A Southern Baptist reckoning
May 23, 2022 9:12 AM Subscribe
At last summer's meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (previously), delegates voted to force their executive committee to turn over confidential documents about the church's handling of sexual abuse cases to an independent review committee. Almost a year later, the report (trigger warning: sexual abuse) has been released. It says that church leadership routinely silenced and disparaged sexual abuse survivors, ignored calls for policies to stop predators, and dismissed reforms that they privately said could protect children but might cost the SBC money if abuse victims later sued.
More reporting: NYTimes, Washington Post.
I grew up gay in Texas being regularly told by Baptists that I was full of sexual sin, an evil on the land. No, the Southern Baptist Convention is the evil. (See also: Catholic Church, Boy Scouts.)
posted by Nelson at 9:20 AM on May 23, 2022 [26 favorites]
I grew up gay in Texas being regularly told by Baptists that I was full of sexual sin, an evil on the land. No, the Southern Baptist Convention is the evil. (See also: Catholic Church, Boy Scouts.)
posted by Nelson at 9:20 AM on May 23, 2022 [26 favorites]
The SBC’s governing documents allowed for the removal of churches that ordained women or “endorse” homosexuality, but leaders said they had no such oversight when it came to churches led by convicted sex offenders.posted by clawsoon at 9:21 AM on May 23, 2022 [33 favorites]
After the delegates voted last summer, there was still a big fight in the Executive Committee about waiving attorney-client privilege on this issue. Not surprising that it was a big fight, given how deeply the lawyers turned out to be implicated in the coverups.
posted by clawsoon at 9:32 AM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 9:32 AM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
On NPR this morning, the term “criminal conspiracy” was used in the midst of the reporting. Though still half asleep, I immediately thought “Yes!” So when does that investigation begin? Bring these hypocritical creeps into court, criminal court.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:36 AM on May 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 9:36 AM on May 23, 2022 [16 favorites]
I expect we'll be soon be hearing some variation of the talking point "Separation of church and state means the courts have no Constitutional jurisdiction over criminal allegations involving members of the clergy."
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:47 AM on May 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:47 AM on May 23, 2022 [18 favorites]
The Houston Chronicle describes the report as a bombshell. I'm not saying they're wrong, but I'd say it was fairly easy to predict the overall gist ahead of time if not the specifics.
posted by plonkee at 10:05 AM on May 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by plonkee at 10:05 AM on May 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
But the liberal atheists are “groomers!”
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:13 AM on May 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:13 AM on May 23, 2022 [15 favorites]
The denomination has long emphasized that its decentralized structure meant it had little ability to force churches to take any action, because legally each church stood alone and did not report to higher authorities. But the report alleged that a handful of powerful leaders had the ability to stonewall abuse reports and attempts at accountability and reform.
It also found a pattern of intimidating survivors of sexual assault and their advocates, and said they were “denigrated as ‘opportunists.’”
Always the same...
posted by subdee at 10:19 AM on May 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
It also found a pattern of intimidating survivors of sexual assault and their advocates, and said they were “denigrated as ‘opportunists.’”
Always the same...
posted by subdee at 10:19 AM on May 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
Actually no I take it back, this has a distinctly evangelical spin:
In an internal email, August Boto, an influential executive committee leader, described advocates’ efforts as a “satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism,” referring to the work of Christa Brown, a survivor, and the advocate Rachael Denhollander, who has worked with the denomination, as “the devil being temporarily successful.” Mr. Boto could not be reached immediately for comment.
posted by subdee at 10:21 AM on May 23, 2022 [23 favorites]
In an internal email, August Boto, an influential executive committee leader, described advocates’ efforts as a “satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism,” referring to the work of Christa Brown, a survivor, and the advocate Rachael Denhollander, who has worked with the denomination, as “the devil being temporarily successful.” Mr. Boto could not be reached immediately for comment.
posted by subdee at 10:21 AM on May 23, 2022 [23 favorites]
Three voices I've found helpful:
Chrissy Stroop, in 2019: "The most effective solution to evangelical abuse will be for young people—and people of conscience of all ages—to continue to abandon the SBC and other evangelical denominations. The rot goes to the core, and the internal responses are destined to fail. What makes me so sure of this? In a nutshell, the SBC (and white evangelicalism writ large) continue to cling to (white) Christian supremacism and patriarchy, which they justify with reference to a doctrine of “biblical inerrancy” that just happens to function primarily to uphold straight white male authority over women, children, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community." (Playboy.com: Why the Southern Baptists Won't Solve Their Abuse Problem)
Kristen Du Mez: "I'm not an SBC insider by any stretch, but one of the first things I did when I started to write JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE was consult a lawyer because I knew sexual abuse and cover-ups needed to be part of the story. How did I know? Because I'd been listening to women." (Substack, A response to SBC abuse investigation)
Anthea Butler: "One more thing. This report needs to be on every major network and newspaper because the Southern Baptist Convention is big lynchpin of Republican Party politics. If you think they won't try to push this abuse report under the rug while pushing CRT, attacking Trans kids..."
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2022 [49 favorites]
Chrissy Stroop, in 2019: "The most effective solution to evangelical abuse will be for young people—and people of conscience of all ages—to continue to abandon the SBC and other evangelical denominations. The rot goes to the core, and the internal responses are destined to fail. What makes me so sure of this? In a nutshell, the SBC (and white evangelicalism writ large) continue to cling to (white) Christian supremacism and patriarchy, which they justify with reference to a doctrine of “biblical inerrancy” that just happens to function primarily to uphold straight white male authority over women, children, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community." (Playboy.com: Why the Southern Baptists Won't Solve Their Abuse Problem)
Kristen Du Mez: "I'm not an SBC insider by any stretch, but one of the first things I did when I started to write JESUS AND JOHN WAYNE was consult a lawyer because I knew sexual abuse and cover-ups needed to be part of the story. How did I know? Because I'd been listening to women." (Substack, A response to SBC abuse investigation)
Anthea Butler: "One more thing. This report needs to be on every major network and newspaper because the Southern Baptist Convention is big lynchpin of Republican Party politics. If you think they won't try to push this abuse report under the rug while pushing CRT, attacking Trans kids..."
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:23 AM on May 23, 2022 [49 favorites]
If you think they won't try to push this abuse report under the rug while pushing CRT, attacking Trans kids..."
Paying for pro-Depp articles to be promoted on Facebook....
posted by subdee at 10:27 AM on May 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
Paying for pro-Depp articles to be promoted on Facebook....
posted by subdee at 10:27 AM on May 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
A religious organization suppressed reports of sexual abuse?
