I was genuinely shocked and distressed when I saw this news today, in Christianity Today:

For more than a dozen years, Christianity Today failed to hold two ministry leaders accountable for sexual harassment at its Carol Stream, Illinois, office.

A number of women reported demeaning, inappropriate, and offensive behavior by former editor in chief Mark Galli and former advertising director Olatokunbo Olawoye. But their behavior was not checked and the men were not disciplined, according to an external assessment of the ministry’s culture released Tuesday.

The report identified a pair of problems at the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism: a poor process for “reporting, investigating, and resolving harassment allegations” and a culture of unconscious sexism that can be “inhospitable to women.” CT has made the assessment public.

“We want to practice the transparency and accountability we preach,” said CT president Timothy Dalrymple. “It’s imperative we be above reproach on these matters. If we’re falling short of what love requires of us, we want to know, and we want to do better.”

In separate, independent reporting, the CT news editor interviewed more than two dozen current and former employees and heard 12 firsthand accounts of sexual harassment.

Women at CT were touched at work in ways that made them uncomfortable. They heard men with authority over their careers make comments about the sexual desirability of their bodies. And in at least two cases, they heard department heads hint at openness to an affair.

More than half a dozen employees reported harassment from Galli or Olawoye to a manager or HR between the mid-2000s and 2019. But neither leader was written up, formally warned about their inappropriate behavior, suspended, or otherwise punished. There is no record that Christianity Today took any corrective action, even after repeated complaints of nearly identical offenses.

“The culture when I was there was to protect the institution at all costs,” said Amy Jackson, an associate publisher who left what she said had become a hostile work environment in 2018. “No one was ever held accountable. Mark Galli was certainly protected.”

Read it all.

In a written response, Galli denies most of this. Excerpt:

Some parts of the story are, therefore, accurate, and I’m troubled that I distressed any women, or men for that matter, by anything I said or did.  But the fact of the matter is that I never in 30 years ever approached a women with the intent of sexually harassing, intimidating, or “hitting” on her. Never. But some women believe I had done that, and for that I’m regretful.

As anyone who has read this newsletter knows, I am sometimes apt to write something that I later recognize was confusing or misleading, and I am forced to retrace my steps to clarify. This has also been a character flaw in my interactions with people that crops up now and then, as anyone who has worked with me can testify. So that point in the article is fair as far as it goes.

But I was stunned to read the piece and discover that there were a number of incidents reported that either never happened or the context in which they happened was left out. Just three examples among many: It is said that I lingered over a woman’s bra clip and that my hand got caught in her bra. Never happened. It is said that I “felt up” a woman. Never happened. It is said that I said aloud that I like to watch women golfers bend over. Never said it. So amidst the stories in which I can see I genuinely offended or confused some women, there were allegations that just mystify me.

I don’t know what the full truth is, though even giving Galli the benefit of the doubt, it is hard to deny the large numbers of current and former CT women employees making the same allegations. I would prefer to pass this story by, in part because I slightly know Mark Galli, and like him, but it would be hypocritical for me to do that, given that I have praised Galli in this space in the not-too-distant past. It was about an essay he wrote as an ex-Evangelical (he’s now Catholic), about how elite Evangelicals have sold out to the world. I cited in my blog post Galli’s saying that when he was at CT, the magazine often shied away from taking positions that might encourage fundamentalist Christians, therefore embarrassing its staffers in front of the secular world. Then I cited this passage from Galli’s essay:

Another example was [CT‘s] accommodation to a more radical feminist worldview. Once I wrote a draft of an editorial arguing that traditional traits associated with masculinity (like competition, aggressiveness, etc.) were not intrinsically toxic but needed in every human community (and, yes needed to be moderated!). The reactions of three key staffers (one male and two females) was shock and fear; they assumed I was justifying such things as wife abuse, even though in my draft I twice condemned the phenomenon. I put the editorial aside for the time being because it was not worth the staff dynamics I would have had to navigate at the time, since I sensed their anxiety would be shared by many other staffers. I hadn’t recognized how much fear and suspicion of masculinity pervaded the hallways.

