Religious Scrupulosity, Religious Hypocrisy

On the Theology That Makes Mountains of Molehills While Ignoring Actual Horrible Mountains

Photo by Daniel Leone on Unsplash

On Sept 12, 2023, a visibly traumatized man named Adam Paul Steed sat down for a nearly six-hour interview on the podcast Mormon Stories, in which he documented a truly terrifying and harrowing case of abuse from the time he was fourteen. Adam began with his story of surviving sexual abuse at the hands of his Boy Scout leader. This scout leader was a member of the LDS church and LDS leaders strongly discouraged him from telling his parents about the incident. They later counseled him not to pursue punitive damages in his lawsuit against the camp. From this incident, according to Adam, LDS leaders seemed to haunt his steps every second of his life, finally culminating in a disastrous relationship with abusive counselor Jodi Hildebrandt (currently facing charges of felony child abuse connected to the “8 Passengers” Youtube mom Ruby Franke) that ultimately ended his marriage and resulted in a protracted legal battle for custody of his children. 

The entire story is almost unwatchably horrifying, and for those who can stand it Adam’s story deserves to be heard in the detail in which he told it.. However, what particularly caught my ear is the reason why Adam ended up in the dubious care of Jodi Hildebrandt in the first place. Adam was referred for counseling for a “porn addiction,” a habit where, as he recounts, a few times a year beginning as a teenager, he would look at pictures of women in underwear and masturbate to them. As in many Christian and Christian-origin movements, this is understood to be a serious sin. To atone for this wrongdoing, Adam was forbidden from sleeping in a bed with his wife, talking to her outside of therapy settings, and was repeatedly told it was not safe for him to be around his children. Other men in Jodi’s treatment program were not permitted to stay in their own homes during the course of treatment.

All this over photos of underwear models, from the same group of people who were sorry to see Adam’s literal rapist face legal consequences.

This story primarily focused on the LDS church, but it was a story that could have been told about a lot of churches in the U.S. The discrepancy here that is painfully obvious is the gap between the extreme response to (as it is understood in these cultures) fairly mild wrongdoing, but no response to wrongdoing that rises to the level of a crime. Why did IBLP families study booklets about how exactly to design a dress for maximum modesty, but struggle to find momentum to stop child sexual abuse in its ranks? Why did Church of the Resurrection lead intense recovery groups for men who felt attracted to other men but respond anemically to a volunteer who raped a congregant? Why has the SBC exhaustively documented and restricted the ability of women to serve in its churches while providing years of cover to sexual predators? There are a lot of ways we could answer these questions, but what’s stuck with me is that all these cases ultimately look paradoxical to me. How does it happen that people in high-control religious environments suffer from an intense need to scrupulously follow minor rules that seem to impact very few people, but this same scrupulosity is nowhere to be found when someone commits a felony? 

These questions have multiple answers, of course. Obvious places to start would be homophobia, purity culture, power imbalances, male dominance, and so on. But I also think there may be a theological answer in play here – namely, the way in which many Christians understand sin, forgiveness, absolution, and personal change, under the heading of “justification theory.”

I want to shamelessly apply the theology of a book written by my husband Jon Depue, and our dear friend (and wedding officiant!) Douglas Campbell. The book I’m going to draw on is Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel, which is currently available for preorder. I’m not going to be able to lay out all the mechanics of Jon and Doug’s reading of Paul here – for that I strongly encourage you to check out the book, or at least dabble in the summaries on Jon’s Youtube channel. Here, I’m mostly going to lay out the theology that they’re critiquing – namely, the “justification theory” reading of the theology of Paul in the New Testament. 

What Is Justification Theory?

Campbell and DePue lay out nine steps of how justification theory works. The source text they primarily draw on here is John Piper’s, but they also note that these ideas are present in the work of other prominent New Testament scholars and writers. 

Justification theory (or JT) works like this:

1. Everyone, without exception, knows God accurately (pg 46). Simply by existing in the world and rightly discerning it, we can know who God is and what God expects of us. This dovetails pretty strongly with ideas of “natural theology,” or the idea that the revelation of God can be discerned in the natural order of the world around us.

2. God’s righteousness consists of God’s commitment to his glory (pg 47). God is holy and is ultimately committed to his own holiness, righteousness, and glory. 

3. The Torah (in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) and our personal consciences attest to God’s expectations of us (pg 48). God makes it clear exactly what he expects from us.

4. Reward and punishment hangs on our ability to do what God demands (pg 49). We all know the will of God, either through our own consciences or from a written record, and we have to do it. We are punished or rewarded based on whether we do it.

5. Humans don’t follow God’s demands (pg 50). Even though we all know the truth about what we should do, we don’t do it. This means we are all guilty before God. 

6. All humans deserve retributive punishment for their sins (pg 51). God’s primary commitment is to his own holiness and own glory, and so to maintain this, he must punish everyone who fails to follow his rules. We all know the rules, but we don’t do them, so God is being fair. And, of course, because God’s commitment is to himself, overlooking our sins would be inappropriate and compromise his glory.