This is my shocked face.
posted by Paladin1138 at 10:31 AM on May 23, 2022 [10 favorites]
This is my shocked face.
posted by Paladin1138 at 10:31 AM on May 23, 2022 [10 favorites]
The rot goes to the core, and the internal responses are destined to fail. What makes me so sure of this? In a nutshell, the SBC (and white evangelicalism writ large) continue to cling to (white) Christian supremacism and patriarchy
The fact that ~15,000 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of this investigation makes me wonder if there'll ultimately be some kind of theological shift as a result of all this. Many church members support rigid patriarchy in the form of complementarianism, but they hate the consequences of rigid patriarchy in the form of abuse and its coverup. What will the result of the collision be?
posted by clawsoon at 10:34 AM on May 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
The fact that ~15,000 delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of this investigation makes me wonder if there'll ultimately be some kind of theological shift as a result of all this. Many church members support rigid patriarchy in the form of complementarianism, but they hate the consequences of rigid patriarchy in the form of abuse and its coverup. What will the result of the collision be?
posted by clawsoon at 10:34 AM on May 23, 2022 [4 favorites]
What will the result of the collision be?
The renaming of the no true Scotsman fallacy to the no true Southern Baptist fallacy?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:37 AM on May 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
The renaming of the no true Scotsman fallacy to the no true Southern Baptist fallacy?
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 10:37 AM on May 23, 2022 [12 favorites]
If the "hundreds of millions of dollars in annual donations" are more important than preventing sexual abuse, maybe it's time for the SBC and other churches to start paying some fucking taxes
posted by caution live frogs at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2022 [48 favorites]
posted by caution live frogs at 10:39 AM on May 23, 2022 [48 favorites]
Note the overlap between SBC membership and the group of people who believe that Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats are secretly controlling the American government.
The more you fixate on the imagined crimes of an imaginary foe, the more likely you are to reject credible evidence of those very crimes among your own leaders.
posted by cubeb at 10:52 AM on May 23, 2022 [23 favorites]
The more you fixate on the imagined crimes of an imaginary foe, the more likely you are to reject credible evidence of those very crimes among your own leaders.
posted by cubeb at 10:52 AM on May 23, 2022 [23 favorites]
Many church members support rigid patriarchy in the form of complementarianism, but they hate the consequences of rigid patriarchy in the form of abuse and its coverup. What will the result of the collision be?
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. My parents and grandparents were SBC preachers and committee members. I had a front-row view to how the SBC handled previous worldview collisions, starting with the 1979 "Conservative Resurgence." While I'm decades out from that world, nothing I've seen indicates it's changed at all. And based on that? Those who want accountability and justice won't get it. They'll either leave or swallow their convictions and remain, silent and loyal.
The SBC exists because its founders loved slavery. The big question it's still wrestling with is, "Can women really be independent people?" The SBC's Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which lives in the denomination's flagship Southern Seminary, decided that today was the day to drop a negative and duplicitous review (their second!) of Beth Allison Barr's "The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth."
The leaders will release statements of lament and tears, which is just the next Pokémon evolution of "thoughts and prayers." The rot existed from the beginning. There is no solid foundation. Tear it all down.
posted by sgranade at 10:57 AM on May 23, 2022 [34 favorites]
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. My parents and grandparents were SBC preachers and committee members. I had a front-row view to how the SBC handled previous worldview collisions, starting with the 1979 "Conservative Resurgence." While I'm decades out from that world, nothing I've seen indicates it's changed at all. And based on that? Those who want accountability and justice won't get it. They'll either leave or swallow their convictions and remain, silent and loyal.
The SBC exists because its founders loved slavery. The big question it's still wrestling with is, "Can women really be independent people?" The SBC's Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, which lives in the denomination's flagship Southern Seminary, decided that today was the day to drop a negative and duplicitous review (their second!) of Beth Allison Barr's "The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth."
The leaders will release statements of lament and tears, which is just the next Pokémon evolution of "thoughts and prayers." The rot existed from the beginning. There is no solid foundation. Tear it all down.
posted by sgranade at 10:57 AM on May 23, 2022 [34 favorites]
The more you fixate on the imagined crimes of an imaginary foe, the more likely you are to reject credible evidence of those very crimes among your own leaders.
Or, you recognize the existence of the problem, but require an external enemy to project it onto because you can't admit it is your own community's problem.
posted by subdee at 10:59 AM on May 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
I went poking around on Patheos to find religious responses. So far I've only found this. It starts out well enough, saying that victims and survivors should be supported.
But then it slips into a different gear, talking about how we should focus on our own sins instead of the sins of others, which is a classic technique that Christian minimizers of abuse use. "Stop thinking about how bad the abuser is, and start thinking about how bad you are."
posted by clawsoon at 11:26 AM on May 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
But then it slips into a different gear, talking about how we should focus on our own sins instead of the sins of others, which is a classic technique that Christian minimizers of abuse use. "Stop thinking about how bad the abuser is, and start thinking about how bad you are."
posted by clawsoon at 11:26 AM on May 23, 2022 [8 favorites]
The more you fixate on the imagined crimes of an imaginary foe, the more likely you are to reject credible evidence of those very crimes among your own leaders.
If only there was a teaching from Jesus directly expressing this exact point.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2022 [27 favorites]
If only there was a teaching from Jesus directly expressing this exact point.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:34 AM on May 23, 2022 [27 favorites]
The more you fixate on the imagined crimes of an imaginary foe, the more likely you are to reject credible evidence of those very crimes among your own leaders.
I will add to this that part of the reason these groups think there is a ring of secret pedophiles and the media is lying and politicians are all corrupt and in collusion with the bad guys is because they know what goes on behind closed doors on their side of the fence and assume it is that way every where.
posted by domino at 11:35 AM on May 23, 2022 [49 favorites]
I will add to this that part of the reason these groups think there is a ring of secret pedophiles and the media is lying and politicians are all corrupt and in collusion with the bad guys is because they know what goes on behind closed doors on their side of the fence and assume it is that way every where.
posted by domino at 11:35 AM on May 23, 2022 [49 favorites]
I strongly recommend reading Rachael Denhollander's response. (She is the survivor, and attorney, who was first to publicly report Larry Nassar and is also a survivor of abuse by a church official. She has been working for years to get the SBC to wake up to the abuse happening within their churches.)
posted by mcduff at 11:55 AM on May 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by mcduff at 11:55 AM on May 23, 2022 [13 favorites]
the SBC (and white evangelicalism writ large) continue to cling to (white) Christian supremacism and patriarchy, which they justify with reference to a doctrine of “biblical inerrancy” that just happens to function primarily to uphold straight white male authority over women, children, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community.
N.B.: There are no white men in the bible, EVERY person in the bible is a POC.
posted by mikelieman at 3:31 PM on May 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
N.B.: There are no white men in the bible, EVERY person in the bible is a POC.
posted by mikelieman at 3:31 PM on May 23, 2022 [22 favorites]
Reading Rachael Denhollander's response, where she draws parallels between the Spotlight investigation of the Archdiocese of Boston and the SBC, I'm struck by how completely opposing sets of church polity and governance end up with identical results. If your goal is to protect your church at the expense of people, then you will find a way to use your polity to enable that. But, the people are the church.
posted by plonkee at 3:32 PM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by plonkee at 3:32 PM on May 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse (Russell Moore in Christianity Today)
The two things that stood out for me: "inter-faith marriage" rather than interdenominational (the ultimatum that Russell's wife made) and the not even allowing women to preach on Mother's Day.
posted by freethefeet at 3:56 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
The two things that stood out for me: "inter-faith marriage" rather than interdenominational (the ultimatum that Russell's wife made) and the not even allowing women to preach on Mother's Day.
posted by freethefeet at 3:56 PM on May 23, 2022 [6 favorites]
There are no white men in the bible, EVERY person in the bible is a POC.
