“The Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation keeps a sex offenders register that nobody outside the church is allowed to see, a former ‘elder’ tells Panorama… His sources indicate there are 23,720 abusers on the list — who are protected by the system. ‘They [the Jehovah’s Witnesses] do not want people to know that they have this problem’, he tells Panorama. ‘And by covering it up they just hurt one person. By letting it out, then they hurt the image of the church…’ Little over a year ago, Bowen, as a concerned elder, rang the legal desk and asked for advice on how he should handle a suspected case of abuse in his congregation. The advice was: ‘You just ask him again: ‘Now is there anything to this?’ If he says ‘no’, then I would walk away from it… Leave it for Jehovah. He’ll bring it out.’” — BBC (UK)

This is essentially another twist on the current wave of allegations of sexual abuse in the church, except that here the church is the cultish Jehovah’s Witnesses. Interestingly, in spite of the hysteria and media frenzy these allegations have produced, no one seems to want to draw the obvious conclusion. In fact, it’s shocking that, amid so much outcry and chatter, people stop short of drawing the obvious conclusion, as though they are content to hang the effigy and not the culprit.

What exactly is the obvious conclusion? This: far from perverts being Godless, it is the “Godful” who are perverted.

In other words, does this wave of allegations not suggest a correlation between religious belief and sex crime? In fact, is it not plausible to think that the more extreme religious belief becomes, the more likely deviant activity becomes? Think about it. Religion tends to frown upon the expression of normal sexual desires, thereby exacerbating them, building them up without providing socially acceptable avenues of relief. Religion tends to construct a climate of secrecy in which sexual infractions are swept under the rug, thereby providing de facto immunity for perpetrators. Religion tends toward fatalism in morality — “leave it for Jehovah” — thereby failing to correct the corruptions in its own midst. Are these not precisely the preconditions, even the warning signs, for sexual disturbance?

Certainly it would be wrong to say that all religious people are sexually deviant, or that spiritual belief is synonymous with moral corruption. And yet, at the same time, you could write a convincing history of cults and religions showing that they were almost always hotbeds for sex scandals and deviant behavior — from the naughty parts of the Old Testament (and there are a lot of them!) to the possibility that Jesus was gay, from Mormon polygamy to David Koresh taking child brides… It would be a great thesis for some sociologist out there: The History of Religion from the Vantage Point of Sex.

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