Church Need to Come Clean on Sexual Abuse and Homophobia

A column in The Guardian looks at the recent settlement of the four sex abuse lawsuits filed against Baptist preacher, Bishop Eddie Long - one unofficial report said the settlement payments totaled $25 million - who certainly turned religion into a very lucrative business. But the column also looks at the larger problem of churches stigmatizing sex - and gay sex in particular - while all kinds of moral turpitude exists within the churches. Obviously, the Catholic Church is a stellar example of the hypocrisy. But the Southern Baptist Conventions likewise turns a blind eye to a raging sex abuse problem within that denomination one consequence of which is the denominations continued shrinking numbers. Religion has caused so much death and misery over the centuries. It's time that the persecution of sexual minorities cease and that the churches confess to their foul hypocrisy. Here are highlights from the Guardian column:
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About a year ago, four young men in Bishop Long's Georgia church sued him, accusing him of sexual coercion. Apart from the suggestion of abuse of his pastoral role, the allegations painted Eddie Long as the consummate hypocrite. This was the bishop who had railed against homosexuality as being a "manifestation of the fallen man". In 2004, in the heat of Bush gay-baiting about a constitutional ban on gay marriage, this preacher led a march to the graveside of Rev Martin Luther King to support Bush's initiative.
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His views on gay rights were considered so odious, that when civil rights icon Coretta Scott King died, many progressive African Americans leaders, including former NAACP President Julian Bond, refused to attend her funeral service at Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist church. They argued that Coretta Scott King, who was a staunch gay rights supporter, would never have approved of her funeral service being held in Long's church because of his homophobic views.
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Bishop Long has now settled the lawsuits against him, under terms that preclude any discussion of the truth of the men's allegations; or disclosure of how much, if any monies were paid or if an apology had been delivered. As with many sex scandals, Long's troubles are as intriguing for his apparent moral failings as they are for what it says about his community. Recently, Bishop Long's friend and fellow pastor, Creflo Dollar, admonished those in Long's flock who have fled the church because of the stench of the allegations.
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Apart from the inherent implications of deception, Long's alleged seduction of impressionable young men smacked of downright exploitation. If the facts in that suit were true, Bishop Long was able to perpetrate these acts through a massive corridor of silence. Of course, only a victim of predatory sexual relations can say, definitively, what took place with an abuser. But wilful ignorance also encourages abuse. And the call from fellow Pastor Dollar for Long's congregation to stick with him no matter what seems like an impatient dismissal of the serious charges that were made.
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The lid is slowly being lifted on sexual abuse within churches. And the question of homophobia in the black community is attracting attention that will, hopefully, spur useful discussion. . . . a closer examination of the architecture that propped up Bishop Long and made him so powerful is really what will prove most useful in the end.
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As for the willful ignorance at the leadership level of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bob Felton had this to say:
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Nobody should be surprised; the Southern Baptist brand is so tarnished that many churches refuse to even display the words on their signage or Web site. Making matters worse, the rise of Calvinism in the denomination has been accompanied by an increased and explicit emphasis on some of the most degrading aspects of Christian thought.
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Add to that the implacable hostility toward gays, modern scholarship which dispositively establishes that the Bible is highly errant, and the see-no-evil refusal to deal with the sexual abuse of children by clergy, and the picture that emerges is one of amoral and relentless predation of the insecure.