Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Magic-word Lullaby

“How do these men sleep at night?”

That’s the question I often ask myself about Baptist officials.

How do they sleep when they leave reported clergy child molesters in their pulpits . . . and do nothing?

How do they sleep when they know their own inaction will carry the consequence of countless more kids being molested and raped by religious leaders whom they trusted completely?

How do they sleep when they know that clergy predators can church-hop with ease through the porous Baptist network and yet, though they hold the power, they do nothing to plug the holes?

I’ve pondered these questions so much that I finally came up with the magic-word lullaby that Baptist officials must surely sing to themselves. How else could they possibly sleep?

It’s to the tune of “Lullaby and Goodnight.” Imagine it in the voice of your favorite do-nothing Baptist official.

Au-to-no-meeee
Keeps us safe
From those evil-doer
Op-por-tu-nists.

They’re just bitter
“Nothing more.”
Au-to-no-meeee
Means not our chore.

All those kids
And clergy rapes.
Not a worry.
Au-to-no-meeee.

Raped by pastors?
Not our problem.
‘Cause we’ve got
Au-to-no-meeee.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Evil doer opportunists - hmm, seems to me that's what a child rapist or "pastor" who takes advantage of his position to convince a young woman to have sex with him is. Is it they are projecting what the monsters are onto us?

Christa Brown said...

For those who haven't followed the history of this . . . "Evil-doers" is what former Southern Baptist president Paige Patterson called us. (He's also currently the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, training a whole new crop of Baptist pastors.) And "opportunists" is what former Southern Baptist president Frank Page called us. He called us that publicly and in his official role as Southern Baptist president. He said we were "nothing more than opportunistic persons."

"Nothing more." That's such an incredibly mean-spirited thing to say about any group of human beings... much less about human beings who have been raped by clergy.

I still think it's appalling and astonishing. I mean . . . think about it . . . the highest leaders of a 16.2 million member faith group -- the largest Protestant denomination in the land -- say such hateful things about people who were molested and raped by clergy. In the middle ages, these would have been the men insisting that we should be burned at the stake.

And these men call themselves spiritual leaders???? It's barbaric behavior.