Why Religious Institutions Should Not Receive Taxpayer Funds

The Founding Fathers wanted no established church and a clear separation of church and state being mindful of the wars of religion that had wracked Europe and witnessed the abuses of the Church of England which was the established church in much of colonial America.  Their concept has been perverted over the years and the Trump/Pence regime and a recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court have made the situation even worse as bigoted and discriminatory denominations have sought to gorge themselves at the trough of taxpayer funds.  Indeed, churches, including the immensely wealthy Catholic Church, received PPP loan funds - an example of how far we are from the Founder's intent. Another area where taxpayer funds are wrongfully given to discriminatory religious institutions is the federal funding of sectarian colleges and universities which gobble up taxpayer money even as they discriminate against members of society.  The test should be simple: discriminate and you receive zero taxpayer funds. Such a rule in no way restricts institutions' ability to practice their so-called religion yet doesn't make the public underwrite their bigotry financially.  A situation involving a Southern Baptist - a denomination founded on racism and bigotry - college underscores why such institutions should not receive a penny in taxpayer funds.  A piece in the Charlotte Observer looks at the expulsion of a gay student by Union University in Tennessee for the mere fact that he is gay.  Here are highlights:  

Alex Duron was slated to attend a master’s program in nurse anesthesia this fall at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, about midway between Memphis and Nashville.

But days before classes started, the private Christian college sent him a letter rescinding his acceptance.

“Your request for graduate housing and your social media profile, including your intent to live with your partner, indicates your unwillingness to abide by the commitment you made in signing (the university’s community values statements),” the letter states.

Those community values include a reference to “sexually impure relationships” and the acknowledgment that God’s definition of marriage is between a man and a woman, according to the student life handbook.

“The promotion, advocacy, defense or ongoing practice of a homosexual lifestyle (including same-sex dating behaviors) is also contrary to our community values,” the value statements read. “Homosexual behaviors, even in the context of a marriage, remain outside Union’s community values.”

Duron — who is gay — shared the letter in a Facebook post Tuesday, telling Union “that bigotry masked as religion is not Christian at all.”

In a statement to McClatchy News, spokesperson Tim Ellsworth said “as a Christian institution,” Union has certain “standards of behavior for its faculty, staff, and students”

Union University — which touts itself as “the oldest institution affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention” — is home to roughly 3,100 undergraduate and graduate students, according to its website. Tuition and fees for the average undergraduate total close to $45,000 a year.

To help students offset that cost, the university receives federal funding from the U.S. government.

According to the Treasury Department’s data lab, which tracks federal spending, Union received more than $40 million from the government in 2018. The vast majority went toward student aid with a small chunk — about $90,000 — allocated for nursing and health professional grants.

As a recipient of federal funds, Union is subject to Title IX regulations, which bar K-12 schools and institutions of higher education that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of sex — including sexual orientation.

But there’s a catch: They can claim a religious exemption.

Union University President Dub Oliver applied for such an exemption in 2015, citing the university’s oversight by the Southern Baptist Convention and beliefs against homosexuality and abortion, according to letters filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

It was accepted that year.

The Title IX religious exemption has long been used to protect colleges and universities from complying with federal discrimination laws that go against their beliefs, though it can be hard to keep track of which institutions have sought one, Teen Vogue reported in 2018.

Campus Pride, a nonprofit advocating for the rights of LGBT+ students, keeps an updated list of colleges and universities that have sought a Title IX exemption or otherwise discriminated against LGBT+ students.

It’s called the “Shame List.”

Union University is one of more than 100 campuses across the U.S. on the list.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled businesses can’t discriminate against employees who identify as LGBTQ+, and a lawsuit filed in California last year challenges religious exemptions to Title IX.

Two former students at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena have accused the evangelical seminary of unlawfully discriminating against them in violation of Title IX after they were expelled for being apart of same-sex marriages, media outlets report.  Christianity Today reported the lawsuit “is believed to be the first of its kind.”

 Hate and bigotry masked as religion remains one of the great evils in the world.  Such religious exemptions from non-discrimination laws need to be eliminated. If these bigoted institutions cannot survive without taxpayer funds, then good riddance. Taxpayers should not be indirectly support hateful institutions.

Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

The Economist has a great review (behind a paywall) of a new upcoming book entitled "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity" which looks at the systemic racism in American Christianity, especially among Southern Baptists and white evangelicals. The book bears out my view that the rise of racism within the Republican Party directly correlates to the rise of evangelicals and "conservative Christians" within the party base.   A piece at CNN also looks at the book to be released next month and has an overview which many white Christians - especially those in the South - will find uncomfortable to face even though the author uses numerous surveys and studies to document the book's damning conclusions.  Here are excerpts from CNN (sadly, those who most need to read the book will likely not do so):

Growing up in the South, Robert P. Jones attended Southern Baptist churches, Sunday schools, even a Southern Baptist college.

But it was only in seminary, in his mid-20s, that Jones says he learned the full truth about Southern Baptists' white supremacist roots. The denomination was founded to defend slavery and did not formally rebuke its past until 1995, when Southern Baptists voted to apologize for their history of racism.

"White Christian churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been complicit," he writes in his book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," publishing next month.  "Rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect White supremacy and resist Black equality," he writes. "This project has framed the entire American story."