7. The solution is that Christ’s death satisfies God’s wrath (pg 52). God’s wrath is redirected at Jesus, and the crucifixion satisfies God’s need for satisfaction over human sins. Jesus receives what we deserve. 

8. Imputation of righteousness (pg 53). Despite receiving God’s wrath, Jesus was sinless. God can impute Jesus’s righteousness to us and counts Jesus’s righteousness as our own, which provides us with the righteousness we need in order to escape God’s wrath.

9. Appropriation of Christ’s righteousness (pg 53). God does not simply impute Jesus’s righteousness to all of us, though. We still have to respond with faith to God. If we put our faith in God through Jesus, then God will credit Jesus’s righteousness to us. 

Now, some of you might be thinking, “Well, that’s just what Romans says,” and if that’s your response, I encourage you to read the book and see that that’s simply not the only way to read it – and, it doesn’t account for the vast majority of Paul’s writings. 

Setting that aside, I want to focus on a problem that, if you’ve been following along, arises pretty plainly from these nine steps. You’ve put your faith in Christ, God treats you as though you are righteous, you have escaped the hell you so richly deserve – but now what? 

If you look at the dizzying array of commandments and instructions that have come down the pipe, it starts to look like being saved by faith alone is actually a hell of a lot of work after all. 

Now what do you do? 

As Doug and Jon note, most theologians who follow JT argue that sanctification comes later. Now that you have been forgiven, you can start the work (or God can start the work) of actually improving your behavior. As they note, though, this creates new problems, because your relationship with God has been framed from the beginning as contractual. You needed to follow God’s law, but you didn’t, so you were going to be punished. You needed to put your faith in God, and you did, so now you’re not. Now, in many churches, the demonstration of your faith simply multiplies into all kinds of new contracts. You need to say a certain prayer, you need to believe a certain doctrine, you need to speak in tongues, you need to not drink, you need to believe this about the Bible, you need to adhere to these gender roles, you need to commit yourself to this social policy, etc., etc., etc. 

Because, if you don’t do those things, then you might not have faith. And then you’re back where you started. 

Essentially, what started out as being saved by faith, not works, turns into being saved by a lot of works – participation in a community norm, upholding community standards, holding a certain set of beliefs that go well beyond faith in God in Christ – in order to demonstrate your faith. And, of course, if you look at the dizzying array of commandments and instructions that have come down the pipe at Desiring God, it starts to look like being saved by faith alone is actually a hell of a lot of work after all. 

From here, I want to return to our original question that we started with at the beginning of this essay: why is it so hard for churches to apply the same scrupulosity to major evils as it applies to minor offenses? Why did IBLP families have to commit to a dizzying array of rules, but “don’t abuse children” wasn’t one of them in actual practice? Why does a man who looks at porn deserve severe consequences when his rapist doesn’t? 

I think the answer can be found in justification theory. 

The Minors: The Role of Religious Scrupulosity in Justification Theory

When you look at the writings of many people who have come out of the evangelical movements, and the sins (or “sins”)  they recall dominating their teenage years, there are a few traits of culturally-dominant sin narratives that seem to come up again and again.

What do modesty rules, purity rules, and gendered expectations all have in common? We might say “sex,” but as we’ve noted, the same scrupulosity doesn’t seem to apply when we’re talking about sexual violence. No, the thing that more stands out to me is that all these offenses have no obvious injured party. Kissing your boyfriend, wearing shorts, and thinking a girl at the pool is hot have no obvious victim. So why do they matter?

Well, they matter because God is offended, right? And he’s the one who counts. 

A strong emphasis on minor offenses is really useful for getting people into JT. If you say to someone “you deserve to be tortured forever for what you’ve done,” an understandable response to this statement would be, “why?” And the answer is, because you have not done what God wants, and actions that look minor to you are actually major to God, because he told you not to and you did it anyway. Therefore, what you think is minor is actually completely disqualifying for a relationship with God. 

Even once you have been “justified,” this emphasis on minor offenses is never actually going to go away. As we’ve also noted, JT doesn’t really have a coherent theory of change of what happens next – if you thought girls at the pool were hot before you prayed the prayer, you will probably feel the same way after. Except, you now know that that action is exactly what would have qualified you for hell. You might be glad that you’re not going there, but the fact that you’re doing a hell-worthy thing will remain with you. This is still part of your mental reality. And of course, if you keep struggling with this, or not doing enough to prevent it, it might reveal you actually don’t have faith… and now you’re in serious trouble. 

This is how I think we end up in churches where people will do literally anything to not commit minor offenses – go to support groups, go to therapy, throw out all their clothes and buy 2 sizes up of everything, refuse to date anyone (until, of course, you hit a certain age and now must marry someone). It’s also worth noting that all this behavior is extremely visible – it communicates that you are part of the in-group, which demonstrates your faith. 

