Preaching with a Predator in the First Pew by Angela Yarber

Seeing him in the first pew was distracting. Legs splayed in expert manspreading fashion, both arms draped unaware across either side of the backrest, belly protruding over a worn leather belt. He wasn’t a tall man, yet his sprawling body occupied nearly six feet of space. A slight smirk was always smeared across his lips and his eyes were fixed on me.

Preaching to a predator is never easy. So, while I could never imagine what it would be like to speak truth to power like Bishop Budde at the National Prayer Service, I’m confident that, like me, every clergywoman in America knows what it’s like for a pussy grabber to leer at you from the first pew. Even the finest vestments, highest clerical honors, and the divine herself cannot protect you from that.

Only minutes before my pulse raced at the sight of that man from my pulpit, I’d presided at communion. I held a basket of gluten free bread in one hand, a chalice of grape juice in the other.

“Please don’t pick my line. Please don’t pick my line,” I implored silently.

He would. He always did.

Though the queue to receive communion from my co-pastor was clearly shorter, he sauntered into my line. I stooped to lower the basket to a wily seven-year-old gripping a jump rope. He dunked a hunk of bread into the chalice with such fervor that juice sloshed over the edges as we giggled, “Cup overflowing with blessing!” His mother looked embarrassed, so I grinned, winked, and shrugged, proclaiming, “Bread of life for you, mama!” Old and young, gay and straight, cis and trans, and all that glorious goodness in between made their way through the line, my hands growing sweatier and sweatier as the manspreader closed in on me.

Though clad in a bulky clergy robe, similar to Bishop Budde’s to the untrained eye, he always found a way to touch my actual body. This was a feat given the way the robe engulfed my small stature. Padded, pleated shoulders make way for what can only be described as absurdly poofy sleeves, three velvet stripes adding even more heft to the fabric. One stripe for each degree: a bachelor of religion, a master of divinity, and a Ph.D. in Religion. My sleeves, an esoteric and elitist symbol that I had, indeed, doctored the divine. The thick robe hovered barely above my ankles and zipped all the way up to my collarbone. How this man managed to press his way through all that fabric to spread his smarmy hands across my lower back in the act of “receiving a blessing” is beyond me.

But he did. Every time.

He pulled my tiny frame, tilting my pelvis ever closer to his body, only a basket full of gluten free Jesus between us.

I’d mentioned this to someone on the personnel committee and was assured that “he was of a different generation” and I should pay it no mind.

This time, however, was different.

As I inched the basket of bread closer to the man, he did not extend his hand. I gestured it closer, smiling awkwardly and saying, “Bread of life,” careful not to let my pitch rise at the end of my sentence as though I was asking a question. Or worse, permission.

The man looked me in the eye, shifted his sights to the bread, met my gaze once more, and opened his mouth.

Several seconds passed with his mouth agape.

Was he asking me to feed him? To place the intinctured bread into his wanting mouth?

This is normative in some traditions. Many Catholic priests, always men, place the elements in the mouths of kneeling congregants, but it’s never been the practice of congregational churches like mine.

I had placed the elements in the mouths of worshippers a few times in my ministry. When Parkinsons rendered a beloved member’s hands too shaky, she requested I serve her by placing the bread, dripping sugary sweet, into her mouth. Or a grandfather who suffered a stroke and needed my assistance to part his lips and place the bread of life into his mouth, massaging his cheeks for a moment afterwards so that he could chew and swallow.

These were hallowed moments. The stuff of ministry.

The man’s gaping pie hole was not that. There was a look in his eyes. Was it yearning? Desire? I couldn’t place it, but it felt so gross. Nothing in seminary trained me for this. Teaching Introduction to Worship and Ritual for four years as a professor offered no historical, theological, or pastoral resources for the creepy man’s salivating tongue inches from my face.

Not knowing what to do, I clamped the chalice between my middle and forefinger, balancing the breadbasket in the same hand the way one might at a cocktail party while trying manage a martini and flimsy plate of hors d’oeuvres. Trembling, my other hand snatched a chunk of bread, dipped it timidly into the chalice, and attempted to catapult it quickly into his open mouth. But he closed his lips around my fingers. I could simultaneously feel the gluten free body of Christ between my thumb and forefinger and his wet lips encasing my cuticles. His tongue caressed my fingertips.

He looked me in the eye and sucked. The man—a deacon—was sucking my fingers during communion.

Tears shot into my eyes as I yanked my hand back, clasping the quivering chalice, catching my breath, and preparing to serve the next person in line. The man lingered for a moment, staring into my teary eyes, then looking me up and down, and sauntering back to the first pew where he’d gawk at me throughout my sermon only to complain of how feminist, and gay, and political it was afterwards.

Bishop Budde may be the only clergy woman to preach to the president, but she was not alone in her pulpit. All the clergywomen who have bravely spoken truth to power with grace and poise while a predator sat on her first pew were there alongside her.

My story is not a unique one. It’s the story of countless clergywomen who have been gaslit into believing we’re being too sensitive or deemed a “nasty,” “uninspiring” “so-called bishop” by sexual predators in power. Bishop Budde is brave, to be sure. But she is far from alone.