Book documents molestation in conservative Baptist churches

Author Jeri Massi says abuse victims have been written off, discarded and even vilified in the pulpits of both Independent Baptists and the Southern Baptist Convention. Her The Big Book of Bad Baptist Preachers catalogues 100 cases of preachers and churches involved in child molestation scandals in the last 20 years.



“The sexual abuse of children is part and parcel of the cultures of the Independent Baptists and Southern Baptists,” Massi says in the book’s introduction.

When confronted by the scale of the problem, she says, Baptist leadership has “at best turned a deaf ear and at worst has countered with threats and intimidation.”

Massi says abuse victims and their advocates are routinely accused of “painting with a broad brush.” In her own Independent Fundamental Baptist tradition, she says she has been depicted as sexually promiscuous, a drug addict and a witch and had her life threatened three times.

Whistleblowers don’t fare much better in the Southern Baptist Convention, she says, quoting SBC leaders denouncing the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests as “opportunists motivated by personal gain” and “just as reprehensible as sex criminals.”
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Massi says the book is sadly a work in progress. She is only about a third of the way through her notes and plans to release a second volume in December adding another 60 cases she knows about, with the list growing every week.

“Sex abuse is rampant in Baptist churches,” Massi says in a page at the end of the book that includes a form for individuals who have information about a case to fill out and submit for future volumes.

“I suppose if the SBC and IFB refuse to track dangerous preachers, it is up to us to provide the record, so that children in Christianity remain safe,” she addresses readers.

Book documents molestation in conservative Baptist churches

The Problematic Obsession With ‘Curing’ Autism -- Science of Us

Silberman’s interest in the subject was first piqued in 2000, when he realized that a startling number of kids in Silicon Valley were showing signs of autism — something that looked like an “epidemic” was afoot, and people were starting to freak out. His reporting on that phenomenon led to “The Geek Syndrome,” a 2001 article in Wired in which he explained how the concept of assortative mating — basically, people pairing off with those who are similar to them — could help explain what was going on with Silicon Valley’s children. There’s a reason Asperger’s has long been called “the engineer’s disorder” (or disease), after all — people in programming and engineering seem to have these traits more frequently than people in other fields. And if you put a bunch of them together in one place and they start having kids, there’s an explanation for the “epidemic.”

But that was only the start of Silberman’s research. “As time went on, I began to feel I had blown a much larger story,” he said. Even ten years after the publication of the article, he kept getting emails from families — increasingly, they were concerned not with figuring out what had caused their kids' autism, but rather what to do now that their kids were “aging out of services.” The problem is that, as Silberman explained, is that “once autistic kids graduate high school, the families are left to twist slowly in the wind and there are very few resources to help the kids translate from school to the workplace.”
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Silberman started to see this sort of focus on causes and cures as missing the point. “I think the idea that there’s going to be a cure ‘just around the corner,’ which is the phrase that gets echoed in media coverage all the time, comes from the mistaken belief that it’s a historical aberration, that autism was very rare before, now it’s very common — something’s changed and we’re going to zero in on that and fix it, and then there won’t be so many autistic people,” he said. “That’s a lie — it’s an illusion.” The traits that define the autism spectrum have always been around, he explained — while it might make for a pat story to suggest that chemicals in our food or evil pharmaceutical companies have led to skyrocketing rates, the available research suggests this isn’t an accurate way to look at it. Rather, NeuroTribes makes the case that a collusion of forces in the 1980s and 1990s produced the skyrocketing rates, including drastically broadened diagnostic criteria, the introduction of easy-to-use clinical tools for autism assessment, and — somewhat entertainingly — Rain Man, which made autism in adults visible to global audiences for the first time. These factors came together in what Silberman calls “an epidemic of recognition.”


The Problematic Obsession With ‘Curing’ Autism -- Science of Us

How the Vatican investigates miracles | New York Post

In “The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age” (Viking), John Thavis, former Rome bureau chief for the Catholic News Service, describes this 1982 secret exorcism.

The new book shares how the Vatican deals with supernatural — or supposedly supernatural — events, from holy relics to instances of possession.

Thavis makes it clear that events of this sort put the Vatican in a difficult spot. On one hand, they cannot reject such supernatural phenomena outright, as to do so would reject many elements of the religion’s history.