Counterpoint: The Southern Baptist Convention organized itself in 1845 as the church of Southern slaveholders.
Once you rewrite Christianity to justify owning, torturing, raping, and murdering other human beings, it's hard to resurrect that Christianity into something that doesn't hurt people.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:33 PM on May 23, 2022 [19 favorites]
Counterpoint: The Southern Baptist Convention organized itself in 1845 as the church of Southern slaveholders.
Once you rewrite Christianity to justify owning, torturing, raping, and murdering other human beings, it's hard to resurrect that Christianity into something that doesn't hurt people.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:33 PM on May 23, 2022 [19 favorites]
But the liberal atheists are “groomers!”
Every accusation is an admission.
posted by jzb at 5:53 PM on May 23, 2022 [21 favorites]
Every accusation is an admission.
posted by jzb at 5:53 PM on May 23, 2022 [21 favorites]
I was raised SBC. Root it out and burn it down. There is nothing of value in the SBC, and plenty of better places for decent people to worship if they so choose. The whole denomination is founded on a monstrous desire to support slavery, it's nothing but ugliness from beginning to end.
posted by emjaybee at 8:19 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 8:19 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
"N.B.: There are no white men in the bible, EVERY person in the bible is a POC."
Possibly the Roman cops who killed Jesus were white.
Which, seems pretty par for the course for the SBC.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:59 PM on May 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
Possibly the Roman cops who killed Jesus were white.
Which, seems pretty par for the course for the SBC.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:59 PM on May 23, 2022 [14 favorites]
I'm going to have to read the report at much more length, but what I keep thinking about right now is, I can't decide if I'm shocked it took this long, because people were having these conversations back in 2003-2004 and warning that the tsunami of sex abuse accusations was coming for evangelical Protestants; or if I'm shocked that the report happened at all ever. Because a big part of me thought it never would.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:12 PM on May 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:12 PM on May 23, 2022 [11 favorites]
...plenty of better places for decent people to worship if they so choose.
I was raised in a sect far that looked down on the SBC as 'moderate' even in the 80's and 90s. There's plenty worse sects that folks could end up too. Especially kids who don't have a choice where they're forced to go.
Though, I'm far more concerned with the what kind of congregations the perpetrators and collaborators wash up in.
posted by furnace.heart at 9:49 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
I was raised in a sect far that looked down on the SBC as 'moderate' even in the 80's and 90s. There's plenty worse sects that folks could end up too. Especially kids who don't have a choice where they're forced to go.
Though, I'm far more concerned with the what kind of congregations the perpetrators and collaborators wash up in.
posted by furnace.heart at 9:49 PM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]
Possibly the Roman cops who killed Jesus were white.
Depends on whether Italians count as white, which is still an open question in some communities.
posted by clawsoon at 5:24 AM on May 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
Depends on whether Italians count as white, which is still an open question in some communities.
posted by clawsoon at 5:24 AM on May 24, 2022 [8 favorites]
I am most fascinated that I see no mention of any assaults on boys. Can't help but think that's too extreme for SBC folks to even mention.
posted by Goofyy at 5:55 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Goofyy at 5:55 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm struck by how completely opposing sets of church polity and governance end up with identical results.
I've been reading some of the reports from the massive Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which interviewed thousands of survivors plus representatives from dozens of institutions. Different churches had different governance structures, but they had the same Bible, and I noticed that a specific set of Biblical principles which enabled abuse and coverup, mostly from the Pauline epistles, were used by every church:
- Obey authority. Women obey men; children obey adults; slaves obey masters, church members obey church elders. (Romans 13:1-5, Colossians 3:18-22, Ephesians 5:22-24, Ephesians 6:1-5, Hebrews 13:17, Proverbs 13:24.) When a revered man of God tells you to do something, you do it. When he explains why it's your fault, you accept it. If you tell your parents, they give you a Biblical beating for telling lies about a revered man of God.
- Don't go to court; resolve your disputes inside the church so that unbelievers won't see you fighting. (1 Corinthians 6:1-11) Based on this scripture, churches create internal investigation mechanisms which are almost always more concerned with protecting the reputation of the church and its leaders than with justice for past victims or prevention of future victimization. Victims are told that if they go to the press or to court, they'll be harming the mission of the church and thereby dooming innocent people to hell who would've otherwise been saved. This is a heavy burden for many victims who are believers, and is effective in keeping them silent and allowing abuse to continue.
- Forgive others; focus on your sins, not theirs, for we are all equally wretched before God. (Jesus' Sermon on the Mount comes into play here: Matthew 5:21-30, Matthew 6:12-15, Matthew 7:1-5, plus: John 8:7, Romans 3:9-23.) This is virtually always part of the script that abusive leaders and their supporters use to downplay the harm done to victims and to allow abusive leaders to remain in their positions. Victims are put under tremendous pressure to forgive and stay silent. If some rumor does make its way to the congregation, abusive leaders can get standing ovations from their congregations for tearfully confessing to vaguely-described sins and asking for forgiveness. Instead of focusing on the harm to victims, abusive leaders quickly pivot their congregations to the Biblical idea that we are all equal sinners in front of God. You should be thinking about the time you got mad and yelled at someone in traffic, since that's your sin. You should not be thinking about whatever it is that your leader is describing so vaguely, since that's his sin. Don't cast the first stone, fellow sinner. And don't ask too many questions.
- Sexual "impurity" is the main problem. (Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, 1 Corinthians 7:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 1 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 13:4, Ephesians 5:3.) Another common tactic of church abusers is to use scripture to convince their victims that they are both tied up in the impurity of what happened. Many abusers will take it further and tell the victim that they are totally at fault, even if they are a child, since they are the source of temptation. Congregations accept this logic shockingly often, shunning victims as mentally ill, unstable, seductive, demonic forces who led their wonderful man of God astray. Victims are shunned and rejected by church members, while abusive leaders go through "restorative" processes.
Now... I'm sure Paul would be horrified by these uses of the scriptures he wrote. Nonetheless, the principles that he laid down of obedience to authority, internal dispute resolution, forgiveness of other church members, and a focus on sexual impurity came together to produce the perfect institutional framework for abuse and coverup.
Paul wanted to build a respectable, orderly church, but instead his rules often create organizations that are desperate to maintain respectable and orderly appearances rather than face realities. I wonder if any of these scandals - all of these scandals - will eventually force a theological reckoning.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on May 24, 2022 [33 favorites]
I've been reading some of the reports from the massive Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which interviewed thousands of survivors plus representatives from dozens of institutions. Different churches had different governance structures, but they had the same Bible, and I noticed that a specific set of Biblical principles which enabled abuse and coverup, mostly from the Pauline epistles, were used by every church:
- Obey authority. Women obey men; children obey adults; slaves obey masters, church members obey church elders. (Romans 13:1-5, Colossians 3:18-22, Ephesians 5:22-24, Ephesians 6:1-5, Hebrews 13:17, Proverbs 13:24.) When a revered man of God tells you to do something, you do it. When he explains why it's your fault, you accept it. If you tell your parents, they give you a Biblical beating for telling lies about a revered man of God.
