment about this. You see, what is inevitably going to happen is some clergy person or someone who goes to one of the churches involved in this story will contact me or will announce on social media, “they don't have the full story.” There are other parts of what happened that they don't know about or that they're not acknowledging finger pointing back at me for not doing my journalistic due diligence, for only giving voice to one side. Guess what? To some degree, this will be true, as every story we tell will be complicated and contain numerous moving parts and individuals. As I said, I'm acknowledging from the beginning that in regards to, “getting the other side,” I'm not going to do my journalistic due diligence, so to speak. And yet, the stories you will hear belong to the victims of the people who are raising their voices to advocate for change. They are their own stories and they can't be taken from them. Actually, it was a tweet from Joanna Rudenborg who got me out of this moderate freakout session. In response to some of her other tweets in the past year or so, she said essentially this. If you want the story to be told differently or you think we're not telling the full story, feel free to start your own victims advocacy and support group. In other words, if you think we're telling the story wrong here, then the impetus is on you to find another way to tell it. You can start your own podcast perhaps. 

Before we go any further, let's go into the broader background of this case. So what exactly is an Anglican and what is the ACNA? Over the past few years, numerous church abuse scandals have risen up in American churches. Unless you're immersed in each culture, the process of learning about these scandals can create an overwhelming acronym word salad where it's your job to decode which denomination or churches are facing the latest scandal. For example, a few years ago there was the case of RZIM. Right? This would be Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Then there are ongoing cases in the PCA and SBC, which are Presbyterian and Baptist denominations, the latter being the largest Protestant denomination in the US. But you also need to be aware of Hillsong and Vineyard and Mars Hill, which Mars Hill, by the way. And of course, there's IHOPKC or the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, not the Pancake House. They made a point of differentiating themselves from the Pancake people for copyright reasons. But IHOPKC has dominated headlines for the past year. And if organizations aren't enough to keep track of, then there are also the pastors and leaders who have been implicated. It's exhausting, keeping up with it all. Last of all, and of course I probably missed some along the way, there's also been a recent scandal within TEC or ECUSA, both of which are acronyms for the Episcopal Church. 

So now we come to Anglicanism. I'm an educator and I make a conscious effort to explain complicated subjects in simple terms  a la the Feynman technique. Look it up. It's really, really cool. So what would my elevator speech surrounding Anglicanism be? One thing I know is that, unlike an evangelical or a Catholic, a lot of people still have no idea what an Anglican Christian is, despite there being around 110 million of us worldwide. 

I did. I went to a private school until I was like 13 and then I get Catholic school. Is that Anglican school? Anglican. Yeah. What's the angle on that? The angle is, you know, it's an Anglican Church of England? Is that what it is? It's pretty mellow. 

That was comedian Mark Meheron on his podcast. In some southern states, Anglicanism seems to be much more prevalent, but where I'm from in the Midwest, it's still a cultural anomaly within American Christendom, despite there being Episcopal and Anglican churches just about everywhere you go. Perhaps most famously, people associate Anglicanism with C.S. Lewis, the writer of Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. Or sometimes your most significant encounter with an Anglican priest is through books, film, and television, such as Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels, Keeping Up Appearances, The Vicar of Dibley, or a certain priest in Pride and Prejudice. 

What a superbly featured room and what excellent boiled potatoes. Many years since I've had such an exemplary vegetable. To which of my fair cousins should I compliment the excellence of the cooking? 

So here's the short version of the story of Anglicanism. In other words, a vast amount is being left out. Please be gracious. During the era of the Protestant Reformation, Henry VIII of England wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. The pope said no, and Henry, also working through Acts of the Parliament, declared himself the head of the Church of England. Yes, yes, this is quite a strange way to start an entire Church tradition. Nonetheless, Anglicanism was born. From that word, you can see Anglos or Anglo-Saxons. Many people say sure, Henry VIII founded the Church, but Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, established it as the via media or middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism. Cranmer most notably gave us the Book of Common Prayer. Fast forward to the American colonies and the establishment of the US. For various reasons, the Anglican Church in the US became the Episcopal Church, or ECUSA, if you like your acronyms. Fast forward to the late 20th and early 21st century, and you will find a fracture emerging between liberal and conservative Episcopalians, between progressives and traditionalists. Church of the Resurrection was one of the first churches to leave the Episcopal Church. Eventually, through various iterations and ecclesiastical oversights, the Anglican Church of North America was founded in 2009. I could go into how the ACNA still isn't officially part of the global Anglican Communion, while nonetheless having the blessing of primates, that is archbishops, in South America, Africa, and Asia, as well as how the ACNA have been integral in Gafcon, essentially a kind of Church Council of Conservative Anglican provinces. But all of that is not within the scope of this podcast. Hopefully, though, that gives you enough of the context that I'm dealing with in the episodes to come.

