Part One: How The Southern Baptist Convention Was Taken Over By Republicans and Child Molesters

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Doctor, Dr Peterson, Why is it you think all of
these these um, these left wing radicals seem to fundamentally
hate the ideas that the United States? Well, you know
what I mean. It's the the story of pain, right.
You have this this jealousy, deeply uh gret jealousy in

(00:22):
their DNA and as they say in the film Tombstone, Um,
you know you're a You're angry at God for for
for being and I think we all feel that. But
this is just the lashing out of children who have
not been properly developed in our society. Thank you, thank you,

(00:44):
Dr Peterson. Oh no, he's crying. He's crying, he's crying.
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Jordan Balthazar Peterson. I'm
sorry to be clear that was I was coming from
a photograph from Sworts Illustrated. Oh that's good, I do
find beautiful one from the nineteen seventies when properly Yes,

(01:10):
so I've been looking at my copy of Maps of
Meaning and yeah, terrible book. I apologized. Well, that's all
the time, Dr Peterson. As for us today, I'm Robert Evans.
Let's go to the second portion of Behind the Bastards,
where I introduced my co hosts, Katie Stole Cody Johnston. Hello. Hello, look,

(01:37):
you'll you'll always be my co host even though our
our other show is paused while we wait for the
litigation to finish. Oh god, yeah, yeah any day. I
mean they deposed us all this week. So yeah, it's
looking good. Um, it's good to have you back on.

(01:58):
Good to be doing this again. And I thought, I'm
gonna have some of my best friends, We're all going
to sit down and talk. What better thing to chat
about then a massive decades long sexual abuse scandal within
America's largest Protestant denominations. So low that good stuff. Yeah.

(02:27):
So today our bastard is the Southern Baptist Convention. Um,
what do you guys know about the the SBC? So
that is that phrase true? All all cops are Baptists? Yes,
that is that is? I mean, actually broadly speaking, yes, yeah,
generalize some of them are Pentecostals and those are the
real scary ones. I don't know much. I don't know much.

(02:51):
I am the perfect canvas for this story. I wish
all cops were Anabaptists, because the Anta Baptists were actually
pretty dope but that's a story for an the day
also gotten massacred in a castle. But anyway, um so,
but anyway, but anyway, Yeah, the Southern Baptist the Southern

(03:14):
Baptist Convention, we'll talk about what that means, but like
the Southern Baptist Convention is like the thing that organizes
the Southern Baptist denomination. Essentially, Southern Baptists are the largest
Protestant denomination in the United States today. There's around fourteen
million of them, um, and there's like forty six or
forty seven thousand uh S SBC affiliated churches in the

(03:35):
United States. So real big, um and very very conservative.
A lot of people will argue that, like the Southern
Baptists are kind of the heart of the conservative movement
in the United States in a lot of ways. Um.
And at the moment as we speak, like literally the
week that we're recording this, um, a bunch of fucked
well okay, the literal week that we're recording this, they

(03:55):
had their annual Southern Baptist Convention where they vote on
a bunch of stuff, including like the dude who's going
to be we'll call him the President of the Southern
Baptists and um uh, they vote on resolutions and stuff.
We'll talk about that at the end and part two
a little bit more how that went. Um. But yeah,
the thing that was kind of one of the top
stories about the Southern Baptists is both this kind of

(04:17):
war between it's really not between left and right, it's
between like normal conservatives and absolute fascist maniacs, right, Like,
oh yeah, that classic tale. Yeah, that classic tale of
like people who don't like taxes and people who want
to do a genocide. Yes, so that clash has been
this has been actually going on for years. But the
thing that has kind of um uh sent a curveball

(04:40):
in it is starting like a year or so ago,
two years ago something like that, the a series of
articles started being published, um by the Houston Chronicle, um
about a massive sexual abuse scandal within the SPCs. We're
gonna talk about that a lot. That's what we're all
we're gonna be going into today. But but I'm before

(05:01):
we get into that, we need to do some history,
right because while over the course of my lifetime and
y'all's lifetimes, the Southern Baptists have been a huge force
for rigid, regressive, often vicious conservatism, they didn't start that
way the very first Yeah, it is kind of weird
how different Um this actually gets kicked off though, is

(05:23):
um from where they are now? So the very first
Baptist church was found in sixteen o nine in Amsterdam
by an English dissenter named John smythe um now John
and his fellows again, what are the center is? These
are folks like you know, you got that Church of
England thing right, because you get that king and there's like,
you know, wants to fun. There's other stuff than the

(05:43):
fucking people. He wanted to fund. He wanted to funk
like he wanted to he wanted marriages anyway, whatever you
want to do ship you couldn't do as a Catholic.
There's other stuff going people always get well, it wasn't
just about that. This was going on too, and this
was going on to and fuck you in your English history.
I don't care. Um. Anyway, you have these, you have
this Church of England get established, breaks away Catholic Catholicism
is illegal, all that good stuff, and then you have

(06:05):
these like dissenters who are not Catholic but also are
not don't want to don't like the idea of the
Church of England and John Smith particularly and his followers
in Amsterdam. The thing they don't like is the idea
of the religion being affiliated with the state government. They
don't want a state religion. They think there should be
separation between church and state, right and there. Yeah, there's

(06:26):
less about like yes, and again this is not because
of like, this is less about personal liberty, I think
in their hearts than it is about like the state
will fundamentally corrupt the faith. Um. Yeah, which it's it's
it sure does seem to Yeah. Yeah, might have been
right on the money there, John. Um. Now there's a
there's some other stuff going on here, including the fact

(06:48):
that John and his fellow early Baptists rejected the baptism
of infants. Um, like the Anabaptists. I think you might
be able to tell where the name Baptists comes from
by the fact that earlier in history there was a
group called the Anna Baptists. Um. They don't believe babies
should be baptized. Only adults can be baptized because like
a baby can't choose to be Christian, Like an infant

(07:10):
cannot accept Jesus Christ because it's a baby. Ah. Yeah,
that tracks that tracks to me. Now, an awful lot
of people get murdered over this, Like, it is astounding
how many human beings are killed because some folks are like,
what if only adults who could consent God baptized. That
is a big, big thing, so let's kill each other.

(07:32):
I love how the so much death comes from the
holiness of God, and in this case we should devote
to him. This is just like and this is again
so you see fundamentally, the one of the big splits
between other Protestant denominations and the Baptists is the Baptists
are really focused on personal liberty and autonomy, right the

(07:53):
idea that you can't get baptized until you can fully choose,
can make an informed choice as to whether or not
to to be a Christian um, which I think is
broadly speaking better than dunking babies in the water. But
I also don't think baptism babies has any particular effect
on them because their babies, they don't remember ship. Um,
you could do whatever like if they if they die

(08:18):
without being baptized, they go to hell. Um. I'm actually
not a Christian, but I do believe that just you know,
the one that broke evil hell is just for babies, yeah,
special for babies. Baby hell where it's like you have
to you have to I don't know what would baby

(08:39):
he'll be. I guess like like I mean, just like
just a room full of babies without adults, right, Yeah, Honestly,
I have to say that I think being a baby
probably is hell, and you can't you don't ever know
what's happening. But then you get the things that you
need and comfort from all you got to do. But
I don't know who giant people coming at me really

(09:01):
close with their giant phases. I think being a baby
is probably an incredibly traumatic experience. It does seem to difficult,
having having known a couple of babies, it seems way
harder than what I do not envy you man. And
then at one it starts being good because you can
talk like yeah, then you can start to funk around
with people, you know, yeah. Yeah. So in the decades

(09:26):
that follow John Smith in the establishment of his church,
the Baptist faith grows, and it actually has a split
very early on between a chunk of Baptists who feel
like um is that it's like murder of crows. Chunk
of Baptists chunk of Baptists. Yeah, um, so half of
them are like, I don't know if it's exactly half,