In the book Jones, CEO and founder of Public Religion Research Institute, blends church history, memoir and contemporary public opinion surveys. Together, they make a clear and compelling case for why White American Christians need to reckon with their past.
 But American Christianity's past is only part of the problem. In survey after survey, said Jones, contemporary white Christians repeatedly deny that structural racism is a problem, that shootings of unarmed Blacks are not isolated incidents, or even that African Americans still face racism and discrimination.
 One of the challenges, historically, has been that the Christian theology developed in White churches intentionally blinds White Christians to racial injustice. White Christians are nearly twice as likely as non-religious Americans to say police shootings of unarmed black men are isolated incidents. That is a moral and theological problem. As long as White supremacy has a hold on our culture, it's pretty comfortable for White Christian churches to say their theology is about personal salvation and personal lives. Theology has been constricted to be only about personal piety, disconnected from claims of social justice. Everything outside of salvation has been labeled "politics."

It's a self-protective move. If you read sermons in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s you would have no idea that there was a Civil Rights movement. It was a lulling of white consciences to sleep.
 I see the last four years as a moment of reckoning for White Christians. The election of President Trump, who has put White supremacy front and center, has brought these issues from just barely below the surface into plain view. Charlottesville changed things. Charleston changed things. Dylan Roof was a confirmed Lutheran, who, in his journal while imprisoned has been drawing crosses and white Jesus and is completely unrepentant. White Christians have inherited a worldview that has Christians on top of other religions, men over women, Whites over Blacks. There is a top-down authoritarian structure to it. 

Sex Abuse Scandal Claims Another U.S. Bishop

St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo, N.Y. (David Duprey).

It is almost 18 years since the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal was blown wide open by the Boston Globe in 2002, yet the leadership of the Church has still not come to grips with ending the causes that gave rise to the scandal in the first place: (i) the requirement that priests - at least in western rite churches - be celibate, (ii) a mindset where cover ups to supposedly protect the image of the Church outweigh protecting children and youths, and (iii) the Church's 12th century dogma concerning sexuality and a near obsession with all things sexual. Meanwhile, little has been done to weed out bishops and cardinals who were either sexual predators themselves or who willingly participated in cover ups of abuse and protected predator priests. In Buffalo, New York, public pressure and media exposure have seemingly forced the Vatican's hand in the removal of Buffalo bishop Richard J. Malone.  Too many bishops and cardinals like Malone remain in their bishoprics and the Church continues its anti-LGBT jihad and refusal to accept normal human sexuality. Locally, it was only this year that Virginia Beach's Catholic High School had the name of former Richmond bishop Walter Sullivan removed from its name due to Sullivan's protection of predatory priests. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the forces and ugly cover ups that led to Malone's removal.  Here are highlights:

The Vatican on Wednesday announced the resignation of Bishop Richard J. Malone, who stoked fury in his Buffalo diocese for the alleged mishandling of sexual abuse claims, and whose tenure became emblematic of the Catholic Church’s struggle to overcome its central crisis.

Under Malone’s watch, Buffalo had become perhaps the U.S. Church’s most scandal-tainted diocese. It faces an FBI probe and more than 200 lawsuits. Malone pledged to institute reforms, but he was instead battered by accusations of coverup and by embarrassing leaks. One whistleblower said she found a 300-page dossier on accused priests hidden away in a supply closet near a vacuum cleaner.

Malone, 73, is departing two years before the mandatory age at which bishops must offer their retirements to Pope Francis — though many prelates stay on the job beyond the 75-year mark. The Vatican did not explain the reasons for Malone’s resignation.

Malone’s case offers mixed signals about how the Vatican is dealing with bishops accused of negligence or coverup and whether changes drawn up by Francis will help the institution police its upper ranks.

The Vatican did not use a system, put in place by the pontiff earlier this year, that would have allowed the region’s top bishop — in this case, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York — to open an investigation. Instead, in something of an ad hoc measure, the Vatican dispatched a different prelate, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, on a “nonjudicial” fact-finding mission to Buffalo.

The Associated Press reported last month that DiMarzio himself is facing accusations of sexually abusing a child. DiMarzio denies the allegations.

In September, a Buffalo television station broadcast audio, secretly recorded by the bishop’s priest-secretary, in which the bishop worried about what might happen if the sexual harassment accusations that a seminarian had leveled against a priest became public.

“This could be the end for me as bishop,” Malone said in the leaked recording.

But the situation was even more convoluted. The seminarian, Matthew Bojanowski, accused Malone of failing to take actions against the parish priest. Meantime, news outlets obtained a letter from the bishop’s priest-secretary to Bojanowski that suggested the two had a romantic relationship.

The local congressman called on Malone to resign. So too did a council of prominent Catholics. A petition calling for Malone’s departure gathered more than 12,000 signatures, accusing him of deceit and for being a “silent accomplice” to the crimes of priests. A Buffalo News poll in September said that 86 percent of Catholics wanted him to resign. Picketers had followed the bishop to recent events, and the newspaper reported that the diocese had ceased publishing the bishop’s event calendar.

The problems for Malone escalated early in 2018 when an initial accuser came forward, describing molestation as a teenager at the hands of a priest. A wellspring of abuse complaints followed, and in March 2018, Malone released a list of 42 priests who had been credibly accused of abuse, mostly from earlier decades. But it was anything but full transparency: Malone’s former administrative assistant had seen an earlier draft of the list. It contained more than 100 names.

Going public to “60 Minutes” last year, the former administrative assistant, Siobhan O’Connor, accused Malone of wiping some of the most problematic names from the public record. One of the missing names was that of a priest who had been accused of inappropriately touching two boys. According to the “60 Minutes” report, Malone endorsed that priest for a job as a cruise ship chaplain.

To be clear, the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on sex abuse by clergy.  The Southern Baptist Convention - another stridently anti-LGBT denomination - has a huge problem with abusive pastors which the denomination continually tries to sweep under the rug.  Meanwhile, Patheos reports this:

Popular Alabama televangelist Acton Bowen pleads guilty to 28 charges of raping and sexually assaulting multiple children between the ages of 12 and 16.  Before his arrest in 2018, Bowen was the host of xlroads TV, a global broadcast reaching millions every week.