At the same time, every claim of a supernatural or otherworldly presence must be handled with extreme skepticism, to prevent the Church from being taken in by charlatans, any one of whom could deal a blow to the Church’s credibility.

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The Church has dealt with fake relics since the Middle Ages, when the “brain of Saint Peter,” which had been “venerated for centuries in the cathedral of Geneva was investigated and found to be a pumice stone,” and the “arm of Saint Anthony,” long “kissed by the faithful on festive occasions, turned out to be part of a stag.”

These days, rather than spend time and money exposing forgeries, the Church sometimes turns a blind eye to relics whose authenticity is in question. In 2011, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster angered many Catholics when he stated, “If that connection is made through an object which maybe forensically won’t stand up to the test, that’s of secondary importance to the spiritual and emotive power that the object can contain.”

How the Vatican investigates miracles | New York Post

Post-traumatic church syndrome? Yep, it's a thing. - On Faith & Culture

Fifty-nine percent of Millennials who grew up in a Christian church drop out of it permanently or for an extended period of time, according to research by Barna Group. Among the most common reasons for leaving are Millennials’ beliefs that churches are shallow, anti-science, overprotective, and promote simplistic, judgmental views of sexuality. Some of these disaffected believers stay gone and others return later in life, but a large proportion of both end up bitter or jaded toward institutional religion. Now, thanks to Reba Riley, these Millennials have shorthand to describe what they are experiencing: PTCS.

In her hilarious and raw memoir, “Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome,” Riley describes her struggle to heal from wounds inflicted by institutional Christianity. Her spiritual quest will doubtlessly make some Christian readers uneasy–Riley, for example, samples 30 different religions and ends up affirming beliefs and practices of several non-Christian faiths–but it will surely resonate with many. Here we discuss what PTCS actually means and what Riley learned about faith from her recent religious journey.

Post-traumatic church syndrome? Yep, it's a thing. - On Faith & Culture

American Apocalypse by Matthew Avery Sutton review – the rise Christian evangelicals | Books | The Guardian

Hmm,,,a book review that I am having trouble pulling out what to highlight.  Not that it is a bad review or a poorly written one, but there be a lot of stuffs in this here review.

For starters, it touches on a topic I have posted about before How Corporate America Invented Christian America by POLITICO Magazine,

It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.

Where POLITICO criticizes the capitalistic aspect, Guyatt highlights Matthew Avery Sutton’s focus on the "prophecy belief at the heart of the modern evangelical movement."  What should be noted in the crossover of the main players.

Matthew Avery Sutton’s new book locates prophecy belief at the heart of the modern evangelical movement. At the start of the 20th century, conservative Protestants reacted to the populist politics and theological liberalism of their age with righteous defiance. The stereotype of religious conservatism throws up images of rural churches in the southern Bible belt, but Christian fundamentalism was born in the big cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, funded by wealthy businessmen such as Lyman Stewart, a California oil tycoon who bankrolled The Fundamentals (1910-15), the book series that gave the movement its name. Initially, fundamentalists struggled to endorse candidates for Congress, let alone the presidency. Most loathed Franklin Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented four presidential elections despite their disdain. Politicians became aware of the power of evangelical voters in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jimmy Carter himself was a born-again Christian (though not a fundamentalist). But it was only with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that the religious right gained entry into the White House.
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The central paradox of Sutton’s book, which he acknowledges but never quite resolves, is why anyone expecting Armageddon would waste time on politics. For more than a century, prophecy adherents have largely agreed on the end times sequence: war in the Middle East, world government and the rise of the antichrist will mark a seven-year period known as the tribulation. Jews will suffer particular torture, but will ultimately find refuge in Christ. Evangelicals can afford to be sanguine about this because they think God will teleport them to heaven just before things turn bad. Prophecy is an obvious recruiting tool for Christian fundamentalists, who can implore sinners to become “rapture ready” by emphasising the horrors of the tribulation.

But if the fate of the world is sealed, why bother trying to take over the US government? American Apocalypse suggests a range of answers. “No matter what happens,” wrote the celebrated evangelical William Blackstone in the 1920s, “we are under marching orders” to advance God’s cause. Billy Graham hinted that a religious revival in the US might delay the apocalypse, allowing more time to win souls for Jesus. According to Sutton, some evangelicals in the mid-20th century even imagined they could shield the US from God’s harshest judgments, a kind of religious version of American exceptionalism.