Now that you know the basics of the Mark Rivera story and how that connects to the broader ACNA story, here now is my thesis statement, my reason for doing this podcast. Reason number one: this isn't only a story about sexual abuse in the Church. That would be bad enough. Instead, it's also about how Church leadership failed to respond to a sexual abuser appropriately. Of things done and left undone. It is about how they mishandled and covered up abuse, and whose ultimate response to the abuse was a resounding silence. But our story will also point to the future. How can the Church change? How do we shift from protecting our leadership and leadership structures and instead protect the victims of abuse? Even more, how can we create a Church culture where abusers are not allowed to take root in the first place, let alone passively tolerated, but are instead exposed and held accountable from the beginning? Reason number three: my goal is to intentionally center the stories of victims and advocates of victims. This actually came up in a recent interview I did with Lisa Weaver Swartz. I asked her, in talking about her book, Stained Glass Ceilings; How Evangelicals Do Gender and Practice Power, what advice would she give me going into this podcast? Here's what she said: 

I mean, the one thing that I always come back to is the importance of foregrounding the experiences and stories of women. One thing that I would say as you're hearing from women and you ask you how to help women listen well, one thing I wish that I would have realized early on in my project is that it's not always easy for women to identify their own stories. It's not really encouraged often for women to tell their own stories. I say this as someone who, I have a PhD in this, I wrote a book about women's experience and I am still in some ways learning how to narrate and understand my own experiences as a woman in the church. So I think I would just encourage patience and listening and lots of questions.

Relatedly, in another interview I had with Stephen Backhouse, which we'll feature later in this podcast, he had this advice to give me.

You know, there's a classic one, the Mars Hill podcast is a very good example here of, I don't know if you follow it, but it's certainly... I listen to most every episode, yeah. So are you aware of the criticisms of that podcast? Yes. You tell me if this is what you've heard. Is it doesn't center the victims enough? Yeah. That's a podcast which is trying to, in a way, both-sides everything. It's trying to give a voice to different, to the abusers as well as the abused. It kind of apologizes for some of their actions and things that Mark Driscoll and his enablers and that kind of stuff. And a friend of mine named Stephanie Drury, who was on the Tent podcast, she was one of the initial people involved in, whistleblowing the Mars Hill problems actually. And they declined to interview her. They decided not to interview her for the Mars Hill podcast and stuff, even though she was a central figure in that story. I mean, one of the reasons why they didn't want to interview her was because she was criticizing them of not centering the victims enough. They're sort of telling a story, a kind of a prurient shocking exposé kind of story, but then they also were trying to wrap it up too tightly, too neatly, they were kind of solving the problems too quickly. And I would say, you're entering similar territory here. So if you're just like, I want to make an interesting podcast about an interesting subject, it's like, no, no, you need to center the victims and give them the voices. Yeah, okay, well, that's that's what I've been trying to do. And a lot of it has been me slowing down and asking them questions and being really clear. Like, so here's what I'm going to do now. Also getting a lot of consensus, because I'm dealing with people where so much of their power has been taken from them. They've essentially been robbed of their voice and their ability to make change. So in the midst of that, I find I don't want to be another one of those guys to them. Yeah, exactly. You know, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, you have to be careful when you give somebody a mic, you have to say, I really am giving you the mic. 

So yes, I will intentionally center the voices and stories of the victims and their advocates. You have my pledge on that. Reason number four: this podcast is born of my own ignorance. I am not trauma-informed. I wouldn't know how to handle a church abuse scandal properly. Thus, a large part of what you'll hear is my own self-education. And by default, if you choose to listen along, your own education as well. Let's learn together. Let's engage in the slow process of being broken open and changed together. I hope we can learn how to listen, how to stretch ourselves so we can help people who have been through horrible things, and how to protect the church in the future. 

