Covering your Pastor's Nakedness

In Predators in the Pulpit, Chris Efinda, on the Bereans blog, talks about the doctrine of covering your father's nakedness. In spiritually abusive groups, sins of the father are routinely covered up by the "sons," the enablers of abuse.
Efinda says that it becomes a spiritual test, "When a spiritual son happens to witness his dad in a sinful act, he needs to treat the incident as a divine test of his own loyalty and must promptly cover dad’s nakedness."
This justifies the perpetuation of abuse in churches and groups and gives a scriptural veneer to the most atrocious acts of the clergy.
 Those who help abusive pastors, then, think they are doing something noble, when in reality they cement in place abusive church leaders.

Sometimes they see

Jana and Barry Bishop confess to enabling an abusive church leadership and offer an apology to spiritual abuse victims. Barry's post is here. Jana runs the Secret Life of a Bishop's Wife: What you may not see on Sunday blog, an excellent resource for those trying to figure out what goes through the head of those enabling spiritual abuse in churches.

Is Submission Necessary?

Is submission to church leaders necessary for spiritual protection? This site, part of a larger site called Covering and Authority, provides a very clear response to the issue of "covering" in churches. It shows how recent a doctrine this is and points out the logical fallacies of the practice.