- Don't go to court; resolve your disputes inside the church so that unbelievers won't see you fighting. (1 Corinthians 6:1-11) Based on this scripture, churches create internal investigation mechanisms which are almost always more concerned with protecting the reputation of the church and its leaders than with justice for past victims or prevention of future victimization. Victims are told that if they go to the press or to court, they'll be harming the mission of the church and thereby dooming innocent people to hell who would've otherwise been saved. This is a heavy burden for many victims who are believers, and is effective in keeping them silent and allowing abuse to continue.
- Forgive others; focus on your sins, not theirs, for we are all equally wretched before God. (Jesus' Sermon on the Mount comes into play here: Matthew 5:21-30, Matthew 6:12-15, Matthew 7:1-5, plus: John 8:7, Romans 3:9-23.) This is virtually always part of the script that abusive leaders and their supporters use to downplay the harm done to victims and to allow abusive leaders to remain in their positions. Victims are put under tremendous pressure to forgive and stay silent. If some rumor does make its way to the congregation, abusive leaders can get standing ovations from their congregations for tearfully confessing to vaguely-described sins and asking for forgiveness. Instead of focusing on the harm to victims, abusive leaders quickly pivot their congregations to the Biblical idea that we are all equal sinners in front of God. You should be thinking about the time you got mad and yelled at someone in traffic, since that's your sin. You should not be thinking about whatever it is that your leader is describing so vaguely, since that's his sin. Don't cast the first stone, fellow sinner. And don't ask too many questions.
- Sexual "impurity" is the main problem. (Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, 1 Corinthians 7:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 1 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 13:4, Ephesians 5:3.) Another common tactic of church abusers is to use scripture to convince their victims that they are both tied up in the impurity of what happened. Many abusers will take it further and tell the victim that they are totally at fault, even if they are a child, since they are the source of temptation. Congregations accept this logic shockingly often, shunning victims as mentally ill, unstable, seductive, demonic forces who led their wonderful man of God astray. Victims are shunned and rejected by church members, while abusive leaders go through "restorative" processes.
Now... I'm sure Paul would be horrified by these uses of the scriptures he wrote. Nonetheless, the principles that he laid down of obedience to authority, internal dispute resolution, forgiveness of other church members, and a focus on sexual impurity came together to produce the perfect institutional framework for abuse and coverup.
Paul wanted to build a respectable, orderly church, but instead his rules often create organizations that are desperate to maintain respectable and orderly appearances rather than face realities. I wonder if any of these scandals - all of these scandals - will eventually force a theological reckoning.
posted by clawsoon at 6:00 AM on May 24, 2022 [33 favorites]
Good round-up from John Fea: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s third-party abuse investigation report was just released. It’s horrifying.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:59 AM on May 24, 2022
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:59 AM on May 24, 2022
I depressed myself looking on Twitter yesterday - the bigger stink there is the fact that State Farm insurance had announced that it had selected a couple of kids' books about LGBTQ issues that it would be happy to donate to any library upon request, and some busybody had made a video in response calling them "Groomers" and the furor got so big that State Farm cancelled the program.
...I tried replying to any Tweets about the issue with the one line "Yeah, they're nothing like the SBC, are they." But there were just so many.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:57 AM on May 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
...I tried replying to any Tweets about the issue with the one line "Yeah, they're nothing like the SBC, are they." But there were just so many.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:57 AM on May 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
Depends on whether Italians count as white, which is still an open question in some communities.
Even Italians aren't settled on that issue.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:02 AM on May 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Even Italians aren't settled on that issue.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:02 AM on May 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
and some busybody had made a video in response calling them "Groomers" and the furor got so big that State Farm cancelled the program.
That is infuriating.
posted by clawsoon at 9:04 AM on May 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
That is infuriating.
posted by clawsoon at 9:04 AM on May 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
More from Chrissy Stroop: "And you don’t change a culture overnight like the one created by the SBC after its 1970s-1990s fundamentalist takeover—particularly when you refuse to consider how the theology that shapes that culture is of a piece with the protection of white male leaders over all “others”—women, children, people of color, and queer people, as you note. I don’t see any serious stakeholders in the SBC willing to consider how patriarchal theology and attitudes are the root of the abuse problem." Religion Dispatches: It’s the Theology, Stupid: Why the Shocking SBC Report is Anything But Surprising
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
To sort-of follow on clawsoon's comment and Chrissy Stroop's commentary (and this comment is a long walk to get to a tentative conclusion, skip ahead as preferred!), I have low-key had a theory since grad school that theology of baptism matters in terms of child abuse. Way back then I saw some child (physical) abuse statistics broken out by religious affiliation, and what really struck me was that abuse rates were lower in pedobaptist denominations (i.e., those that baptize infants, like Catholics and Methodists) than in denominations that required the person being baptized to understand and specifically ask for it -- Baptists, many Presbyterians, Mennonites. The much stronger predictor was geographical location, and then political affiliation -- religious affiliation was a much weaker correlation. But reading how parents talked about disciplining their children, and how other community leaders (teachers, preachers) talked about how children should be disciplined, I was really struck by the fact that pedobaptists talked about children as human beings (and sometimes explicitly as "children of Christ"), but adult baptizers talked a lot about children being "full of Satan" and "needing the devil driven out of them," because those children literally were not part of the church, and could not be part of the church, and were not Christians, because they were too young to understand the idea of salvation. One group viewed children as innocents who were too young to grasp the idea; the other group viewed children as dangerously loose cannons because they lacked reason and so could not accept salvation. And I thought, this feels like a place where theology's influence on society is desperately underrecognized, and I bet there's a whole Ph.D. thesis here.
Child sexual abuse is different, and I fully expected to see similar rates in the SBC as we see in the Catholic Church (and as we see in public schools). Not because I really understand why that is, but because I've read enough of the literature to know that that's what experts expect, and they typically turn out to be correct about this. There's sort-of a baseline of "creep-ass abusers who seek out positions of authority over children" that you expect to find in any organization with children (schools, boy scouts, sports, churches), and every organization involving children needs specific sorts of policies that prevent adults from having private, unmonitored access to children, because we can't currently screen out the creep-ass abusers who haven't been caught yet.
