Evangelical Alliance rubbishes ‘spiritual abuse’ language: It could ‘criminalise’ conservative teaching on sexuality
by Harry Farley, Christian Today:
An influential evangelical body in the UK is rubbishing the term ‘spiritual abuse’, warning it could ‘enshrine religious discrimination on the statute book’.
The Evangelical Alliance (EA) is highly critical of the definition and claims it could lead people ‘potentially to criminalise whole religious communities with whose theology they happen to disagree’.
The EA warns against its use as a category in safeguarding policy, describing it as ‘vague and incoherent terminology’ that is ‘not fit for purpose’.
It comes after a vicar in Oxfordshire was found guilty by the Church of England of spiritually abusing a teenage boy.
Timothy Davis, of Christ Church, Abingdon, was found guilty under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM) 2003 of ‘conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in holy orders through the abuse of spiritual power and authority’.
But the report by the Evangelical Alliance’s Theology Advisory Group (TAG) urged its member churches to avoid the term.
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