Bullying at Church

The organization actually is set up to do what is suggested. We mortals mess it up by letting our natural selves not do what we are supposed to do.

I also hope this gets wide traction. It is a serious issue that permeates every aspect of society, and it needs to be recognized and addressed head-on.

One of the quotes I liked is:

“We should address bullying with the same level of seriousness as drugs or immorality,” the Bresees say. “It’s serious. In some ways, it’s even more serious.”

If they are serious about this, it means that people who bully others should be eligible for discipline, temple recommend revocations etcetera. There may be guidance on that already, with behaviors that fall into the bullying category mentioned in the CHI…

The Father in this story givings a suggestion about how the Church can combat the effect of bulling:

With this, every boy or girl would have someone they would be mentoring and watching over and also have someone watching their back. No matter how many kids, whether it’s three, whether it’s two, whether it’s fifteen, they all have someone watching their back, doing service for them, and they also have someone that they’re taking care of.

(for what its worth)

Great, now who will organize that. Not practical on a large scale in my view, unless there is a strong culture of bullying in the organization. Then it might work if enough people are affected.

But the buddy system is a great idea when you have someone who is a target and is subject to bullying — to alert the good kids to watch out for the bullied kids. We also teach our children to object to the bullying. To uncover what they are doing — “what you are doing is bullying — repeated attempts to do some kind of harm to a person — either emotionally or physically”. My children are also taught to say “if you hit me, it’s as if you are hitting my dad — he told me to tell you he will get involved if you continue bullying this way”.

Also, you have to train the people who are NOT bullies, to stand up for the bullied. To back them up when bullies start bullying.

I also train them to know the student code of conduct in their schools. My daughter knows that we can threaten to report bullies who violate that code of conduct.

Last of all, and this is the hard part — you have to stand your ground with leaders who inadvertently resort to “blaming the victim”. I had a church leader do that to my daughter when she was subject to bullying. I was appalled — he was actually circumventing bully prevention behavior when my daughter stood up for a person who was about to be bullied, and got bullied herself.

I find that uncovering and the tactic — bullying, blaming the victim, verbal abuse — whatever it is — is part of standing up to a bully or a misguided leader.