Talibaptists

Leonard Pitts put this word into print in September 2006: “Talibaptists.”

Pitts, a columnist for the Miami Herald, was talking about the sometimes brash influence of “Talibaptists” on Florida politics, and he complained that they allow little room for those who refuse “to drink the Kool-Aid of fundamentalism.”

Even though Pitts didn’t say anything at all about clergy sex abuse, his word “Talibaptists” resonated with me. By that time, I had already had quite a few encounters with state and national Baptist leaders, and the word “Talibaptists” rang all-too-true.

Pitts’ word came to mind again when I saw the recent EthicsDaily article about Baptist seminary professor Bruce Ware’s sermonizing on wifely submission.

Ware says men abuse their wives because the wives refuse to adhere to their proper biblical role and refuse to be submissive. So, according to Ware, abuse occurs because women rebel against the God-given authority of their husbands.

Nothing new here. This is a strongly dominant strain in Southern Baptist theology: It’s the woman’s fault.

“Talibaptists.”

For me, that one word just about says it all by way of response to Ware’s way of thinking.

The sad thing is how unsurprised I was by Ware’s remarks. That’s because the same sick belief-system bleeds over into the arena of clergy sex abuse.

Men who abuse their wives do so because of their need for control and dominance. With Southern Baptist teachings on “biblical manhood,” those abusive men find biblical justification for their dominance.

Baptist clergy sex abusers also have control and dominance issues. And guess what? They also use biblical justification. Why? Because their victims were raised from the cradle to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.

“The Bible tells me so.” Every 3 year-old in a Baptist Sunday School sings that song. If the Bible says it, then I believe it, and that’s what I must do. It’s what we were all taught. Thinking otherwise wasn’t even thinkable.

Clergy-predators know how to exploit that early indoctrination. They become masters at biblical perversion and they turn the word of God into a weapon.

They even convince themselves they’re entitled. After all, they’re called by God Himself. And countless other Southern Baptists fall into that same thinking whenever an abuse victim tries to speak up. “Touch not mine anointed!”

In Baptist churches all across the country, pastoral “authority” carries the day when abuse allegations are raised.

It’s tempting to dismiss people like Ware as being a fringe-element. But that would be a mistake because Ware is hardly unique in his views. To the contrary, he’s a prominent Southern Baptist seminary professor, and there are countless other Southern Baptist leaders of similar mind.

Ware’s words are not idle words. These men mean it. They teach it. They train the next generation of Southern Baptist pastors.

Pollster George Barna, himself an evangelical, did a study which concluded that women in traditional, male-dominated marriages were 300 times more likely to be beaten than women in egalitarian marriages. (Christine Wicker, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, p. 80)

Yeah. Words like Ware’s have an impact. They bring about blood, bruises and broken bones. They also bring about dreadful emotional wounds in women whose faith leaders have inculcated in them the belief that they brought abuse down on their own heads by failing to follow the way of “biblical womanhood.”

Now here’s the real kicker. You all know that the SBC executive committee recently rejected the creation of a “database” of clergy-predators. Less widely reported was the fact that the SBC executive committee also rejected a rule that would disfellowship churches that harbored clergy-predators or that failed to respond appropriately to clergy abuse allegations. This was action that SNAP requested of Southern Baptist officials almost 2 years ago.

Yet, the SBC executive committee is now considering a proposal to amend the SBC constitution so that they can disfellowship churches with women as senior pastors. There’s actually only a few such female-led Southern Baptist churches in existence, but apparently that's still a more important issue for SBC leaders than what to do about clergy who molest kids.

"Talibaptists." The word fits.
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Thanks to the undermuchgrace blog for the photo.

Read more on "The Strange Sexual Obsessions at Southern Seminary."
Read more on the theology of submission as proclaimed by former SBC president Paige Patterson.