But what's striking and interesting, in a way that I think there's another dissertation in it, is how differently child abusers in the Catholic Church and in the SBC have framed the theology of their child sexual abuse. Catholic abusers have tended to say, "I was tempted. I sinned." (The movie "Spotlight" has some arresting dramatized interviews to this effect, especially the priest who's like, "sure, I did it, but I didn't enjoy it; that's the important part.") In other words, the adult is the active party; the adult is giving in to sin. The child is almost incidental to the adult's occasion of sin. (And I mean that in a very gross way -- they don't really consider the child's POV or trauma, just the adult's temptation and sinning.) But SBC justifications of child sexual abuse that I have read have tended to revolve around, "The child misbehaved, the child tempted me, the child was a way Satan was working against the church." (They don't tend to LITERALLY say "the child was an agent of Satan," but when they start bringing up Satan wanting to discredit the church, that's freaking implied.)
And again this is a super-gross thing for me to even bring up, because there should not be a theology of child sexual abuse, but I think there is, and I think the theology of childhood more generally strongly influences the justifications that abusers use. And I strongly suspect that part of the reason the SBC was able to mentally distance itself from Catholicism's sexual abuse crisis is that their theology of abuse was entirely different, and so they actually didn't see the Catholic Church's abuse crisis reflected in their denomination. Not because it wasn't happening, but because it was understood so differently that a critical mass people who knew it was happening (but weren't participating in the coverup, or weren't activists against the coverup) were able to say "... but it's not the same thing." Because sociologically it was exactly the same thing, but theologically the foundation was very different.
And I remember back in 2003-2004, when American Protestants were beginning to have these conversations in the wake of Catholicism's exposure, it was pedobaptist denominations (Methodists, Lutherans) who were much more serious about the possibility that their denominations were similarly riddled with abuse, and adult baptizing denominations that were more dismissive of the possibility -- they often didn't even attend the meetings/seminars/discussions. And I think part of that is political happenstance that has led pedobaptist denominations to be more liberal than adult-baptizing denominations (although, there's a dissertation there too!). But I think part of it is in their theology of childhood, and which Protestant denominations could conceive of themselves as being similar to Catholicism in this specific way and which could not. (And maybe, possibly, on how the theology of children being part of the church or not expresses itself in actions -- there's not a lot of sociological work on how theology expresses itself in the culture, so I don't know. But there's a dissertation there!)
I know less about this, but you do see it repeated in the abuse of women, and exactly how the voices of women abused by male religious leaders are suppressed. There are distinct theological differences in how more politically conservative denominations discredit women accusers in the press (references to complementarianism, calling women temptresses) and how more liberal/mainline denominations do (much more "yep, whelp, adultery happens, lots of sinners here"). BECAUSE MISOGYNY "yep, whelp, everybody sinned" actually works almost equally as well as "this woman tempted me!" to demonize the woman and allow the man to "atone." But the underlying theology is quite different.
I'm not saying here there's a correct theology or a superior theology (although I personally fall along the lines of "everyone is part of the Body of Christ or your theology sucks") -- clearly it doesn't really matter what the theology is; all these denominations are engaging in similar rates of sexual abuse. But I do think the underlying theologies of personhood result in specific justifications for abuse that vary among denominations, and I think those underlying theologies contribute to how difficult it is for a denomination to confront its own failings.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:51 PM on May 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
Child sexual abuse is different, and I fully expected to see similar rates in the SBC as we see in the Catholic Church (and as we see in public schools). Not because I really understand why that is, but because I've read enough of the literature to know that that's what experts expect, and they typically turn out to be correct about this. There's sort-of a baseline of "creep-ass abusers who seek out positions of authority over children" that you expect to find in any organization with children (schools, boy scouts, sports, churches), and every organization involving children needs specific sorts of policies that prevent adults from having private, unmonitored access to children, because we can't currently screen out the creep-ass abusers who haven't been caught yet.
But what's striking and interesting, in a way that I think there's another dissertation in it, is how differently child abusers in the Catholic Church and in the SBC have framed the theology of their child sexual abuse. Catholic abusers have tended to say, "I was tempted. I sinned." (The movie "Spotlight" has some arresting dramatized interviews to this effect, especially the priest who's like, "sure, I did it, but I didn't enjoy it; that's the important part.") In other words, the adult is the active party; the adult is giving in to sin. The child is almost incidental to the adult's occasion of sin. (And I mean that in a very gross way -- they don't really consider the child's POV or trauma, just the adult's temptation and sinning.) But SBC justifications of child sexual abuse that I have read have tended to revolve around, "The child misbehaved, the child tempted me, the child was a way Satan was working against the church." (They don't tend to LITERALLY say "the child was an agent of Satan," but when they start bringing up Satan wanting to discredit the church, that's freaking implied.)
And again this is a super-gross thing for me to even bring up, because there should not be a theology of child sexual abuse, but I think there is, and I think the theology of childhood more generally strongly influences the justifications that abusers use. And I strongly suspect that part of the reason the SBC was able to mentally distance itself from Catholicism's sexual abuse crisis is that their theology of abuse was entirely different, and so they actually didn't see the Catholic Church's abuse crisis reflected in their denomination. Not because it wasn't happening, but because it was understood so differently that a critical mass people who knew it was happening (but weren't participating in the coverup, or weren't activists against the coverup) were able to say "... but it's not the same thing." Because sociologically it was exactly the same thing, but theologically the foundation was very different.
And I remember back in 2003-2004, when American Protestants were beginning to have these conversations in the wake of Catholicism's exposure, it was pedobaptist denominations (Methodists, Lutherans) who were much more serious about the possibility that their denominations were similarly riddled with abuse, and adult baptizing denominations that were more dismissive of the possibility -- they often didn't even attend the meetings/seminars/discussions. And I think part of that is political happenstance that has led pedobaptist denominations to be more liberal than adult-baptizing denominations (although, there's a dissertation there too!). But I think part of it is in their theology of childhood, and which Protestant denominations could conceive of themselves as being similar to Catholicism in this specific way and which could not. (And maybe, possibly, on how the theology of children being part of the church or not expresses itself in actions -- there's not a lot of sociological work on how theology expresses itself in the culture, so I don't know. But there's a dissertation there!)
I know less about this, but you do see it repeated in the abuse of women, and exactly how the voices of women abused by male religious leaders are suppressed. There are distinct theological differences in how more politically conservative denominations discredit women accusers in the press (references to complementarianism, calling women temptresses) and how more liberal/mainline denominations do (much more "yep, whelp, adultery happens, lots of sinners here"). BECAUSE MISOGYNY "yep, whelp, everybody sinned" actually works almost equally as well as "this woman tempted me!" to demonize the woman and allow the man to "atone." But the underlying theology is quite different.
I'm not saying here there's a correct theology or a superior theology (although I personally fall along the lines of "everyone is part of the Body of Christ or your theology sucks") -- clearly it doesn't really matter what the theology is; all these denominations are engaging in similar rates of sexual abuse. But I do think the underlying theologies of personhood result in specific justifications for abuse that vary among denominations, and I think those underlying theologies contribute to how difficult it is for a denomination to confront its own failings.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:51 PM on May 24, 2022 [15 favorites]
I'm trying to remember something I read long ago-- that some sexual abusers would say that there's a rule against adultery. There's a rule against masturbation. There isn't an explicit rule against sexual abuse of children, which I think was combined with some sense that their children were their property.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 1:55 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 1:55 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I know this is a tangent, but - Eyebrows, how do you think your theology around children influences views about abortion?
