Dept. of Blame the Victim

In response to the outing of prominent minister Ted Haggard last week as a closet homosexual and drug addict, the evangelical community was left reeling, "Where did he go wrong?" Well, folks, it might not have been all his own fault.

Here's an explanation for Haggard's shenanigans from the blog of Mark Driscoll, pastor of the Mars Hill mega-church in Seattle:

"Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations
and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely
despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one
for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who
really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their
husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives
them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually
available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank
about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be
helping him either."

Pastor Driscoll, 33, counts himself as lucky, "I have married a beautiful woman," he wrote on his blog last Friday. And indeed, Driscoll's wife Grace, his highschool sweetheart, remains lovely even after 10 years of marriage. It also seems that Gracey has done her "wifely duty": She's given Mark four children.


Driscoll's wife, Grace, is a "beautiful woman."

But temptation is always knocking at the door, Driscoll confesses, even for a man with a beautiful wife. In his most recent post, he recounts how on a number of occasions, wonton young women -- members of his own congregation -- have attempted to seduce him, even dropping offers of dinner and sex into his shirt pocket while he was serving communion! "On another occasion," he writes, "a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body." "Thankfully, that email was intercepted by an assistant and never got to me." Thank the Lord!

To protect oneself against these femme fatales, Driscoll lists 11 precautions that every preacher should take, including:

1) Work late at home, not at the office. "Some years ago when I did not, I found that lonely people, some of them hurting single moms wanting a strong man to speak into their life, would show up to hang out and catch time with me."

2) If these women continue to pursue you at home, don't feel bad about turning them away: "This means that if someone keeps dropping by unannounced and is unwelcome, or a flirtatious woman shows up to a Bible study at the pastor’s home, the pastor and his family have the right to request that they never return."

Other precautions include giving your wife oversight of your e-mail account and taking a companion (your wife, older child, or assistant) on the road with you if you must be away from the marital bed over night. "Pastors must not travel alone," he writes. "If this cannot be afforded then travel should not be undertaken."

Finally, Driscoll suggests that churches consider returning to the tradition of hiring heterosexual male assistants instead of nubile female secretaries. "Too often," he writes, "the pastor’s assistant is a woman who, if not sexually involved, becomes too emotionally involved with the pastor as a sort of emotional and practical second wife."

Indeed, if Haggard had only taken Driscoll's advice and hired a male assistant, his could have avoided this fall from grace.

You can read the full post, and Driscoll's other thoughts on pastoral seduction, male assistants, and wifely duties at:
www.TheResurgence.com.