Civil Commotion

I am sure that the investigation is constitutional, and that Trump cannot pardon himself, but he will undoubtedly argue that the fruit of an unconstitutional investigation cannot be used against him in an impeachment proceeding, et cetera, et cetera …

Trump will attempt to remain in office if he is impeached and convicted, summoning his loonies to rally to the White House and prevent a coup; we are headed toward an epochal constitutional confrontation.

Heh. Unthinking obedience is what got the SBC into its present mess.

Southwestern Seminary has reacted to Sharayah Colter’s blog post defending Paige Patterson with a press release.

Statement by Kevin Ueckert, Chairman of the Board of Trustees

By Kevin Ueckert on Jun 1, 2018

Based on a number of follow-up questions I have received this week, I am providing this additional statement related to our May 30, 2018 statement. The unanimous decision by the Executive Committee to immediately terminate Dr. Paige Patterson was prayerfully considered and warranted.

We confirmed this week through a student record, made available to me with permission, that an allegation of rape was indeed made by a female student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2003. This information contradicts a statement previously provided by Dr. Patterson in response to a direct question by a Board member regarding the incident referenced in our May 30 statement. The 2003 rape allegation was never reported to local law enforcement. SWBTS will not release the student record to the public without additional appropriate permissions.

In addition, as previously disclosed, a female student at SWBTS reported to Dr. Patterson that she had been raped in 2015. Police were notified of that report. But in connection with that allegation of rape, Dr. Patterson sent an email (the contents of which were shared with the Board on May 22) to the Chief of Campus Security in which Dr. Patterson discussed meeting with the student alone so that he could “break her down” and that he preferred no officials be present. The attitude expressed by Dr. Patterson in that email is antithetical to the core values of our faith and to SWBTS. Moreover, the correlation between what has been reported and also revealed in the student record regarding the 2003 allegation at Southeastern and the contents of this email are undeniable.

Further, SWBTS received a request from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary requesting the return of any documents taken by Dr. Patterson upon his departure from Southeastern. Counsel for SWBTS, Michael Anderson, immediately reached out to counsel for Dr. Patterson, Shelby Sharpe, on May 25 and made inquiry regarding the documents. Mr. Sharpe advised Mr. Anderson that Dr. Patterson only took documents from Southeastern that belonged to him. Yet, independent of that request, following the May 30 Executive Committee meeting, SWBTS located Southeastern documents on the SWBTS campus and began taking steps to preserve them. Mr. Anderson is in contact with George Harvey, counsel for Southeastern, and is working with Mr. Harvey regarding Southeastern’s request for the return of its documents.

The morning after the May 30 Executive Committee meeting, Mr. Sharp provided a few documents he reportedly obtained from Dr. Patterson. The documents clearly dealt with Dr. Patterson’s tenure at Southeastern and should have been previously provided in response to Mr. Anderson’s May 25 request. Shortly after these documents were provided, the wife of Dr. Patterson’s Chief of Staff published a blog and attached these documents without the permission of the students referenced in the documents or appropriate leadership from SEBTS or SWBTS. I believe this was inappropriate and unethical. Regardless, the additional documents do not alter the decision of the Executive Committee.

Ultimately, the decision of the Executive Committee to immediately terminate Dr. Patterson was clear and unanimous.

I also want to reiterate what SWBTS Interim President Dr. Jeffrey Bingham said earlier this week. SWBTS denounces all abusive behavior, any behavior that enables abuse, any failure to protect the abused, and any failure to safeguard those who are vulnerable to abuse.

In this difficult situation, the Executive Committee based its decision on the current performance of the president and did not allow the legacy of Dr. Patterson or the #MeToo pressure to steer the outcome. We did not react; rather, we decisively exercised our responsibility based on the Seminary’s biblically informed core values and integrity.

I join Dr. Bingham in his call for the SWBTS community to join the Body of Christ in praying for healing for all individuals affected by abuse.

OK:

• Patterson took with him to Southwestern a cache of papers from his tenure at Southeastern. Now, Southeastern wants them back.

  Oh … ho-hum. There is plenty of room for good-faith disagreements over the proper ownership of at least some papers, so I’m disinclined to characterize them — yet — as ‘stolen.’ I’m sure the lawyers will sort it out.

