What do you do when a space that once felt sacred suddenly feels unsafe?

That’s not a theoretical question for me. It’s personal.

For much of my life, I’ve loved the Church. To me it stood for healing and of hope. But over the years, I’ve heard too many stories that make my heart break. Stories whispered in fear. Stories silenced by shame. Stories of abuse, especially sexual abuse that happened not on the streets but within the walls of churches and seminaries. In homes that called themselves “Christian.” By leaders who carried the title “pastor” or “worship leader” but exploited people rather than protected them.

These stories are not far away. They are here. They are ours. 

As a South Asian woman and pastor, nonprofit founder, and mentor, I cannot deny the reality of the brokenness in what we picture as sacred spaces – brokenness in how women suffer.

My journey toward recognizing, recovering from, and seeking to heal other womens’ trauma did not begin in a classroom. It began in community. In listening. In sitting beside survivors who carried pain not just in their stories but in their bodies. In grieving with them over the silence of the Church. In realizing that often, the Church has cared more about preserving its name than protecting its people. So I write not from a distance but from proximity. Not primarily as a scholar but as a sister. Not from theory alone but from the trenches of praxis. And this reflection is not a position paper. It is a pastoral lament. A theological plea. A vision to see shalom breaking through the silence of sacred spaces.

The Cry of the Broken

Sometimes abuse manifests in physical treatment and in how it is handled by the church. A woman who survived abuse once told me, “The first violation was when he touched me. The second was when the Church told me to keep quiet.” Her trauma did not begin and end with that physical abuse. It deepened when her community failed to respond with justice and compassion. When friends distanced themselves and encouraged prayer but discouraged pursuit of justice. When sermons preached grace without accountability. She said, “I began to feel like I was the one who had dirtied the Church.” 

Another young woman in her twenties described how her theological college handled a sexual harassment incident. She was brave enough to speak up. She followed the rules. She submitted a written report. But when it reached the leadership, they treated her as if she were a threat to the institution. She said, “I felt like I had sinned by telling the truth.”

A third young woman once shared that her pastor would repeatedly ask her to “stay back after service” for counselling. It began with concern. Then it became control. Then abuse. She was nineteen. When she tried to report it, she was met with disbelief. People questioned her motives: “Why didn’t you speak up earlier?” “Are you trying to ruin his ministry?” She said to me, “He was the one who hurt me, but it’s the Church that broke me.” 

I have met women who said they were told to fast and pray after being molested by a Christian leader. Others were urged to forgive quickly, to avoid “bitterness.” One woman was even asked to apologize to her abuser’s wife for “bringing shame” to the family. Another pastor would preach on purity after molesting a member the previous day. These are not stories from outside the community of faith. These are stories from inside our sanctuaries. And they are not isolated cases. They echo across seminaries and congregations in South Asia. Sometimes the abuser is a pastor. Sometimes a teacher. The tragedy deepens when survivors of physical abuse are told to forgive before they are believed, to stay silent so that the ministry will not suffer, to reconcile without repair. When sacred spaces turn away, they do not merely fail to protect. They participate in the trauma.

At other times abuse manifests in spiritual and institutional attitudes and policies. A young woman once said to me, “I don’t feel safe in my church. But if I say that, I’m accused of being rebellious.” She wasn’t angry. She was desperate. She had grown up being taught that women should be silent, that they shouldn’t correct a man, that their primary identity was as helper. She had been led to believe that questioning this narrative was questioning God Himself. 

Another woman said, “Even when I am in leadership, I feel like I have to hide my strength. I don’t want to come off as aggressive. I always have to calculate how I speak.” This is the trauma of being made invisible while being expected to serve. It is the contradiction of being needed but not empowered. 

The pain of this kind of suffering doesn’t show up in bruises. It shows up in diminished voice. It shows up in burnout. It shows up in churches where women are present but never platformed. As one woman told me, “It impacts the whole identity of a person. If you’re growing up with the belief that you are inherently lesser in value, it fuels the way you develop. It affects your confidence and the way you present yourself. It distorts your identity and your view of yourself.” This captures the theological and psychological rupture that happens when personhood is diminished by cultural constructs.

