Chaperoned by a child
The Billy Graham rule and pastors who act without consent
He was the last person I wanted to ask for help.
Which is why I spent the entire choir rehearsal trying to find anyone else who could open the kids’ ministry building for me. But I was still new to the church, the children’s director wasn’t there, and no one else had a key.
Having run out of options, I finally, reluctantly, approached the lead pastor and explained the situation. My friend had asked me to find her daughter’s epi-pen, which had been left in one of the classrooms.
I chose my words carefully: “Is there anyone who can take me over there to unlock the door?”
I didn’t want to appear to be asking him to do it. I didn’t want to inconvenience him. But the much bigger deal was the situation it would create. I was very aware that my task would require a 50-yard walk across the street to the kids’ building. It was already dark outside. A woman doesn’t just ask the pastor to accompany her under these conditions.
I was hoping he’d let me take a key and open the door myself, or perhaps hand it off to a woman.
Instead, he offered to take me over himself. I wanted to appreciate it as a kind favor, but something inside me started to tense up. And if you’re a woman reading this, you probably have a guess as to what comes next.
The pastor turned and called to his daughter, who was about 12 at the time: “Can you walk with us over to the kids’ space?”
I was going to be chaperoned by a child.
Shame washed over me. I had failed. I’d tried so hard to avoid being alone together with him. I should have done more.
Shame at my failure was just the top layer — deeper down was the more permanent shame, the shame of feeling I wasn’t someone who could be trusted. The shame of being perceived as the creator of an unsafe situation, the shame of feeling like a dangerous object men needed to avoid. The shame of being a woman.
And thus began the walk of shame. We made small talk on the way there and back, my brain scrambling the entire time to push overwhelming feelings out of the way so I could focus on the conversation.
I have no idea how the pastor felt on that walk. I tried to ask him several years later, when we’d become friends.
He’d only say it wasn’t his intent to hurt my feelings by asking his daughter to walk with us. “Not my goal,” he wrote in an email. The shame I described didn’t seem to make an impression on him. And he never shared his perspective, though I asked more than once what the experience was like for him.
How should that walk have happened?
Most of my interactions with men in the church have been influenced by the so-called “Billy Graham rule” — a man’s commitment to not spend time alone with any woman, other than his wife. (Sometimes now called the Mike Pence rule.)
The original rule was part of a set of ministry guidelines Billy Graham and his fellow evangelists created in 1948 as they traveled the country drawing huge crowds. While we can commend their desire for integrity, what’s problematic is how Graham and his colleagues made decisions about women, rather than with women. From that point on, any woman who might interact with those men would be subject to their rules, their boundaries.
And in the 76 years since, this dynamic has been repeated in church after church. Pastors who decide to practice the Billy Graham rule are assuming the privilege of determining when, where, and how women may interact with them.
Men’s preferences — and in many cases, their desire to maintain a good reputation — are prioritized. Women’s voices, and women’s preferences, are almost never brought into the conversation.
My pastor was practicing a version of the Billy Graham rule that night. He didn’t ask me what would work for me, didn’t invite me to solve the problem with him, didn’t even ask me if I thought there was a problem. He assumed our walking together was a problem and then decided how to solve it, without ever asking what I would prefer.
Plenty of criticism has already been written about the Billy Graham rule: how it objectifies and dehumanizes women, how it assumes nothing good — nothing but sex — can come from a man and woman being in the same space together.
But what may be worse is how it encourages male pastors to believe they can make decisions for other people without seeking their consent. These men are encouraged to believe they know what’s best for their congregation, without ever asking for their perspective.
In the process, women become the object of men’s preferences and decisions, things to be avoided or strategically moved around, rather than peers who should have a say when it comes to setting boundaries.
Some women wouldn’t have felt comfortable walking alone with my pastor. I’m not even sure I would have, if I had to make the decision. But I wasn’t given the option.
So, what was the right choice? I’m not sure there’s one clear answer.
Perhaps my pastor could’ve asked my opinion: “I want you to feel comfortable — Do you mind if I ask someone to walk with us?”
Or, he could have invited me to pick a chaperone.
Even better, he could’ve been aware of the potential for shame and tried to take that burden himself, saying “sorry to make this awkward, but I try to follow this rule…” — making it clear it was about him, not me.
As I look back today, I realize this was about much more than the Billy Graham rule. It was about how pastors can start believing they have the right to make decisions for others.
When pastors are taught they know what’s best and can act without seeking consent or consensus — this can lead them down the path towards becoming controlling, domineering, or even abusive.
Worst of all, these pastors will be blind to the harm they cause, because it’s done with good intentions. A pastor can be convinced he’s doing what’s best for those in his care, even as he tramples them.
I wasn’t able to see any of this back then, and I don’t think our pastor could have realized it either. But he was already on the path.
Readers, I’d love to hear your feedback on this post. Have you had similar experiences? How can we, as women and men in the church, grow in our ability to listen to and consider one another?
From the story I’m getting that either you were a teenager of just being treated like a child. It’s a destructive feature of this whole culture in Church that infanalizes women and makes so it’s unsafe for men to be around them.
I'm a single male pastor on staff in a church setting. With all due respect to the author - how is a male pastor ever expected to avoid a lose-lose outcome here?
If he gives you the key and lets you go alone, people can spin that into, "He's discourteous," or "he's lazy," or "he doesn't care about this woman's safety".
If he asks another woman to escort you... "He's too uptight," or "He can't be professional with women", or "How dare he try to assume what will make her feel comfortable?"
If he walks with you 1-on-1... "He's a potential cheater or groomer for walking alone at night with a woman who's not his wife." (Also, if somebody spies him with you and tries to weaponize your interaction into a rumor, he's got no grounds to dispute that.)
And now, if the male pastor invites a third party to come along (on what sounded like a last-minute, spur of the moment decision)... "He's guilty of shaming, objectifying, and making dehumanizing decisions about women"?
He literally cannot win. Period.
To echo Susan's comment, there have been far more tragedies from the **ignoring** the BG rule (or policies like it) than there have been from implementing it. I make no apology whatsoever for applying this rule in my ministry.