Over the past couple weeks, a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) pastor named Chris Gore has been making the news—and not in a way his Dear Leaders would like. One of his former congregants, Brenda Blake Bicskey, exposed spiritual abuse committed by Gore and his lackeys. He did his best to silence her using his tribe’s box of approved tools. But when those attempts all failed, he did exactly and precisely what we expect dysfunctional authoritarians to do in his situation. Today, we’ll review the situation itself, then see why Chris Gore responded as he did at the end.
(Note: The Patriarchy movement described here today is sometimes conflated with the Reconstructionism movement. For our purposes today, I’ve chosen to describe that entire end of fundagelicalism as “Patriarchy.” Just know that I know there are some differences between them—just none that matter here. If you want more info on these groups, someone wrote a fantastic blog post about them some years back. Long but superbly-done, much like dolmas themselves.)
(From introduction: The cookbook I mentioned; a reenactment of the Law of Hamburger Supremacy in Anime. This post first appeared on Patreon on 10/25/2024, and its audio ‘cast should be public by the time you see this!)
SITUATION REPORT: Oppression and subjugation in the wild from Chris Gore and his lackeys
On October 4, 2024, Brenda Blake Bicskey wrote an explosive account of the abuse she suffered while part of an evangelical church in Oklahoma. Starting in March 2022, Chris Gore taught her husband a system of “domestic discipline” that looks exactly like financial and emotional abuse:
Chris Gore teaches men how to control their wives, although he would call it “leadership” (because control is a bad word). He does this by encouraging domestic discipline (not wife-spanking as is the general belief, but more covert means such as withholding finances, alienating her from her children, invading her privacy, forcing her into seclusion/ isolation, even threats of homelessness and “sending her away”, aka divorce, etc.).
In September 2023, Bicskey finally filed for divorce. Gore and another church guy wrote letters containing falsehoods in support of her husband. The next month, she learned that Gore had “advocate[d] for an abusive man in the FBC Beggs church.” In March 2024, Gore and the men at church voted to shun Bicskey.
The divorce case is ongoing. It’s clear that her STBX (soon-to-be-ex) is in it to win whatever battle he thinks it represents. It’s also clear that Chris Gore is his steadfast ally and thought leader—and that the other men in that church stand behind Gore and Bicskey’s STBX.
Once Gore lost all of his formal power over Bicskey, he sent her a cease-and-desist letter in hopes of silencing her that way. In turn, Bicskey immediately released pics of the letter to social media.
We all had a good laugh at this letter. It is very obviously crafted by someone in terminal stages of unwarranted self-importance, someone who is a legend in his own mind. It features lots of accusations, smears, misused legalese, and retaliatory threats with no teeth. Amazingly, it was even sent on church stationery, meaning no actual lawyers were formally involved in its creation. It was just a hypocrite’s last-ditch attempt to silence someone he’d wronged.
There has been no news since Chris Gore’s abortive, laughable attempt at a cease and desist letter and some Facebook smearing of his enemies. His church’s Facebook account ran their official reply on October 13th. They have said little about the matter since. Some people are accusing them of deleting critical comments there, and I 100% believe it. But since then, they appear to have given up even that effort. As I look at the page now, I see it has almost entirely unsupportive comments—though it also says the church has since limited who can reply, and the number of total replies does not tally up with the number there now. Regardless, their post has had no comments published since the 14th.
Gore’s behavior demonstrates so many points I’ve made about the dysfunctional-authoritarian men of the Christian Right that he catapulted himself and his ideology to the top of our dance card. We haven’t talked about these guys lately, but now Chris Gore has given us a great opportunity to explore yet another reason why his religion keeps sprouting abusers and abuse like that’s what it was born to do.
Everyone, meet our setting: Beggs, Oklahoma
According to the SBC’s membership site, First Baptist Church of Beggs is one of their member churches. They’re a basic boilerplate fundagelical SBC church headed by an anti-abortion whackadoo with no leadership qualifications that I could find. If he’s as unqualified to lead a church as I suspect he is, then he’s in the perfect place to do it, at least.
