TNE and Trauma: Not So Fast is Wiser than Let's Move On

How I'm using trauma recovery lessons to interpret the recent news about TNE

What do you do when you receive sudden, upsetting news? How soon should you resume the regularly scheduled programming of your life or even the super-alarming rollercoaster known as Life in Donald’s America? What if you’re the subject of the sudden, upsetting news? What if it’s your behavior that pulled the rug out for the community of trauma survivors?

Last week, news hit the religious trauma community that Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals and Dr. Laura Anderson were part of a report by GRACE regarding misconduct. You can read an overview of the situation here.

The investigation took ten months, and the fallout hasn’t been good—worse, actually, than I anticipated. I’ve carried a certain amount of dread over scandals hitting the survivor communities because I knew painful conflict was inevitable as the movement grew. My heart is to center survivors; I didn’t want to see anyone further harmed. But I did anticipate something like this was coming, and here’s why.

It’s been clear for a while now that a replication has been occurring: folks hungry for community and belonging are re-creating a para-church environment, complete with power dynamics, nontransparent organizational structures, and deconstruction-in-process diversity. Big personalities are involved, centered within big platforms, generating big-ish money.

I knew it would become evident who had deconstructed and divested of high-control religion (as well as adjacent systems like racism and colonialism, for example) and who had not. Within hours of the report breaking, the lines formed. “Let’s keep it in-house,” “Don’t go public,” and “She’s making a big deal out of nothing” are as true of this situation as anything we encountered in evangelical churches. I don’t know what deconstruction is for if it doesn’t result in believing survivors and holding system leadership accountable—and that includes recovery spaces.

If you think a week isn’t long enough to process such complexity, I agree with you. And, if you think there are bigger fish to fry, that can be simultaneously true. My hunch is that it matters who’s deciding of their own accord to move on and who’s feeling shamed for taking more time to listen and consider the response.

Rick Pidcock wrote a follow-up about the angry calls circulating, and it’s obvious there’s more unraveling behind the scenes. Publically, though, Tim posted social media content as if life is business as usual, as well as a tone-deaf story slide using “Student Driver” as the song choice (his misconduct involves driving abuse).

If intentional, that’s whack. If merely subconscious, that’s worrisome. Self-awareness might have avoided this entire debacle. Then, it got even weirder Monday when it was revealed one of the comment trolls diminishing the situation was Tim’s wife. By the time I read that and saw Tim’s posts about our extraordinary ordinary politics, I was breathless and honestly hoping the Whitakers would sit down and take a beat. There is a point where it’s just wiser to be quiet.

GRACE offered the report not so that the victim or the offenders could be tried in the court of public opinion. The point was to show with transparency that a situation had occurred and was being addressed differently than how churches would.

Unfortunately, the response has repeated how the churches would do it.

Something that gets lost in the victim-blaming debate over how Tim handled himself with RV, or how seriously RV felt it, or what the mediator said and did, or what the GRACE team found, is the sequence that emerges when time is applied.

1. Tim did something

2. RV reported something

3. A mediator and an investigation ensued

4. A report was generated

5. The report was released on a small scale

6. The report was released on a wide scale

7. Some hell broke lose

8. Some phone calls were made

9. There are after-shocks occurring

10. The root dismissiveness and anger are repeating

11. There are some flying monkeys in the air

12. New behavior is emerging

13. This story is clearly unresolved

Is this really the time for pulling out the old evangelical 1-2-3 and getting back to business as usual? I suggest that the reason we feel scandals in our bodies is because we remember when we trusted violations would be handled before. Our trust is broken. Our bodies know there’s a high likelihood that if we just get back to normal and let life go on, that “it’s” going to happen again. We are triggered, activated, and hyper-aware, and the person in the hot seat tells us it’s time to pay attention to higher priorities.

How many times were you told by a weepy preacher who was sorry (and his earnest wife) that it’s time to get back to lovin’ Jesus because lovin’ God is more important than the trouble he got into last year, but damn that woman, he just got caught? If a new way of handling misconduct is here, I sure would like to see something other than what I see because what I see is repetition.