(09:46):
but one a big chunk are like, anyone can be saved.
Jesus Christ died for everybody, right, all you have to
do you have to accept Christ as your Lord and
savior and nothing you're saved but a bang bada boom,
and then there's a chunk. They're like, no, God picked
a small number of people all throughout history. I think
it's like a hundred and sixty thousand to be elect
to go to Heaven and everyone else goes to Hell,
which is a thing that only lunatics believe, but it's

(10:08):
very popular in this period. So as a general rule,
Baptists were the anti authoritarian strain of Christianity in this period.
They believed in the separation of church and state. They
believed in freedom of conscious conscience, and they believed in
the value of individual life experience in preaching. And this
is a big This starts like because the Catholic Church
in this period you don't insert your opinions into talking

(10:32):
about the Bible. You read the Bible right, and you
do the liturgy, and you have this like Creed that
you read and it has all been laid down, and
other people like, your job is to go read the
same thing every Catholic. Here's right. Your job is not
to extempor anialize from the fucking pulpit, you know. Um.
And now that you've got these Protestant denominations and they
have some different there's Protestants who are like, no, because

(10:53):
the Bible is an errant, you preach just the Bible. Um.
Baptists are like, well, no, your God made you as
a unique person and your experiences and beliefs about faith
are a part of like what God has given you,
So you should share your personal experience with faith with
other people. Right. This scares the ship out of Anglican
and Calvinist leaders. They do not like this. And the

(11:15):
main reason why is that the Baptists really extend this
attitude that like, well, God made us all the way
we are, with the capacity to make choices and experience things,
and He wants us to share that with each other.
So clearly women should be allowed to speak in church.
This is a big problem for people. So you've got

(11:36):
you've got I don't know if they're quite past Yeah,
they're not quite pastors, I don't think, but you have
women preaching the word of God in Baptist churches and
that is a real like folks get very honree about that,
um and spoilers. They still are today. So through the
seventeen hundreds, Baptists were attacked out of the fear that

(11:56):
their beliefs would overthrow male leadership, not just in the
church but in government right. And they believe that like
men had been put above women, this is part of
God's design. There will be chaos and and and violence
and horror if women you surf this. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah,

(12:17):
Jordan B. Peterson would absolutely have been like, like if
he's in the seventeen he's never not talking about Baptists,
like that's every hour of his life and still still
claiming that patriarchy doesn't exist and has never existed and
it's made up. But also some hierarchies are ingrained with

(12:38):
human soul and older, older than treats Peterson. Yeah. Um,
so I want to quote right now from a very
enlightening write up in Religion Dispatches by Diana Bass quote.
The Baptist commitment to liberty also shaped a revolution among
Christian women empowering them to exercise their spiritual gifts take

(13:00):
up leadership in the emerging religious movement. Indeed, one of
the first attacks leveled at Baptists in England was that
they scandalously allowed for she preachers, including teachers that's right,
including waiting for you get together, including one Mrs Ataway,
who's Tuesday afternoon Bible lectures in attracted as many as

(13:23):
a thousand eager listeners. Baptist women were among the greatest
radicals of a revolutionary century, and they preached a gospel
of visionary egalitarianism based in biblical injections like your daughters
will prophecy and there is no longer male and female
in Christ Jesus. So there's some radical ship going on
in the Baptist this ship. I love. That's pretty cool

(13:47):
radical way back when I mean that, does it so Baptist? Yeah,
o g Baptist fucking revolutionaries in a lot of ways,
like let you you open the adore for women and
look what they do for you. We are abolishing gender
sixteenth or seventeenth century Baptists. Yeah, now they're abolishing whatever.

(14:12):
Yeah it's whatever. Um. So conservatives at the time struck
back against progress as is why they exist. Um, and
they accused Baptists suffomenting revolution and chaos. One pamphlet from
the mid sixteen hundreds warrant that female Baptists quote, Oh
you're gonna like this, katie. Female Baptists of quote lately

(14:33):
advanced themselves with vainglorious arrogance to preach in mixed congregations
of men and women in an insolent way, so usurping
authority over men and assuming a calling unwarranted by the
Word of God for women to use. Yet all under
the color that they all as the Spirit moves them,
wherein they highly wrong and abuse the motions of the
blessed Spirit to make him to be the author of

(14:55):
such of so much schism, disorder and confusion, they being
rather led by a strong delusions of the Prince of
darkness to countenance there in ignorance, pride, and vain glory. Baby,
that's what we call words salad. You piss better than you,
better at preaching than you, Jordan Peterson. Um. So, Baptist

(15:24):
radicals were met with weaponized Bible quotes about how women
need to, you know, stay quiet and submit to their
husbands and all that good stuff in England, a whole
lot of Baptists gets get jailed for doing Baptist stuff. Um.
And when they refuse to stop anyway, um, you know,
things get any This is part of why a lot
of Baptists wind up in North America. Right. There are

(15:44):
crackdowns across Europe of Baptist communities and they're like, well,
let's go colonize a place. Um. Now, this is where
things start to go wrong because number one, they're now
becoming kind of implicit in the genocide or the series
of genocides that are about to follow. Um. But also
because it's North America in the six hundreds, they're gonna

(16:07):
start to become complicit in slavery. This is where things
go awry. Pretty good for a while though for a while.
End the episode where we were had a good thirty years.
That's like, yeah, not even someone's lifetime generation. Yeah that's

(16:35):
not bad. I mean good for the time. It's it's
longer than we have left in as a United States.
So I mean it's disappointing. Yeah, it is disappointing. Um,
it is this is there although it ends, this is
this is a story that's gonna end on a kind
of hopeful. Note, Um, so that's good. This won't be
as sad as a lot of things end, although boy howdy,

(16:57):
it's going to be a rough road to get there.
So in the Old Country, right, Baptists had lived in
a slave state as well, the British Empire, most of
the countries in Europe. Slavery is if it's not within
the country itself, the country's economy is heavily reliant upon slavery,
and like colonies and stuff. Right, So obviously Baptists and
you know, but but personal ownership of slaves was not

(17:19):
really much of a thing to the nearly to the
extent that it became in like the US South, and
Baptists were radicals. They did not tend to have a
lot of money, so you didn't have before they kind
of came to the US. I don't think they were
really Baptist slave owners, certainly, not as any kind of
organized group. Right, Maybe there were some individuals who did.
But in the United States, Baptists, because so many of

(17:39):
them come over in very short order, they are the
largest Protestant sect in the new you know, the first
than the colonies and then eventually in the new United States.
And because there's a lot of them. And because you know,
when you travel to a country that's in the state
of being born and that is appropriating and stealing a
great leod Land, a lot of them wind up being

(17:59):
rich and they get wealth and they get power, and
they get slaves and they stop being quite so cool
and radical. Um. So the first Baptist had been big.
One of the foundational things about being a Baptist is
that they are a non hierarchical religion um, which means
that they abided by no state interference in their worship,
unlike the Anglican Church. And they also have no bishops

(18:19):
or popes. Their radicals have actually extended beyond that. Baptists
had no unified creed, so like the Nicene Creed or
whatever like that. They don't have anything like that. There's
no liturgy, there's nothing that if you are a Baptist,
every Baptist like reads this thing, and like every Baptist
goes straight other than like the Bible. But again there's
a lot of freedom and like how it's preached and
like whatnot. So the Baptists in the United States very

(18:44):
quickly start to split along kind of the same lines
as the rest of the New Country splits. Northern Baptists
continue to hear to this anti hierarchy intellectual tradition, and
a lot of them do become Abolitionists. A lot of
Northern Baptist Baptists are part of the abolition movement. But
in the South, Baptist who had accumulated wealth and power
and slaves start to see things very differently. Now they

(19:07):
still reject choice hierarchy, and they claim to not have
a creed, but a growing number of them start to
argue that slavery is not just acceptable, but is divinely
inspired the actual will of God. Doctor Richard Ferman, who
is an early Southern Baptist leader, wrote in a letter
to the governor of South Carolina, quote, the right of
holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both

(19:29):
by precept and example. Now this causes a rift, because
by the eighteen hundreds, the you know, mid forties, slavery.
I don't know if you guys know this kind of
a contentious issue in the United States. Yeah, yeah, a
lot of people disagree. Did they smooth it out about it?

