Reading Time: 12 minutes When an abusive evangelical pastor, Christian Watts, tried to downplay his grooming of a teenager decades earlier, he described his predation as ‘my past sin.’ That’s a time-honored tactic for people caught in his exact circumstances. Let’s take a closer look at this tactic to see why it works so well in evangelical culture.
Evangelical Sex Assault Scandal
Posted inReligion
Pastor Christian Watts tried to negate abuse accusations with Christianese
Reading Time: 14 minutes To save his job, Christian Watts clung hard to a time-tested, long-honored evangelical get-out-of-scandal-free card: calling upon Christianese to escape the writing on his wall.
Posted inReligion
Why Mormons confuse scrutiny and mockery for persecution
Reading Time: 10 minutes The post we’re examining today contains big words like oppressed and persecution. Its writer has misdefined them all.
Posted inReligious News
How Hillsong is quickly falling apart
Reading Time: 6 minutes So far, Hillsong has lost 9 of its 16 American campuses. It’s a swift comeuppance for a church that seemed too big to fall. But Hillsong has shown, through these constant scandals, that their dazzling and trendy image is distinctly at odds with their lived reality.
Posted inReligion
The Hillsong scandal—and damage control—continues
Reading Time: 8 minutes A few days ago, the world learned that Brian Houston–beleaguered founder of Hillsong Church, a global megachurch–violated his church’s code of conduct with “inappropriate behavior” directed at two women. He’s trying his best to spin-doctor what he did, but he’s just making his situation worse. In the process, he’s revealing just how extensive his enabler network is–and how far they’re willing to go to protect Hillsong itself.
Posted inReligion
This Christianity Today scandal doesn’t surprise me at all
Reading Time: 8 minutes I’m not even half surprised by any of these revelations. For years now, I’ve noted unsettling trends in this publication. Once again, then, we learn to our detriment that evangelicals cannot have authoritarianism and institutional sexism without it breeding scandals and abuse.
Posted inReligious News
Southern Baptists apologize to a sex abuse victim. Here’s why it’s a big deal
Reading Time: 14 minutes This apology and settlement represent some of the very most definitive actions the SBC has ever taken regarding any sexual abuse claim since journalists first exposed their mega-scandal, “Abuse of Faith,” three years ago. I don’t think the timing of this action is accidental. Today, let me show you why.
Posted inLeaving Religion
What Finally Stopped Josh Duggar
Reading Time: 7 minutes Had we left the Duggars to their own business all this time, Josh Duggar would still be molesting little girls and consuming child pornography so horrific that one veteran investigator called it “the top five of the worst I have ever had to examine.”
Posted inEthics and Morality
This Seventh-Day Adventist Pastor Told Us Who He Is
Reading Time: 6 minutes No way, no how did Burnett Robinson come by his opinion recently. No way, no how did he get any significant pushback for his views from anyone he counted as important — until now, at least. Instead, he was telling us exactly who he was, and exactly who he’s been for a long time. But he also told us a lot of other important stuff.
Posted inGeneral
Hypocrisy Reveals Christians’ True Morality
Reading Time: 6 minutes If people have a stated morality that they’re not actually living, then they’re being inauthentic. Inauthenticity is not a symptom of sin nature. It’s just being human. For such people, the real morals by which they live can be found elsewhere. Whatever they’re living day-to-day, that is their moral code — not what comes out of their mouths.