I read in more than one place and heard Tim imply himself that, as citizens, we have more important news to watch. The message was clear: it’s time to move on. Get back to business as usual. Not everyone cares. The changes will take time; he works out of his guest room, and in the meantime, they’re going to fight Christian Nationalism “and bring more faces to the platform.”

Some things.

1. This situation existed before the investigation, so it’s over ten months old. There has been time to make changes, and the fact that they haven’t already been made is starting to stink.

2. Where he works was never the problem.

3. Using current events to deflect from the situation is gross. We would love to be able to trust our therapeutic resources in the healing community so that we can engage in urgent current events. However, an interruption has occurred. Who’s fault is that? Not ours.

One of the reasons exevangelicals left their churches in the first place was to engage in the world differently than evangelical scandal allowed. Disengaged citizens are a consequence of both inglorious leadership and traumatic wounding. The dangers of Christian Nationalism are precisely why the integrity and health of the resistance matter, especially in resistance leaders.

Ironically, that means one of the best ways to combat Christian Nationalism is for those devoting their platforms to combatting Christian Nationalism to do their best to keep their street clean.

Time creates space to heal. It can’t be compressed or skipped

I’ve learned the hard way that anyone pushing a narrative and prodding people to just move on have nefarious motives. I want to say it wasn’t always the case, but I’ve yet to encounter an exception. Patterns emerge, and speed offers a handy cover. I feel strongly about this because it’s something I guard against in myself: when I’m rushing, I’m anxious, and when I’m coaxing someone to hurry up, I have a reason other than the reason.

Example: you don’t just want to get out the door quickly. You don’t hurry because hurrying is fun. You hurry because you don’t want to be late and pay whatever consequence will occur if you are. Your reason for hurrying carries a deeper reason beneath it.

Going slow encourages honesty. It allows context to rise, other voices and information to surface, and big emotions time to air out. Allowing upset the time it takes to settle is a trauma-healing practice that applies to more than scandalous news and bad behavior. I use it for everything.

I learned my greatest trauma-healing lessons through slow travel. In 2023, I boarded a transatlantic liner for a slow trip to Europe to process grief in my own time frame. I needed a time-out, a change of scenery, and to hear myself think. I faced a cliff of insanity and knew that without a chance to catch my breath, I would not be okay.

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I spent a lot of time gazing at the ways water, light, and time shift. I stared into space. Watched waves ripple up and disappear. I moved myself gradually, slower than I’d moved in years.

I’d devoted my adult lifetime to serving what others wanted and needed, and I carried guilt and shame for small gestures to care for myself. I was an adult who couldn’t make “I” statements without defensiveness or speak for my needs without shame.

Now, here I was on this audacious trip alone.

It took courage to defy conventional thinking about moving on, as well as getting somewhere asap. Very quickly, I learned there’s wisdom in moving slowly enough for light to shift.

Slow travel allowed me time to articulate why loud volume, speed, rushing, prodding, and lambasting overwhelmed me, and why all my trauma had this in common.

Slow travel revealed why those who push an agenda—even a kind one—exhaust me

My slow travel ethos became an embodied example of the vision I wanted for my life going forward.

• There’s wisdom in taking time to acclimate and warm up to new information

• Heal in ways that feel manageable to you

• Resist a life of urgency

• Find rest in boundary spaces with intentional disconnection.

• Don’t rush or control the narrative—or trust anyone else who does.

• Sit and listen to whispers that only speak in the shadows.

• Take all the time you need.

My slow travel lessons have created an infrastructure within me so that when I wake up on a Monday to sudden and disappointing news, I have a reflexive game plan to support me while I encounter triggers, fears, worries, projections into the future, and disruption. So much breathing happens while we wait. That breathwork will help heal you if you let it.

One of the reasons I trust the GRACE report is the time they took and how thorough they were. I immediately felt the comforting trust of time, length, detail, names, and clarity. It doesn’t solve the pain of disappointment, relieve grief, or mean there’s less work ahead—but the slow methodology does allow us to metabolize new information, acclimate to shifting views, and gather our wits. That peace will inform our steps going forward so we’re not playing into someone else’s game. Honestly, that’s a big reason why I left groupthink in the first place.

Read about paying attention and finding hope here.

Read about why trans identities drive fundamentalists bonkers.

Book Office Hours with me here.

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