The day Baptist News Global published a second article detailing alleged abusive behavior by Tim Whitaker of The New Evangelicals, Whitaker returned from a week-long public silence with a new video post on social media.
That March 24 video appears to be an attempt to return to business as usual despite the 94-page report from GRACE outlining abusive behavior against employees and despite Whitaker’s attempt to intimidate a BNG writer and other influencers and despite the board of directors pledging to take seriously the report and make adjustments.
Days after being accused oi “angry driving” with a female colleague in the passenger seat, Tim Whitaker posted this to social media,.
“As we stated last week, we were going to be doing a lot of things to make sure that we are putting our very best foot forward as an organization. There are many facets to TNE beyond me making content and it’s important that we start including you in those things,” Whitaker says in the new video. “So beyond our regular content of fighting Christian nationalism we will be bringing in more faces to the platform, which I’m sure you’ve already noticed over the past two months just by looking through our feed. And we’ll also be doing things like board updates for you to know what we are doing behind the scenes.”
Then he explains that his seven-member board is made up of volunteers who “have lives and jobs, careers and families.”
He then asks those who participate in TNE’s online community to “make sure to be kind and not to dehumanize others in comments. We all know that the internet can be a very cruel place and we want to do our best to remember that everyone we engage with is made in the image of God and is worthy of human dignity.”
This video was posted just hours after BNG published a second article by Rick Pidcock detailing how Whitaker had called Pidcock to complain about his first article that explained the GRACE report. Whitaker began that call by saying, “I’m going to do you a favor here and let you know that your article has factual errors all throughout it.”
When pressed to identify factual errors, he did not name any.
Yet when pressed to identify factual errors, he did not name any.
It is BNG’s policy to correct factual errors in our content as soon as we are made aware of errors. Five days after publication of the first article, no one has contacted BNG to ask for a correction and no errors in our reporting have been identified.
Social media post from Sarah Whitaker to Rick Pidcock.
Instead, as Pidcock explains in his second piece, someone with intimate knowledge of the GRACE report created a burner social media account to push back on BNG’s coverage of the GRACE report. Today, Whitaker’s wife, Sarah Whitaker, identified herself as the source of that anonymous account.
The New Evangelicals is a nonprofit that says its mission is to “reclaim a loving evangelical tradition that informs a better way forward.”
Its seven-member board of directors has posted several videos and statements on social media in the aftermath of the GRACE report. One of those on March 18 said the board “does not have the time to manage comments” on social media.
Members of TNE’s board of directors are:
- Erin Radomsky, who lives in Orlando and has a background in human resources and finance.
- Rebecca Thomas, a certified trauma-informed coach and accredited Enneagram practitioner in Santa Barbara, Calif.
- Hope Decker, who is listed as a former librarian, rural community researcher, teacher and facilitator with no geographic location identified.
- Malynda Hale, a singer/songwriter, actress and activist based in Los Angeles.
- Bruce Johnson, a business development specialist from the San Francisco Bay area.
- Simon Nixon, a former evangelical pastor who lives in Sydney, Australia.
- Christiaan VandenHeuvel, who also lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.
Related articles:
Allegations against Tim Whitaker and The New Evangelicals show how hierarchy transfers to progressive ministries | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
That time I got an angry call from the subject of an article about anger and abuse | Analysis by Rick Pidcock