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. 

48% Of Evangelicals Back Kavanaugh Even If Guilty

After today's testimony by Christine Blasey Ford - who came across as a totally credible witness - and the belligerent response of Brett Kavanaugh, it is unclear whether the Senate Republicans will belatedly uphold decency and have a detailed FBI investigation and delay their vote or give Kavanaugh - who seems cut from the same cloth as some I knew in college who participated in "trains" on incapacitated or inebriated young women - a pass and place him on the Supreme Court.  Regardless of the outcome, Senate Republicans have made it totally clear that the GOP can no longer claim any shred of morality high ground.  Most disturbing is the reality that nearly half of evangelical Christians want Kavanaugh confirmed EVEN IF HE's GUILTY.  After two decades of monitoring evangelicals and "family values" organizations and witnessing the manner in which evangelicals Christians ushered in the embrace of lies and moral bankruptcy overtake the GOP, I candidly am not surprised.  As I have said a number of times, no group lies more or is more filled with hypocrisy than evangelicals who parade around with false piety and while making a mockery of the message of the New Testament.  A piece in Vox looks at the moral bankruptcy of evangelicals.  Here are excerpts: 

Forty-eight percent of white evangelicals say that embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed even if the allegations of sexual assault against him are true.

Marist asked 1,000 respondents from September 22 to 24 whether they would support Kavanaugh if the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh assaulted her at a high school party decades ago, were found to be true.

Support for Kavanaugh’s confirmation falls along partisan lines with 12 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans saying yes.

Aside from the 48 percent who said they would support Kavanaugh’s appointment to the court, 36 percent of white evangelicals say they would not support it, and 16 percent did not have an answer. Mirroring the poll results, many prominent white evangelicals have spoken out in Kavanaugh’s defense, characterizing the allegations against him as part of a liberal plot to waylay his nomination. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of the evangelical Liberty University, sent 300 women Liberty students to Washington, DC, to support Kavanaugh during this week’s Senate confirmation hearings.

Likewise, prominent evangelical Franklin Graham has expressed support for Kavanaugh, minimizing the nature of the alleged assault and characterizing it as merely a clumsy come-on, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network, “She said no and he respected it and walked away.”

Yet the Marist poll results suggest that, for many white evangelicals, another factor is at play in their support for Kavanaugh: They don’t think what he did is bad enough to be disqualifying.

Or, as one unidentified woman Trump and Kavanaugh supporter from Montana said, according to MSNBC, “It’s no big deal.” While the woman did not reveal her own religious affiliation, her words are nevertheless indicative of many conservatives’, particularly white evangelicals’, stance on the allegations against Kavanaugh.

Such a perspective fits neatly within the context of evangelical sexual culture, which in recent months has been characterized by a wider suspicion of the #MeToo movement. Within evangelical culture, as I’ve written previously, the idea that women are “supposed” to be the gatekeepers of male sexuality, that male sexual urges are inherently uncontrollable, and the idea that forgiveness is automatically “owed” to any alleged abuser, converge to create a climate in which allegations of sexual harassment and abuse tend to be seen as minor or, at least, forgivable.

Certainly, the evangelical community is already redeeming its own people accused of sexual misconduct during the #MeToo movement. Earlier this month, former Southern Baptist Convention president Paige Patterson — who left his position as president of the Southwestern Baptist Seminary in disgrace after accusations of sexism — returned to public ministry with a pair of sermons that denigrated the #MeToo movement and focused on the problem of false rape allegations.

Today, as Christine Blasey Ford testifies in front of the Senate, GOP senators will be trying to argue that her assault never happened. But what might be even scarier is the idea that, if it did, plenty of Americans wouldn’t even care.

 I cannot undo the reality that I was baptized as a Christian, but I will certainly do all in my ability to distance myself from evangelical/conservative Christians and the toxic moral bankruptcy that they represent.