NDAs compromise our Christian witness in the aftermath of misconduct. It’s time to end them.
If the cruelty of silence took a shape, it would be the scold’s bridle. Fixed to a woman’s head, this brutal device of torture pressed a metal bit against the wearer’s tongue, preventing speech by making it unbearably painful. The goal of this device was clear: to silence women whose words might somehow pose a challenge to the powerful structures or persons of society.
It is easy to look on these 16th-century devices with horror, to judge our early modern ancestors as backward and barbaric. But as the organizational studies scholar Victoria Pagan argues, there are striking similarities between the scold’s bridle and our use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) today. Though NDAs are not physical instruments of torture, they can function as modern muzzles, legally binding individuals to silence and protecting those in power from accountability.
Originally created as a method of protecting trade secrets in the technology sector, NDAs are contracts (or clauses within contracts) that attempt to prevent a person from sharing knowledge. In other words, NDAs stop a person from speaking about their experience. In this context, NDAs might be harmless. After all, is it not acceptable to protect trade secrets?
The pressing problem arises when this legal device is used in situations involving misconduct. In these cases, NDAs can be incorporated into settlement agreements to prevent reputational damage to a perpetrator of misconduct and to the institution in which the misconduct has taken place. They do this by prohibiting the survivor from speaking about their experiences. As one anti-NDA campaign puts it, they attempt to buy silence from a survivor.
For a survivor of misconduct who might feel compelled to sign this document (and who is always the person with the least power in these situations), the consequences can be devastating. By enforcing secrecy, NDAs can prevent survivors from speaking about their experiences—in ways that might not only warn others of potential danger but also help their own healing. How can one engage in therapy or receive spiritual care if they are not allowed to speak to their therapist or spiritual care provider about their experience? The use of NDAs in these situations can perpetuate survivors’ trauma, placing them under psychological burdens of which they cannot even speak.
I believe the horror and revulsion with which we view devices like the scold’s bridle will one day mirror how we see legal devices like NDAs in situations of misconduct. We are already witnessing the shift. Nearly 30 U.S. states have banned the use of NDAs in cases of sexual misconduct, as has the government of Prince Edward Island. The Canadian Bar Association is lobbying other governments here to do the same.
Sin is not only personal; it is also social. “There is sin as deed and sin as illness,” wrote the late Canadian theologian Gregory Baum. While understanding sin as deed focuses us on individual actions, understanding it as illness and blindness helps us see it as a collective force that harms us slowly, often silently, and unawares. “It destroys us,” Baum says, “while we are unable to recognize its features and escape its power.” This sin is social in the sense that it “resides in a group, a community, a people.” Though it may seem vague, diffused as it is across many people, make no mistake: social sin concretely and often severely harms individuals—our siblings in Christ.
NDAs used in situations like abuse or wrongdoing are a social sin. Like an undetected cancer in the body of our church, they multiply the harms of misconduct to the detriment of the most vulnerable members of that body. By their very nature, steeped in secrecy and silence, NDAs prevent us from knowing the extent of their use in the Anglican Church of Canada, but of this we can be sure: their very possibility quietly corrupts the integrity of our Christian witness.
In contrast to the kind of ministry Jesus inaugurates (Luke 4:18-19), our use of NDAs in situations of misconduct harms the poor, binds the captives, keeps us blind to our sins, and smothers any proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favour with the hypocrisy of our institutionally enforced silence. Survivors deserve better. We all deserve better. And we owe it to Jesus to be the kind of people who prioritize the aspirations of his gospel over the institutional protectionism more reflective of the principalities and powers of this present age.
It is time for us, as a church, to take up Jesus’ proclamation by refusing to use NDAs in situations of misconduct. We can bring good news to the poor. We can proclaim release to the captives. We can recover our moral sight amid the blindness of our social sin. We can let the oppressed go free. And we can do this by renouncing the misuse of NDAs in June at General Synod.
Make no mistake: the true crisis facing our church is not financial—it is moral. We are closer to bankruptcy than we realize. Buying silence is a social sin we cannot afford.