(19:49):
Was there some sort of fight. There's a people call
it the Big Disagreement that everything was fine. After that,
everything was fine after the Civil Debate, the Civil Debate,
and then everything was good. Um, that's what we had.
So it happens. Obviously, the Civil War starts in eighteen
sixty in the United States, it happens a bit earlier

(20:10):
for the Baptist in eighteen forty five. There is a
fundamental rift within the Baptist faith over the question of
whether or not slaveholders can be missionaries. That's what kind
of Again, There's been a bunch of arguments and debates,
but like, fundamentally this issue is kind of like winds
up being the thing that that sets the kettle of boiling,
Like can slaveholders go out and preach the gospel? Can

(20:30):
you can you go out and win souls for Christ
while owning human beings? Right, It's a good question. That's
a good question question, but also easy question. The Northern
Baptist would say, very easy question. No, Um, But the
Southern Baptists say yes. And the Baptist faith splits, and
the very first Southern Baptist Convention takes place in Augusta,

(20:51):
Georgia in May of eighteen forty five. And I'm gonna
quote from a write up in patheos is Daylight Atheism
blog quote largely comprised of slavehole orders, the gathering endorsed
the peculiar institution slavery was biblical abolition. Sinful Baptists of
the North were wrong to appropose slavery abolitionists for responsibility
for the Baptist division. Baptists of the South had been

(21:11):
patient with the agitators, but enough was enough, right, We've
it's just again tales all this time. We've been very patient,
We've been very civil with us needing the slaves um.
But you you people need to calm down. That's such
a It's amazing how the same thing is happens forever

(21:34):
the time might be some sort of flat circle. Um.
So of her that Reggie lid Dow I did have
I did an event in Austin recently, and I had
a lunch in a couple of loan Stars there, and
I considered I should have done it. I regret not
doing it. I should have bought a six pack alone.

(21:55):
Start to walk into my book signing, y like counted
six loan stars while like thing about nihilism. Already take
out your naive and start carving the empty Yeah, yeah, Robert,
I see that in your future. I want that. I
want that next time. I mean, what man doesn't want
to grow up to be rust Cole like honestly beautiful man.

(22:20):
Harrison's character's name goddam right, you're Woody Harrelson's character nobody. Yeah, anyway, whatever,
great great season of television. Never watched the show again
after that, Dard Harrison had been a good Yeah, not
worth after that? We do we needed an ad break.
It's not yeah, you know who we Reggie do we?
Reggie Lie do Cody? You fucking Reggie did it? So

(22:45):
go go go watch the first season A True Detective
again and also listen to these acts under the same
leg Oh we're back, um boy, that was pretty good show,

(23:05):
True Detective it yeah. Um. So the Southern Baptist Faith
grows rapidly after, and you know it's got there's a
lot of slave money behind it, which allows them to
do things like set up a shipload of schools and
build a really really powerful publishing arm to start pushing
out newspapers and magazines all over the primarily the South.

(23:28):
Now the faith is is decentralized on paper again. There's
no central church, there's no pope. But you will start
to have these very wealthy institutions arrived that are putting
out content for schools, that are putting out like stuff,
you know, training pastors and whatnot. Um. And as a result, things,
even though the Baptists, Southern Baptist say that it's decentralized,

(23:51):
things get very fucking centralized, right. Um. You start to
congregate a lot of power in these institutions that are
influential for the Southern Baptists. Um. And of course, because
the men who are funding them and running them are
slave holders, supporting slavery becomes a religious creed for the
Southern Baptists. In eighteen fifty one, Baptist news editor wrote, quote,

(24:12):
as a question of morals, it is between us and God.
As a question of political economy, it is with us
alone as free and independent states. Interesting that word? What
that word? What that first word you said? And what? Yeah? States? Yeah,
it's cool. Six. A prominent Alabama Baptist leader label slavery

(24:33):
quote as much an institution of heaven as marriage, basically saying,
of course there will be slaves in heaven. It wouldn't
be heaven if I didn't known people. How can I
be happy without my property, tying slavery to marriage. Yeah,
it is. It is interesting. Interesting make my stomach churn
every time I think about how recent all this ship is,

(24:55):
Like it's not all that far ago. Actually fifty mother
fucking yeah, this is like a hundred years before Martin
Luther King is marching around. You know. It's like not
that distant from my parents lifetime. Like, I mean not,
are our grandparents knew people who'd been alive at this period, Absolutely, absolutely,

(25:17):
or at least could have. So. The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary is founded in eighteen fifty nine in Louisville, Kentucky,
and it provides the Southern Baptist with a place to
train their clergy. Again, part of the thing with Baptist
is that there's supposed to be no centralized control over clergy.
People are not Like it's not like, you know, if
you like being a Catholic priest, it's like a whole
fucking deal, right, Like you gotta like it's like becoming

(25:38):
a mechanic or something. Um, you can just get declared
ade like if your congregation says, hey we like this guy,
he's the pastor you're the pastor right, But now they
also have a seminary um that is training people to
be pastors, which is very centralized. Oh and by the way,
the four guys who own the seminary owned fifty slaves
in between them. Um. So when Abraham Lincoln was elected, No,

(26:03):
it's fine, it's good times. It's good times. So Abraham
Lincoln gets elected, and the very normal dudes at the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary reacted as you had expect by
immediately arguing for secession. Now, some Baptist leaders had been
arguing for secession in the early eighteen fifties, and the
Southern Baptist faith overwhelmingly supported the Confederacy in the Civil

(26:24):
War that followed, which should not be a surprise. And
in eighteen sixty three meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention
SPTS founder John brought us, seen by some as almost
the founding father of like, the Southern Baptist Convention wrote
and submitted resolutions pledging Southern Baptist support for the Confederacy. Now, Cody,
I know you're just like on page one oh five

(26:46):
of your U S History textbook from middle school, but
I'm gonna spoil something for you. Civil war doesn't go
great for the Confederacy. Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry,
I know you were just getting there, right, But the
flags are still around. It seems like there was successful
I I see why that's confusing, Cody. Um, but workout victory.

