Designation Program Curriculum for Faith Communities

The Child-Friendly Faith Project’s Designation Program is a unique curriculum designed just for faith communities. Those that complete the program are designated as Charter Members of the CFFP and recognized as having taken a key step toward protection young people from religious child maltreatment. (4 min.)

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

—Nelson Mandela

The heartbreaking reality is that the marginalization of survivors is all too common in the Christian community. I have encountered many abuse survivors who want nothing to do with Jesus because of being marginalized by the very community they had hoped would care most, the Church. Just like the Priest and Levi in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we are often so quick to embrace "rationale excuses" for why we walk away. When we do this, we marginalize the very lives that God sees as beautiful and infinitely valuable. When we do this, we marginalize Jesus.

—Boz Tchividjian

I remember clearly the agony and anguish I felt as a child. I remember that no adult stepped forward to end it. The law authorized my parents’ decision to leave me untreated, and the sanction of the law discouraged others from doing what is right. But refusing to act on the pain a child feels is criminal.

—Liz Heywood, Survivor, Born into the Christian Science Church

My name is Jane Eyre. I was born in 1820, a harsh time of change in England. Money and position seemed all that mattered. Charity was a cold and disagreeable word. Religion too often wore a mask of bigotry and cruelty.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

I had to make a decision between God and my kids, and I knew . . . that if I chose my kids, I didn’t have a prayer. But I didn’t care anymore. So we lost everything in one day.

—Sara Poisson, mother who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses as the only way to protect her children from her abusive husband

The Child-Friendly Faith Project: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment

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