At the #CaringWell conference last week, Rachael Denhollander recommended that Southern Baptists read Christa Brown’s book, This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang.[i] I read the book after receiving a copy at the For Such a Time as This rally at the SBC Annual Meeting in Birmingham at the recommendation of a friend. I too commend the book to you.
Frank Page would later characterize her as “opportunistic,” Paige Patterson would call her and other advocates “evil-doers” and “just as reprehensible as sex criminals, ” while an EC member would call her a “a person of no integrity (180-81, 183).
Spiritual abuse often goes hand in hand with sexual abuse. Perhaps the most alarming part of Christa’s story of abuse, which I’ve now heard in many other stories, is how this minister used scripture and manipulated her faith and desire to please God to satisfy his own vile lusts.
Christa Brown was a 16-year-old girl in a troubled family in Farmers Branch, Texas. Christa loved the Lord and she loved her church. So when her youth minister started paying extra attention to her, she felt special and loved. When he told her that God meant for them to be together, she believed him.
In this groundbreaking memoir and exposé, Christa Brown tells the story of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups in the largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.
The uniqueness is that Christa never stopped trying to get the SBC leadership's attention. She never stopped trying to protect children. She still is helping to uncover wolves. Christa has been a front running, trailblazing survivor and advocate in the area of sexual abuse cover-ups in the Southern Baptist Convention.
The commonalities are clergy predators and leadership coverups that run deep and wide throughout church communities . The uniqueness is that Christa never stopped trying to get the SBC leadership's attention. She never stopped trying to protect children. She still is helping to uncover wolves in sheep's' clothing.
According to an investigative report released earlier this month, deceased celebrity evangelist Ravi Zacharias abused multiple women with “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse and rape.” The evidence is overwhelming. The details are stark and nauseating. Many have described the report…
When Bible verses, prayer, hymns, faith, God-talk and church rituals are perverted into weapons for sexual assault and then hammered into shields for church cover-ups, they become neurologically networked with trauma, and this renders them polluted and often toxic for the survivors.
As Southern Baptists convene in Birmingham, we ask again: what will it take for denominational leaders to take meaningful action on clergy sexual abuse and the incalculable harm done to so many lives? Recent proposals are bare half-measures at best, with too many unknowns and too little transparency.
Sooner or later – and probably sooner – Southern Baptists will get their turn in the spotlight of still another media exposé on clergy sex abuse and cover-ups. When that happens, will anything change?
Most people wouldn’t accept excuses from a company whose product caused serious injuries to children. So why do people accept evasive explanations from a Baptist denomination for clergy sex abuse?
In its March 10, 2011 issue, Réforme magazine published a profile story about This Little Light, and about clergy sex abuse among Southern Baptists. I’m told that Réforme is the largest Protestant publication in France.
That’s the headline that people in France saw when they opened the December/January edition of the Paris publication, Books magazine. In English, it says:
Reverend Thomas Doyle is the whistle-blower priest and former Vatican canon lawyer who, twenty-five years ago, warned Catholic bishops about the looming clergy sex abuse nightmare. They ignored him, but Doyle’s prophetic words proved to be tragically true.
Reverend Thomas Doyle is the whistle-blower priest and former Vatican canon lawyer who, twenty-five years ago, warned Catholic bishops about the looming clergy sex abuse nightmare. They ignored him, but Doyle’s prophetic words proved to be tragically true.