Evangelicals love to claim having a superior morality to heathens. They insist that their faith produces real changes in believers that lead them to greater moral heights than we poor heathens could ever manage. But their own behavior betrays those claims. Today, we’ll see how one evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), compartmentalizes away its leaders’ utter hypocrisy to cling to a saintly self-image—and how that compartmentalization enables a morality system that completely fails to deliver the morality they promise.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 5/13/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: ‘Rotted Fruit’ blames secular culture for rejecting evangelical morality
On May 5, Jeff Dalrymple published a post on Baptist Press: “The rotten fruit Western culture has borne over the last several decades.” He attributes this “rotten fruit” to Americans’ “shifting values.” See, Americans increasingly reject evangelical literalism/inerrancy and authoritarian control for a human-rights and facts-based worldview. In the process, they’ve caused every single problem Dalrymple perceives in our society.
Dalrymple conflates his personal flavor of Christianity with the Bible itself. He claims that Americans’ increasing rejection of his religion has caused society’s moral decay:
In a sense, our culture certainly has been “freed” from Scripture’s teaching when it comes to sexuality, marriage and the family. But at what cost? What did we unleash when we freed ourselves from God’s good design? [. . .]
As churches, it’s our job to be salt and light as we welcome those who ate of the rotten fruit of the Sexual Revolution.
But then, he offers this stunning claim—and here’s where my whiskers fanned forward:
We have the message of freedom, hope, redemption and grace. Our churches should be the safest place for the vulnerable to hear the Gospel. Our leaders must lead with biblical qualifications and as a matter of stewardship consistent with our Christian worldview.
This claim is breathtakingly false.
Dalrymple’s rhetoric collapses under the slightest scrutiny. SBC churches aren’t safe for anyone vulnerable—as SBC leaders themselves have ensured. Their leaders do not display “stewardship consistent with [Dalrymple’s] Christian worldview.”
Here’s the kicker: Dalrymple knows this already. That’s why his May 6 follow-up post, “Safeguards for churches,” addresses the SBC’s sex abuse crisis.
Dalrymple wrote both posts as a teaser for his panel on the same topic at the SBC’s Annual Meeting next month. In the second post, Dalrymple blames the SBC’s sex abuse crisis on church leaders embracing “the Sexual Revolution,” thus abandoning their god’s divine morality. He suggests several practical, real-world safeguards that could prevent ministers’ abuse, but these are very unlikely to be implemented any further than they already are.
Like many evangelicals, Dalrymple conflates morality with adherence to evangelical rules, and immorality with anything defying those rules. Thus, any ministers’ abuse stems from this redefined immorality.
SBC leaders’ own scandals contradict their posturing about morality
Baptist Press isn’t just a platform for SBC self-flattery. The site also reports SBC sex abuse and scandals. Recent examples include:
- “Memphis-area music minister arrested on obscenity-related charges,” March 19 (Minister: Britt Taylor)
- “Louisiana pastor arrested on rape, molestation charges,” April 15 (Minister: Shane Wiggins)
- “Illinois counselor suspended after state charges,” May 7 (Counselor: Matthew S. Cuppett; the association employing him, Baptist Children’s Home and Family Services of Illinois, operates within the Illinois Baptist State Association, an SBC state-level convention)
A recent case surfaced elsewhere: “North Carolina Children’s Pastor Charged with Distributing Child Sex Abuse Materials,” May 9 via the Roys Report (Minister: Aaron Luke Bradley of First Korean Baptist Church, an SBC congregation)
Most damning is the SBC’s secret sex-abuser database, which tracked hundreds of accused SBC ministers for years without action. Worse, authorities have caught SBC leaders lying to cover up that abuse, as we saw in the recent case of seminary leader Matt Queen. He lied to the feds in a uniquely evangelical way, too: Clumsy and obvious to any non-evangelical—yet relying on his power to shield him from further criticisms and questions.
SBC sex abuse not just pervasive across the denomination, but also systemic, spanning from top to bottom. One key figure in the SBC’s Conservative Resurgence, Paul Pressler, allegedly sexually abused countless young men—while his fellow SBC leaders looked the other way. Another key figure, Paige Patterson, deliberately silenced young women reporting sex assaults at his seminary—all to protect the SBC’s image.
These cases, often reported by Baptist Press itself, exposes the moral failures of Southern Baptist leaders.
How does the SBC even define ‘morality’?
In June 1998, SBC leaders released a “Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials.” Therein, they condemned “certain public officials” (targeting Bill Clinton, mostly). In their view, the conduct of those officials “spawned” greater immorality in America:
Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.
Notably, the resolution never defines the word “moral.”
SBC definitions are vague, but we find clues elsewhere. An SBC-affiliated site, Baptist Standard, suggests that morality centers around evangelical rules around sex, gender roles, and marriage. Their post states, “morality is what we believe.” They promise that those following their morality system will have “a good life.”