Yeah I know it's a tangent but this has lead my mind down some interesting paths.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:48 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yeah I know it's a tangent but this has lead my mind down some interesting paths.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:48 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Eyebrows McGee: I have low-key had a theory
I've definitely heard survivors of Catholic abuse talking about how the adults who abused them blamed them for being seductive and tempting them into sin. I don't know how systematic it was, but it was definitely a thing.
I'd offer a different half-baked theory: The confessions (importantly: as opposed to what they said to children) of Catholic abusers were different from that of other denominations not because of ages at baptism but because of celibacy requirements and the higher rate of homosexual abuse in the Catholic church. Celibacy and homosexual abuse meant that in their confessions, Catholic abusers couldn't call on church narratives like, "Well, Joseph married Mary when she was 8. If it was good enough for God, why shouldn't it be good enough for us?"
However, I'm only offering this as an idea, not as an answer.
posted by clawsoon at 5:33 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've definitely heard survivors of Catholic abuse talking about how the adults who abused them blamed them for being seductive and tempting them into sin. I don't know how systematic it was, but it was definitely a thing.
I'd offer a different half-baked theory: The confessions (importantly: as opposed to what they said to children) of Catholic abusers were different from that of other denominations not because of ages at baptism but because of celibacy requirements and the higher rate of homosexual abuse in the Catholic church. Celibacy and homosexual abuse meant that in their confessions, Catholic abusers couldn't call on church narratives like, "Well, Joseph married Mary when she was 8. If it was good enough for God, why shouldn't it be good enough for us?"
However, I'm only offering this as an idea, not as an answer.
posted by clawsoon at 5:33 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
A Catholic example of "children are seducers" that I was able to Google just now in lieu of tracking down the victim statements that I've heard in the past: A well-known Catholic priest... says clergymen in a lot of cases are seduced by children.
posted by clawsoon at 5:44 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 5:44 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
A pastor quits over 'adultery,' but a woman says she was 16 when he abused her. This very brave person listened while her pastor confessed to his "affair" long ago in the past, then she and her husband calmly walked to the front of the room and told what really happened.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:02 AM on May 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 6:02 AM on May 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
Everyone read that link from hydropsyche - it includes one or two VERY gratifying details about the parish's reaction after she tells her story (including when the pastor got back on the mike and was all "I can explain..." and a woman in the crowd hollered "you didn't say she was ONLY 16!")
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:21 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:21 AM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
(I'm also wondering if churches which ran historical residential schools were forced to face sexual abuse issues sooner just because of the horrific scale of abuse in those institutions. That seems to be part of the Australian experience anyway, with some of the first major public attention on child sexual abuse coming from protests by groups of victims from the same school, like that organized by David Gould. A bit of his story is described on page 589 of Un-redacted Volume 16, Religious institutions Book 1 (PDF) from the Australian Royal Commission.)
posted by clawsoon at 7:29 AM on May 25, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 7:29 AM on May 25, 2022
(There are also many example of "theologically" blaming children for their abuse from abusers in multiple denominations, starting on page 470 of the "Un-redacted" link. Eyebrows McGee, I wonder how those examples would work into your theory.)
posted by clawsoon at 7:54 AM on May 25, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 7:54 AM on May 25, 2022
There's a rule against masturbation.
Didn’t want to let this pass without comment: there is absolutely no fixed rule here. The entire sect of fundie churches I grew up in - which could be broadly characterized as less-racist or even anti-racist but otherwise less tolerant than the SBC on every front - was very clear during Sunday School for late middle schoolers (puberty onset) that Onan’s sin was defiance of God. Lust is a separate sin. If you’re somehow able to masturbate without lust, that’s fine and natural, don’t beat yourself up about it.
I was always, always told that masturbation was not in and of itself a sin by every single adult except one super-creeper single white male youth leader who (surprise) had all the 6-8th grade boys sleep at his place overnight and took the opportunity to ask for incredibly minute details on their masturbation habits. No assault followed, but lying there in my sleeping bag on his bedroom floor after I was waiting for it pretty much the whole night.
This person was also the science and math teacher at the private religious school that occupied the same sprawling building as the church proper.
But yeah, everyone else that ever said anything about masturbation: parents, youth group leaders, Sunday School teachers, ministers - all were insistent that masturbation wasn’t a sin, if you could somehow do so without committing lust in your heart (to which: lol, but okay).
posted by Ryvar at 9:29 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Didn’t want to let this pass without comment: there is absolutely no fixed rule here. The entire sect of fundie churches I grew up in - which could be broadly characterized as less-racist or even anti-racist but otherwise less tolerant than the SBC on every front - was very clear during Sunday School for late middle schoolers (puberty onset) that Onan’s sin was defiance of God. Lust is a separate sin. If you’re somehow able to masturbate without lust, that’s fine and natural, don’t beat yourself up about it.
I was always, always told that masturbation was not in and of itself a sin by every single adult except one super-creeper single white male youth leader who (surprise) had all the 6-8th grade boys sleep at his place overnight and took the opportunity to ask for incredibly minute details on their masturbation habits. No assault followed, but lying there in my sleeping bag on his bedroom floor after I was waiting for it pretty much the whole night.
This person was also the science and math teacher at the private religious school that occupied the same sprawling building as the church proper.
But yeah, everyone else that ever said anything about masturbation: parents, youth group leaders, Sunday School teachers, ministers - all were insistent that masturbation wasn’t a sin, if you could somehow do so without committing lust in your heart (to which: lol, but okay).
posted by Ryvar at 9:29 AM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I thought that a rule against masturbation was Catholic, while having no opinion about Protestants.
I'm sorry if it sounded like I meant Protestantism, I thought the conversation had drifted to sexual abuse of children regardless of religion, or at least regardless of type of Christianity.
Catholics have a rule against masturbation.
https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-masturbation-is-wrong.
It's good to hear that modern(?) Protestants are reasonable about masturbation. I may have read that book some 30 or 40 years ago, and it may not have been current then.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:54 PM on May 25, 2022
I'm sorry if it sounded like I meant Protestantism, I thought the conversation had drifted to sexual abuse of children regardless of religion, or at least regardless of type of Christianity.
Catholics have a rule against masturbation.
https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-masturbation-is-wrong.
It's good to hear that modern(?) Protestants are reasonable about masturbation. I may have read that book some 30 or 40 years ago, and it may not have been current then.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:54 PM on May 25, 2022
It's good to hear that modern(?) Protestants are reasonable about masturbation.
The topic of masturbation in particular is a complete tossup for any given Protestant church. Also, what Upstanding Men in said church tell their sons in private, and what they say to their sons in front of Mother are often markedly different. YMMV.
posted by Ryvar at 4:21 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
The topic of masturbation in particular is a complete tossup for any given Protestant church. Also, what Upstanding Men in said church tell their sons in private, and what they say to their sons in front of Mother are often markedly different. YMMV.
posted by Ryvar at 4:21 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don't mean there's a hard theological "this denomination is this way, that one is that way"; I think there's a slightly different theological emphasis that impacts the ways in which abuse is justified, covered up, and dismissed. I think there's far more overlap than difference (I don't expect Catholic abusers to NOT talk about being seduced by children). But I think there are differences in the theology of childhood, of abuse, and of sexuality that impact how groups discuss these things.