(27:12):
They they're celebrating a victory. Um. We're actually kind of
getting to some of that. So. Yeah, so the South
South loses the war, and kind of as a result
of the South losing the war and a number of
things that happened with it, there are rather fewer living
Southern Baptist men in eighteen sixty five than there had
been in eighteen sixty Um. Now, emancipation and the end

(27:35):
of the war leads eventually to something that kind of
starts to approach equal rights for black people. Right. Um.
And obviously this is not an even you know, you've
got your reconstruction period where things are looking good, You've
got this horrible crackdown. You've got the establishment of Jim
Crow laws and the SPTS, the Sudden Baptist Theological Seminary Um,

(27:56):
and thus the leadership of the faith are hugely in
favor of Jim Crow and in finding ways to reduce
and eliminate any kind of legal equality that black people
might have. Um, the people who are kind of running
the Southern Baptist Convention oppose equality and support the separation
of white and black people. Professor William Wilson assured his
students whites will rule in the South still. Now, some

(28:20):
Southern Baptist leaders, like brought Us did evolve their views
as time went on. Brought Us eventually came around as
believing slavery was wrong in eighteen eighty two. I don't
give him a lot of points for that. Like you'll
see defenders of Southern Baptist leaders being like, well, look, no,
brought Us realized that it was wrong. It's like yeah
in the eighteen eighties. Look, man, if you're like raised

(28:41):
in the slave holding South and in like eighteen fifty
or like, you know what this is wrong? Funcket, I'm
an abolitionist. Now you get a lot of points. It's
hard to evolve beyond the things that your culture considers
fine when they're immoral. That's a that's that takes courage.
Eighteen eighty two, I don't really care came around you know,
radical anymore, Like yeah, like yeah, yeah, that's not really

(29:03):
like good, I guess, but okay, um, But he also
argues against those in the faith. What he does do
is he argues against Southern Baptist once the war is
over and they've lost, he does argue against people within
his his religion who think that black worship is less
acceptable to God than white worship. Um. And as a result,
there's start to be a few Black Southern Baptist churches.

(29:26):
Now this is a more significant chunk of the faith.
Now it's still not most. I think it's like seven
percent of of SPC churches are a majority black, um,
But black Southern Baptists do grow to be a more
significant chunk of the faith throughout the early nineteen forties
and particularly in the modern period. Uh An actually kind
of disproportionate chunk of pastors are black. Um. But yeah,

(29:48):
the Southern Baptist Black Southern Baptists do become more of
a factor in in the faith, even as kind of
leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention take advantage of this
racist system that they've built in the post war South.
And for more information on that, I want to quote
from an investigation published by the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Um. Yeah,

(30:10):
that's actually kind of a spoiler for where some of
the sins. But this is the same institution that we
were just reading a bunch of arguments for why God
loves slavery. Quote. Josephie Brown, the Seminary's most important donor
and chairman of its board of trustees eighteen eighty to
eighteen ninety four, earned much of his fortune by the
exploitation of mostly black convict lease laborers. Josephy Brown's coal
mines and iron furnaces coerced the full extent of labor

(30:32):
from Georgia convicts by employing the same brutal punishments and
tortures formerly employed by slave drivers. The legal system and
trapped thousands of black men, often on trumped up charges
and without any due process protections, and earned money for
sheriffs and state treasuries by selling their labor. It was
worse than slavery. Investigations of Brown's Dade coal operation concluded
that if there is a hell on Earth, it is

(30:53):
the Dade coal mines. Brown reaped enormous profits from his
coal and iron businesses. His eighteen eighty gift of fifty
dollars was instrumental in saving the seminary from financial collapse.
At his death, the seminary honored him for his service
as a trustee and for the generous financial support he
had provided. Okay, yep, pretty bad that guy. Pretty bad stuff. Um. So,

(31:17):
as you might guess, though, the SPTS recently has done
some broadly admirable things in terms of grappling with its legacy.
But of course, even in these again broadly admiral, because
there's some really good work they've done on kind of
the funked up parts of their history, they also still
toss some bullshit up in there. Um. For example, again,
most of these Southern Baptist sources you'll find grappling with

(31:40):
their legacy will note that guys like Broadest came around
and that other theological leaders, specifically William J. McLaughlin, loudly
repudiated the children of Ham stuff, which is, do you
guys know anything about that. There's also a thing in
the Mormon Church there's this idea cam Yeah, there's like
some ship in the Bible about these like children these cities.

(32:00):
You know how there's all these cities God gets mad
at in the Old Testament for like stuff Okay, so
at Ham's a city. Yeah, yeah, the Mormon Church will
be preaching that kind of ship up until like when
we were little kids, you know. Um so, but some
guys in this period and this kind of like late
end of the eight hundreds, very early in nineteen hundreds,

(32:21):
there are some Southern Baptist leaders who are like repudiating that.
Um but, and this is good, it's important in your
analyzes of racism to mention stuff like that. But then
after doing some really good research you get lines like
this quote. Several faculty and trustees lamented the prevalence of
lynching in the South, which is like, why why would

(32:41):
you even include like the fact that someone like, yeah,
lynching seems fucked up. It's not let's not point as
our property values is like such a weird word for that,
it's weird, Like maybe just don't even include that. Right.
If somebody did something to try to stop lynching, sure
of course that's a part of your history too. They

(33:03):
felt they felt about it. But also this is going
to be a pattern, this exact kind of thing where
you're like, well, we're not going to do anything and
we're not going to take any action to try to
make this less common, but we'll say it's bad. Right.
That is a real strong through line in the Southern
Baptist Convention in the seminary all that good stuff. So Um,

(33:24):
while they are limented lynching, the SPTS approved of the
Lost Cause mythology which spread in Southern Baptist schools and churches,
and that Cody is a big part of why you
see so many Confederate flagstickers on cars. Um. This a
historic take. We'll we'll do a whole thing on the
Lost Cause at some point, but basically it describes the
Civil War as a conflict caused by not the South's

(33:47):
desire to in like maintain a nightmare system of like
human bondage, but because of the South need to uphold
their honor and you know, states rights and all this
is there's this like noble culture that like and may
sometime times like the people who are smarter about it
be like, well, slavery was bad, but it wasn't any
worse in the South, and it wasn't all these other places,
and like there was all these good things and it
wasn't just about like obviously it was about slavery. The

(34:09):
Confederates at the time we're like, yeah, it's about sucking slaves. Literally, Yeah,
they were about it. Yeah. Um. Archibald T. Robertson, a
prominent professor at the SPTS in the early nineteen hundreds,
supported and taught the books of Thomas Dixon as like
major Southern Baptist like texts in their schools. Do you
know who Thomas Dixon was? He wrote The Klansman, which

(34:33):
was adapted in nineteen fifteen to the film The Birth
of a Nation. So this guy's books are all over
Southern Baptist schools in the Yeah, it's good to be educated. Yeah, Now,
the spt reading is important. It's great to learn because
knowledge is white power. Knowledge is like Christ. Um. So,

(34:59):
spt S faculty supported segregation until nineteen forty, which, if
we're gonna be totally fair, means they were ahead of
a lot of the United They were not the last
you know. Um, that's nineteen forties when the SPTS admits
its first black students again, and this is the school
that can like train people become pastors. The process of
giving up segregation was uneven because there's a bunch of

(35:21):
Southern Baptist schools and stuff. But the SPTS integrates like
as a general rule, they integrate their classrooms in nineteen
fifty one under the advice of Southern Baptist Convention President
Ellis Fuller Um. This puts them like three years ahead
of the federal mandate. UM. In general, SPTS faculty and
much of the Southern Baptist leadership supported the civil rights
movement with hesitation, but apparently with some honesty. And in

(35:45):
nineteen sixty one they invite Dart Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To speak um, which isn't nothing um. So they are
they do like while there is this strong conservative chunk,
they are able to like they're not on the side
that's you know, uh anti Martin Luther King. Yeah, they're
not like fighting tooth and nail, right right, right, It's

(36:05):
it's just kind of more like, well, I guess we're
getting dragged into the present. But maybe that's not bad.
Which is not the worst that anyone in America handles things.
It's not the best. I don't give them a lot
of credit, but not the worst. Yeah, yeah, let's give
me say give me cy um. But yeah. By the
early ninety by the early nineteen sixties, a huge chunk

(36:31):
of the faith had become quite liberal in their doctrine,
um and progressive on a whole host of social and
political issues. A lot of this has to do with
the growth of black churches, Black Southern Baptist churches um
and Yeah, only about six percent of Southern Baptist or Black,
but something like one fifth of their churches are headed
by black pastors. Um. And in this period, a lot