So we end up with a lot of people who are very concerned about not offending against God. This system explains a lot of religious scrupulosity. But what happens if we offend against another person? 

The Majors: The Absence of Accountability

On May 17, 2019, Cherin Marie’s 9-year-old daughter told her that Cherin’s godfather and church leader, Mark Rivera, was sexually abusing her. Cherin and her husband told their pastor at Christ Our Light Anglican (outside Chicago) about the abuse, and the pastor, Rand York, told them that neither the church or Cherin had any reason to report the abuse. Cherin did anyway. Mark Rivera would later be convicted of rape of a different congregant, and has faced allegations from others in the church. According to Rivera, the church found Rivera an affordable lawyer, and several congregants provided material support. According to Cherin, this financial assistance (for counseling and, eventually, civil legal costs) was never offered to her. This is a diocese I was previously a member of. I can personally tell you that it taught a highly conservative sexual ethic, and ran support groups for people who struggled to meet this demand.

Why? Why was Mark’s rape not dealt with in the same way that any other sexual sin in the church was dealt with? Surely this is significantly worse, right? 

A possible explanation can be found in the shortcomings around justification theory. Justification theory doesn’t really have a coherent way to deal with interpersonal wrongs. The relationship between God and the person is not communal, it’s individual. You, the atomized persoon, are in a relationship with God. Your primary problem is God. The wrongs you do are done as offenses against God. You may even have heard Psalm 51:4 invoked in church – “against you, you only, have I sinned.” Ultimately, all sin is against God. 

So in this model, it already makes some sense to treat major offenses that seriously harm other people in more or less the same way any other offense would be treated. All sins have the same impact in the realm that really matters – they all offend against God’s glory, and they all result in an eternity of punishment. Both the offense and the consequence are God’s business, but the management of the sin (namely, getting it forgiven to prevent torture) is also God’s business. God imputes righteousness to the person who committed the sin, assuming they have faith. The sin is against God, is confessed to God, and is absolved by God. Other people aren’t really involved in this process. This might go a long way towards explaining why Church of the Resurrection’s solution to Mark Rivera’s crimes was reportedly an exorcism. The role of others in an offender’s life is to turn them back to God (and removing, in this apparent case, a supernatural element that was causing the problem), not necessarily to encourage restitution and accountability. 

Now, there are obviously a lot of other elements in play here (Kate Manne’s book Down Girl has an excellent chapter on why women are not believed, why sympathy shifts to male offenders over female victims, and of course, the difference in the community between the stature of a catechist and local leader), and I don’t want to deny the role that misogyny has in this story. But I also think that ultimately framing sins as an offense between the single individual and God is also in play here. If Mark did wrong, it was God’s business, and the church’s responsibility was to turn Mark back to God. The role of care for his victims was completely sidelined. 

A second significant element that might be causing this lack of concern towards major offenses is the problem of “othering.” Starting on pg. 95, Jon and Doug walk through the ways in which JT results in a strong differentiation between insiders and outsiders. The saved, those who have put their faith in God, are the people who have correctly discerned God’s demands through revelation and the natural world. They have realized that they have fallen short of these demands. They have acted to receive grace to be forgiven for these sins. And, they are now part of the community that alerts the rest of the world to the fact that JTis the only way to receive salvation. 

So it’s not hard to see why, in this framework, it is incredibly difficult to reconcile blatantly evil behavior on the part of someone who is part of this community. Mark Rivera, in this theory, had discerned that he fell short of God’s standards. He had accepted the grace of Jesus Christ for forgiveness. He was alerting other people to the truth that is accessible to all but is repressed by most. But, he was also committing felonies against women and children? How does that fit with Mark’s status as an insider? 

Well, it really doesn’t. (And again, this goes a long way towards explaining the exorcism reaction - it wasn’t Mark who committed the rape, it was something acting through Mark). Mark’s hideous behavior seriously challenges the extent to which he is an insider, and by extension, anyone else who agreed he was one. If JT is going to work as a system that provides absolution for sinners through knowledge of the truth, the fact that people who supposedly do know the truth show little evidence of knowing it actually creates a huge problem. And, because there’s no intuitive way to deal with the problem interpersonally, and because absolution before God is the primary priority, it makes sense why covering up someone’s misdeeds would be a more appealing solution than holding them accountable. 

Alternative Systems

If this sounds like I’m saying that Christianity and hypocrisy are inevitable companions, I’m not. The awesome news is that there are other ways to frame Paul’s theology, and we’ll talk about these in a future article. 

As we said, my goal in the above article is not to ignore the role that purity culture, misogyny, power structures, and homophobia play in creating these hypocrisy traps. But I think we can go one step further and show that much of this is baked into problematic readings of the New Testament. Even if churches want to reform the way they respond to serious allegations, without considering other models for understanding our Gospel, we’re going to be fighting against our theology, not with it.