Finally, here's another version of my thesis taken from a statement I wrote on the Wall of Silence page on ACNAtoo’s website. My reasons doing this project are two-fold. First, I believe the requests of ACNAtoo for reform and accountability within the ACNA regarding church abuse and mishandling are reasonable and absolutely necessary. Their accounts of abuse are extensively researched and fact-checked in whatever they release, they do it with extreme care. And therefore, secondly, I wanted to help them find a way to tell their story in another medium. One where people can hear it in their own voices. In the larger Anglican culture, I have continually seen their accounts ignored, derided, and demonized. As a priest in the Anglican Church of North America, this podcast is my humble and considered attempt to get both leaders and lay people to invite ACNAtoo to the table. Listen to them, work with them, learn from them. To be clear, this podcast was my idea. I'm not in ACNAtoo, but I did approach them about it, and they have been working with me on it for over a year. Finally, I'm doing this because, as a priest, I believe it's time for leaders in the ACNA to take responsibility for how our churches operate and how we treat the victims of abuse. I'm hoping and praying we can be humble enough and broken enough to work towards seeing actual changes made. And if that's not possible, then this podcast will still exist as a testament to why that process broke down. May we weep and wail and tremble for how we have broken faith with our God. But even now, there is hope for us in spite of this. This was inspired by Nehemiah 10, chapter 2. 

Or perhaps a quote from Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird would sum up my thesis statement. Well, he says this in regards to a trial of a Black man that he's taken on, and knowing the scrutiny he will face in his community. 

Simply because we were licked 100 years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” And then he says, describing what real courage is, “it's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what.” And finally, putting his words in my own context, “You know, I'd hope to get through life without doing a podcast like this, but you think I could face my children otherwise? No, I don't think I could.

As a way of further explaining my reasons for creating the wall of silence, I'm going to read two statements from Joanna Rudenborg, whose story will be told in full and later episodes. Here's an excerpt from an email she sent to Bishop Stewart Ruch when she was still in the process of working with the Upper Midwest diocese. This was before things broke down between the two groups. She said, 

It seems to me that usually the best case scenario for an assault or abuse survivor is to receive validation, loving support, and a safe place to begin to heal. And I am so thankful that I have all those things. But there's something uniquely healing and the further opportunity to bring a dark story full of shame and regret to a place where people not only respect and validate it, but choose to sit with it, to gaze into it with a brave curiosity, and then decide to use it for something life-giving going forward. That's how I feel and how I know others feel about the prospect of our stories catalyzing changes that protect other people or help them find healing. From where I sit at this moment, I can't think of anything more honoring or hopeful than seeing my experience of harm transformed, like that, to something redemptive. 

Perhaps what's such a gut punch about that statement that I just read from Joanna is that inevitably she wasn't listened to. Things broke down between her and Bishop Stewart Ruch and the Diocese in Church of the Resurrection, and they decided to go public because of it, her and Cherin and now others. But here's another statement from Joanna. Again, consider her words. 

An ideal investigation, for me, uncovers and details a story of an abuser. His victims, crucial individual enablers, and the greater enabling community. An ideal assessment would then use that story to name specific community dynamics that would have enabled abuse, regardless if the most enabling individuals were replaced, or had not been there to begin with, and regardless if the abuser were Mark or someone else. The now distinct failure before us is a church system that did everything wrong in dealing with abuse allegations. From multiple mandatory reporters not reporting to the police, to an entire church shunning and vilifying the victim and her family for going to the police. That in itself is tragic and needs more detailing, and better apologies and amends. But the greater tragedy still to be uncovered is how the system was blind to Mark's red flag behavior long before he had a chance to abuse Cherin’s daughter, and how, statistically speaking, it has likely been blind to other abusers, and inevitably will continue to be barring a widespread fact-based education and how abusers manipulate communities. 

Finally, Joanna says this, she again reminds the diocesan team that the survivors want transformation, not adjudication. To close this first episode, I wanted to offer something of an explanatory point. Musician Rich Mullins begins his album, A Liturgy, A Legacy, and A Ragamuffin Band in a rather cooly disorienting way, and it just about sums up how I feel right now. 

Just allow me to make this disclaimer for everybody. I'm barely ready to do this, but let's keep doing it, so don't get mad at me. Hey man. So we all fun. Two, what? Two, three. 

