If someone out there still doesn’t get my delighted obsession with evangelical infighting, this G3 Ministries story ought to do the trick. This popular ministry just closed its doors after an egregious incident involving a mystery brown envelope containing anonymous complaints against someone they knew, someone that they absolutely had Read more
Another day, another sex abuse crisis in an authoritarian flavor of Christianity. This time, it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses facing the music. Authoritarian Christians keep thinking it won’t happen in their church, right up until it does. And when—not if—it does, they act completely shocked. They shouldn’t. Any really authoritarian religious Read more
An evangelical leader named Mike Bickle has been dealing with the consequences of his actions for perhaps the first time in his entire life. Throughout his career, he has escaped accountability by taking advantage of the serious flaws within evangelical culture. Today, we’ll examine those flaws—and see how they allowed Read more
The Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, has known about their entrenched sex abuse problem for at least a few decades now. Everyone else found out about it in 2019 with ‘Abuse of Faith.’ Since then, however, SBC leaders have done virtually nothing to reform their denomination. The SBC’s biggest names Read more
As I researched the Anglican Church’s ongoing sex abuse crisis, a secondary story about organizational power emerged. It illustrates the gulf between an organization’s leaders and its followers—and how those leaders must be much more careful than they think about how their behavior comes off to followers. This story pairs Read more
Recently, we discussed an ongoing scandal within the UK’s Anglican Church (also called the Church of England). Its highest-ranking clergyman, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, had to resign after everyone discovered he’d egregiously mishandled sex abuse complaints and shielded a particularly-serious abuser from consequences for years. His last day Read more
Of late, the Anglican Church has been exposed in yet another sex abuse cover-up scandal. Nobody should even be surprised at it, either. Over here in Freedom Land, we’re used to evangelicals being disgusting hypocrites. When an evangelical leader lands in the news, we already have a good idea of Read more
A few months ago, we talked about how Matt Queen and some of his seminary associates outright lied to the feds about a sex assault on their campus, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS). I suppose nobody told these Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) guys that the FBI’s investigators have zero chill Read more
In Christianese, fallen pastors are pastors who have lost their pastoring jobs after causing a scandal. But even good, rules-abiding pastors have a tough time finding employment after leaving pastoring behind. The ones trailing scandals behind in their wake have an even harder time. And in the twilight of evangelicals’ Read more
Reformed theology is an add-on to evangelicalism that amps up its already existing dysfunctional authoritarianism and power disparities. The people who belong to Reformed groups think that their ideology is far superior to base-model evangelicalism—that it produces Christians whose Jesusing is both more fervent and more correct. But Reformed groups Read more