Guest post 2 on NDAs by Into Account Executive Director Stephanie Krehbiel.

The short version: NDAs sustain and reproduce the most spiritually violent tendencies in organizational cultures. Abuse of all kinds–sexual, psychological, financial, spiritual, physical, emotional–thrives in cultures of silence. The normalization of NDAs makes that silence feel both necessary and legally enforceable.

Guest post 1 on NDAs by Into Account Executive Director Stephanie Krehbiel.

I've been trying for years to get Mennonites to start paying attention to abuse-related NDAs, and mostly I feel like I've failed. Mennonites have so much trouble believing that their institutions are like other institutions. But that's the case for every religious group that has its own institutions… The comprehensive silence they can buy with that hush money is just far too tempting.

Are we a “peace church”? A leading producer of avant-garde “peace theology”? Founders of a globally significant “peace organization”? The ultimate apologists for Christian non-violence? I long to see “non-violence” begin to refer not only to our refusal of military service and our migrations to avoid conscription, but to the work of naming and identifying our own violence, hearing from those who have been harmed by it, confessing and rejecting it, and repairing the harm it has caused….

When stories of marginalization, betrayal and pain – carefully documented and courageously shared – can be honored and believed in our communities as part of our very “catechesis,” then our communities can become places where “harm is repaired and offenders are held accountable.”