Why Evangelicals Love Trump: It's All About Race

I have followed the misnamed "Christian Right" - mainly evangelicals - since the early 1990's when they began to infiltrating the local city committees of the GOP in southeastern Virginia - an infiltration that was facilitated by cynical Republican who foolishly thought they could control these religious extremists and hypocrites. These supposed "Christians" wore their religion on their sleeves, but was limited to opposing abortion and being anti-gay. Christ's social gospel message was absent from their agenda.  So too was any shred of racial acceptance except when hated groups in all but formal designation such as The Family Foundation manipulated black pastors to urge their followers vote against their own best interests. Over this period of time, two things became obvious to me: (i) few groups are more morally bankrupt than evangelicals, and (ii) racism is a primary motivation for evangelical voting patterns.  An op-ed at NBC News looks at the reality of evangelicals' racism and their corresponding adulation of Donald Trump's message of racial division.  Here are excerpts:

Liberals have a tendency to wring their hands at the strong support President Donald Trump — he of the three wives and multiple affairs, and a tendency to engage in exceedingly un-Christian-like behavior at the slightest provocation — continues to receive from the white evangelical community. White evangelical support for Donald Trump is still at 73 percent, and more than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2016.

But focusing on the disconnect between Trump's personal actions and the moral aspects of their faith misses the issue that keeps their support firm: racism. Modern evangelicals' support for [Trump] this president cannot be separated from the history of evangelicals' participation in and support for racist structures in America.

They have a long history in America, and include a number of different groups, including Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists and nondenominational churches. After the schism among the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in the 1850s over slavery, conservative denominations like the Southern Baptists — who defended slavery through their readings of scripture — came into being.

Evangelical denominations formed from these splits in the South were usually comprised of people who had made money from slavery or supported it. After the Civil War many were more likely to have supported the Ku Klux Klan and approved of (or participated in) lynching. The burning cross of the KKK, for instance, was a symbol of white Christian supremacy, designed both to put fear into the hearts of African Americans and to highlight the supposed Christian righteousness of the terrorist act.

Ronald Reagan, who also counted evangelicals among his most vociferous supporters, started his presidential campaign on the platform of states’ rights from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered by several Klansmen with the participation of local law enforcement in 1964, while attempting to register African Americans to vote. Decades later, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the evangelical leader, opposed sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime and insulted Bishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Prize Peace winner, as a "phony."

And when Barack Obama was elected president, they regrouped, bought guns and became Tea Partiers who promoted fiscal responsibility and indulged in birtherism, promoted by no less than the son of Billy Graham, Franklin.

[E]vangelicals have worked to make a good show of repenting for racism. From the racial reconciliation meetings of the 1990s to today, they have dutifully declared racism a sin, and Southern Baptists have apologized again for their role in American slavery — most recently in 2018 via a document outlining their role.

But statements are not enough. Proving how disconnected they are from their statements about atoning for the sin of racism, the 2019 Annual Convention of the Southern Baptists was opened with a gavel owned by John A. Broadus, a slaveholder, white supremacist and the founder of their seminary.

So it's not surprising that white evangelicals supported the Muslim ban, are the least likely to accept refugees into the country (according to the Pew Foundation) and, though a slim majority oppose it, are the denomination most likely to support Trump's child separation policy. White evangelicals certainly are not concerned with white supremacy, because they are often white supremacists.

And Trump appeals to these evangelicals because of his focus on declension, decline and destruction, which fits into evangelical beliefs about the end times. When Trump used the term “American carnage” in his inaugural address, evangelicals listened; they too, believed America is in decline. Their imagined powerlessness, and the need for a strong authoritarian leader to protect them, is at the root of their racial and social animus. Their persecution complex is a heady mix of their fear of “socialists,” Muslims, independent women, LGBT people and immigration. . . . . Rhetoric, not morality, drives their voting habits.

All of this has made a mockery of white evangelical protestations about morality and the family. Moral issues once drove white evangelical votes but, first when Obama was elected and then when the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on same sex marriage in June of 2015, what remained was their fear. Trump promised justices and a return to a time when they felt less fear, and he delivered, at least on the former. White evangelical fealty to [Trump] him is firm. Evangelicals in America are not simply a religious group; they are a political group inexorably linked to the Republican Party.

[P]erhaps we should take evangelicals at their word that they will support Trump come hell or high water, rather than twisting ourselves into knots trying to figure out why.

If one wants to witness moral bankruptcy, look no farther than evangelicals who support Trump.

Evangelical Churches' Reckoning May Be At Hand

Evangelical churches have long denied that they suffer from a sexual abuse crisis similar to that which has consumed the Catholic Church all across the globe.  That's not to say there isn't a rampant sexual abuse problem in evangelical churches.  Rather due to the decentralized structure of these churches - the Southern Baptist Convention is a prime example - central accountability is harder to establish and and many leaders disingenuously plead ignorance.  Then too, there is the repeated problem of church leaders rallying members to support the abuser and condemn the victim.  Indeed, demanding accountability becomes labeled as an attack on god and the church.  Often, the victims and their families become outcasts.  In my view, the problem is three fold: (i) an abuse of power by pastors and other church leaders, (ii) an absurd 12th century dogma on sexuality (that is stridently homophobic) inherited from the Catholic Church, and (iii) churches offering a haven where the sexually maladjusted can hide.  The end result is institutions that put their own prosperity and reputations over the lives of their members.  A lengthy piece in the New York Times looks at one abuse case - at least 700 victims were identified in an a recent investigation by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News - that demonstrates that the Catholic hierarchy is not alone in caring nothing for victims of abuse.  Here are article highlights: 

HURST, Tex. — Christi Bragg listened in disbelief. It was a Sunday in February, and her popular evangelical pastor, Matt Chandler, was preaching on the evil of leaders who sexually abuse those they are called to protect. But at the Village Church, he assured his listeners, victims of assault would be heard, and healed: “We see you.” Ms. Bragg nearly vomited. She stood up and walked out.