I think in this case one reason (among several, including celibate clergy) the SBC was able to see itself as discontinuous with the Catholic Church is that they have very different theologies of children. "This isn't our theology" becomes "therefore this isn't our problem." Partly my thoughts come from being in Protestant seminary in the few years just after Spotlight, and literally being in the room as different Protestant leaders (church leaders, theologians, pastors, "influencers") were having conversations about it. Methodist, Lutheran, and Anglican leaders were much quicker to say "This probably means we have a problem too" than the Calvinist and Baptist groups were.
I actually think the biggest part of that difference is actually that Calvinists and Baptists were able to say "all our groups are locally governed, we don't have to deal with this at a regional or national level." Whereas Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists all have bishops and a more centralized organization (to various degrees). But I retain my low-key theory about pedobaptist theology. :)
And what I do think is actually super-important about the underlying theological justifications (my low-key theory is not particularly important, just something I think about sometimes) is that how you talk to leadership and membership about abuse strongly influences whether they take it seriously. I know a lot of MeFites are familiar with Beth Moore, and if you've read her work for several years, you've watched her cast around for the right language to use to get people to listen to her without dismissing her as "not one of us." Beth Moore has no formal theological education, and if you read her over several years, you watched her start as a sunday-school teacher, who felt deeply about her faith but had mostly learned rote phrases, and slowly develop real precision and clarity in expressing her theological ideas, and then turn to trying to express those ideas in ways that a) congregations would hear her and b) leadership would hear her. Russell Moore (no relation) has a lot of formal training and so wields his theological word choice very precisely to signal "I am one of us, and we are wrong on this." But you can see how he has to phrase it in ways that Baptists will hear it; people often complain he's still catering too much to his SBC roots, but a lot of that's deliberate -- they won't hear him if he doesn't speak their theological language.
There are people within the SBC (and other denominations, but today's issue is the SBC) who are working very, very hard to make it literally impossible to talk about clergy abuse, about racism, about misogyny. They're literally removing those discussions from the realm of theological possibility; that want it so that anyone who says, "this is racist" is automatically labeled "not one of us" because it is not theologically possible to discuss racism within the SBC in a meaningful way. A lot of high-profile Baptists (including both Moores) have fought really hard to keep those theological possibilities open in the SBC, for it still to be possible to say as a Baptist "this is sexual abuse and must be condemned." The most ham-handed response is "that's how Satan undermines the church" (and you hear that plenty!) but there are a lot of more subtle ways that conservatives in the SBC are working to exclude even the ability to discuss these topics by shifting the available theological language and space to discuss them. And I think some of those who have left the SBC recently (including both Moores) are in some ways admitting defeat; they're saying, "Yes, you have successfully foreclosed any possibility of theological discussion of this serious issue, and the truth is no longer available to you."
Epistemic closure, I guess, but in a very theological fashion.
---
Separate comment, I actually don't think the theology of childhood has a damn thing to do with the theology of abortion, because the theology of abortion as we know it today is basically entirely discontinuous with the entire history of Christian thought, and owes more to fetal ultrasounds than to traditional theology. Not that Christian theologians aren't talking about abortion in the middle ages straight through to the present, but the theological reality of the pregnant person (and I did my master's thesis on the theology of pregnancy) was very much about the woman in a liminal state, and then late in pregnancy, the woman/baby in a dyadic state. Before the 20th century it was harder to know you were pregnant, impossible to know if the baby was viable until the "quickening" (when the mother can feel the baby moving, and when Christian theology eventually mostly settled on as "when the baby gets ensouled"), and maternal and infant mortality were so high. Both the pregnant person AND the baby are held in a sort of suspended theological animation until the baby is actually born alive.
The arrival of pregnancy tests and -- much more importantly -- ultrasounds completely wiped away that entire duality/liminality. Now you ARE PREGNANT or ARE NOT PREGNANT. And once the ultrasound lets us look INSIDE the womb at a fetus as a separate entity from the mother -- well, that's when people start talking about "fetal personhood" and all the other nonsense that underlies current abortion debates. Medieval and Renaissance and so on Christians may have said "abortion bad," but the underlying theology had absolutely zero to do with the "fetal personhood" that holds up the entire structure today. It's just totally discontinuous, and modern "theology" of pregnancy has nothing to do with anything before 1930. Like literally nothing at all.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:29 PM on May 25, 2022 [10 favorites]
I think in this case one reason (among several, including celibate clergy) the SBC was able to see itself as discontinuous with the Catholic Church is that they have very different theologies of children. "This isn't our theology" becomes "therefore this isn't our problem." Partly my thoughts come from being in Protestant seminary in the few years just after Spotlight, and literally being in the room as different Protestant leaders (church leaders, theologians, pastors, "influencers") were having conversations about it. Methodist, Lutheran, and Anglican leaders were much quicker to say "This probably means we have a problem too" than the Calvinist and Baptist groups were.
I actually think the biggest part of that difference is actually that Calvinists and Baptists were able to say "all our groups are locally governed, we don't have to deal with this at a regional or national level." Whereas Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists all have bishops and a more centralized organization (to various degrees). But I retain my low-key theory about pedobaptist theology. :)
And what I do think is actually super-important about the underlying theological justifications (my low-key theory is not particularly important, just something I think about sometimes) is that how you talk to leadership and membership about abuse strongly influences whether they take it seriously. I know a lot of MeFites are familiar with Beth Moore, and if you've read her work for several years, you've watched her cast around for the right language to use to get people to listen to her without dismissing her as "not one of us." Beth Moore has no formal theological education, and if you read her over several years, you watched her start as a sunday-school teacher, who felt deeply about her faith but had mostly learned rote phrases, and slowly develop real precision and clarity in expressing her theological ideas, and then turn to trying to express those ideas in ways that a) congregations would hear her and b) leadership would hear her. Russell Moore (no relation) has a lot of formal training and so wields his theological word choice very precisely to signal "I am one of us, and we are wrong on this." But you can see how he has to phrase it in ways that Baptists will hear it; people often complain he's still catering too much to his SBC roots, but a lot of that's deliberate -- they won't hear him if he doesn't speak their theological language.
There are people within the SBC (and other denominations, but today's issue is the SBC) who are working very, very hard to make it literally impossible to talk about clergy abuse, about racism, about misogyny. They're literally removing those discussions from the realm of theological possibility; that want it so that anyone who says, "this is racist" is automatically labeled "not one of us" because it is not theologically possible to discuss racism within the SBC in a meaningful way. A lot of high-profile Baptists (including both Moores) have fought really hard to keep those theological possibilities open in the SBC, for it still to be possible to say as a Baptist "this is sexual abuse and must be condemned." The most ham-handed response is "that's how Satan undermines the church" (and you hear that plenty!) but there are a lot of more subtle ways that conservatives in the SBC are working to exclude even the ability to discuss these topics by shifting the available theological language and space to discuss them. And I think some of those who have left the SBC recently (including both Moores) are in some ways admitting defeat; they're saying, "Yes, you have successfully foreclosed any possibility of theological discussion of this serious issue, and the truth is no longer available to you."
