The Inextricable Subject: The Meaning of Theological Ethics for Dealing with Sexualized Violence in Church Contexts

Expert reports and studies have left the victims of church sexual abuse, in particular, but also church communities and the surrounding political and social entities dissatisfied. There is therefore a need to introduce a broader range of forms of reappraisal. In this context, adopting an ethical perspective can make a decisive contribution to addressing the problem of the prioritization of external perspectives, by introducing a programmatic approach to the subject that can be justified from the perspective of theological ethics. The unavoidability of the subject as a criterion for the so-called processing of sexual violence in ecclesiastical contexts will be justified here methodologically through an appeal to Reformed theology rooted in Zwingli. In this way, a broader theological consensus should be reached, as strong conceptions of the subject, as in liberal theology, are confronted with the problem of an excessively strong and not vulnerable position of the subject. A new, subject-oriented focus on individuals who have been the target of sexualized violence in church contexts entails a reversal of the previous way of looking at the vulnerability of sexual abuse and how a reappraisal might happen (if at all). The dominant practice so far has been for churches, investigating authorities, and researchers to address questions to victims of sexualized violence. However, there are specifically ethical reasons for adopting another, more subject-based perspective to at least the same extent. However, this has rarely been the case in practice.