Exactly one year before that day, on Feb. 17, 2018, Ms. Bragg and her husband, Matt, reported to the Village that their daughter, at about age 11, had been sexually abused at the church’s summer camp for children. Since then, Matthew Tonne, who was the church’s associate children’s minister, had been investigated by the police, indicted and arrested on charges of sexually molesting Ms. Bragg’s daughter.

Ms. Bragg waited for church leaders to explain what had happened and thoroughly inform other families in the congregation. She waited for the Village to take responsibility and apologize. She waited to have even one conversation with Mr. Chandler, a leader she had long admired. Evangelical churches have long distanced themselves from the sexual abuse crisis that has consumed the Catholic Church. Many Southern Baptists have dismissed sexual abuse as a problem caused by “corrupt Hollywood” or “liberal theology.” But a reckoning has arrived.

Nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders, from youth pastors to top ministers, have pleaded guilty or were convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998, according to a recent investigation by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News. Superstar pastors like Bill Hybels and Andy Savage have been forced to resign over allegations of misconduct.

After years of resisting reform, the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, promised that it would address the problem this week at its annual gathering of thousands of pastors. At the Village, one of the most prominent Southern Baptist churches in the country and a bedrock of Texas evangelical culture, Ms. Bragg said leaders offered prayer. . . .  But as months passed, she came to believe their instinct to protect the institution outweighed their care for her daughter or their interest in investigating the truth.

For years she trusted that her church’s top leaders had acted in the best interest of the congregation, and that if she disagreed, the problem was hers. She had a spiritual reason: to doubt them was to doubt God.

The Village, like many other evangelical churches, uses a written membership agreement containing legal clauses that protect the institution. The Village’s agreement forbids members from suing the church, and instead requires mediation and then binding arbitration, legal processes that often happen in secret.

The Village also uses an abuse prevention firm called MinistrySafe, which many evangelical churches cite as an accountability safeguard. Ms. Bragg assumed MinistrySafe would advocate for her daughter, but then she learned that the group’s leaders were the church’s legal advisers.

The Village permanently removed Mr. Tonne from the staff within weeks of learning his name from the Braggs. To this day, the Village denies he was fired because of a sexual abuse allegation.

The Village declined to answer a list of detailed questions about the matter from The New York Times, and Mr. Chandler declined multiple requests to be interviewed. The Village said that the church “promptly” met with the Braggs, provided outside professional counselors and received the Braggs’ signoff on all of their public communications “in an effort for honesty, transparency and to avoid any embarrassment or concern.”

But the Braggs, along with several of their friends, see things differently. They have now left the Village, worried that raising their children in an environment where her family was not supported was, in Ms. Bragg’s words, “spiritually abusive.” “No one was looking out for our daughter’s best interest,” she said, speaking publicly for the first time. “She matters. Jesus says she matters. We say she matters.”

They signed the church’s Membership Covenant, an agreement stating they would submit to the Bible and to the authority and spiritual discipline of church leaders. Members promise to “practice complete chastity” unless in a heterosexual marriage, to “refrain from illegal drug use, drunkenness, gossip,” and to “diligently strive for unity and peace within the church.” Leaders promise “to lovingly exercise discipline when necessary.”

Mr. Chandler has become a brand name in American evangelicalism, with a large national following. Many young people see his faith as authentic, even cool.

With more than 10,000 weekly attendees, the Village now has five campuses across the Dallas area. Mr. Chandler is raising money to build a new campus that is likely to cost more than $70 million. The Village has entered “kind of a golden era,” he said recently.

A sexual abuse survivor herself, Ms. Bragg realized her worst nightmare had come true. Suddenly so many troubles in her daughter’s life made sense. The recurring nightmares. The night she decided not to kill herself so her sisters wouldn’t find her dead. The hours of counseling and medical treatments. Unable to wait any longer to hear from church leaders, Ms. Bragg asked for a meeting with them. The first opportunity, the church said, would be several weeks away, three months after the family reported the incident.

At the meeting, none of the church’s top three pastors were present. Ms. Bragg and her husband brought a list of 15 questions, asking about church policies and the camp. They received no clear answers.

Ms. Bragg raised the possibility that the perpetrator could have been someone from the Village. That was impossible, she recalled being told by Doug Stanley, a senior director at the church, because leaders followed the church’s moral code, enshrined in the membership covenant.

She turned to her husband as they walked out. “Thank God” for the police detective assigned to the case, she said. “If we were relying on our church to give us information, we’d be leaving empty-handed.”

On its website, the Village currently cites its work with MinistrySafe as evidence that the church is “a safe place for children and victims.” . . . . Unknown to Ms. Bragg, Ms. Norris and her husband are attorneys, and they have an associated legal practice to manage crises and minimize risk for clients. MinistrySafe’s website offers legal consultation, and those services are provided through Ms. Norris’ law firm, Love & Norris.

MinistrySafe may address legal risks for churches, but it does not help promote greater transparency as part of its response to abuse, said David Pittman, a survivor.  “Christians want to believe that everything the church does for them is for their safety and salvation,” he said. “That simply isn’t true, not right now.”

“What we encountered Wednesday was a church that has made a conscious choice to protect itself rather than reflect the Jesus it claims to follow,” she wrote to the pastor of her church campus in Southlake.  “It’s a terribly sad joke,” she went on. “We followed the rules. We followed the bylaws.