Though it is a tiny town of about 1100 people, Beggs hilariously boasts not one but two SBC churches. They compete with 7 or 8 other churches in the area. None appear to be overly large.
That might be because Beggs is experiencing a slow but inexorable population drain. Since 2000, it’s lost about 200 people. Of those who remain, many are older folks. Moreover, fewer than half of its residents are living together in marriage. The town’s big claim to fame is still having inexpensive public pay phones. In more modern news, Reservation Dogs was filmed around there, likely since a Native American reservation is near the town.
Unsurprisingly, Beggs residents tend to vote red. In the last major election, 67.5% of voters voted Republican. It is a very conservative area overall. They’re also quite religious, with a near-majority of evangelicals and Pentecostals dominating the area. Overall, 67% of its residents claim affiliation with some flavor of Christianity; none report being Jewish, Muslim, or “an eastern faith.”
In a town like Beggs, a dysfunctional authoritarian finds the path to power both easy and swift. Power-hungry people gravitate to tiny little towns like these. There, any fool can start up a fundagelical church and find relative success doing it. That’s one of the reasons why small-town evangelical churches are such hotbeds of drama, gossip, and abuse.
Dysfunctional authoritarians have a harder time finding power in large cities with large, well-established churches and experienced hiring committees. If nothing else, such larger churches have stringent educational and training requirements of pastors. Only the most ambitious dysfunctional authoritarians want to work that hard to obtain power! Nor will they be happy working alongside a strong board of elders who can fire them or stymie their power-grabs. No, they’ll always be on the lookout for the quick, easy paths to power. That doesn’t mean they don’t get into power in such areas and churches—just that it takes way more effort.
(See also: An SBC leader tells us how to fool a monster.)
In short, I’m not in the least surprised by any element of this story’s setting.
A quick review of the Patriarchy movement and where it is now
Chris Gore appears to take a great deal of his understanding of masculinity from Patriarchy nutjobs like Doug Wilson. Wilson is just a small-town Idaho pastor and bigot-for-Jesus whose reach very much exceeds his grasp. Like so many control-hungry men, once Bicskey’s husband fell into Gore’s orbit, he got way into “homesteading” (a proxy for self-sufficiency, a major value for fundagelicals for years) and lording it over his wife. Despite Bicskey’s attempts to follow her pastor’s orders regarding obedience to her husband, her marriage continued to disintegrate.
This church congregation and their pastor certainly sound like adherents of the evangelical Patriarchy movement. For the self-worshiping misogynists of the Christian Right, the Patriarchy movement is like pouring gasoline on their brush fire. But I haven’t seen one of these groups for a hot minute. Even at their peak, these folks were an ultra-extremist movement within the overall extremism of the 1990s fusion of evangelicals with fundamentalists. Like other fundagelical-fusion extremist movements, this one uses biblical inerrancy and literalism to support its claims and demands.
Overall, the Patriarchy movement called for men to rule their families—and pastors to rule their congregations—with iron fists. It featured a totalitarian, merciless style of power that really appealed to all those mediocre white evangelical men who felt they’d lost too much dominance in real life. Anyone promising them a return to dominance won their allegiance for life. After all, that is exactly why they are Donald Trump’s biggest voting bloc: He explicitly promised white evangelicals power over their enemies.
Alas for all those sexists-for-Jesus, the Patriarchy movement got hit with scandal after scandal in the 2010s. In response, they quieted down for a bit.
But while its peak lasted, the Patriarchy movement was a big deal. It gave evangelical pastors enormous amounts of undeserved personal power over their congregations—and husbands similar power over their wives. Instead of earning that power through rigorous training and self-discipline, this movement simply granted it to men. And instead of ensuring fairness and justice through rigid accountability, it simply removed all accountability in favor of a tight-knit crony network that protected its own.
Patriarchy has largely been completely lapped by the new hardline, ultra-politicized fundamentalist faction within evangelicalism. In fact, one branch of it struggles as we speak to take control of the SBC. Unfortunately, therefore, Patriarchy isn’t gone. Its formal groups might have receded, but their dysfunctional teachings remain au courant in the SBC in particular.