Indeed, one of the hardest parts of advocating for safety in the Church – whether physical or spiritual or emotional – is the trauma of being misunderstood. People say things like: “She’s just bitter,” “She’s trying to stir up division,” or “She’s a feminist in Christian clothing.” But I’ve seen the cost of silence. I’ve met the girls who are told their abuse was “God’s will.” I’ve seen women step down from ministry because they were exhausted from fighting to be believed. I’ve heard about survivors who stopped going to church not because they stopped loving Jesus but because His people had failed them. 

This is why we need a theology that refuses to spiritualize systems of injustice. A theology that names what is broken and refuses to look away. In the last few weeks, in the course of my work, I have heard stories from victims of sexual abuse in well-known ministries and churches. As I write this, there are survivors still waiting to be heard. Their stories remain hidden, buried beneath fear and power. I find myself grappling with how to pursue justice for them and how to ensure that these accounts are not silenced, how to protect those who speak, and how to hold the powerful accountable without causing further harm. Sometimes I feel powerless.

A Vision of Shalom: Safety as Sacred

The word that keeps returning to me is shalom.

We have often imagined shalom as peace. But biblically, shalom is not just about quiet or stillness. It is about the wholeness of creation. It is about right relationships between God, self, others, and the world. It is the garden in Genesis, the new city in Revelation, and the life of Jesus in between. Shalom is what sin disrupts. And shalom is what the cross restores.

To make this theological vision specific, concrete, and everyday: We have too often treated safeguarding as a compliance matter. But shalom insists that safety is theological. It flows from the very nature of God. God is not indifferent to suffering. God does not protect the powerful at the cost of the vulnerable. In Christ, God enters our woundedness. He names it. He heals it. He restores what was stolen.

If shalom is absent – even in such apparently mundane matters as safeguarding practices or whistleblowing policies or who gets to speak in the church service – the Gospel is incomplete. Safety and dignity are not an add-on to mission. They are mission. They are not separate from the Church’s call. They are at the heart of it. I’ve seen what happens when safety becomes sacred. I’ve seen survivors reclaim their voice. I’ve seen girls laugh again, not because their trauma was erased but because it was no longer defining. Even that someone believed them and validated their experience began a healing process. This is what shalom looks like in real time. It is slow. It is messy. It is sacred ground.

And so shalom cannot be built on silence. It requires us to enter pain. To sit with survivors. To stop protecting platforms and start protecting people. To believe that the work of justice is holy. Shalom is not a soft word. It is not passive. It is not about calm atmospheres or quiet worship. Shalom is the roar of justice echoing through the temple courts. It is the overturning of tables. It is the healing of bleeding women who were excluded from the system. It is Jesus saying, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole” – not just healed!

Towards a Shalom-Affirming Narrative

While anti-shalom theological discourses often seek to silence women in general and women who are victims especially, to cover sin, and to protect abusers, shalom-seeking theologies give room for women to speak and act, name sin, break secrecy, and seek justice and healing. Sometimes anti-shalom theologies praise women for being “submissive,” discourage women from preaching or teaching, warn women about “overstepping, and even quote Scripture to keep women silent. But shalom-seeking theology does not reduce women. It releases them. It does so by exposing sin. By breaking secrecy. By telling the truth about what happened. And then, only then, can the Gospel begin to rebuild. 

And we must remember that healing is not linear. It is not quick. It is not easy. Some survivors have spent decades reclaiming their sense of worth.

In my own case, trauma took root in the way Scripture was interpreted to define my worth. I had internalized teachings that told me that I did not belong in leadership and that questioning power was rebellion against God Himself. These shalom-deficient theological discourses that distort God’s design for humanity shaped how I saw myself, God, and others. Over time, they damaged my sense of identity, making silence seem like holiness and subservience seem like faithfulness. The Gospel had to enter that space not just to comfort me but to confront those lies. Through Scripture and the work of the Spirit, I began to see a God who restores dignity, a God whose image is not divided by gender. Slowly, I learned to see myself as one made in His image, free to lead, speak, and serve without fear.

Specifically, time at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity became a turning point for me. Writing my paper “Is the Gospel Good News for Women?” helped me name these tensions and embrace freedom through a deeper understanding of God’s heart. Rev John Scott’s words at my graduation, “The Gospel is indeed good news for women,” affirmed what I had begun to believe, that the Gospel of Jesus is a Gospel of shalom, wholeness, and inclusion. 