(36:51):
of those folks are kind of more liberal a lot
of No, they're not the only ones. There's you know,
there's this this is the sixties, right, Like, there's this
kind of progressive wave that's sweeping over a lot of
the country. Um. Now, as I've noted a few times,
there is no creed for Southern Baptists, but they do
have an what they call an outline of faith, which
is basically a creed. Um. It's called the Yeah, it's
called the Baptist Faith and Message. One thing that does

(37:14):
legitimately separate the SPC for other faiths is that the
faith and message is edited and revised over time and
reflective to democratic or at least kind of quasi democratic pressure.
Some segment of people within kind of the faith every
year kind of like vote on things that will be
ways in which this will be like added like different
motions and stuff. So it is much more the Southern

(37:36):
Baptist Convention is much more able to kind of move
with the times than a lot of denominations that that are.
So you know, for as large and as centralized as
it becomes, it is kind of more reflective, able to
be more reflective at the times. And I'm gonna quote
from a write up by Religion Dispatches here. The first
version was issued in nineteen twenty five, during the heyday
of the fundamentalist modernist crisis. In nineteen sixty three, revision

(37:58):
toned down the fundamentalism of the older statement, articulating more
strongly Baptist latitude and doctrine that favored the liberty of
conscious conscience. So you see, you've got this throughout the
early part of the country. Wow, there's also you know,
the things going on in the country about like the
civil rights movement and all this other stuff. Within the
Baptist faith, there's this debate over fundamentalism. Is the Bible

(38:20):
perfectly inerrant and unquestionable and something to be taken totally
literally or can we be like not lunatics about how
we read the Bible right, and in kind of this
period for the middle of the century, the people who
are like, yeah, let's adapt our faith to the modern
era and like be different than people were in the

(38:41):
nineteen twenties or in the eighteen sixties or whatever. Those
folks are winning, like they're winning for a while. Um. Now,
this opened things up for Baptist churches that might in
the future come to embrace and support even more radical
ideas women's rights, gay rights, all that good stuff. So
and indeed, Baptist for a time were some of the
most liberal denomination. From nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty eight,

(39:03):
when abortion was kind of starting to become a hotbed
issue in the United States, Baptist publications did not mention
abortion like there's no evidence of it being an issue
at all, uh, nor did any Baptist body take action
on it one way or the other. In nineteen seventy
a pull by the Baptist Sunday School Board found that
seventy pastors supported abortion to protect the mother, and seventy

(39:23):
one percent in the case of rape. In nineteen seventy three,
a pull by the Baptist Standard News Journal found that
nine of Texas Baptists believe the state's abortion laws were
too restrictive. Cannot emphasize how different things were back then. Yeah,
and again, we talked about this in our episodes on
the Religious Right and the Moral Majority Night. This is

(39:44):
it's it's not that big. It is starting to become politicized.
And obviously Catholics have always been against it, right, but
fucking Protestants don't have a long history in the United
States of giving a ship about abortion. Now, nineteen seventy
three is the year Roe v Way you know happens
um and the Southern Baptist Convention endorses the right to

(40:05):
choose and their their big vote magic that year. Now,
this makes some people happy, but it makes a lot
of people angry, and it particularly infuriates a ship head
named Larry Lewis. Larry is a St. Louis pastor who
went on to run the North American Mission Board. This
is like the board that's we will be talking about
them a lot later. They're like the folks running the

(40:26):
SPCs like mission because like that's the whole big deal
for them going out and preaching to people. So in
nineteen seventy nine, Larry Lewis picks up a newspaper that
listed the Southern Baptist Convention alongside the Unitarian Church as
support of abortion. As he later recalled, quote that bothered
me a lot. So now I'm gonna quote from a
rite up by the Baptist press, who suck and chicargo

(40:46):
glass quote. So Louis did something about it, proposing in
nineteen eighty the first and more than twenty pro life
resolutions adopted by the SPC over the next few decades.
When Lewis became HMB Home Mission Board President of in
nineteen seven, one of his first actions was to create
the Office of Abortion Alternatives to help churches establish crisis
pregnancy centers. We did an episode of it could happen

(41:07):
here on crisis Pregnancy Centers. Not great stuff? Do they
not help? I am oh no, um, I would say not.
So you know this is again. We have a couple
of periods, one in the late sixty hundred and one.
Now we're like things were going great for a while
and now they start to get funked up again. Um.

(41:30):
So Louis was just one of the conservative white leaders
of the church who started in the nineteen eighties flipping
the fuck out about how the evil liberals were taking
over America's most racist faith, most particularly, and most significantly.
Some of the leaders that scared were two guys named
Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler. Now these were both prominent

(41:51):
Southern Baptist You just know, oh my god, you just
know fucking Page Pressler, you or or fuming Age Patterson
or Paul Pressler, both of those guys you know, have
like opinions about inner city crime that are basically like
basically a fucking um uh neo Nazi tract from the

(42:12):
nineteen seventies, Like yeah, absolutely filing, Oh my god, like, yeah,
I am a nominative determinalist. For example, you hear the
name Dr Jordan B. Peterson, You know what that guy
is going to be serving. He's gonna have a lot
of opinions about snakes gardens. It is time for another

(42:36):
at break. Yes, you know who else has strong opinions
about racial hierarchies. They don't believe there should be any higherarchy.
The only hierarchy believes in is the hierarchy of children
on the private hunting preserve. They keep going off of
the coast of Indonesia and the people who hunt those
children as God intended promo code uh brisket. Yeah, however

(43:04):
you want, it's not gonna work. H We're back. So
we're talking about Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler, who are
not wild in the And again, this kind of the
eighties is when this all really ramps up. But the seventies,
the Carter administration in particular, is when these guys all

(43:25):
start being like, we gotta take our faith back from
these fucking liberals. Now, Paige had started preaching as a teenager,
and he moved on to occupy several positions running churches
across the filthy ass South. He became to get some
scabby team up there telling me about when yeah, nobody
I trust. It's like every time I see Mormon missionaries

(43:50):
and it's like, my dudes, this is your first time
out of the house. What do you what do you
know about? Like what you like? Come on, man, Like,
are you offering what do you go work at a
sparrow or some ship? Like some life experience? You know? Yeah, seriously, dude,

(44:11):
Like what come on? Um? Anyway, Um, so yeah, Page
starts as a teenager. He becomes president of Chris Wall
College in Dallas, Texas. Uh, there's my city of hate
in nineteen seventy five. Now, chris Well is a private
Baptist college. It started as a Bible institute and as
its president, it was Paige's job to inculcate new generations

(44:31):
in the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. He is one of
these fundamentalists, you know. Um, and he's not a big
fan of Roe V. Wade. He does not like the
idea either that women can be ordained as ministers, which
is starting to happen. He's really doesn't like that. And
again that's very anti Baptist originalism, right, like you need
to go back. Yeah, my dud be a little more

(44:53):
conservative maybe, Um, but no, he doesn't like this. Uh.
And he believes the Bible included quote an assignment from
God in this case that women, that a woman not
be involved in teaching or ruling capacity over men. Says
who says you? Says him. Well, it's very revealing of

(45:14):
his attitude too, because if it's like a normal person
would be like, well, yeah, why wouldn't I mean, if
it's all that matters to preach is like your relationship
with God, and God loves everybody equally. Why wouldn't a
woman be able to preach? And his attitude is if
you are a preacher, you are ruling, and women can't
look like And it's like, yeah, man, I mean that's
maybe you shouldn't be doing anything, Like maybe fuck you entirely.

