BaptistLife review of "This Little Light"

Some of you will remember William Thornton, a minister who is a discussion moderator on the BaptistLife site. At the end of 2006, some of you shared pieces of your clergy abuse stories on this site and engaged a lengthy dialogue with other Baptist ministers. I think it was the first big blog discussion ever had on Baptist clergy sex abuse, and I suspect it may have been one of the longest threads ever pursued on the BaptistLife forums.

I know it was painful for many of you at the time. The callous harshness of some of the posted responses was very hurtful. Yet, for many of us, we made that painful effort to engage Baptists in a dialogue on clergy sex abuse because we held the vague hope that it might help to open hearts and to eventually bring about change within the denomination.

So far, I can’t see that there has been much change in the denomination. Baptists are entrenched in mass-scale denial, and compared to other major faith groups, Baptists seem determined to be “lasteth with the leasteth” in addressing clergy sex abuse.

But perhaps there has been some small bit of opening in some few hearts.

Rev. William Thornton just posted his review of my book on the BaptistLife forums. It’s under the Baptist Life & Practice forum (as opposed to the SBC News forum), and he posted it Monday, June 7, under the thread “Christa Brown’s book on clergy sexual abuse.” I have cut and pasted it below. Thanks, William.

Christa Brown’s book on clergy sexual abuse

Christa Brown was kind enough to send me a copy of her book This Little LIght: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang. She is known from her website Stop Baptist Predators and has blogged about the book on her blog, here .

You are a 16 year-old girl as active in your Southern Baptist, Baptist General Convention of Texas affiliated church as a kid can be; a kid who doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, never been on a date, never been kissed, never even held hands with a boy, when your married youth minister zeros in on you with sexual innuendo and physical horseplay, finds ways to isolate you from the rest of the church kids, and who uses perverted spiritual talk and Bible quotes to call evil good and wrong right and eventually end up with you doing pretty much anything he wanted you to do sexually - 16 year-old kid, married adult clergy staff minister. Along the way, you are forced to apologize for seducing him. You finally spill things to another staff minister in the church who already has some knowledge about it, and eventually come to understand that perhaps others in the church and community knew something was going on if not exactly what was going on. Your minister/abuser eventually moves on to a larger churches and years of high level positions in his field in some of the largest churches in the SBC. You are left with the emotional and spiritual wreckage of the abuse out of which pretty much every church memory is soiled, but decide three decades later that this wasn't right and isn't right and someone should do something about it.

And you decide to do it.

You expect at least some level of apology, compassion, and at least some degree of justice from the church, the abuser, the BGCT, and the SBC, any or all of them.

What you get is: a lot of people wishing you would go away, a lot of people just ignoring you, some people in the BGCT making promises and then silently letting them slide by; you get hardball tactics from church and BGCT attorneys, melifluous words from some Baptist leaders in private but never in public; encouraging words from SBC executive Committee members in private, but followed by "you can't ever tell anyone I said that"; you get a lecture from the clergy sex abuse expert in the denomination; you get snubbed by some denominational leaders and rudeness from others. You get called a liar and a long list of other things, none good. You learn that there is BGCT money to help abusers return to ministry but none for victims. You learn that the BGCT accepts reports of abuse by clergy, but only from churches and not abused individuals. You get to hear SBC pronounce that there were 40 cases of abuse in 15 years, at about the same time you have difficulty in managing your email inbox from other abused individuals telling you their story.

You eventually spend a lot of your own money and time and wrest an apology from the church but no church leader then or now ever looks you in the eyes and says, "I'm sorry."

You finally conclude that any person or entity with the name "Baptist" will be of no help.

Aren't there any good guy Baptists in this sordid tale? Bob Allen in a big way, Wade Burleson in a smaller way. That's about it for the Baptist bruthus.
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Update 9/9/09: See Baptist Planet's review on William Thornton's review: “This Little Light of hers outshines the abusers.” (Incidentally, I'm glad to see you back in the saddle, Baptist Planet.)