The Southern Baptist Convention has no explicit procedure or enforcement mechanism to respond to an abuse allegation when it arises in one of the denomination’s churches, each of which is autonomous. The S.B.C. has resisted calls for reforms for years, but addressing the issue of sexual abuse will be a major focus this week at the convention’s annual meeting in Birmingham, Ala. All Ms. Bragg said she wanted was a church home that will care for her family. Evangelicals in Dallas are enamored with the Village, with Mr. Chandler, and all the church represents, she said recently. She started to cry.

“It is your word against these people,” she said. “Where could we come in and say, ‘This is what we have experienced,’ and have them actually honor that?”

Sadly, churches and church institutions are often NOT safe places for children and youths.

Evangelical Sex Abuse Has Been Fueled by "Purity" Culture for Decades

Father-Daughter Purity Ball in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

With the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") at long last having the spotlight shined on the sexual abuse that many have suspected was rampant across the SBC's affiliated churches thanks to the efforts of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News,  some are examining the culture that facilitated abuse and discouraged predators from being held accountable.  In some ways, there are strong parallels between the SBC's so-called purity culture and the Catholic Church's archaic sex obsessed dogma and undercurrent messaging that women are the font of all evil and temptresses to men.  While ending undeserved deference to religion and those holding religious clergy positions would be a huge start in lessening sexual abuse, the real solution lies in ending the warped theology and patriarchal structure that allow sexual predators to go unrevealed and all too often unpunished.  A piece at NBC News looks at this troubling culture.  Here are highlights:

Sexual abuse was never just a Catholic problem. But unlike the Catholic structure, evangelical churches like the one I grew up in and have spent the past 13 years researching are largely self-governing. This means we’ve mostly lacked the kind of bureaucratic record that might prove systemic abuse the way it’s been documented in Catholic dioceses.

Now, a report on a major evangelical denomination is changing all that.

A joint investigation by two Texas papers, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News, resulted in a three-part report revealing that over 200 Southern Baptist pastors, youth pastors and deacons were convicted or took plea deals for sex crimes over the past 20 years — leaving behind over 700 survivors. When the vast majority of rapes in the United States never lead to a felony conviction, these numbers suggest an astronomical level of violence.

I went on to spend more than a decade researching sexuality and the evangelical church and heard story after story of minimized and unreported abuse. To be sure, sexual violence extends well beyond the church, yet I have found that religious authoritarianism and purity culture — hallmarks of both Catholicism and evangelicalism, among other groups — can enable it.

Purity culture teaches that there are two types of people: those who are sexually “pure,” and those who are “impure.” Some teach one can lose their purity by having sexual thoughts or feelings or making sexual choices outside of a heterosexual marriage. Some even teach you can lose it by inspiring sexual expression in others.

Too often the prestige of a high-ranking perpetrator protects them, as we have seen happen in secular spaces as well . . .  . However, “prestige” doesn’t quite do justice to the untouchability a religious leader can enjoy in a highly stratified community where it is believed that they have been hand-selected or at least approved by God. Many parishioners see their pastor as the conduit to a higher power and will go to great lengths to protect them even if it means ignoring, blaming and ultimately hurting survivors.

In America, a contributing factor is a strong culture of collective victimhood in the evangelical community. My interviewees and I were taught growing up that evangelicals were the real victims — that the world hated us so much they’d do anything to make us look bad. So, it was our job to represent our community in the best light possible . . . . The underlying message was clear: a good Christian keeps their mouth shut.

Those who speak out about sexual abuse in authoritarian religious communities are often shamed in an attempt to quiet them. . . . After all, abusers don’t just groom victims, they groom communities, preparing them to rise up and protect them.

Women and girls, in particular, can be silenced in hierarchic churches that teach “complementarianism” — the belief that God ordains male authority especially in the church and the home. Having been conditioned not to question men, some women struggle to stand up to male misconduct when they see it, and when they do are often dismissed.

Meanwhile, when women and girls come forward as survivors, purity culture — which focuses largely on them — can be used against them. Many of my interviewees and I were taught that men are weak when faced with the temptation of the female flesh and it was therefore our responsibility to protect men from the threat that our bodies posed to them. We had to walk, talk and dress just right to ensure the alleged purity of our entire community, safeguarding against all sexual expression outside of marriage — the implication being that anything that did happen, even sexual violence, was our fault.

The failure to differentiate between purported sin and violent crime can also be observed in how cases are sometimes handled by churches. The report on the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, found that some accused and convicted abusers were never reported to law enforcement by church leadership; some are still working at churches; some are even still in the pulpit.

It’s only recently that evangelical leaders have even begun to be held accountable for sexual misconduct. Last year, Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced into early retirement after reportedly mishandling rape allegations, and superstar megachurch pastor, Bill Hybels, retired early after a number of women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior. But if we really want to deal with systemic sexual abuse in the church, we need to do more than remove a few bad apples. We need to take a long look at the theological and structural conditions that enable abuse — rejecting purity teachings that are used to shame and blame survivors, renouncing authoritarianism and elevating the voices of the many who remain unheard.

These same solutions apply to Catholicism as well - along with ending the priestly celibacy requirement. 

Hundreds of Victims Abused by Southern Baptist Convention Leaders

For years some have said that the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") had a major sex abuse problem of its own despite the media's greater focus on the Roman Catholic Church.  Worse yet, like the Catholic Church, the SBC leadership was aware of the problem and did little or nothing to address it. Rather, the focus was on covering up abuse and avoiding scandal that would hurt the denomination's image. What is stunning is that there 700 victims of abuse in Texas alone.  The problem is likely far larger and, in my view, stems from the SBC's ridiculous dogma on human sexuality which parallels that of the Catholic Church which has changed little since the 12th century. No one should be surprised that when this distorted approach to sexuality was combined with the often unchallenged power afforded pastors and church leaders, bad things were guaranteed to happen. The SBC obviously should have spent less time striving to make life hell for gays and subordinating women and cleaned its own house.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

“20 years, 700 victims” So reads part of the headline of a sweeping investigation that has found years of sexual abuse perpetrated by hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders against an even larger number of victims.