That said, it’s very clear that Bicskey’s soon-to-be-ex (STBX) glommed onto Gore’s teachings right away. I think narcissistic and abusive men can smell its potential.
And now, let’s meet Chris Gore, the pastor of First Baptist Church Beggs
Chris Gore is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Beggs, Oklahoma. I strongly suspect he started the church as a very young man because his church bio says he’s been pastoring there since 2008 and he doesn’t look more than 40-45 years old now. Nor can I find references to the church prior to 2008. I hope I’m right about that. It’d be far more preferable to the idea that some church hiring committee full of ostensible adults hired a near-teenager to pastor them.
Gore is very active on Twitter, where he posts the nonstop shitty hot takes common to belligerent fundagelical men:
- He’s very thankful that Christopher Columbus taught those ickie New World people to stop “eating each other.” Aww, how loving!
- Progressive Christians “use ‘love’ as a smokescreen for evil.” Gosh, he’d sure know about that, wouldn’t he? (Every accusation is what, again?)
- Abortion is “the murder of kids.” In fact, he tweets and retweets countless times about abortion. But this posturing coward just uses the accusation as a moral high horse. (He even retweeted someone wringing their hands because abortion bans do not actually reduce the number of abortions. Indeed, they don’t. That info has been available for years now. If fundagelicals want to reduce the number of abortions women get, making laws and punishments even harsher won’t do that. However, I don’t think Gore realizes what a slam that fact is to his long-held culture-war position.)
- He retweeted some other fundagelical who said “Red team is pro Christ; Blue team is anti Christ.” Unsurprisingly, Gore thinks of politics as teams like in sports. (See also: Seeking the winning team’s banner.)
- Weirdly, he’s also a major Elon Musk fanboy. Dude constantly retweets Musk’s stuff. Trump too, but we expect that. Musk, not so much.
This Twitter timeline is thoroughly alarming. Despite all of the scrolling I did, I found not one tweet that sounds loving, kind, compassionate, or charitable. Rather, it’s Republican Jesuses and Jesus-flavored misogyny all the way down. Gore’s feed indicates a man with a deep need to control others, particularly women. It also indicates a man who is utterly incapable of empathy or introspection. I’m not even sure he’s achieved a theory of mind.
Worst of all, his timeline indicates someone who is fundagelical not because he wants to Jesus his little heart out and obey Jesus’ commands, but rather because of the tribalistic power and authority he thinks it grants him. Centuries ago, he’d have been a hardline Catholic gunning for top roles within the Inquisition.
In short, if I knew nothing else about this guy but what I see on his timeline, I’d know he is bad news for anyone who lands under his thumb.
He’s also got a lot of livestreamed sermons over on YouTube. I watched one of them, as we’ll be seeing in just a minute. As you might guess, they are exactly the sorts of sermons we expect from a really power-hungry fundagelical hypocrite.
Interesting: Chris Gore has no leadership credentials that I can find
Unfortunately, we don’t know much about this guy’s background. His staff page at his church’s site gives us no information at all about his education or training.
When fundagelicals don’t say something, it’s usually because the truth would be really bad news. So in this case, I’ve got to wonder if he simply has no relevant education or training. Maybe he really is the living embodiment of my somewhat-joking contention that “any fool can start up a fundagelical church.” It would explain his Twitter bio, at least:
If you’re wondering what the “Foundry” is, I am too. But I’ve got no idea. I found its unsurprisingly-weird dress code, but all I can gather is that it’s some sort of private religious school he runs. Let’s hope he doesn’t treat other people’s children the way he treats women.
That said, I did scare up a 2022 story at a site aimed at convincing Southern Baptists to get on board with “abolishing abortion.” The story describes Gore as one of several “Oklahoma abolitionist pastors,” meaning forced-birth pastors. These days, some forced-birthers have taken to calling themselves abolitionists. The term is meant to evoke images of slavery, when it’s actually them wanting to strip away other people’s human rights and control their most intimate decisions.