American Apocalypse by Matthew Avery Sutton review – the rise Christian evangelicals | Books | The Guardian

Remembering the lesbians, prostitutes, and resisters of Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Nestled alongside an idyllic lake, the Ravensbrück concentration camp, 50 miles north of Berlin, was constructed in 1939 specifically to house women. By the end of the war, 130,000 women from 20 European countries had been led through its entrance, often unaware of the danger inside.

Most of the camp’s inhabitants weren’t Jewish; rather, they were considered inferior because they were prostitutes, lesbians, political resisters, “work-shy,” or “asocial.” Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s Witnesses—the latter had only to renounce their faith to be freed—were also imprisoned there. All were considered “useless mouths” by the Nazis, worthy of brutal treatment. More than 30,000—some estimate as many as 90,000—women perished there from starvation, disease, gassings, hanging, torture, or execution by shooting.

“They had what I would call dead eyes,” said Sylvia Salvesen, a Norwegian survivor of Ravensbrück, recalling her first impression of the bald, skeletal prisoners she saw when she arrived at the camp in 1943. Author Sarah Helm chronicles Salvesen’s story, and those of many others, in a new book, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women. Helm’s exhaustive research includes interviews with numerous survivors. The youngest were in their mid-80s; many have since passed away.


Remembering the lesbians, prostitutes, and resisters of Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods” - Salon.com

Yes, another book to add to my list. What intrigues me is the overall premise behind the book, the "a city upon a hill" reference. Although I was aware of this metaphor, I never considered the ramifications in regards to the "Christian Nation" push by the Reich; especially in regards to their love of all things Puritan. It is definitely something to explore,,,

 See also: We are not a Christian nation: Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and the eternal lie of the “city upon a hill” - An excerpt from "One Nation Under Gods: A New American History"

As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,” would have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan, the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years “dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion.”

The incessant citation of Winthrop’s metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned truth.

Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S. is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

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Some of the stories in “One Nation, Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety.

The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods” - Salon.com

Barna and Barton: America is Doomed If We Don't Do This

The United States became a unique, prosperous and admired nation because of its faith in God and the willingness of the people to abide by God's standards and principles. Over time, however, the urge to glorify oneself rather than God has seriously eroded the strength and potential of the nation.

Based on shocking new research and compelling interviews, FrontLine's newly released book, U-Turn, combines George Barna's and David Barton's unique insights and cultural analysis to demonstrate the moral and spiritual underpinnings that made the United States great, its decline over the past forty years and a detailed road map for the future.
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"Unless we invite God to be at the center of our process and operate in strict accordance with His principles, we are doomed to continue our downward slide," Barna and Barton write. "Because He has proven Himself to be a merciful ruler, though, if we will humble ourselves before Him, there is hope. U-Turn will describe the radical action Americans must take in partnership with God to restore the nation."

Barna and Barton: America is Doomed If We Don't Do This

Victim Speaks Out, While Cult Leader Awaits Trial

Cult Child is based on the recollections of a real-life child abuse survivor, whose physical and sexual maltreatment were allegedly abetted by a still-functioning Christian organization, known variously as The Move of God, The Movement, or more commonly just The Move.

The book is especially timely as former Move leader Doug McClain Sr. awaits trial in Bexar County, Texas, charged with conning a paraplegic man out of his entire life’s savings. McClain Sr., who already has millions in civil judgments against him, has also been linked to a shell corporation that allegedly smuggled tons of cocaine into the US on private planes. McClain’s son, Doug McClain Jr. was previously convicted for orchestrating a different multi-million-dollar fraud.

Though a character named “Brother Doug” does play a role in Cult Child’s tale, the novel’s events predate the McClains’ legal woes and focus not on the Move’s questionable leaders, but rather on one of the families victimized by the church.

The story is written from the perspective of Sila Caprin, who progresses from preschooler to adolescent over the course of the tale. Her history begins with a prologue that states: “The events you are about to read are all true. Only names have been changed”.

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The Move’s history and doctrines are revealed in overheard snatches of adult conversations, which Sila often does not fully comprehend. As details trickle in, readers develop a picture of the background and functioning of the group.

