"Most clergy sex abuse survivors say the greatest harm was done not by the abuse itself, but by the way so many others in the faith community responded. And actions always speak louder than words."
#SouthernBaptists #SexualAbuse #women #MaleDomination #MaleEntitlement #patriarchy #misogyny
/3
"What we see is yet another example of this powerful institution — the Southern Baptist Convention — telling us by its actions that what was done to us doesn’t really matter and that what is far more important is the perpetuation of a man’s ministerial career."
#SouthernBaptists #SexualAbuse #women #MaleDomination #MaleEntitlement #patriarchy #misogyny
/2
"In October 2024, Matt Queen pled guilty to lying to the FBI in a sexual abuse investigation, and now, just a year later, Queen has been hired as associate pastor at a prominent Southern Baptist church [Plymouth Park SBC in Irving, Texas]."
~ Christa Brown
#SouthernBaptists #SexualAbuse #women #MaleDomination #MaleEntitlement #patriarchy #misogyny
/1
https://baptistnews.com/article/matt-queens-return-to-the-pastorate-sends-a-message/
That destruction is crystallized and illustrated in the starkest way possible in his razing of a wing of the White House to build a guilded ballroom as he chooses to withhold support for food to hungry families and children.
Please don't tell me you can justify all this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Because you can't.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/6
White Christians own the Trump presidency, having voted — across the board from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Catholics — three times in the majority for Trump.
And for his cruelty visited on children, immigrants, his critics… And for his destruction of longstanding norms of decency and respect for the Constitution that keep democracy going.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/5
"Arkansas is religiously an evangelical Christian state; Southern Baptists are the largest evangelical denomination in existence; and 80 percent of evangelicals countrywide vote MAGA. …
I am not a MAGA supporter. I think MAGA is an abomination and scourge on not only the Republican Party but America, and certainly evangelical Christianity."
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/4
She answers her critic thoughtfully, refusing to cede ground on the well-documented fact that a very large percentage of white evangelicals are the core support of Donald Trump and the cruelties he is visiting on so many people. As she states,
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/3
In the essay I've just linked, Faulkenberry responds to an Arkansas man who emailed her a lengthy response to her previous statement about spiritual abuse, saying that, in effect, she's painting with a broad brush, that not all Christians and not all Southern Baptists are like what she's describing.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/2
Arkansas writer Gwen Faulkenberry, who grew up Southern Baptist in Arkansas, recently published an essay in which she speaks about the "spiritual abuse" she and others, notably women, have endured in Southern Baptist churches.
#Trump #WhiteEvangelicals #SouthernBaptists #Arkansas #women #abuse #MAGA #cruelty #immigrants #children #food #ballroom #EpsteinBallroom
/1
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/oct/30/opinion-gwen-faulkenberry-origins-of-toxic-beliefs/
“I can't help but wonder what the United States would be like if white Christians had devoted even a tenth of the money, effort, sacrifice, and prayer toward efforts for racial equality, repair, true justice, and reconciliation as they have chasing dreams of spiritual heroism and cleansing themselves in the warm, inviting waters of other cultural contexts."
~ Ibid., pp.112-3
"But if I say the same of American police forces, well, now we're talking about deeply held emotional/social/cultural commitments. There is a Christian nationalism connection here. Our beloved Christian nation, in its foundation, cannot be wrong."
~ Ibid., p. 112
“Missions offer white evangelicals a safe arena in which to act out a narrative of racial harmony without risking their self-conception, control, comfort, or power”
Fletcher quotes historian Jesse Curtis: “If I say that Kenyan police forces are corrupt and brutal, evangelicals won't bat an eye."
~ Ibid.
"Survey data from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows an abundance of white evangelical self-deception; PRRI found that white evangelicals rate themselves highly in having ‘warm feelings’ toward Black Americans even while they hold the most objectively racist views of any category of Americans.”
~ Ibid.
"The aim of color blindness — I see people, not color — shuts down any conversation around race, the Black experience, and white evangelicals’ appallingly poor track record by implying that anyone who brings it up is perpetuating the problem and failing to forgive.”
~ Ibid.
“As it has evolved out of southern Christianity, evangelical theology’s emphasis on individual conversion and faith deftly dispenses with issues of race with claims that racism is an expression of personal sin."
~ Holly Berkley Fletcher, The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism (Minneapolis: Broadleaf, 2025), p. 111
#SouthernBaptists #WhiteEvangelicals
/1
https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9798889832034/The-Missionary-Kids
(continued from /8)
"with the truth that the white evangelical tradition has been repeatedly and grievously wrong at every single turn on issues of race (and possibly on other matters of consequence as well).”
“In other words, missions allowed white evangelicals to act out a kind of racial enlightenment in a way that didn't impact their own lives.”
~ Ibid., pp. 104, 109
“And more broadly, white evangelicals like to think of themselves as the most theologically and doctrinally correct of all Christians. Wading into the costly, arduous work of racial reconciliation and justice with people of color at home, who aren't letting them off the hook, might force them to reckon" (continued in /9)
~ Ibid., p. 104
"American evangelicals are heavily, cosmically, existentially invested in being right, being special, and following a divine plan to save the world.”
“White American Christians have thrown themselves into evangelism and humanitarianism among non-white people overseas, while trying to avoid the less heroic task of confronting their own responsibility for and complicity in the United States’ horrific racial past.”
~ Ibid., pp. 43, 103-4
"Narcissists have an inflated sense of self that overcompensates for and masks a fear of introspection and an unconscious shame over weakness and failure. He finds that American culture in general is highly narcissistic, but that white evangelicals supercharge it with a sense of spiritual importance, goodness, and, via a theology of certainty, rightness."
~ Ibid., p. 43
"One is left wondering, ‘Whatever did the Lord do before there were American Christians?’”
“In his recent book, Dave Verhaagen shares research indicating that the white American evangelical subculture as it currently exists attracts a higher-than-average number of people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)."
~ Ibid., pp. 33, 43