The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reported that nearly 400 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced sexual misconduct allegations in the past two decades. As many as 700 victims — some as young as 3 — were sexually abused, some raped and molested repeatedly, according to the report.

But instead of ensuring that sexual predators were kept at bay, the Southern Baptist Convention resisted policy changes, the newspapers found. Victims accused church leaders of mishandling their complaints, even hiding them from the public. While the majority of abusers have been convicted of sex crimes and are registered sex offenders, the investigation found that at least three dozen pastors, employees and volunteers who showed predatory behavior still worked at churches.

The revelations, published Sunday, have not only led to a chorus of condemnation and calls for restructuring, but have also pushed church leaders to grapple with the troubling history — and future — of the largest Protestant denomination in the country.

The investigation comes amid a string of recent allegations of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic priests and coverups by the church hierarchy. Just a few days earlier, Pope Francis acknowledged that members of the Catholic clergy had abused nuns for years.

The abuses described in this [Houston Chronicle] article are pure evil,” [SBC president J.D.] Greear wrote. “I join with countless others who are currently ‘weeping with those who weep.’ ”

Greear called for “pervasive change” within the denomination, including taking steps to prevent abuse, fully cooperating with legal authorities when people reported abusive behavior and helping survivors recover. He did not go into detail about what those steps would look like, except to say that “change begins with feeling the full weight of the problem.”

In Texas, where the newspapers said many of the abuses happened and where the Southern Baptist Convention has some of its most prominent congregations and pastors, church leaders expressed similar feelings of alarm.

Lively told The Post last year that she was raped in 2003 when she was pursuing a master of divinity degree in women’s studies at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. The seminary’s president at that time, Paige Patterson, urged Lively to not report the alleged abuse to police and to forgive her assailant, she said.

“The worst part is that we have known for years. I have known most of this for years, and spoken out about it. No one wanted to listen. It did not matter enough to investigate and act,” Denhollander said. “Grief and repentance and silence to learn is the only proper response."

Denhollander’s husband, Jacob, said the number of instances of sexual abuse is not the primary problem.

“Better training and protection policies can help address that,” Jacob Denhollander tweeted. “The bigger issue is that there is a pattern of leaders, who knew of the abuse, protecting the perpetrator and shaming the victims.”

Trump/Pence Regime Green Lights Discrimination in South Carolina

Miracle Hill Ministries: anti-gay, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. 

I have long argued that evangelical Christians' feigned persecution by society and disingenuous bloviating about "religious liberty" has actually been part of a larger evangelical effort to legalize discrimination against who the falsely pious do not like.  While, LGBT citizens are a favored target, evangelical "religious liberty" seeks to legalize discrimination by taxpayer funded organizations on a much larger scale.  Eager to retain support from evangelicals - the largest support group for the morally bankrupt Trump -and Pence - The Trump/Pence Department of Health and Human Services has given the green light to discrimination by a right wing "Christian" organization in South Carolina to discriminate against gays, Catholics, Jews, and I suspect, if they are discrete, blacks, in making adoption and foster care placements.  Since the organization receives taxpayer funds, Trump/Pence is in effect forcing targeted taxpayers to support an organization that openly discriminates against them.  The situation parallels what the established Church of England enjoyed in colonial times that the Founding Fathers sought to prohibit through the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Right Wing Watch looks at this travesty.  Here are excerpts:   

In a move that brought a startling clarity to the end game for “religious liberty” claims made by Religious Right political and legal groups, the Department of Health and Human Services last week granted a waiver from federal non-discrimination rules to South Carolina, allowing the state to continue funneling tax dollars to Miracle Hill, a child welfare agency that refuses to place foster children with Jewish or Catholic families—or anyone who doesn’t share Miracle Hill’s conservative evangelical religious doctrine. The waiver also applies to all other South Carolina faith-based foster care agencies.

“Under Miracle Hill’s policies, not only Jews are rejected” as potential mentors and foster parents, reported the Religion News Service. “Muslims, Hindus and atheists are also barred from fostering or mentoring children in the nonprofit’s programs; so too are Catholics.” Don’t even ask about same-sex couples, even if they’re Protestant. Miracle Hill has reportedly received millions of dollars from the state and federal governments.

What makes this development even more jaw-dropping is that at the very same moment the Trump administration is deferring to the far right and approving this taxpayer-funded religious discrimination, the right-wing Judicial Crisis Network is promoting a video dishonestly accusing Democratic senators of anti-Catholic bigotry over their questioning of judicial nominees.  A previous JCN ad attacking senators over their questioning of appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was actually entitled “Catholics Need Not Apply.”

The smears against the senators are false, and reflect a strategy meant to smooth a path to the Supreme Court for Barrett, who some Religious Right leaders have called God’s anointed choice to fill the next vacancy. But in the case of Miracle Hill, an actual “No Catholics Need Apply” rule has been given formal approval by South Carolina’s governor and the Trump administration.

In pushing for broad religious exemptions from nondiscrimination laws, Religious Right groups have almost always made gay people and same-sex couples the bad guys—the ones religious social service agencies and business owners don’t want to be “forced” to serve. The idea that businesses could use the same principle to return to a time when it was legal to discriminate against, say, interfaith couples, is no longer theoretical.

Miracle Hill says it works with “Christian” families. But when it says “Christian,” it really means Protestants, and only those who meet the agency’s religious standards. No one else.