One of the musicians in his band, a fellow Ragamuffin, Rick Elias, says he's barely ready to do this. They're all nervous and not as prepared as they want to be. This is for my fellow advocates, victims, and whistleblowers. We're not ready, but let's do it anyway. Actually, I'm sure all of you in ACNAtoo know this well already, but who knows, we might end up doing something great together. 

You know, I really want you all to realize something. Everyone you hear on this podcast, every person sharing their story: none of them want to be here. This includes myself. No, I don't mean that I have somehow forced them to tell their stories against their wills. Instead, it's that truly horrible things have happened to them. Their voices and their requests were not listened to, and perhaps even outright demonized, and now they willingly come into this forum as another way to get their story heard. It's a desperate attempt, a last grasp of hoping. Maybe something will change this time? But let's be clear, no one actually wants to be here. We'd rather be with our families watching television, learning a musical instrument, gardening, watching a film, playing sports, sitting beside a fire just enjoying the sparks as they fly at us. We'd certainly rather be laughing and just enjoying life. But here we all are. I say this because I would like everyone to realize that coming on this podcast comes with a cost for everyone. The people you're going to listen to have entered this space at great risk. They risk losing relationships, losing jobs, and for the victims, they risk re-traumatizing themselves after years of working towards health, wholeness, and freedom from the nightmare. These aren't people out on some reckless vendetta. No, those speaking on this podcast are here because they have to be. They are compelled. My hope is that you would be compelled to listen to them and not write them off, but instead allow your hearts to be open. 

As a way of getting into practice, here are the reflections of Audrey Luhmann, a member of ACNAtoo who you will hear on upcoming episodes. 

The longer this plays out, the more the risk simply continues. There is, within our canonical Anglican structure, there is the possibility that the five longest serving Bishop, active ordinary bishops, the oldest five can inhibit bishop Stewart Ruch. And they've chosen not to do that. That means that during the pendency of this entire ecclesiastical trial, canonical disciplinary process, he is allowed to continue leading and ruling and ordaining and what have you in his diocese, even after the demonstrated pattern that he places individuals in leadership or in congregations who have these criminal convictions and dangerous pasts with an uninformed congregation. Nobody knows about it. And the bishops are saying that their process, you know, that we just need to be patient. Well, okay, patience, but why are you not stopping and putting a pause on his leadership until we figure this out? That's unacceptable. You do have power. You have a voice and you need to decide if it's time to use it. An institution that cannot hold its leaders accountable and create a safe space is broken. An institution that can and doesn't is evil. I think that question is up for debate right now. Does the ACNA have a system in place to hold its leaders accountable and create safety for its members or not? If it does and it's refusing to do so, then we need to seriously examine our church. 

Finally, I need to say that of all the ACNAtoo people I've spoken to, they actually do love to laugh. One of the first ways they introduced me to the group was through various memes and twisted jokes, which spoke to my soul, I should say. So as crazy as it might sound and as heavy as this podcast is going to be, I imagine you'll be laughing at times as well. We all need to determine who it is we see in this podcast. Are our enemies here? Is that what we want? Further separation, further hurt? Or are these people who need things put right? People in need of reconciliation. This is not going to be a “yeah, but you need to hear both sides” podcast. But even so, hear me. It is done in the spirit of restoration and redemption. Speaking of Rich Mullins, a quote from a favorite song of his, we are not as strong as we think we are goes this way. If you make me laugh, I know I can make you like me. Because when I laugh, I can be a lot of fun. But if we can't do that, I know that it is frightening. But I don't know is why we can't hold on. It took the hand of the God Almighty to part the waters in the sea. But it only took one little light to separate you and me. We are not as strong as we think we are. 

This has been episode one of the Wall of Silence podcast, The Thesis. Thank you for listening. If you believe in what the Wall of Silence podcast is trying to accomplish, please consider supporting us through our Patreon page at patreon.com/wallofsilencepodcast. Each month, there will be extra interviews and conversations released exclusively for Patreon members. Again, that is patreon.com/wallofsilencepodcast. I appreciate you helping to make this show a reality has me lift up the voices of church abuse victims. 

The Wall of Silence podcast is produced and edited by me, Chris Marchand. I also do the music and our artwork is by Alice Mitchlick. You can find her other work or commission a piece through her Instagram account, @mouthful.of.stars. On the next episode, The Parable. I hope you join us.