The Move’s now deceased founder is Sam Fife, a former Baptist minister. Considered an apostle by his followers, Fife’s sermons were laden with apocalyptic prophecy. Sila’s family were among thousands converted during a recruitment effort that bracketed the revelation of Fife’s defining theology—known as the ‘Wilderness Message’.

Central was Fife’s prediction of a Russian occupation of the United States. Followers were told that their sole hope of freedom lie in retreating to subsistence farms that Fife had established in remote areas. Fife’s evangelists crisscrossed the globe in privately owned aircraft, spreading his message to cities across the US, Canada, and Columbia. Ironically, people who’d hoped to escape communism were required to surrender their wealth before being admitted to the prison-like conformity of Fife’s communal farms.

Victim Speaks Out, While Cult Leader Awaits Trial

What Does Religion Look Like in Prison? - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

Sorry if I just stabbed you in the back,” Joshua Dubler writes in the closing paragraph of Down in the Chapel. Hugging one of the prisoners whose religious faith his book chronicles, Dubler forgot to cap his pen.

The apology is a joke, but uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has labored to tell the stories of others, especially a group so disenfranchised as the prisoners at Pennsylvania’s largest maximum security prison. Joshua Dubler was a graduate student at Princeton when he began visiting Graterford, which is just outside of Philadelphia. His research at the prison, sanctioned by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and conducted over six years, included meticulously observing the life of its chapel for years and repeatedly interviewing some of its 3,500 residents.

Down in the Chapel, published last year, is an adapted version of Dubler’s dissertation, a record of one particular week in the life of the chapel, along with 10 broader theses about religious life at the prison. Dubler’s voice is rarely absent from Down in the Chapel, but it blends with many others: a Catholic convert who has studied Greek and Hebrew for seven years since being sentenced to life for murder; an atheist who works as the chapel janitor and thinks more about the philosophy of religion than most seminarians; Cherokee and Lakota prisoners who come together for smudging ceremonies and prayer circles; the rabbi, imam, Catholic priest, Lutheran pastor, and former guerrilla warrior in Sierra Leone’s civil war turned reverend who serve as chaplains; a lazy-eyed Wiccan who wears a silver pentagram but refuses to practice anywhere but his cell; and the many corrections officers, some callous and some caring, who staff the prison.

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Down in the Chapel is most interesting when it focuses on the thoughts, questions, concerns, and beliefs of the prisoners themselves. These are the voices we long to hear, the perspectives we realize are missing from our own considerations of religion. Eavesdropping on these conversations is the real gift offered by Dubler’s book.

What Does Religion Look Like in Prison? - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

Book Review: 'Blood Will Out' By Walter Kirn : NPR

Nonfiction writers often have to go scrounging for their dream subject. They may buy themselves a ticket to some far-flung place, or join an Iditarod team, or start researching a historical figure who seems to have led a colorful life. Sometimes, writers are fortunate enough to already have a personal passion for one subject, and writing a book about it seems only natural.

But it's rare to stumble on an idea for a book that's so exciting and unusual it practically bears a sign saying write me. Yet that's pretty much what happened to Walter Kirn. At the time his book begins, Kirn is a writer living in Montana, and his then-wife, working for an animal charity there, tasks him with the job of hand-delivering a disabled dog to a dog lover in New York City. As it turns out, the dog lover is a pretentious and socially unpleasant guy named Clark Rockefeller. But as it further turns out, Clark Rockefeller probably isn't a dog-lover at all. And, more to the point, he isn't even Clark Rockefeller, who actually doesn't exist.

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Blood Will Out is the page-turning story of the highly improbable friendship that develops between these two men. "Clark" — I'll call him that here to make things simpler — comes off like an empty, creepy husk of a person — both the writer of and a character in his own life. And Kirn, while a calmly riveting and eloquent narrator, is flawed too, as he's the first to admit. He's gullible, which can be endearing, and he becomes highly excited in the presence of this kind of money and pedigree.

Book Review: 'Blood Will Out' By Walter Kirn : NPR

Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist – TheHumanist.com

I may have to get this book just for the "hometown" spin. West Seneca, a suburb of Buffalo, is about 20-25 minutes from my home stomping grounds

What makes Pinn’s journey so amazing is that he was a child preacher. He placed pressures upon himself and had pressures placed upon him by others that most children never have to endure. He was constantly aware that he had to be a sterling example for others. Though he was only a child, he had to deliver messages of hope to the adult faithful that would resonate with them. He had to make sure that his recreational activities were not of a “sinful” nature.

