Advent Talk
General Category => General Discussions => Topic started by: mrst53 on May 01, 2010, 07:51:13 PM
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I was reading on BSDA that at one time, un-wed mothers were asked to leave the SD church. Is this true?
Also at the same time, there was no protocol for dealing with those who committed child molestation. Is this also true? I am sorry for being so dumb, but I am not a member of your church.
thanks,
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MrsT, there was a time when unwed mothers were dismissed from fellowship in the SDA church. Indeed, in some SDA churches they still do that.
There was a time when the SDA church did not have an established protocol for dealing with child molestors. For the two thousand years that Christianity has been in practice, children have been sexually abused in the community and by the clergy without any real action being taken to stop it until recently. I am personally acquainted with several issues in the Amish community where the children who were molested were expelled and shunned, and accused of seducing the men who molested them. And this is largely how these problems have been historically dealt with in Christianity. The Puritans executed or severely punished many children for being molested. Christianity has a very shameful history when it comes to the treatment of children. With recent changes in the community, government and church, kids are safer now than they have ever been in the history of Christianity. That being said, there is still a long ways to go. People still want to trust their spiritual leaders implicitly, and all too often will attack the kids who have accused them rather than deal with the problem.
I was reading on BSDA that at one time, un-wed mothers were asked to leave the SD church. Is this true?
Also at the same time, there was no protocol for dealing with those who committed child molestation. Is this also true? I am sorry for being so dumb, but I am not a member of your church.
thanks,
-
In Europe it seemed common to place unwed mothers in insane asylums. I have heard interviews with old ladies who in their early youth were taken to such institutions where many other girls where inmates for the same reason. Even some of them had been raped - and that was regarded as their own fault.