Allowing this kind of discrimination with tax dollars is a huge change. Federal civil rights rules have at times allowed religiously affiliated social service agencies to restrict staff hiring to people with similar religious beliefs. But that rule has never applied to the provision of services with taxpayer money. In other words, a church-affiliated charity that gets government funding to help feed or house poor people may be able to hire only Christian staff, but it couldn’t—at least up to now—feed only the right kind of Christian poor people.

And yet the Trump administration and its Religious Right cheerleaders characterized the waiver as a victory for religious freedom.

The Religious Right’s long campaign to redefine “religious liberty” has taken a core constitutional principle that is meant to be a shield protecting Americans’ free exercise of religion, and turned it into a sword against nondiscrimination laws. That sword, it is now clear, will not only be used to target LGBTQ people, but anyone who doesn’t embrace the Religious Right’s worldview.

Russell Moore, head of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, praised the Miracle Hill waiver, saying, “Culture wars shouldn’t stand in the way of those seeking to care for children in need.” But allowing state-funded agencies to reject an experienced foster mother on the basis of her religious beliefs—like a Jewish woman turned away by Miracle Hill—denies vulnerable children access to qualified care providers.

The Trump administration’s move makes both state and federal governments complicit in explicit discrimination against non-Christians and Christians who don’t meet conservative evangelicals’ approval. The Anti-Defamation League has rightly called it a “dangerous precedent.” That’s especially true in an era in which Christian nationalists and dominionists are committed to building more political power.

The Department of Health and Human Services was a top takeover target for Religious Right groups who helped put Trump in the White House. The new waiver is just the latest sign of the extraordinary and damaging influence on policy that Religious Right activists have in the Trump administration.

I'm sorry, but evangelicals are the least Christian, most morally abhorrent group going. Note the Southern Baptist Convention's ("SBC") lauding of the waiver.  But then, the SBC was created because it supported slavery and discrimination.  Some things seemingly never change.

How Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned the Republican Party Racist

I grew up Republican and was a member of the City Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia Beach for eight years.  During that period, I viewed Republicans for the most part as "the good guys."  But something changed over the years and I have always credited the GOP's decline into a party of extremism and racism to directly correlate with the rise of the Christofascists in the party.  As the Christofascists infiltrated the party, moderates and I would argue sane people not motivated by simple greed (the true motivation for the worship of tax cuts) and racism and/or religious extremism fled the party.  A friend and former classmate recently linked to a lengthy piece in Forbes written by a former Republican that focuses mostly on the South but lays out how pastors, especially Southern Baptist pastors, were key to the transformation of the GOP and accomplished the "Southern Strategy" that Richard Nixon and his strategist, Lee Atwater envisioned.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation in alliance with Jerry Fallwell and now his son and Pat Robertson and his minions have played a major behind the scenes role in turning the Virginia GOP into a neo-Confederate party where racism is no longer disguised and is synonymous with calls for "religious liberty.  Take the time to read the entire piece.  Here are article highlights: 

“White Democrats will desert their party in droves the minute it becomes a black party.” Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969.

Thirty years ago, archconservative Rick Perry was a Democrat and liberal icon Elizabeth Warren was a Republican. Back then there were a few Republican Congressmen and Senators from Southern states, but state and local politics in the South was still dominated by Democrats. By 2014 that had changed entirely as the last of the Deep South states completed their transition from single-party Democratic rule to single party rule under Republicans. The flight of the Dixiecrats was complete.

Reasons for the switch are not so hard to understand. . . . . Southern anger over the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights reforms was no secret and no surprise.

While the “why” behind the flight of the Dixiecrats is obvious, the “how” is more difficult to establish, shrouded in myths and half-truths. Analysts often explain the great exodus of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party by referencing the Southern Strategy, a cynical campaign ploy supposedly executed by Richard Nixon in his ’68 and ’72 Presidential campaigns, but that explanation falls flat.

Crediting the Nixon campaign with the flight of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party dismisses the role Southerners themselves played in that transformation. In fact, Republicans had very little organizational infrastructure on the ground in the South before 1980, . . . The flight of the Dixiecrats was ultimately conceived, planned, and executed by Southerners themselves, largely independent of, and sometimes at odds with, existing Republican leadership. It was a move that had less to do with politicos than with pastors. Southern churches, warped by generations of theological evolution necessary to accommodate slavery and segregation, were all too willing to offer their political assistance to a white nationalist program. Southern religious institutions would lead a wave of political activism that helped keep white nationalism alive inside an increasingly unfriendly national climate. Forget about Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan. No one played as much of a role in turning the South red as the leaders of the Southern Baptist Church. There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America’s largest denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery.

Spirituality may be personal, but organized religion, like race, is a cultural construct. When you’ve lost the ability to mobilize supporters based on race, religion will serve as a capable proxy. What was lost under the banner of “segregation forever” has been tenuously preserved through a continuing “culture war.” A fight for white nationalism and white cultural supremacy has in some ways been more successful after its transformation into an expressly religious, rather than merely racist crusade.

So long as pastors or priests (or in this case, televangelists) are willing to apply their theological creativity to serve political demands, religious institutions can be bent to advance any policy goal. With remarkably little prodding, Christian churches in Germany fanned the flames for Hitler. The Southern Baptist Church was organized specifically to protect slavery and white supremacy from the influence of their brethren in the North, a role that has never ceased to distort its identity, beliefs and practices.

At that time [1956], there may have been no more influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention than W.A. Criswell, the pastor of the enormous First Baptist Church in Dallas.