• How did these papers get into Ms. Colter’s hands, and how could she have thought she had a right to publish them?

• It seems clear that Patterson attempted to bludgeon a second woman into making no fuss over being raped.

• Were the men who were involved allowed to graduate, and are they pastoring churches today?

• It can’t possibly be true that only women who attended seminaries headed by Paige Patterson have been victimized; what goes on at the other seminaries?

Y’all will not be surprised to learn that all right-minded Southern Baptist leadership is shocked and heartbroken.

Please: Patterson’s squalid conduct during the so-called Conservative Resurgence is well-documented; everybody with two eyeballs knows perfectly well that he is heavy-handed and manipulative. And is it even possible that Mohler truly does not know that sexual predators have been graduated by Southern Seminary, too? In a different way, Mohler’s pious mewling is just as hypocritical as Patterson’s cover-ups.

Last, people like me, and a great many others, have been talking about the systemic squalor, hypocrisy, dishonesty — on and on — of the Southern Baptist Convention for years; there is nothing really new in the latest round of scandals. All that has actually changed is that they can no longer be hidden and studiously ignored. These scandals and cover-ups are the unhappy truth about the Southern Baptist Convention, about who they have been for a very long, long time.

There will be no shortage of talk about brokenness and prayers for healing over the next several weeks. Every bit of it is wasted hot air, because the bad behavior now coming to light inheres in the Southern Baptist teaching that y’all are no damn good, in its systematic obliteration of character and personal agency, in its demand for unthinking obedience. This scandal, in all of its embarrassing particulars, is the realization of Southern Baptist teaching.

Well.

Just as decent-minded adults were coming down from the high of Paige Patterson’s dismissal, along comes the wife of his (now, former) Chief of Staff with several hundred words of Patterson apologetics assuring all right-minded Southern Baptists that ol’ Paige was grievously mistreated.

The first fact I’d like to offer in full disclosure is that I have had a front row seat to observing Paige Patterson during my time at Southwestern as a student and most recently as wife to his chief of staff, Scott Colter. I have been in his home, ridden in his car, passed him on the sidewalk, been a student in his class, sat through his chapel sermons, emailed with him and shared meals with him. I’ve observed him in large groups and small family gatherings.

Second, I want to be clear that I have compiled this account of the truth completely of my own volition. Paige and Dorothy Patterson have not asked me to write on behalf of or in defense of them, and my words are my own.

Third, the fact is, Southern Baptists deserve to know the whole story. Thus far you’ve heard one side of it, and that is because Patterson holds the conviction not to defend himself personally, following the example of Christ. However, this story has spiraled out of control to a point that demands a balanced and truthful response.

These are Southern Baptists so, as Fox Mulder used to say, “Trust nobody.”

I’ll add just two thoughts: First, the article is accompanied by images of correspondence that purport to be from some of the participants — correspondence that belongs, variously, in the student– and personnel-files at Southeastern and Southwestern Seminary. How does it happen that this non-staff spouse is able to offer selections from those files? Something is amiss here — and it is probably a selective, ex post facto reconstruction of Patterson’s offenses against ordinary decency.

Second, she says that Patterson learned he had been fired via a phone call while he was in Germany, and that his access to his e-mail — and calendar, and notes, et cetera, et cetera, leaving him unable to access even his travel itinerary — was immediately cut-off. Simultaneously, the locks were changed on his office and home. If that’s true, the Board should be summoned by irate Southern Baptists to explain why he was treated so shabbily.

The Board could have waited until his return to notify him that he’d been fired, and should not have exposed him to the humiliation of arriving at home — suitcase in one hand, housekey in the other — and being unable to get in. That goes to the character of the Board — and it’s looking unbecomingly small. Really: They shouldn’t have behaved as execrably as Patterson himself did when he was upending the SBC.

Though I share Samantha Bee’s disdain for Ivanka Trump, I think her slur of Ms. Trump is inherently worse than Roseanne Barr’s racist attack of Valerie Jarrett. An impromptu and intemperate tweet is different in kind than a rehearsed and prepared crudity, and can more easily be forgiven.

The first reveals ignorance, and the second reveals malice.

Bee’s behavior was no less discreditable than Barr’s, and ought to put her, too, on the outskirts of polite society.