My healing did not happen overnight. It is still ongoing. The Gospel began to heal me not by giving quick answers but by reintroducing me to Jesus. I was moved by how Jesus actually saw women. He listened to their pain. He entrusted them with messages of resurrection. He never silenced their voices or shamed their stories. Slowly, I began to believe that my worth did not depend on permission from systems or the brokenness of culture. It was spoken over me by God. Today, I know that I do not need to prove my worth. I am who God made me. That identity, that I am made in the image of God, comes before gender, before culture, before expectations.

Shalom in Action

In December 2012, India woke up to a national nightmare. A 23-year-old woman, later known as Nirbhaya, “the fearless one,” was brutally attacked on a bus in New Delhi. Her death shook the conscience of a nation. For me, it was more than a news event; it was a turning point. It forced me to see both the world and the Church differently. If women are unsafe on the streets, they can also feel unseen and unheard within systems shaped by harmful theological assumptions that have, over time, treated them as lesser. Yet even within these sacred spaces, I began to sense God’s invitation. This was an invitation to mend – not to retreat or to attack but to speak over lies. God was calling me to return, to name what was broken, and to seek His vision of shalom both within the Church and outside its walls. 

This conviction has led me toward several practical steps. After Nirbhaya’s death, I began several awareness campaigns for women’s safety. Following my time at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, I launched the nonprofit Women of Worth. To me, it is more than an organization. It is a movement to replace damaged narratives about women. It has grown, becoming one of the voices in India that has dared to reach women who have been falling prey to destructive patterns.

In addition, in 2021, I pioneered the Disruptive Women movement, a city gospel movement inspired by Mac Pier’s book A Disruptive Gospel. My vision is to create a Gospel-shaped disruption that dismantles injustice and challenges the lies that have stolen women’s worth. Disruptive Women is a city gospel movement catalyzing the flourishing of women in all spheres of influence by mobilizing the Church to reflect the fullness of God’s image as male and female, to restore shalom and advance Gospel transformation. The movement is about disruption that accelerates transformative change for women and girls. In this journey of uniting the Church to rise for women, I saw the urgency of addressing brokenness within sacred spaces, including churches, Christian organizations, and seminaries. We began workshops under the banner Churches as Safe Spaces. 

My recent book Restoring Sacred Trust grew out of this work. It expresses a dream of seeing churches rise to take their place in the healing of those torn by injustice, silenced by harmful theology, and forgotten in spaces that should have been sacred.

Conclusion

This reflection shares what I’ve learned through the painful journey of discerning where the Church must stand in the face of abuse. I am committed to being an advocate for shalom the rest of my life. To create safe sacred spaces is not to follow a trend. It is to follow Jesus. We cannot separate the message of salvation from the work of restoration. The Gospel is not just about going to heaven. It is about being made whole here and allowing the Gospel to shape every aspect of life. And this wholeness must enter our churches, our seminaries, our policies, our pulpits.

A few weeks ago, I asked my daughter, now nineteen, how she experiences the world as a young woman. She paused and said, “I do not usually think about it until someone reminds me, that is, when people comment on my body, warn me to look out for my safety, or tell me what not to wear. That is when I realize [that] I am not just a person. I am a girl in a dangerous world.” 

Her words broke something in me. We seek to raise confident, faith-filled daughters, yet the world still teaches them to shrink, and sometimes that message comes from within the Church. This is why I have spent much of my life creating spaces where girls and women can reclaim their worth, where personhood is shaped not by cultural hierarchies but by the presence of God. The Church must recognize that harm is not only physical but theological: when pain is silenced or dismissed, it distorts identity and damages faith. Healing begins when we listen before legislating and repent with humility. The call to the Church is to lament without performance and rebuild with justice and care. These are not just institutional reforms but spiritual practices of discipleship. A shalom-seeking Church becomes sacred again when it listens to survivors and honors their stories. We do not need to pretend we have done everything right. We need only to confess. We need to name our wounds and show our scars. For in the hands of the Healer, even broken spaces can become places of shalom.

References

Pier, Mac. A Disruptive Gospel: Stories and Strategies for Transforming Your City. Grand Rapids, MI:     Baker Books, 2016.