Yet even they admit that most evangelicals ignore their tribe’s rules.
Online, evangelicals insist that heathens can’t possibly possess a sense of morality. As we see in this 2012 essay on Answers in Genesis, Creationists love this claim. But it’s also a well-trod road for evangelical apologists. It is the popular logical fallacy called “The Appeal to Morality” (or “Argument from Morality”), though dishonest evangelicals usually call it “the moral argument.”
Evangelicals’ rhetoric about morality makes zero sense until one realizes that they define morality as their behavioral rules.
(Note bene to useless nepo baby Sean McDowell and literal-who apologist Tim Stratton: No, we won’t bear your burden of proof or prove negatives for your entertainment. We definitely aren’t swayed by your tired old logical fallacies. Hope that helps!)
How heathens define morality
Of my dad, my mom once said: “He doesn’t even donate anything to charity.” She was on her deathbed, though we didn’t know it quite yet. Her pale lips compressed into a line of firm disapproval. After she died, I discovered her checkbook ledgers. They revealed her high level of support for mostly secular charities and causes. My mom walked the walk, rather than just talking about it.
That’s morality.
Humanist and atheist definitions of morality tend to be far more grounded in reality. In an essay by Frank Zindler for American Atheists, he begins with some observations:
The behavior of Atheists is subject to the same rules of sociology, psychology, and neurophysiology that govern the behavior of all members of our species, religionists included. Moreover, despite protestations to the contrary, we may assert as a general rule that when religionists practice ethical behavior, it isn’t really due to their fear of hell-fire and damnation, nor is it due to their hopes of heaven. Ethical behavior – regardless of who the practitioner may be – results always from the same causes and is regulated by the same forces, and has nothing to do with the presence or absence of religious belief.
This view resonates with me. I’ve seen this behavior myself many times. Zindler also defines morality in a facts-based way:
The task of moral education, then, is not to inculcate by rote great lists of do’s and don’ts, but rather to help people to predict the consequences of actions being considered. What are the long-term as well as immediate rewards and draw-backs of the acts? Will an act increase or decrease one’s chances of experiencing the hedonic triad of love, beauty, and creativity? [. . .]
It is in our natures to desire love, to seek beauty, and to thrill at the act of creation. The labyrinthine complexity we see when we examine traditional moral codes does not arise of necessity: it is largely the result of vain attempts to accommodate human needs and nature to the whimsical totems and taboos of the demons and deities who emerged with us from our cave-dwellings at the end of the Paleolithic Era – and have haunted our houses ever since.
Thus, morality maximizes personal well-being while upholding rules that increase the good of society. Sometimes, these rules evolve, as seen in most cultures’ modern rejection of slavery. At other times, these rules demand personal sacrifice for the collective good. Immorality, then, involves harming others for personal gain or neglecting to help when well able to do so.
But authoritarians need words set in stone. They’d rather navigate life with concrete rules, even outdated ones that clearly cause harm to others. Social nuance frightens them.
The SBC’s fake morality enables abuse
Last September, the SBC installed Jeff Iorg as the President and CEO of its top-ranked Executive Committee (EC). On this illustrious occasion, Iorg praised the SBC as a “force for good.” He references the SBC’s definition of morality, too:
We tolerate considerable diversity in our movement – doctrinal, methodological, and strategic – as long as churches are orthodox on the defining doctrines and moral standards of the Christian faith and are committed to God’s eternal mission.
Here, Iorg commits a core evangelical error: As the night the day, he assumes that correct beliefs guarantee correct behavior.
Yet ministers in Iorg’s denomination, who must adhere to the SBC’s prescribed beliefs or get kicked out, break their own rules constantly. By now, sex abuse scandals involving SBC ministers are a daily mainstay of the news cycle.
Both Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, who spearheaded the SBC’s shift to literalism and inerrancy, broke the SBC’s own rules in private. They fostered and nurtured a culture that enabled their and other leaders’ immorality. Abusers could move around freely within this post-schism culture. Other leaders would shield them, guaranteed. Indeed, only secular pressure put the brakes on this entire culture of abuse-enablement. Even then, progress happens despite SBC leaders’ kicking and screaming bloody murder at every half-inch of reform.
It wasn’t religious intervention that exposed SBC leaders’ abuse or began to stop it. Their leaders require immense secular pressure and legal action to begrudgingly think about institutional reforms.
SBC leaders demand compliance they don’t bother with themselves
SBC rules produce hypocrisy and cover-ups for the powerful, and pain for the powerless. That’s why SBC abusers get shuffled around to new churches that are unaware of their history.
And yet SBC leaders demand that all Americans be bound by their flawed ruleset. They claim that forcing Americans to follow their rules will solve all of the problems they perceive in society.
