Lucifer Growns in Our Garden
An Anatony of Clergy Abuse

Pascal once made the observation, “People never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction”. We are living in a day when some of the people who know the truth of that dictum in painful detail are parish ministers.

“There now exists within the institutional church a phenomenon known as ‘clergy abuse’. It finds embodiment in certain ‘killer congregations’. These waiting time bombs are energized by mentally ill or disordered people, or people of evil character and purpose. Their intent and habit is to destroy ministers”.

What are the invisible forces working behind the scenes that allow such a phenomenon to persist with such devastating human consequences for ministers, their families and congregations?

Barry Robinson peels back the conspiracy of silence regarding one of the institutional church's hidden shames: the systemic abuse perpetrated against members of the clergy. Any victim of gossip, fear-mongering and bureaucratic hypocrisy, the kind that can happen in any institution, will find much with which to identify in this book. Lucifer Grows In Our Garden is a scathing indictment of the church and an incisive but ultimately hope-filled attempt to name and exorcise some of the corporate demons that currently afflict ministers and congregations. It is an exercise in what Daniel Berrigan calls “pastoral prophecy”, an effort to call the institutional church to a transformation of its life and witness. Not only will readers be enlightened, they will also be inspired and ultimately encouraged; for in the end, this is the tale of one man's refusal to be vanquished by the evil done in high places.

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Details

Lucifer Grows in Our Garden Sub Title: An Anatomy of Clergy Abuse
ISBN 0968534600
Published in Canada by FERNSTONE, March 2004
Page Count: 206, with annotated notes, bibliography and index
Binding: Perfect Bound
Language: English
$24.95 CDN and US.

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