And you thought the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal was bad. Southern Baptist are competing to be worse.

[lees1975]

https://baptistnews.com/article/court-records-reveal-tangled-trail-in-sills-sexual-abuse-case/

A sprawling collection of discovery material now made public has unearthed explosive new details and previously unknown facts regarding the Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the sexual abuse allegations involving former professor David Sills and his former student, Jennifer Lyell.

The documents, stemming from Sills’ ongoing defamation lawsuit against the SBC and others, expose a staggering chasm between the supportive public statements made by key denominational leaders and the private doubts, skepticism and hostility expressed in internal communications regarding abuse allegations and the survivor community.

Among the thousands of pages of court documents, new details from the deposition of former Lifeway Senior Vice President Eric Geiger provide a harrowing glimpse into the specific nature of the abuse Lyell reported to SBC leadership in 2018 — details that paint a far darker picture than the “morally inappropriate relationship” initially reported to the public by Baptist Press.

According to discovery documents and deposition testimony from Geiger, Lyell allegedly described a theological trap in which she felt compelled to “please the patriarch,” a twisted spiritual justification that allegedly framed years of sexual violence.

[walkingman]

1. Sexual misconduct and the Church have a long and dark history.

Another example of not holding people accountable which leads to more misconduct.

[lees1975]

4. It's doctrine.

Conservative Christians in particular tend toward a literal interpretation of the Bible, and that leads to blending doctrine with the culture that existed at the time the Bible was written. And that includes the subjugation of women as property, which is completely discredited by the gospel Jesus preached, which conservatives ignore or now call "woke."

There is no standard of morality when the Old Testament is equated in inspiration and interpreted as a verse by verse rule book. In the Old Testament, male sexual gratification is a goal. The first hint that there might be something wrong with that is when David sleeps with Bathsheeba, but the emphasis in that story isn't on the adultery he commits, its on murdering her husband.

A denominational organization is simply a power structure for a small group of individuals who use it to channel wealth and power into their own interests. The Southern Baptists are particularly vulnerable because their structure was designed along the lines of the old Confederate States of America, to create and then preserve an inside aristocracy to use the structure for other than religious purposes. The Southern Baptists are now much more of a right wing extremist political organization than they are a Christian group of churches.

[DBoon]

2. authoritarian organizations ALWAYS end up with leader abusing their followers

[LastDemocratInSC]

3. They just can't shake off that original sin thing.

Going to a church to learn morals, values, temperance, etc, is like going to a shoe store where all the sales people are barefoot. They don't use or trust their own product.