Their leaders don’t even bother following these rules. The SBC’s sex abuse crisis demonstrates the emptiness of their claims to greater moral virtue. Even within their own purely subjective definition of morality, they fail.
By reality-based standards of morality, they fail catastrophically.
Explaining evangelical hypocrisy using a reality-based definition of morality
Southern Baptists act immorally. In other words, they cause harm to others and themselves, face numerous drawbacks and consequences in the short and long terms, and decrease their future chances of experiencing love, beauty, and creativity. Worse, their religious beliefs do not ensure rule-following when temptations arise.
Moreover, evangelicals’ beliefs actually allow believers to commit heinous immorality. Their emphasis on performative piety allows bad-faith actors to fool other evangelicals into thinking they are good, trustworthy people. This situation explains the prevalence of abusers in evangelical circles compared to mainline ones.
(You could have knocked me down with a feather when I realized that, too. See: “A safe guess for Anona United Methodist Church.”)
Mainline groups are more likely to embrace reality-based definitions of morality, prioritizing safety and justice over the group’s reputation or its leaders’ comfort. By contrast, when a high-ranking evangelical hurts a vulnerable one, other leaders can be counted upon to cover it up to protect their own power and privilege. That’s what makes the SBC’s authoritarianism “dysfunctional.”
Functional authoritarian systems, which hire and fire based on individual qualifications and conduct. By contrast, dysfunctional authoritarian systems, like the SBC, prioritize factors like loyalty to leaders, adherence to doctrine, and reputation within the group.
The SBC’s subjective morality breeds evil, not good
Just before 9/11 in 2001, Dennis Prager asked Christopher Hitchens if he’d feel safer or less safe if he encountered a bunch of men leaving a prayer meeting in a strange city at dusk. Hitchens replied that he had often felt threatened by religious people in many cities around the world, including “Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad.”
Religious zeal can easily turn malevolent. Zealots’ sense of morality twists to justify harmful behavior. They readily rationalize their own desires, with sex abusers always managing to justify their molestation of children.
Some evangelicals even preach the joys of “Biblical slavery” and openly yearn for a return of it. In 2014 evangelical pastor Joe Morecraft publicly expressed a desire to enslave atheists to TRUE CHRISTIANS™ like himself. He supported atheists’ enslavement specifically to force them to live by evangelical rules. A reality-based sense of morality has no room for people like that.
This hypocrisy is captured in countless jokes about topics like keeping one’s beer safe from a Southern Baptist on a fishing trip. (Answer: “Invite a second Southern Baptist along.”)
Evangelical immorality explains why SBC hardliners still idolize Paige Patterson—and why this disgraced former seminary leader enjoyed such a soft landing. Despite his 2018 firing from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for mishandling abuse, a more conservative seminary hired him to teach ethics. In 2021, Montana Southern Baptists hired him as a trustee at Yellowstone Christian College. They were likely thrilled to hire him, too, at whatever his asking price is nowadays.
(Patterson remains active. In 2023, he wrote a book about “the sufficiency of the Bible in counseling.” But I doubt he includes his special counseling instructions for young women who report rapes to him.)
Morality means accountability, so it won’t ever happen in the SBC
Genuine morality requires full accountability for evangelical leaders. That’s why sex abuse reforms keep stalling in the SBC. Reforms would limit SBC leaders’ power.
For dysfunctional authoritarians like them, it’s unthinkable. It’s a dealbreaker. Submission signals weakness. SBC leaders, who typically claw their way to power with endless bootlicking and favor-performing, refuse to relinquish their hard-won control.
Under dysfunctional authoritarian logic, they’re correct. Submitting to any oversight watchdogs would expose their flanks and throats to rivals. That’s why Mark Driscoll abandoned Mars Hill Church’s throne in 2014. He knew he couldn’t endure that kind of oversight, and I completely agree that he couldn’t.
Jeff Dalrymple understands his tribe all too well. His “safeguards for churches” are all voluntary and toothless measures. Pastors can adopt them or not as they please. His suggestions—though well-meaning and potentially effective—are useless without enforcement.
Without outside forces SBC leaders can’t ignore or control to keep an eye on them and enforce the rules, any reforms Dalrymple suggests are completely meaningless. Evangelicals have shown us time and again that they will consistently ignore reforms for as long as they can. Functional churches probably already do the stuff he suggests, but dysfunctional ones won’t. And he sure can’t make them.
This is the SBC.
This morality, which the SBC’s leaders seek to impose on all Americans, produces hypocrisy, not virtue. The results SBC leaders have gotten with their redefined morality speak for themselves.
It’s no surprise at all that more and more people are rejecting their religion!
NEXT UP: A hardline Calvinist SBC pastor was caught using a sockpuppet social media account. Without spoilers, I’ll just say that he’s a semi-familiar name around here, as is his organization. See you soon! <3
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