As news is breaking from the investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s handling of sexual abuse, my heart breaks for women in the denomination I once called home.
It is devastating to read about the treatment of victims and about decisions to try to protect the church instead of the abused. As this report brings about a reckoning, I can only pray it will force the SBC to take a look at its handling of all women and of everything having to do with sex. This sexual abuse is the most dreadful, but it is not the only way that the SBC has abused women.
Paula Garrett
When I was about to be ordained as a deacon in a Baptist church years ago, I had a conversation with someone dear to me, someone whose faith I always admired. He told me he could not support my ordination; he said he genuinely believed it was not of God. When I asked him why, he didn’t quote the well-worn, context-specific lines about women keeping silent. To my shock and, frankly, to my absolute horror, he said, “How can I pray with my deacon of the week if it’s a woman? That is too intimate. Too potentially sexual.”
This was the first but not the last time I saw how much sex and power are intertwined for some ministers.
“To see this as solely about individual misbehavior on the part of some ministers is to underestimate the depth of the disease that is rotting the SBC.”
The overt, sexual abuse by Baptist ministers is disgusting. The efforts by leadership, particularly members of the Executive Committee, to cover it up rather than to protect victims is soul-crushing. But to see this as solely about individual misbehavior on the part of some ministers is to underestimate the depth of the disease that is rotting the SBC. The church must confront its devaluing of women at every turn if it is going to heal from this.
When ministers see every person in their congregations as truly a part of the sacred, as truly made in the image of God, as absolutely equal in the sight of the Lord, then this kind of abuse of power will be cast out. If, instead, the SBC treats the symptoms rather than the disease, there will be more and more cases of abuse.
To treat the disease fully, the SBC must confront its misogyny, its racism, its homophobia, indeed, its absolute idolatry of straight, white masculinity.
When Beth Moore finally pulled away from the SBC over the church’s failure to address the gross belittling of women by then candidate Donald Trump, she sounded a clear alarm. Instead of responding, from my vantage point the SBC actually breathed a collective sigh of relief that she had left.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t even agree with half of what Moore says, but I admired her courage to call out this hypocrisy then, and I admire her tweet today for calling out the “men’s club mentality” of those who will not take this report seriously.
“If the SBC wants to rid itself of this disease, this plague really, it must bring to the table folks other than those who have dominated the conversation for so long.”
If the SBC wants to rid itself of this disease, this plague really, it must bring to the table folks other than those who have dominated the conversation for so long. Look at the Executive Committee. It is almost all white, straight, male. What would happen if women, people of color and, dare I even suggest, non-straight Christians were at the table?
First, it would then begin to look like God’s table, not the SBC’s. This would require that white, straight, male leaders in the SBC listen to other voices, rather than their own, to hear the voice of God. In short, it would require the SBC to acknowledge that God speaks to and through women, people of color and LGBTQ folks.
I do pray for the SBC. I pray for the women and children who are victims of sexual abuse at the hands of ministers. I pray for their relationships with God. I cannot imagine the ways God has been contorted, even weaponized, to groom, persuade and ultimately abuse these children of God, and I cannot imagine how they will ever feel safe to call upon God again. I pray for their abusers and for other Baptists who have diminished God’s call on the diversity of God’s children.
As the details from this report continue to emerge and as ministers, churches and the convention try to figure out what to do next, I pray the SBC will truly confront the depths of its disease.
Paula Garrett serves as professor and chair of English after serving for a decade as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C. She previously served as a deacon at Northside Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss. She and her partner have one teenage son.
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