(45:39):
Maybe you need to sit down. Yeah yeah, maybe you
need to sit to funk down bro Um. So Paul
Pressler was a judge and an extremely rich kid whose
father was a Harvard graduate and the vice precedent of
ex On Mobile. Oh yeah, yeah, you can stop talking.
That's the good stuff. Will you hear about this piece

(46:00):
of ship? So Paul goes to Princeton and in I
don't normally use Wikipedia as sources, but his Wikipedia biography
is clearly written by like somebody he paid to uphill
um and it includes lines stating that he quote confronted
theological liberalism head on, having never wavered in the faith

(46:23):
acquired in his youth wavering. These these guys both will
have several positions within the SBC. Um Patterson is going
to lead it for a while, and being guys who suck,
they were both good friends and together the two hatched
a plan This isn't like the nineteen seventies. They sit down.
This is like part a huge part of Southern Baptist

(46:43):
laure today. These two fuckers sit down at the Cafe
Dumont in New Orleans. Um and a former Southern Baptist
leader who now preaches against this kind of ship, Russell Moore,
describes how they quote mapped out on a napkin, how
the Convention could restore a commitment to the truth of
the Bible into faithfulness of its confessional documents. Now, it
took these guys like a decade to organize the kind

(47:03):
of faccory that it took to wrench the Southern Baptist
Convention to the far right. But Patterson and Pressler used
their influence methodically to weld together Southern Baptist conservative pastors
into a voting block capable of manipulating the conventions procedures
in their favor. In a write up for The Atlantic,
Jonathan Merritt describes how it all came together. The two

(47:24):
men successfully executed their strategy, and the subsequent decades a
movement they labeled the Conservative Resurgence and their opponents dubbed
the fundamentalist takeover. Whatever one calls it. The result was
a purging of moderates from among denominational ranks, the codifying
of literal interpretations of the Bible, and the transformation of
the Southern Baptist Convention into a powerful ally of the
Republican Party. Great good stuff, uh, great great stuff yatching up. Yeah,

(47:53):
So Patterson and their allies they see the nineteen sixty
three revision of the faith and message, which is again
that creed that's not a creed, as a mistake. They
call it quote an open door to a less biblical church.
When they began to take over ship in the mid eighties,
and that's really when it starts to come together, Like
eight four eighty five, support for abortion was one of

(48:14):
the first things to go, but as Religion Dispatches notes,
they quickly moved beyond that quote. Among their first targets
were women, the Baptist women in ministry. By nineteen eight seven,
approximately five d women had been ordained by the SBC,
and most especially women in the home. Southern Baptist fundamentalists
busied themselves by creating an entire movement called complimentaryani Ism,

(48:35):
a theological doctrine of equal but separate sexes based on
the joyful submission of Wives and the restriction of female
authority In they succeeded in adding a new article to
the Baptist Faith and Message on the theology of the family.
The wife and husband are of equal worth before God,
since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship
models the way God relates to his people. A husband

(48:58):
is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church.
He has the God given responsibility to provide for, to protect,
and to lead his family. A wife is to submit
herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even
as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.
It sounds sounds like it sucks. It sounds I mean,
it sounds exactly what I expected. Yeah, it's not. It's

(49:22):
like you're you're describing my actual hell. Yeah, a good buddy,
it's equal equal, uh, separate but equal healthy exactly. Yeah.
Are trapped in this like hell of mischismo where they're
they're forced to deny all the aspects of their of
their personalities that like, aren't this kind of toxic mascuml
linity and women are trapped in like an eternal prison.

(49:42):
It's great, it's what God wants. Yeah. Um, actually had
a buddy when I was growing up, was a lot
older than me. We played D and D together and
he was I'm actually I think it was his church.
I'm not sure it was his church or his wife.
But he gets, you know, hitched, and he gets married,
and what's a lovely person. They seem to have. They're

(50:02):
still together, seemed to have a good relationship. She's very
much like that kind of more um um uh forceful
one of the two. But they had they they they
went to their wedding was in this like very fundamentalist
Southern Baptist church, and I'm not sure maybe the preacher
could like read the vibes of the actual relationship, but
he spent like ten minutes talking about the importance of

(50:23):
like the woman submitting to her husband. It was like
super awkward. They're all these glances between people of like, okay, buddy,
you're really going on about this? Huh. It's fun stuff,
so very fun. Yeah. Texas small town churches good good places.

(50:46):
So hierarchy and patriarchy were now written into a not
a creed, creed that churches had to accept in order
to consider themselves. Southern Baptists this caused yet another major
major schism. A lot of moderates left the convention and
started to make new denominations UM and in fact, more recently,
President Jimmy Carter, History's greatest monster, renounced his membership in

(51:07):
the church. He told one interviewer, at its most repugnant,
the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes
of men. Excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation, and
national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it
also costs many millions of girls and women control over
their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them
fair access to education, health, employment, and influence within their

(51:28):
own communities. He said, He's he's been pretty solid for
a while, but also it's it's worth noting again to
talk about how this changes. Carter's considers himself a member
of the Southern Baptist Faith for a long time, like um,
because again, this shift is not all that old, you know.
Um yeah, I mean you keep saying that's like a

(51:49):
whiplash kind of a shift. Yeah, yeah. And it's happened
a couple of times, right, you know, with with the
slavery and everything too, So Patterson and Pressler did not
give a ship about the thing that Jimmy Carter has
an issue with, and they celebrated their victory over their
great enemy women by carrying out a mass wedding ceremony
in the year two thousand. They led five, no, you're continuing,

(52:12):
you don't have Yeah, yeah, it was a involuntary word
that now, but please don't. They led five and fifty
couples to renew their wedding vows, only this time with
more misogyny because they'd added these misogynists planks to the faith. Quote.
Wives reciprocated and in one accord, pledging to graciously submit

(52:33):
an honor their husband's role as servant leader while acknowledging
their responsibilities and as wife and mother as quote priority
above all else. Accept God makes me unhappy, understand. But
it's like it's there's a lot of reasons this is funny,
including the fact that all of the dudes who are

(52:54):
horny about this are the same kind of people who
will point out like, well is law made submission. And
it's like, man, your faiths have the same fucking problems.
And I do think about a lot lately. How do
you not all the time, just about the way people
participate in their own oppression and um and the stories

(53:18):
that you're told, and growing up in communities and environments
like this where you you know or whatever figures that
push you into thinking that this is who you are
and what you're worth and what your role is and
that and you become that's that starts to feel like safety.
Though for a lot of these people it was probably
very dangerous consent to consent that your husband has control

(53:41):
and that you relinquished that. I'm sure that they were
I'm sure that there's a lot of abuse. I know
we're getting to stuff. Okatie boy is there? Yeah. So
Convention leadership was in lockstep behind all of these changes.
A statement signed by many prominent Southern Baptist pastors and

(54:03):
teachers affirmed this, stating quote, we are convinced a denial
or neglect of these principles will lead to increasingly destructive
consequences in our families, our churches, and the culture at large. Now,
for most of the twenty first century, the Southern Baptist
Convention has been a reliable reservoir of the most regressive
attitudes of our era. Gay pastors were also banned in
the SPC organizing documents. Interestingly enough, here's a fun fact

(54:27):
for you kids. You know who's not banned for being
an SPC pastor sex offenders? What the fun? That's just
but yeah, but but maybe Okay. What you're failing to
account for is that Paige Patterson has a lot of

(54:48):
friends who are sex offenders. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't
realize that he was. He's got a bunch of buddies
who were doing sex among Baptist hasn't look like if Katie,
if like you were trying to get a place in
your Landlordie, you know, called me as a reference, like
I would say, oh, yeah, Katie, she's got like a

(55:10):
seven fifty credit rating or whatever. Is that good? What
is good for credit? That's good? Right? I think that
is good. I know that that is good. No, that's good.
I don't know what he's a very excuse me, everybody listening.
Seven fifty is a very good credit score. Don't listen.
You didn't see, Sophie, you go, But I will. I will.
What's important, Katie is I will lie to your landlord