Epistemic closure, I guess, but in a very theological fashion.
---
Separate comment, I actually don't think the theology of childhood has a damn thing to do with the theology of abortion, because the theology of abortion as we know it today is basically entirely discontinuous with the entire history of Christian thought, and owes more to fetal ultrasounds than to traditional theology. Not that Christian theologians aren't talking about abortion in the middle ages straight through to the present, but the theological reality of the pregnant person (and I did my master's thesis on the theology of pregnancy) was very much about the woman in a liminal state, and then late in pregnancy, the woman/baby in a dyadic state. Before the 20th century it was harder to know you were pregnant, impossible to know if the baby was viable until the "quickening" (when the mother can feel the baby moving, and when Christian theology eventually mostly settled on as "when the baby gets ensouled"), and maternal and infant mortality were so high. Both the pregnant person AND the baby are held in a sort of suspended theological animation until the baby is actually born alive.
The arrival of pregnancy tests and -- much more importantly -- ultrasounds completely wiped away that entire duality/liminality. Now you ARE PREGNANT or ARE NOT PREGNANT. And once the ultrasound lets us look INSIDE the womb at a fetus as a separate entity from the mother -- well, that's when people start talking about "fetal personhood" and all the other nonsense that underlies current abortion debates. Medieval and Renaissance and so on Christians may have said "abortion bad," but the underlying theology had absolutely zero to do with the "fetal personhood" that holds up the entire structure today. It's just totally discontinuous, and modern "theology" of pregnancy has nothing to do with anything before 1930. Like literally nothing at all.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:29 PM on May 25, 2022 [10 favorites]
BTW, speaking of clergy sexual abuse, today Josh Duggar was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison (at least 85% must be served before he is eligible for parole) + 20 years of probation after release that includes no unsupervised contact with children, including his own; no pornography of any sort; and he cannot own or use a computer with access to the internet without specific permission from his probation officer.
Now watch to see how the Christian Right tries to spin it so he's not one of them. (And speaking of which, the letters in support of him asking for him not to go to prison make for some fascinating theological reading for what Duggar's community values and doesn't value.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:59 PM on May 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
Now watch to see how the Christian Right tries to spin it so he's not one of them. (And speaking of which, the letters in support of him asking for him not to go to prison make for some fascinating theological reading for what Duggar's community values and doesn't value.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:59 PM on May 25, 2022 [8 favorites]
It’s easy and mostly accurate for me to pin the blame squarely on James Dobson and to a lesser extent Francis Schaefer, but it seems pretty obvious after reading your comment that, yeah, ultrasound probably did pave the way for them. Illuminating as always, EM.
posted by Ryvar at 5:39 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Ryvar at 5:39 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
> The topic of masturbation in particular is a complete tossup
itym "toss off," btw
posted by Pronoiac at 8:54 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
itym "toss off," btw
posted by Pronoiac at 8:54 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
I am giving you a favorite for that but it is a hate favorite. Just know that.
posted by Ryvar at 9:08 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ryvar at 9:08 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Ryvar, I remember whether I was working up a good hate against Rush Limbaugh, and then I realized that he couldn't have become influential if there weren't a huge number of people who liked him. The responsibility is distributed.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:41 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:41 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
How the story was investigated by reporters from two local papers
"Houston Chronicle city hall reporter Robert Downen was on the night shift one evening in 2018, just a few months into the job, when something caught his attention.
Scrolling through an online federal court docket, he spotted a lawsuit that accused Paul Pressler, a prominent former judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, of sexual assault. While the case had been previously reported, newly filed documents painted an even more damning picture, including the revelation that Pressler had previously agreed to pay his accuser $450,000. Downen, then 25, probed more deeply and discovered other survivors of church abuse, who made it clear to him, he recalled, that “if you think this problem is confined to one leader, we have quite a bit to show you.”"
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:56 AM on May 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
"Houston Chronicle city hall reporter Robert Downen was on the night shift one evening in 2018, just a few months into the job, when something caught his attention.
Scrolling through an online federal court docket, he spotted a lawsuit that accused Paul Pressler, a prominent former judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, of sexual assault. While the case had been previously reported, newly filed documents painted an even more damning picture, including the revelation that Pressler had previously agreed to pay his accuser $450,000. Downen, then 25, probed more deeply and discovered other survivors of church abuse, who made it clear to him, he recalled, that “if you think this problem is confined to one leader, we have quite a bit to show you.”"
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:56 AM on May 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm trying to find a discussion I heard (read?) a couple of days ago - maybe even linked in this thread? - where a reporter was trying to figure out why these abuses never got properly investigated by newspapers in the past, despite victims and survivors contacting them over the years. IIRC, the reporter discovered that they had personally killed one of the stories years ago without thinking much about it or remembering that they'd done it.
posted by clawsoon at 7:17 AM on May 26, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 7:17 AM on May 26, 2022
Clawsoon, was it this, from Rachel Denhollander? (Unrolled Twitter thread)
"Spotlight has existed for years. Where were we? Robbie acknowledges “we had all the pieces. Why didn’t we get it?” And he tells his team that he found that list an attorney had sent naming twenty abusive priests. Robbie himself had buried it, when he was a new editor. He doesn’t even remember it. What about us? Where were we? Why didn’t we get it?"
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:41 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
"Spotlight has existed for years. Where were we? Robbie acknowledges “we had all the pieces. Why didn’t we get it?” And he tells his team that he found that list an attorney had sent naming twenty abusive priests. Robbie himself had buried it, when he was a new editor. He doesn’t even remember it. What about us? Where were we? Why didn’t we get it?"
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:41 PM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's the one, thanks, MonkeyToes. From a film... so was that particular moment fictional, or based on a real event?
posted by clawsoon at 4:30 AM on May 27, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 4:30 AM on May 27, 2022
I think it's real -- Spotlight the movie closely adhered to the book that the reporters involved wrote about their experience reporting out the story.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:33 PM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:33 PM on May 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Peter Wehner: Christianity's Generational Catastrophe
18:00 starts that part of the interview.
"The only worse than a wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf in shepherd's clothing."
I can't find a source for the quote. He says possibly Karen Swallow Prior, but I couldn't turn it up.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:21 PM on May 27, 2022
18:00 starts that part of the interview.
"The only worse than a wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf in shepherd's clothing."
I can't find a source for the quote. He says possibly Karen Swallow Prior, but I couldn't turn it up.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:21 PM on May 27, 2022
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Because if they were - odds are that the abusers would likely now be in one of the states in which "assisting with an abortion" is now a criminal act....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:16 AM on May 23, 2022 [7 favorites]