We go through news cycles fast. (There are other descriptions, but they have to do with gun images and I’m not ready for that right now.)
The absolute corruption of the leadership of the SBC needs to be understood. It’s “SOOOOO last week” but it cannot be allowed that convenience!
The Holy Post podcast takes up the SBC report that exposes the deep corruption concerning sexual abuse HERE. It’s in the first half of the episode.
But consider these excerpts from David Brooks’s column in the New York Times:
One woman, Jennifer Lyell, said she’d been sexually abused while a student at a Southern Baptist seminary. In an article, the church’s communications arm made it sound as if she were confessing to a consensual affair. Paige Patterson, then the head of one seminary, told one student not to report a rape, according to the report, and later, at another seminary, “emailed his intention to meet with another student who had reported an assault, with no other officials present, so he could ‘break her down.’”
NOTE: Paige Patterson was announced as the “pulpit guest” at First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX for the Sunday of Memorial Weekend. That is AFTER this report came out. There is no shame in serial abusers.
In 2007 a woman named Christa Brown had the courage to testify before Southern Baptist officials that her youth pastor had repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was 16. She reported that one official turned his back, literally refusing to look at her, refusing to see her. That is the sort of dehumanization that creates indifference that enables rape, abuse and all the other horrific dehumanizing acts down the road.
More HERE.
Friends, I do not write this to shame the SBC. I write this out of grief. The American Church has been in a trouble and the Spirit has been dealing with us for a very long time… and we have systematically refused to listen. We are hard-hearted.
We STILL need to repent as an American church and there is still time for repentance.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 