(55:32):
about your credit. Thank you, thank you so much. And
in the same way, Paige Patterson is going to make
sure that his friends who were repeatedly committing sex crimes
can be that pastors in the same way. Is the
phrase that you just use, UM, And I wondered, maybe
if they're not comparable situations, but we can leave it

(55:53):
at that. We don't have to explore that. We don't
have to explore that, you know, we can't explore Cody
Katie is a guy named Darryl gil Your now in
Gilliard Daryl Garrell. Darryl Darryl gild would be amazing. So
he is one of the specs like prominent black pastors,

(56:14):
and he specifically there's this guy let me pull up
his name, UM, whose name will be familiar to a
lot of people, who was like, uh, let's uh. There's
this pastor named Findes who's like another prominent black like
the the like most kind of like celebrity SPC black preacher.
And Gilliard is considered to be like, oh, this is
like he's he's the new version of this guy who's

(56:36):
like huge for us, makes us a shipload of money,
very popular, UM, and he's a protege of Page Patterson, UM,
who calls him quote the nation's next great African American preacher. Um.
He becomes prominent when he earned several appearances on Jerry
Fallwell's national TV show Super Charismatic. And he has this backstory.
He has this like lurid story about who he's like

(56:57):
raised as a homeless orphan, you know, in in uh
poor place. And it's none of it's true. It's like
all lies who's not raised as a homeless orphan. But
that's a good story. Um. And now I'm gonna quote
next from the problematic source Baptist news. Beginning of nineteen
eighty five, Gilliard was hired and then forced out of
positions at three Dallas area churches, Victory Baptist Church and

(57:18):
Richardson Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas and Shiloh Baptist
Church in Garland. He was similarly hired and forced to
resign at Hilltop Baptist Church in Norman, Oklahoma. At least
twenty five women in the Dallas church publicly accused him
of sexual misconduct. Um. So that is how the Southern Baptists,
when they have to admit that this is a thing
that happened, talk about it. Right. That's that's their summary

(57:43):
of this guy's crimes. Um, it's actually quite a lot
worse than that. Um, but that already sounded already. I'm
gonna quote from an article in the Houston Chronicle by
Rob Down, by Rob Down and sorry rob uh yeah,
about what was actually going on with with with Monsignor

(58:07):
Gilbert Um. Two years after Gilliards, he began pastoring a
non SPC congregation a few blocks away from Vines's megachurts
in Jacksonville, Florida. While there, he was convicted of sex
crimes involving two teens. He faced multiple civil suits, including
one eventually settled from a grieving widow who alleged that
she was raped and impregnated by him during counseling sessions.

(58:30):
Oh my god, very bad dude. Now, A big part
of how he's able to do this is he is
personal friends with Patterson and with Vines, who are like
fucking running the SPC in a lot of ways. Um,
And so he'll tell his victims like, hey, you know,
if you have a problem with what I'm doing, like,

(58:50):
take it up with fucking Paige Patterson, you know, take
it up with Vines. Right, these guys who are like, um,
the big and and for his part as these he
is getting kicked out of churches, you know, for doing
sex crimes. Uh. Patterson backs him to the to the
hilt um to quote from the Houston Chronicle quote um,
Patterson wrote that Gilliard was not guilty of the allegations

(59:13):
or morally culpable. He said that Bailey, one of this
guy's victims, must forget the past and should refrain from
making public statements. While Patterson works to rehabilitate the gifted
young preacher from his mistakes, sorrow and humiliation, he is
no longer a problem to you, Patterson wrote, He is
worth salvage. Will you agree not to disparage him any further,

(59:34):
thus giving me a chance to help Darryll count for
God and for good. Huh uh huh, Yeah, that's cool.
Can we all agree to not disparage this board? Don't
disparage him with your talk of him raping abuse. Can
you be so cruel? He's in pain? Yeah, he's good

(59:57):
at talking in a pulp at guys. Um, do you
not understand the stakes here? But also, this is the
argument they make is that like, well, honestly, it's not
that bad if he's committing multiple sex crimes. As long
as he's winning souls the victims, you suffer. Well, it's

(01:00:17):
also just like you know, if you're a victim, you
know that's bad and everything, but you just suffer once, right,
it's just a few minutes. Whereas if you win a
soul to Christ, that's an eternity of torment that they're
saved from that. And the thing is that is the logic. Yeah,
and here's the I mean, this goes so much even that,
but that if that is what you believe by God,
you can justify damny or anything anything. Yeah. Um, which

(01:00:40):
is a problem, um bigger than this, but this is
one of the reasons in which that's a nightmare problem.
So with Patterson's help again, Gilliard repeatedly gets jobs, preaching,
at one point to more than seven thousand people at
a church in Florida. Um and Patterson would later claim
that since he'd been part of the panel that had
investigated allegations against Gilliard and quote got him to confess
that guilt publicly, it was fine for him to help

(01:01:03):
Gilliard get jobs to preach elsewhere. He said, he was sorry,
what more do you want from me? Effectively, the leader
of the Southern Baptist convention. People, what else can happen?
What can you do? Yes? Now. In two thousand, the
same year that he remarried five fifty people with his buddy,
the judge, Patterson sent a letter to a pastor asking

(01:01:24):
him for advice on stopping sexual abuse in a church.
This pastor writes a letter to Page Patterson's like, Hey,
I am concerned about sexual abuse happening within my church.
What is your advice for? Like avoid you know, for
protecting my with a reasonable thing to do? Write? You're
leading a church. This is the guy who's running things.
You want his advice. I don't want anyone to get
hurt in my congregation. Page's advice was for him to

(01:01:44):
quote hold lunch and one hour awareness seminars, not because
they'll stop abuse, but so that if there is ever
a lawsuit over sexual abuse, it will look like the
church did something to do. Yeah, you smooth it over you. Yeah. Now.
Not long after all this um again, early two thousands,
the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal blows wide open um.

(01:02:05):
I don't know if you guys have heard about this,
but there's been a couple of problems within the Catholic
Church about sex sea a year for centuries, you know,
not that big a deal. But yeah, so this is
a big, big story. Um. And because it's a big story,
it kind of again there's there's a couple of things.

(01:02:26):
There's this anti democratic, very right wing, very centralized thing happening,
but there's also still if a bunch of Southern Baptists
have the mood take them by something that happens, they
can pass resolutions that are like good broadly speaking, um.
And so that that year, kind of inspired by what
had happened within the Catholic Church, they pass a resolution
on the importance of sexual integrity for clergy who were

(01:02:48):
to be quote above reproach morally. Um. They also urged
churches to quote discipline those guilty of any sexual abuse
in obedience to Matthew eighteen six seventeen. I'm not great
at reading the numbers of Bible verses, but that verse
reads quote, if your brother or sister sins go and
point out their fault just between the two of you,

(01:03:08):
if they listen to you, you have won them over.
But if they will not listen, take one or two
others along, so that every matter may be established by
the testimony of two or three witnesses. If you still
refuse to listen, tell it to the church. And if
they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them
as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Again,
yea classic libertarian rant. Yeah, yeah, that's one of those

(01:03:35):
verses that like if you're the kind of guy who
makes your own license plates and then shoots at police
during traffic stuffs, like you're a big fan of that one. Um,
But no, you can obviously, again, like everything in the Bible,
there's a reasonable interpretation of that, which is the Christian
Church is essentially this like radical social movement, uh that
doesn't want to be torn apart by like petty dispute.

