"Before evangelical leaders say a word about the upcoming election, abortion policy or drag queens, they must look at why sexual abuse is occurring in congregations."
In saying this, Nicole Russell speaks as a lifelong evangelical who wonders why her fellow evangelicals think they have the moral high road as they attack LGBTQ people and support Trump, of all people, while ignoring "a clear pattern of abusive and at times criminal behavior among pastors and other leaders in a growing list of evangelical congregations."
"Elders at Gateway Church in the Dallas area claim that until recently, they didn’t know the woman with whom Robert Morris had a 'moral failing' in the 1980s was only 12 years old. However, emails released today [June 21] by the attorney for the alleged victim, Cindy Clemishire, call that claim into question."
Robert B. Hubbell points to the disparity in how the media behaved when Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright made remarks that seemed to criticize the US response to 9/11, and how they're behaving after news broke that Trump's "spiritual advisor" Pastor Robert Morris has resigned as pastor of a church after it came out that he sexually molested a 12-year-old girl in the past.
"Morris served on Trump's evangelical executive advisory board for his 2016 campaign. Morris was also prominently featured at Trump campaign events in 2020. ...
To date, Trump has not commented on the conduct of his former 'spiritual advisor,' nor has any reporter asked Trump to do so."
"For nearly two decades, one woman stood up to the Southern Baptist Convention, forcing it to face its sex abuse crisis. She was gaslit, maligned, and threatened with legal action. But she didn’t back down and on this podcast, you’ll hear her story."
"As a 16- year-old girl, Christa was repeatedly raped by the youth pastor at her Southern Baptist Church. And when she told the music minister at her church what had happened, he told her to never speak of it. For 35 years, Christa kept silent, accepting the shame that rightly belongs to her rapist. But in the early 2000s, Christa broke her silence and confronted her childhood church with what had happened."
Christa Brown, author of Baptistland and survivor of sexual abuse as a minor in a Southern Baptist church, says,
"The all-encompassing nature of church life can provide predators with the ideal cover for committing sexual abuse within congregations."
Pastors enjoy access, trust, and authority. Church members, especially females, are taught to be submissive, above all to "men of God." The reflex response within churches is to cover up abuse.
A footnote to /1: After posting this link to Baptist News Global's report on Christa Brown's Baptistland, I posted exactly the same thing and the same link (same wording found in /1) to my circle of friends on Facebook.
Facebook immediately took that posting down, telling me it was spam.
Christa Brown and others trying to draw attention to sexual abuse of vulnerable people in Southern Baptist churches face some powerful opponents who do not want their voices heard.
"The criminal investigation into child sexual abuse in New Orleans’ Roman Catholic archdiocese has entered a major new phase, after a judge ordered the church to turn over records to Louisiana state police showing how it responded to abuse allegations over the last several decades."
"The order signed on Monday seeks files that would identify every priest and deacon accused of abusing children while working in the US’s second-oldest archdiocese; when those complaints were first made; and whether the church turned those cases over to police, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter."
"Significantly, police are also demanding copies of all communications among New Orleans’ current archbishop, Gregory Aymond, his aides and their superiors at the Vatican, those sources said. …
Now, by essentially seeking the entire paper trail generated by the scandal, investigators could also learn what top church officials in Rome knew of the breadth of abuse at the local level in New Orleans."
"The insidious and chronic nature of church sexual abuse is an outgrowth of patriarchal concepts of the divine that provide theological cover for abusers and shame for their victims, said the authors of a new book on theologies of abuse."
"Language depicting God as 'father,' 'king,' 'master,' coupled with an emphasis on the omnipotence and omniscience of God, is problematic because it emanates from patriarchy, said Susan M. Shaw, co-author of Surviving God, A New Vision of God Through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors."
#Trump has been ordered to #pay#legal fees to a company founded by a former British spy that he sued for making what he claimed were false claims that harmed his reputation (as if it could be worse)
"I grew up in a fundamentalist Southern Baptist church in Georgia. I was on the 'cradle roll' from the time I was six weeks old, and I was at church 'every time the doors were open,' as the saying goes.
What I learned in that church was a perfect setup for sexual abuse for a child who took it all in and believed it all wholeheartedly."
Shaw lists lessons church taught her that set her up for abuse:
God is in control.
You are to submit to those in authority over you.
If it’s a sexual sin, it’s your fault.
You need to forgive your abuser.
You have to deny yourself.
She concludes,
"These traditional theologies of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, God’s maleness and dominance, God’s system of punishment and reward have to go. They enable abuse."
Former nuns Gloria Branciani and Mirjam Kovac deserve credit for their courage in coming forward publicly and revealing their identities, as they tell the world about the bizarre religion-wrapped obscenities to which now-defrocked Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik subjected them.
At the heart of the abuse of vulnerable people that happens in religious groups globally: the assumption that men should have the divine right to control and use others.
"Two former nuns have called on Pope Francis to initiate an independent investigation into a once-prominent Jesuit artist-priest [Marko Rupnik] who they allege sexually abused them, including by forcing them to have threesomes and making them watch pornography so they would 'grow spiritually'."
As Christa Brown, who has followed the Southern Baptist Convention's evasions of truth and political machinations for years, when it comes to dealing with sexual abuse of vulnerable people, says, we'd never have gotten the truth about Paul Pressler without lawsuits.
Because the SBC was determined to resist at all costs letting the truth be known.
Brown concludes: Let the lawsuits continue and proliferate.
To wit: "Just last week, in Arkansas, clergy sex abuse survivors filed a lawsuit naming not only First Baptist Church of Benton but also the SBC, SBC Executive Committee, Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and Central Baptist Association. It’s a dreadful case involving allegations that scores of boys were sexually victimized over the course of 20 years…."
Marine Glisovic reports that after Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed Jamol Jones to the state Board of Corrections, it was found he had been fired by the Benton, Arkansas, police department for having sex with a 17-year-old girl.
As Austin Bailey reports, Sanders' spokesperson Alexa Henning is defending the appointment because Jones talks about God and family.
And speaking of Arkansas and matters of sexual abuse: Benjamin Hardy reports,
"Three additional lawsuits were filed last week against Ted Suhl and others associated with the Lord’s Ranch, alleging staff at the now-defunct northeast Arkansas behavioral health facility sexually and physically abused dozens of children and teenagers entrusted to their care over the course of several decades."
"Suhl was released by President Donald Trump in 2019 after serving less than half of his sentence, due in part to lobbying by Mike Huckabee — a friend of Suhl’s since at least the ‘90s, when then Gov. Huckabee appointed Suhl to a board that oversaw facilities such as his own — and former federal prosecutor Bud Cummins."
"YouTube has taken down Emmanuel TV, the main channel run by TB Joshua’s megachurch empire, amid allegations the late preacher had for decades groomed and raped multiple former leaders of his ministry.
It comes after openDemocracy identified and reported more than 50 abusive videos amplifying abuse against Joshua’s accusers on the video platform."
~ Margaret Coker, Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu, Madeleine Jane