Civil Commotion

What do you know? Claiming to have received new information about the alleged cover-up of a rape in 2003, the Board of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary decided yesterday to fire Paige Patterson.

During the May 30, 2018, Executive Committee meeting of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) Board of Trustees, new information confirmed this morning was presented regarding the handling of an allegation of sexual abuse against a student during Dr. Paige Patterson’s presidency at another institution and resulting issues connected with statements to the Board of Trustees that are inconsistent with SWBTS’s biblically informed core values.

Deeming the information demanded immediate action and could not be deferred to a regular meeting of the Board, based on the details presented, the Executive Committee unanimously resolved to terminate Dr. Paige Patterson, effective immediately, removing all the benefits, rights and privileges provided by the May 22-23 board meeting, including the title of President Emeritus, the invitation to reside at the Baptist Heritage Center as theologian-in-residence and ongoing compensation.

Under the leadership of Interim President Dr. Jeffrey Bingham, SWBTS remains committed to its calling to assist the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention by biblically educating God-called men and women for ministries that fulfill the Great Commission and glorify God.

Further, the Seminary stands against all forms of abuse and grieves for individuals wounded by abuse. Today, Dr. Bingham made it clear that 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. Additionally, Dr. Bingham called for the SWBTS community to join the Body of Christ in praying for healing for all individuals affected by abuse.

So: the two chief architects of the so-called Conservative Resurgence — Paul Pressler, now facing multiple charges of pederasty, and Paige Patterson, now unemployed because he covered-up a rape — are going to spend their waning years as figures of disdain and ignominy.

It couldn’t happen to two more deserving men.

The Resurgence was still recent history when we moved to Wake Forest, North Carolina (the home of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), and feelings were still strong; the careers of many decent, well-educated and –intended academics were gratuitously ruined in order to cleanse the denomination of every last scintilla of modernity. Jerry Falwell gave a sermon at Patterson’s installation as the new president of SEBTS, and complained that the school had “soiled the land for so long” and rejoiced that Patterson was now in charge.

Over the years, then, I acquired a good-sized library of books about that trauma, including all 6-volumes of the now-rare The Truth in Crisis. Even that set, written by an author sympathetic to the aims of the Resurgence, can mount no stronger defense of the Tammany-style tactics that Patterson and Pressler employed than “it had to be done.” For Jesus, et cetera, et cetera.

So there is something poetic about those lionized leaders being laid low within months of each other. It doesn’t give back the lives, careers, and marriages destroyed by their thuggish grasping after power, but I don’t blame their victims for enjoying a PING of schadenfreude.

Because, you know, everything is always about The Donald. Notice this, too: Not a whisper of condemnation of the overt racism that rightly ended Barr’s career as a television performer.

But, then, he wouldn’t risk that, would he? After all, much of his base is incandescent with racism.

Again, this is Code Red: American democracy is truly threatened today — by the man sitting in the Oval Office and the lawmakers giving him a free pass.

Thomas Friedman

There is no more important business before the country today than protecting America from the occupant of the Oval Office.

What do you know? The New York Times’ Ross Douthat has taken note of the SBC’s meltdown.

Late last year I wrote an essay speculating about the possibility of an “evangelical crisis” in this era, driven by the gap between the older and strongly pro-Trump constituency in evangelical churches and those evangelicals, often younger, who either voted for the president reluctantly or rejected his brand of politics outright. But I didn’t anticipate that the crisis would take a specific sex-and-power form — that the Trump presidency and the #MeToo era between them would make the treatment of women the place where evangelical divisions were laid bare.

YAY! Me and a great many others have been goggle-eyed for years at the egregious hypocrisy of the SBC leadership, and it’s good to see the chickens come home to roost.

But let’s not overthink what is going on, parsing generational, complementarian and other theological differences too finely. The narratives are different, but the Southern Baptists are as screwed-up and cult-like as the Scientologists, and the zeitgeist has left their degrading schtick behind. The great days are over.