I cited that as a jumping-off point to discuss how Evangelicals and Catholics who come to visit our Orthodox parish often say that they are drawn to its unfeminized liturgy and spirituality. It’s a hard thing to explain, even to myself, but Orthodoxy manages to be masculine without being macho. I’m not quite sure how that works, but this is something widely observed by American converts to Orthodoxy. I think a big part of it is that the Orthodox Church does not exist to make you feel good in your okayness. Its approach is therapeutic, but in the sense of, “pray, fast, confess, repent — this is the sure way to healing handed down from the Fathers.”

Anyway, re-reading that passage from Galli’s October 2021 essay in light of today’s news is jarring. I hadn’t recognized how much fear and suspicion of masculinity pervaded the hallways he wrote back then. I took that at face value, because I’ve seen the same thing in environments where educated young women are present. But now I wonder if the “shock and fear” on the faces of the female CT editorial employees was not so much fear of masculinity as shock that Galli would be saying those things, if they believed he was a serial sexual harasser.

If Evangelicalism has a problem with being overly feminized, then the accusations against Mark Galli do not make it go away. But they do make it harder to take masculinist critics seriously. When the Catholic Church went through its reckoning with pervasive sexual abuse by the clergy, and cover-up by the bishops and others running the institutions of the Church, it did not negate the Church’s moral teachings about sexuality, including homosexuality. But it did blow up the credibility of those proclaiming the teachings, making it much harder to hear them and take them seriously. Nobody wants to hear a Catholic bishop who looked the other way while gay priests were molesting boys talk about the importance of chastity. Similarly, nobody wants to hear a high-profile former Evangelical talk about the hostility to masculinity within elite Evangelical culture when he stands accused of sexually intimidating women in the workplace, and repeatedly.

I have a couple of male Christian friends who, in their private lives, are dealing with epic cases of what you might call “toxic femininity.” It happens. Because all people are sinners, there is no reason to think that women are less likely to sin, and to sin in ways that are more characteristic of female temperaments, than men are to sin, and to sin in ways that are more typically masculine. I find that the older I get, the less I understand about men and women and what makes them treat each other in particular ways. It’s weird, because usually the more wisdom you gain, the clearer things are. But assuming that Mark Galli is guilty of the allegations laid against him (and remember, he denies some of it), then why would a man — especially a married Christian man — behave that way? Even if you had those desires for women, surely a mature older Christian knows better than to act on them. Similarly in the two private cases I reference earlier, it is exceedingly difficult to understand why Christian women would say and do the things these women are saying and doing to damage the men in their lives? In all these cases, everybody professes Christ, but that profession seems to restrain no one from causing sexualized distress and pain to others.

I have no answer for any of this. But I’m grateful that we can talk about it, instead of sweeping it all under the rug for the sake of protecting institutions. I hope you will read CT president and CEO Tim Dalrymple’s apologetic editorial about the situation. It strikes me as exemplary, both in terms of disclosure, and in how the institution under his leadership (he came aboard in 2019) handled the matter.

UPDATE: There’s some interesting pushback in the comments section against the idea that Galli is guilty of anything other than offending the too-delicate sensibilities (they say) of certain women at CT. A characteristic comment:

“More than half a dozen employees” and “12 firsthand accounts” do not equal “large numbers of current and former CT women employees”. How many women worked at the place over those 10+ years?

Several years ago I noticed that the harassment training at my large company changed: it went from harassment being defined as something objectively offensive to whatever a particular woman might get upset about. Given that this is the standard, everyone is bound to say something that upsets someone else eventually. I’ve never read CT and I know nothing of Mark Galli. I’m just a suspicious middle aged attorney who thinks this is more than likely a bunch of horses!t. Not that it will turn out that way; accusing someone is 95% of the battle in the current climate. Accused = guilty to a large number of people in 2022. As for me, call me when these women have proven what happened in court and been awarded damages, and then I’ll believe them – not before. I’m old fashioned that way.