I don’t think Gore is aware of the SBC’s origin story, which involves a bunch of Baptists peeling away from their main group because Baptists up north didn’t want any missionaries to own slaves. So SBC leaders wouldn’t exist if their predecessors hadn’t wanted to own slaves with no pushback. So comparing women’s human rights to slavery, and evangelicals’ trampling of those rights to abolition, might just be the most appalling and inappropriate take an SBC pastor could have.
However, that’s the sheer level of self-serving delusion these folks operate with. Every accusation Gore makes really is actually a confession. I’ve never encountered anyone who illustrates that truth so vividly.
Either way, that 2022 story also gives us a little extra information about who “Joseph Silk” is, since Brenda Bicskey mentions him a few times in her tell-all social media post. In her account, we encounter Silk as a major ally to her husband and a lackey of Gore’s. In the 2010s, that 2022 “abolition” story says, Silk introduced a draconian anti-abortion bill in his state. Apparently it was so completely at odds with human rights that a forced-birther group in Oklahoma opposed it. (Oof!) It’s hard to find a through line between Silk’s forced-birther ideology and Gore’s hamfisted attempt at fundagelical marriage counseling. I guess these two are truly jacks of all trades. At least we figured out why Gore keeps hammering at women’s bodily autonomy. Controlling women’s bodies and life decisions is just his thing, ya know?
Incidentally, Gore also revealed in a Facebook comment (picture archive) that he uses “church discipline.” I’ve linked this ideology to overreach and abuse for many years now. Man alive, this dude just keeps sounding better and better, doesn’t he?
A very unsubtle sermon by Chris Gore
I’d also really like to know why someone put a toy gun in his pulpit this past September. In his sermon’s first minute, he jokes about carrying guns while preaching. Then, he waves the toy gun around before putting it away. Toy guns seem like quite a strange toy for a Sunday School class, even one set in a super-hardline fundagelical church in Beggs, Oklahoma.
Moving onward, that entire sermon’s topic is “Losing It All: The Danger of Listening to the Wrong People.” Gore (loosely) uses Proverbs 1:1-19 as his text. Given the timeline Brenda Bicskey wrote (relink), it’s easy to guess that Chris Gore is sending a pointed message to his congregation about disobeying him by daring to take her accusations against him seriously. “Do not listen to sinners,” he tells his congregation—and I can’t help but think that he is warning them against Bicskey in particular.
His stumbling and flailing immediately afterward at 6:30 in the video as he desperately tries to square but we’re all sinners with don’t listen to sinners is hilarious, though. This is quite the verbal doe-si-doe:
“If I say listen to your parents, you know [who I mean]. But if I were to say to you ‘don’t listen to sinners,’ there could be some confusion as to what exactly I’m talking about. There would probably be some pious person who would say ‘But we’re really all sinners, aren’t we?’ Uh, which would then basically, and I would say, well, not really according to this passage—at least not in the way that you think.”
He always pairs but we’re all sinners with the word “pious.” I’m not sure he knows what that word actually means, because he always uses it in a pejorative way. I think he means disingenuous.
A guy who routinely preaches for a solid hour every Sunday should also really learn to make better outlines and scripts in advance. Most of his sermon is convoluted verbal diarrhea. I think I could condense this sermon to about 20 minutes tops, and that’s coming from someone who routinely writes 4000-word essays.
WTAF is going on with this sermon
As for the sermon’s content, I’m not a high-falutin’ seminary graduate. But I’m increasingly of the opinion that neither is Chris Gore.
Overall, he tries very hard to equate the wise, wisdom-providing parents in that Proverbs chapter with Jesus, and therefore with the pastors speaking for Jesus in the modern day. That’s the entire point of this sermon: Listen only to King Chris Gore, everyone! Pay no attention to that accusation behind the curtain!
Gore contends at 15:15ish that Catholics simply made up the word “Pope,” but no way is he going to “let” them “steal” the word “Saint” because it’s a “biblical word.” I don’t think he knows that “Pope” just comes from the Latin/Italian for “father,” or that early Christian groups used the term for their leaders before Catholicism was even a thing. The first known use of the term comes from Eusebius in the 3rd century as a reference to Heraclas, so I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear it was already in common usage by then.