The young Pinn handled the challenges admirably. He saw himself as an instrument of God and felt that he was called to lead at an early age. He also had a great role model in the young minister of his church.

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As a preacher, Pinn writes that he became aware at a very early age of male privilege within the church; ministers were supposed to be male and women had no serious leadership roles in the church. Worst of all, their identity often hinged on their willingness to be seen as long-suffering, which often meant enduring the sexism and mistreatment of their husbands.

Pinn eventually left his inner-city public school and attended the predominantly white West Seneca Christian School in Western New York, near his hometown of Buffalo. It was there he noticed differences in black and white religious styles. He recalls being very uncomfortable there and was regarded as an oddity by his classmates.

Writing God’s Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist – TheHumanist.com

Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It | Brain Pickings

“We are indebted to one another and the debt is a kind of faith — a beautiful, difficult, strange faith. We believe each other into being.”

If you’ve ever known someone who committed suicide, or have contemplated it yourself, or have admired a personal hero who died by his or her own hand, please oh please read this. Because, as Jennifer Michael Hecht so stirringly argues in Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It (public library), numerous social science studies indicate that one of the best predictors of committing suicide is knowing suicide — a fact especially chilling given more people die of suicide than murder every year, and have been for centuries. Suicide kills more people than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, or liver disease, more men and women between the ages of 15 and 44 than war, more young people than anything but accident. And beneath all these impersonal statistics lie exponential human tragedies — of those who died, and of those who were left to live with their haunting void.

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"As I examine the history of how, in the West, we have understood self-killing, I also will put forward what might seem to be a contrarian position, a nonreligious argument against suicide. It is a philosophical argument but parts of it can or even must be told in terms of history, and parts must be demonstrated through modern statistics. One of the arguments I hope to bring to light is that suicidal influence is strong enough that a suicide might also be considered a homicide. Whether you call it contagion, suicidal clusters, or sociocultural modeling, our social sciences demonstrate that suicide causes more suicide, both among those who knew the person and among the strangers who somehow identified with the victim. If suicide has a pernicious influence on others, then staying alive has the opposite influence: it helps keep people alive. By staying alive, we are contributing something precious to the world."

Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It | Brain Pickings

“The Myth of Persecution”: Early Christians weren’t persecuted - Salon.com

Another book to add to my list,,,

In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, a modern myth was born. A story went around that one of the two killers asked one of the victims, Cassie Bernall, if she believed in God. Bernall reportedly said “Yes” just before he shot her. Bernall’s mother wrote a memoir, titled “She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall,” a tribute to her daughter’s courageous Christian faith. Then, just as the book was being published, a student who was hiding near Bernall told journalist Dave Cullen that the exchange never happened.

Although Candida Moss’ new book, “The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” is about the three centuries following the death of Jesus, she makes a point of citing this modern-day parallel. What Bernall truly said and did in the moments before her death absolutely matters, Moss asserts, if we are going to hold her up as a “martyr.” Yet misconceptions and misrepresentations can creep in so soon. The public can get the story wrong even in this highly mediated and thoroughly reported age — and do so despite the presence among us of living eyewitnesses. So what, then, to make of the third-hand, heavily revised, agenda-laden and anachronistic accounts of Christianity’s original martyrs?

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This is not to deny that some Christians were executed in horrible ways under conditions we’d consider grotesquely unjust. But it’s important, Moss explains, to distinguish between “persecution” and “prosecution.” The Romans had no desire to support a prison population, so capital punishment was common for many seemingly minor offenses; you could be sentenced to be beaten to death for writing a slanderous song. Moss distinguishes between those cases in which Christians were prosecuted simply for being Christians and those in which they were condemned for engaging in what the Romans considered subversive or treasonous activity. Given the “everyday ideals and social structures” the Romans regarded as essential to the empire, such transgressions might include publicly denying the divine status of the emperor, rejecting military service or refusing to accept the authority of a court. In one of her most fascinating chapters, Moss tries to explain how baffling and annoying the Romans (for whom “pacifism didn’t exist as a concept”) found the Christians — when the Romans thought about them at all.

“The Myth of Persecution”: Early Christians weren’t persecuted - Salon.com