An Abuse of Power and Authority: Lynn’s Story

An Abuse of Power and Authority at the Seminary

After spending twelve years as a stay-at-home mom, attending seminary was a dream come true. It felt like I got to be “me” again. The first year had flown by, and now I was excited to start a preaching class in my second year. I wanted to take this class because I loved teaching women’s Bible study at my church, and I wanted to get better at public speaking. This would enable me to teach well at women’s retreats and conferences. I was also excited about this class because I had heard the professor’s praises sung far and wide.

The preaching professor was well-known in my theological circles. I’d first heard of him years before in his role as a preaching pastor at a local church. He was known as a “solid biblical preacher” who took God’s Word and orthodox doctrine seriously. At the seminary, other professors spoke incredibly highly of both his character and his classes. We were encouraged to take all the courses he offered, and I counted myself lucky to be in his class. All of that praise from others set him up as someone to be respected and trusted right from the start.

I showed up with idealized expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed. On this first night of class, he took command in a way that put me at ease. He seemed authoritative and kind. He recited a long portion of Scripture from memory, and he led the class in singing a hymn of worship, which made it seem more like a sacred moment than merely a seminary class. His teaching outline was focused solely on the beauty of Christ and proclaiming him from all of Scripture.

These were truths I held dearly, and I was so encouraged to hear it from my professor. He presented the material clearly and quickly, compelling me to focus rather than scroll Facebook during his classes. He also came across as kind and caring, like a father to everyone in the class. He offered a candy bar to the student that asked the best question, which he subsequently gave to me. And when he found out that I’d driven two hours to the seminary, he said he and his wife would welcome me in their home whenever I needed a place to stay. I was much younger than he was, so I felt like I’d found the spiritual father I’d been looking for all my life.

A week later, I emailed him to ask a question about our assignment. When the series of emails that would follow became more and more personal, I felt honored and flattered that he wanted to know me, and also that he seemed to find me to be a person in whom he could confide. Because of his stellar reputation and positions as both professor and pastor, it never crossed my mind that he would behave inappropriately towards me.

I had been raised in a Christian world that highly valued education and male theologians. Men were called to be spiritual authorities in the church. For example, although my seminary allowed women to teach biblical languages and history, they reserved the teaching of theology and Scripture to men. As a result, I believed that these men were to be trusted with the “things of God'' more than anyone else, and certainly more than me. On top of that, while I was taught well to discern false doctrine, I had no warning system to alert me of spiritual leaders who misused their power.

A few weeks later, my preaching professor told me that I was beautiful. I felt awkward and didn’t know what to say, so I was silent in response. He picked up on that and asked me, “Did I make you uncomfortable? I didn’t mean to do that.” In response, I told him that I wasn’t sure it was appropriate for him to say that to me. He quickly reassured me that he didn’t mean anything sexual by it, and he suggested that I might be too gnostic. I understood this to mean that he thought I over-valued the spiritual but didn’t have an appreciation for the physical world that God had created. He was saying that my discomfort at being called beautiful was an insult to my Creator.

As we talked, he told me that I had great potential, but I was “spiritually undeveloped” and would learn to be okay with his words as I matured. He gave me the nicknames “little girl” and “baby girl,” which reinforced his father-figure role. His insertion of himself into the realm of my personal life overlapped with his role as my preaching professor. He called himself a Jedi and me his Padawan. In every aspect, he treated me like he was the one with knowledge and authority, and I needed to learn from him.

 During the early months of his abuse, he began to give me increasingly tighter and tighter hugs. He told me that he needed to “belong” to someone because he had never been loved. He still reassured me that he didn’t want anything sexual, but that he needed a unique place in my heart. At first, I thought his hugs were communicating his desperation for my affection. But then they started to hurt. One time he squeezed me so hard that my jaw ached for days afterwards. I knew, without him ever saying the words, that he could easily overpower me physically.

Whenever a part of me questioned what my professor was doing, a louder part of my brain would scold me. I’d think, “I can’t be right about him because everyone else speaks so highly of him.” Plus, I knew that if I brought his behavior into the light, it would ruin his reputation. And everyone always talked about how there was no one else who could do what he did. I felt confused and scared.

In time, I became convinced that his behavior was my fault. I reasoned that if he was the mature, spiritual one, and I was the immature, gnostic one, then I must be the problem. When he told me that he couldn’t control himself around me, I believed that I was a temptation to him. Looking back, this reasoning makes no sense at all. Not only did I never pursue him, but I actually went above and beyond to discourage him from pursuing me the way he was. Nonetheless, because of his position and reputation, and my false beliefs, I blamed myself.

I thought that I should “protect him” by cutting off contact with him, including withdrawing from one of his classes. When I told him my decision, he became angry with me and gave me the silent treatment. I missed out on academic opportunities, and he withdrew the support he’d given to help me plan a conference to teach the Bible to women. 

Later, he contacted me again. He convinced me to communicate with him, and the cycle of grooming, boundary crossing, manipulation and gaslighting resumed. 

Bit by bit and step by step, in a process that unfolded over time, I became deeply convinced that he was right and I was wrong about everything. I no longer trusted my own understanding.

I finally escaped the abuse when my husband found a journal I’d written to process all of this. Because of how everyone else spoke of him, and because of his own overpowering of my identity and voice, I still wasn’t sure if the professor and pastor bore the responsibility for what had happened. It was only when the elders at his own church called him a “wolf” - a man who engaged in “verbal jujitsu” and “entered a death spiral” of anger and defensiveness when confronted – that I finally began to see that he was to blame.

I am so thankful to be free. But I am also so angry when I think of the ways in which he used his power and spiritual authority to question and undermine what I now know was both healthy intuition and a correct understanding of Scripture. I was the mature, godly one, and he was not. I hope that my newfound understanding of spiritual power dynamics will protect me, and that reading about them here will also help others who find themselves in a situation similar to my own.