Gore also throws in bizarre non sequiturs constantly that demonstrate his ignorance of Christianity’s history, like at 26:42:
“There will be sinners who will tell you ‘let’s take their stuff and make it our stuff.’ Luckily, they quit saying that around the time of Proverbs—uh no, this is still this still what they do all the time. [Speaking quickly and softly:] Uh, taxation is theft. [Normal voice:] Anyway. . .”
So much for rendering unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, I guess. Additionally, Gore pisses and moans about Communism at 26:00 and 34:20, too, so I guess he doesn’t know about the New Testament’s references to early Christians sharing everything—or Yahweh’s murder of Ananias and Sapphira for not doing that.
Mostly, I have serious doubts about this guy’s education because something seems really off about how Gore is using this text. Over at Biblehub.com, I notice that the word “sinners” gets translated as “ungodly men” or “sinful men” many times, but Gore always uses the term “sinners” and wraps himself up in knots trying to reconcile its colloquial modern sense with his text’s use of the word.
Mostly, he wants his flock to be afraid of nice people who seem honest and kind, who don’t seem to have any bad intentions at all, but who say things that King Him doesn’t like. He hammers repeatedly at this point and warns repeatedly of the dangers his congregation face for listening to “sinners.”
“Sinners” like, I dunno, just pulling a name out of my ass at random here, Brenda Bicskey.
The problem with this sermon from Chris Gore
Christians in general have a really tough time equating their Bible knowledge to actual actions in the real world. To an extent, they all use subjective means to figure out how to Jesus correctly—and they must, because the Bible just isn’t a definitive, objective document. I’m not even sure it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s possible that anyone trying to make it into one is getting the entire point of Christianity wrong. Literalists like Chris Gore certainly use their quirky li’l interpretation of the Bible to justify all manner of wrongdoing and harm.
For fundagelicals like Gore, all of that goes double—maybe even triple. In his sermon, he tells his flock to ignore “sinners,” which he quirkily defines as anyone who isn’t completely enslaved and obedient to Jesus. (His convoluted attempt to differentiate “sinners” from “every human on Earth, even Christians,” is something to behold. If you need a good chuckle, I highly recommend this sermon.)
However, there’s not really a way to obey or not obey Jesus. As I just mentioned, there’s not even a way any Christian can authoritatively define what exactly Jesus wants his followers to do or avoid.
So the flocks must step one rung lower on the ladder to the guy pretending to speak for Jesus: their pastor. And here we run into a serious issue, because Gore offers his flock not one single way to assess his own obedience to Jesus. In fact, all the descriptions he offers of “sinners” sound exactly like him. If Brenda Bicskey’s account is correct, and it sure sounds like it is, then Chris Gore is the “sinner” the flocks should avoid, not her!
Today, I am sending my kindest thoughts to Brenda Bicskey. My first husband went down a similar road of radicalization from the worst-of-the-worst that fundamentalism had to offer at the time, so I know this is a really rough time for her and her kids. She has my sympathy. May she soon see justice and a quick and satisfying end to her divorce fight.
And may Chris Gore’s church congregation one day see their pastor for the desperate, grasping, posturing, sniveling bully that he truly is. I won’t say he’s no real Christian or pastor, because there’s no real definition of those terms anyway. He’s as real as any others. But I will say that Gore’s own words and actions have convinced me he is a truly awful human being. No truly good and loving god would ever want him as a follower, and nobody who values group functionality and accountability would ever tolerate him as a leader.
NEXT UP: I had to break this post into two parts, so next time we’ll have our deep dive into Chris Gore’s dysfunctional leadership style. See you soon!
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1 Comment
Chris Gore is everything wrong with fundagelicalism - Roll to Disbelieve · 11/01/2024 at 4:00 AM
[…] Last time we met up, I told you about a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) pastor named Chris Gore. Of late, he and his little Oklahoma church have been deeply entangling themselves in the divorce of one of their menfolk. (But to be fair, what else is there to do in the middle of nowhere besides participate and instigate messy interpersonal dramas?) […]