At a convention in South Carolina, Criswell turned his popular fire and brimstone style on the “blasphemous and unbiblical” agitators who threatened the Southern way of life. Beyond all the boilerplate racist invective, Criswell outlined an eerily prescient rhetorical stance, a framework capable of outlasting Jim Crow. In a passage that managed to avoid explicit racism, he described what would become the primary political weapon of the culture wars:

Don’t force me by law, by statute, by Supreme Court decision…to cross over in those intimate things where I don’t want to go. Let me build my life. Let me have my church. Let me have my school. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my family. And what you give to me, give to every man in America and keep it like our glorious forefathers made – a land of the free and the home of the brave.

Long after the battle over whites’ only bathrooms had been lost, evangelical communities in Houston or Charlotte can continue the war over a “bathroom bill” using a rhetorical structure Criswell and others built. He had constructed a strangely circular, quasi-libertarian argument in which a right to oppress others becomes a fundamental right born of a religious imperative, protected by the First Amendment.

Criswell’s bizarre formula, as it metastasized and took hold elsewhere, could allow white nationalists to continue their campaign as a “culture war” long after the battle to protect segregated institutions had been lost.

Southern Baptists remained at the vanguard of the fight to preserve Jim Crow until the fight was lost.

Evangelical resistance to the civil rights movement was not uniform, but dissent was rare and muted. Southern Baptist superstar Billy Graham was cautiously sympathetic to King. . . . . However, in public Graham was careful to keep a safe distance and avoided the kind of open displays of sympathy for civil rights that might have complicated his career.

In 1968, the Southern Baptist Convention formally endorsed desegregation. That same year, in a remarkably passive-aggressive counter to their apparent concession on civil rights, they elected W.A. Criswell to lead the denomination.

Defeated and demoralized, segregationists in the 1970’s faced a frustrating problem – how to rebuild a white nationalist political program without using the discredited rhetoric of race. Religion would provide them their answer. Armed with the superficially race-neutral rhetorical formula Criswell had described, prominent Southern Baptist ministers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would emerge to take up the fight. All they needed was a spark to light a new wave of political activism.

In 1967, Mississippi began offering tuition grants to white students allowing them to attend private segregated schools. A federal court struck down the move two years later, . . . . It was the status of these schools, a growing source of church recruitment and revenue, that finally stirred the grassroots to action. Televangelist Jerry Falwell would unite with a broader group of politically connected conservatives to form the Moral Majority in 1979. His partner in the effort, Paul Weyrich, made clear that it was the schools issue that launched the organization, an emphasis reflected in chain events across the 1980 Presidential campaign.

The rise of the religious right is usually credited to abortion activism, but few evangelicals cared about the subject in the 70’s.

In August of 1980, Criswell and other Southern Baptist leaders hosted Republican Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a rally in Dallas. Reagan in his speech never used the word “abortion,” but he enthusiastically and explicitly supported the ministers’ position on protecting private religious schools. That was what they needed to hear.

Evangelical ministers, previously reluctant to lend their pulpits to political activists, launched a massive wave of activism in Southern pews in support of the Reagan campaign. The new President would not forget their support. Less than a year into his Administration, Reagan officials pressed the IRS to drop its campaign to desegregate private schools.

For decades, men like [Lee] Atwater had been searching for the perfect “abstract” phrasing, a magic political dog whistle that could communicate that “N…r, n…r” message behind a veneer of respectable language.

It was religious leaders in the South who solved the puzzle on Republicans’ behalf, converting white angst over lost cultural supremacy into a fresh language of piety and “religious liberty.” Southern conservatives discovered that they could preserve white nationalism through a proxy fight for Christian Nationalism. They came to recognize that a weak, largely empty Republican grassroots structure in the South was ripe for takeover and colonization. . . . Religious nationalists began to purge traditional Republicans from the region’s few GOP institutions.

Russell Moore became the President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s social outreach arm in 2013. In that capacity, he began to challenge many of the darker elements of the church’s history. From a post in the church traditionally dedicated to hand-wringing over gay rights and dirty movies, Moore criticized those who stirred up hatred against refugees and ignored matters of racial justice. He drew sharp criticism when he denounced the Confederate Flag, explaining, “The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.”

The real fury came when Moore applied to Donald Trump the same standard of conduct Baptists had demanded of Bill Clinton.

As religious leaders lined up solidly behind Trump last fall, Moore commented, "The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us about."

Today, W.A. Criswell’s Dallas megachurch is pastored by Robert Jeffress, who has remained faithful to the most bigoted strains of the olde tyme religion.

Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, retooled the ministry he inherited, turning it into something a civil rights era segregationist could love without reservation. Graham, who earns more than $800,000 a year as the head of his inherited charity, has made anti-Muslim rhetoric a centerpiece of his public profile and ministry.

Jerry Falwell's son also inherited the family business, serving now as president of his father's university. His support for Trump is less surprising than Graham's, and far less of a departure from his father's work. Falwell spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention.

Public perception that a “Southern strategy” conceived and initiated by clever Republicans turned the South red is worse than false. By deflecting responsibility onto some shadowy “other” it blocks us from reckoning with the past or changing our future. History is a powerful tide, especially when it runs unseen and concealed. A refusal to honestly confront our past leaves us to repeat our mistakes over and over again.

No one needs to say “N..r, n..r” anymore. With help from evangelical pastors, this new generation of politicians has found a new political party and a fresh language with which to stir old grievances and feed their power. By merely refining their rhetoric and activating evangelical congregations, a new generation of Southern conservatives grow ever closer to winning a fight their forebears once thought was lost.

Not surprisingly, a recent survey found that a majority of evangelicals admit to being racists.  "Religious liberty" today equates with a right to discriminate against gays but also ultimately to discriminate against blacks, one of the bedrocks of the Southern Baptist Church and its allied evangelical churches. As has been the case through so much of history, organized religion is a pervasive evil.  Hopefully, with the flight of younger generations from religion  over time its toxic power will die in America.