(01:03:57):
So it's saying like, hey, if you've got like if
if someone does something kind of sucked up, first talked
to him one on one and try to get them
to see that they like did something that was like
hurtful or negative. And if that doesn't help, bring other
people along and try to you know, you gradually get
to the point where intervention and they don't people the
opportunity exactly, and if they don't listen, then you you know,
then maybe they need to be out and stuff, right,

(01:04:17):
not that person is a rapist and exactly, and I
this it's I don't know, the Bible versus probably talking
more like, yeah, what if a guy doesn't want to
share his fish? You know? Yeah, they weren't talking like
what if a guy is systematically molesting women as part
of a network of churches that more people like a

(01:04:38):
tax collector? Yeah, um well what if? So what if
I want something worse for this person? How I treat
a tax collector? Yeah exactly. Um, now again, there's a
number of ways you can interpret this. Southern Baptist leaders
tended to take it to mean if some if if
a pastor or someone else who is affiliated with us

(01:04:59):
molest somebody, give him another chance, move them, give me
another chance, and you give another chance, they give him
another chance. It's also I mean, it's cop ship and
it's Catholic pre ship, right, yeah exactly. Okay, Well was
moving to their place and then people where it happened,

(01:05:19):
they'll forget about it. And you go to another place
and it happens, and let's let's just put you around
people who don't know who you are. Exactly, Let's remove
you from the community. That now has some immunity to
you because they're aware of that you're a creep. And
let's put you in a new place. Yeah, it's good
and good, Cody cool, good. Yeah. In three, popular Illinois

(01:05:42):
pastor Leslie Mason was caught molesting four young girls. State
leaders told him he would be fired and lose sefferance
pay if he did not resign. Interesting that they gave
a shit about that. I would say fire is asked
because he molested four girls, but maybe not as like
maybe yeah, yeah, maybe fire him from a cannon. I

(01:06:04):
don't know. So he gets convicted and is sentenced to
seven years in prison and a plea deal which drops
all but two of his charges. Um, he gets I mean,
probably something messed up there, but whatever. He goes to prison.
So he gets out after he does his time, and
he goes right back to preach in a new SBC
church just miles away from his old one. He becomes
a rising star within the church, again, traveling around the

(01:06:25):
state and preaching until his past charges are publicized by
a writer with the local Baptist newspaper. And again you
could see this as a success for the fact that
the Southern Baptists have set up their own media arm. Right.
This is a member of the community who is exposed
this guy right, which is dope. Right. That's unequivocally a
good thing, good journalism. Good on you, buddy. But people
don't react well to this. Angry readers to lose the newspaper,

(01:06:48):
and condemnation against the newspapers expose pours in from the
Illinois State Baptist Association Director Glenn Aikin's complains. Quote to
have singled out Les in such a sense stationalistic manner
ignores many others who have done the same thing. Nearly
you could have oh wait, you could have asked nearly
any staff member and gotten the names of several prominent

(01:07:10):
churches were the same sort of sexual misconduct has occurred
recently in our staked. That's bad to names, buddy, do that,
because you couldn't then go do that, then do that.
It's like Derek Chauvin's lawyer being like, look, he was
just doing what cops are trained to do when he
murdered that Man's I'm watching We Own This City, this

(01:07:33):
HBO show about dirty cops in Baltimore, and that's what
it is. It's like one after the other we'll like, yeah,
well that guy's doing it. This guy, this guy's man,
that's that's why it's bad to be you like, yeah, right,
do you not get it yet? And yes, it's like
when you're staring at something like, yes, that's the problem.

(01:07:55):
This is the problem. You are a problem. Yeah, man. So, obviously,
abused by church officials did not start in the early
two thousands. Right, I'm sure that Southern Baptists, but under
the raid of Patterson and Pressler and their acolytes, deliberately
hiding and supporting the rehabilitation of pastors who assaulted children

(01:08:15):
becomes basically official policy. Debbie Vasquez was molested at age
fourteen by her pastor in Sanger, Texas, back in the
late nineteen seventies. She was assaulted several times before being
impregnated by a married pastor more than a dozen years
older than her. For years, she kept the secret. But
then in the early two thousands, while the Conservatives tightened
their grip on the Southern Baptist Convention, stories like Mason's

(01:08:39):
began to filter out. She decided it was time to
take a tremendous risk and try to do something. And
I'm gonna quote next from an investigation published by the
Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News. I think
I said just the Chronicle earlier. It's a joint kind
of big investigation between the Houston Chronicle and the San
Antonio Expressed News that honestly deserves the fucking Pulitzer quote.

(01:08:59):
In June two eight, she paid her way to Indianapolis,
where she and others asked leaders of the Southern Baptist
Convention and its forty seven thousand churches to track sexual
predators and take action against congregations that harbored or concealed abusers. Vasquez,
by then in her forties, implored them to consider prevention
policies like those adopted by faiths that include the Catholic Church.

(01:09:20):
Listen to what God has to say, she said, According
to audio of the meeting, which she recorded, all that
evil needs is for good to do nothing. Please help
me and others that will be hurt. Days later, Southern
Baptist leaders rejected nearly every proposed reform. Now in the
years that followed, that's two thousand and eight. In the

(01:09:41):
years that follow more than yeah that thanks Obama, UM
more than two hundred and fifties Southern Baptist pastors, leaders,
and volunteers would molest or sexually assault children and other
members of their congregation. More than seven victims have come
forward to date in total. Many would do it more
than once in multi bull churches. And we'll tell that
story and we'll also tell some stuff that's less depressing

(01:10:04):
in part two. Oh, I can't wait. Part of that
I look forward to. Yeah, aspects of that will be
very cathartic. Others won't sure, won't get you got any
you've got any plugs for us at the end. Here, boy,
you can check out our other shows. Some more news

(01:10:30):
is available on YouTube and where you get podcasts. Even
more news is available where you get the podcasts and
are tweet tweets are online? Are tweets? Are your tweets?
Where you go to get the tweets? Yeah? At the
tweet store. Yeah. Paton told invest more time in my

(01:10:50):
other Patreon social media we should all get one TikTok together.
That's kind of what I was getting at it. I'm
actually really I actually think maybe we should and we
should talk to TikTok. We could have some real fun
in that in that environment, just the kids, kids are

(01:11:11):
dabbing a lot these. I think. I think that when
the kids wanted more of us. You know, kids have
on guys, let's do so. I'm sorry, Katie, I cut
you off. No, no, I wasn't going anywhere good. I

(01:11:32):
was just going to say that we should make our
TikTok be Paul Ryan themed, just like bringing back you know,
like Ryan. That will hit with the teens. Yeah, I
think the teens are. The teens are ready for a
bright vice presidential candidate who does cross. They weren't ready before,
which is why they were too young. There were two

(01:11:53):
young and now they're the perfect age to see that
picture in working out, you know that post? Right? Oh yeah,
I think I speak for everyone when I say we've
all suffered enough. I mean, it would be fun that
picture of Paul Ryan, what we could do with it,
because it's a it's a piece of That picture of
Paul Ryan is a piece of one of my favorite

(01:12:14):
kinds of content, which is official Republican Party communicates attempting
to get people horny. Um. It's like it's like a
species of Republican Party propaganda, and it's so embarrassing every time.
Include Don Junior's hunting photo as part of they were
they did their best, They did their best. Um My god,

(01:12:36):
it's so funny. It's never not funny. This is a
fun and uplifting note to end this episode On Yeah,
check out our Paul Ryan TikTok, where used one of
those AI bots to make uncomfortable, erotic videos of Paul
Ryan filating himself with a bull whip while standing on

(01:12:58):
top of a Dodge Dark with that oh no, oh
no song going in the background doing oh no, oh no,
that one. I don't need to sing an you know it.
And we're done. Oh, We're done, We're done. Behind the
Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more

(01:13:20):
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: How The Southern Baptist Convention Was Taken Over By Republicans and Child Molesters