‘The Scarlet Letter’ isn’t about adultery. It’s about clergy sexual abuse. | Opinion
A novel doesn’t change, no matter how much time goes by. But a reader changes. And the world does, too.
“Speak thou for me!” she implores. “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can.” Mercifully, the #metoo and #churchtoo movements have helped not only to bring about justice for some sexual abuse survivors, but they have also helped to raise awareness for many of us about just how wrong some things are that once were quietly accepted, or worse, viewed as normal.
Consider the story the prophet Nathan told King David in 2 Samuel. David was guilty of taking another man’s wife and then having that man murdered, but the king would not face the fact of his sin. Then Nathan came and told David a story of a rich man in possession of many sheep and cattle, yet took for himself the sole, precious lamb of a poor man. David immediately recognized the evil done by the rich man in the story and called angrily for justice.
Interestingly, the multiple drafts and editions of the novel show that even with the aim of exposing his society’s hypocrisy and cruelty in its treatment of women, Hardy had no fixed or certain category for what was perpetrated upon his heroine. Nevertheless, Hardy vividly portrays the truth that when those who have power over others abuse that power by preying sexually on those in their care, they are guilty of great sin.
The people whose beliefs are based on strict understandings of scripture, gender roles, and sexual morality need to be the ones taking sex abuse more seriously than anyone else. Such acts violate image bearers of God in precisely the way in which he designed us to multiply image bearers. We cannot stand for the sacredness of every human life and the sacredness of sex without defending bodies and souls against the very acts that violate both of these at once.
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