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

Robert is joined again by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to continue to discuss The Southern Baptist Convention.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Oh yeah, welcome back to behind the Bastards. I would
have quit so long ago, so fucking long ago if
this was if this was your real, this is real.
Well it's rocking Roberts with cool Katie and Cody moon

(00:28):
Man Johnson here in the morning with you to help
your drive time go by like the moon light again.
Now we're gonna do a new thing. We're gonna prank call.
You're gonna prank call people whose children are in the
n I see you and make them think their kids

(00:50):
are dead. How all comedy works in two thousand three? Yeah,
and the girl just has some sort of like laugh. Yes,
it nailed it, nailed it. M we're back support our

(01:12):
misogyny by laughing at our jokes. Oh, cod Bigs, moon
Man Christ, how's it good one? Well, what's up with you?
I'm good. I'm wishing I'd made my real calling as
a drivetime radio d J. That's who I learned about
nine eleven from? Really really Yes, yeah, we like like

(01:36):
learned about nine eleven, or like learned that nine eleven
happened from blended it happened. Yeah, we were It was
the Jeff and Anna Morning Show. I was driving to
fucking I mean, I wasn't driving because I was a child,
but my mom was driving us to school, and like
they started riffing about how a plane and I think
they thought, like because I remember thinking at first that
it had been like some prop plane or some ship

(01:56):
that some idiot had acted, and so like they were
just like joking about how bad you like, probably making
jokes about people with that eyesight or something. Um. And
then when I walked into my first period class, which
was health, I walked in in time to watch the
second plane hits. Just like that might not be that
might not have been a just a just a kookie
mix up, maybe not a Oh my god. I wanted

(02:23):
to be a radio show host when I was in
I was like, that seems perfect. I wanted to be
like an oldies radio station. You don't get any and
look where I am now, baby, playing the oldies, hanging
out with moon Man Classics and the Jesus So yeah,

(02:46):
speaking of Jesus Christ, well yeah, yeah, one of that's
one of the jesus Is. I mean there's a couple
of them, jeez, I yeah, just swee us famous Jesu. Yeah,
one of the famers. Anyway, whatever, we're talking about the
Southern Baptist Convention anyway. So in two thousand four, d
August Bodo, often known as Augie, a terrible nickname, became

(03:08):
the Executive Committee General counsel to the Southern Baptist Commits
Commission or Convention, right um. And obviously, so the SBC,
which is the centralized governing body of the Southern Baptist Church,
which does not have a centralized governing body of course, Um,
they have an executive Committee, which are you know, because
they don't have popes and bishops, not like being popes

(03:31):
and bishops, but effectively kind of like being popes and bishops, um.
And August Bodo was like their lawyer, right um. And
as that guy, it's Augie's job to guide them in
their responses to allegations of sexual assault, which just become
more and more common in the years leading up to
two thousand and eight, when that group of survivors comes
to beg for them to do something more than than

(03:53):
nothing that they were doing. Now there's yeah. In two
thousand six, members of the Survivors Network of those of
you used by priests held a rally outside of the
Executive Committee's office in Nashville, Tennessee. Aggie accused the abuse
victims of coming at the committee with a quote adversarial posture,
which he used to justify his opposition to their requests

(04:13):
for reform. He was presented with a list of possible
procedures to address sexual assault by the committee, but he
ignored them. In two thousand eight, after Debbie Vasquez and
other abuse victims beg the SPC to set up some
sort of internal lists to track abuse within the faith. Right.
So that's one of the things Debbie and these other
victims asked is like, hey, could you guys keep it

(04:34):
like a list of the pastors who rape people, so
that like if they try to get a job at
a Southern Baptist affiliated church, it'll go like now that
guy molested database of some kind, yeah, yeah, registered like
a registry, like like literal yeah, it's see. It's again,
like the least you can do is be like, we

(04:56):
probably know if somebody molests kids, tries to get another
job where they can molest kids, right, Like that's again,
this should not be like a political issue in any way. Um, yeah,
should not be considered radical. Um. But they don't. This
does not pass Muster with the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee.
UM and Boto drafts the rejection letter UM that they

(05:19):
send to Debbie Basquez when they asked for a form
and and his his justification for doing nothing was the
cherished Southern Baptist tradition of church autonomy. Right, the Executive Committee,
there's no central power in the Southern Baptist faith. Right,
we can't tell churches what to do, So we don't
have the authority to force them to report sex abuse
to a central registry. Right, that's just not what we are. No. Obviously,

(05:43):
we do things like demand that they oppose abortion and
that they say that women should be submissive to men. Uh.
And it works one but not the other, but not that.
But we could we could not. We couldn't make them
keep a list of all the people who read kids.
That's not cool. UM. So that's neat. It's neat that
that's the justification. UM. As a result, Aggie later said,
the committee quote realized that lifting up a model that

(06:05):
could be enforced was an exercise in futility, and so
instead they drafted a report that quote accepted the existence
of the problem, rather than attempting to define its magnitude. Again,
this is an and now an ancient Baptist tradition. Right,
bad things happen. We acknowledge that there's nothing we can
or will do about them. But they happen. We can

(06:25):
save their souls. Well, their souls are probably already saved
before the pastor molested them. He surely baptized them. So really,
it's other people we need to worry about. They're taken
care of. They're good to go to heaven, good to
go to heaven, even judged by the standards of his faith.
Bot host justifications are fucking nonsense. SPC churches work together

(06:49):
to share teaching materials. They have curriculum that is in
common across thousands of churches and schools. They share resources
to help expand and maintain the infrastructure of their faith,
and they pulled together money to fund missionary trips and seminaries.
There is ample precedent for at least a voluntary database
tracking sex abuse convictions and allegations among pastors. Right um,

(07:10):
it is a thing that would not be out of
step with other ship they have done. To their credit,
the Baptist General Convention of Texas did publish a list
of sex offenders who had served in Texas Southern Baptist churches.
You want, I guess how many names it contained. No? Eight? Ah,
that feels like, yes, that feels like it's everybody. I

(07:32):
was searching. I was thinking, twenty came to mind and
I was like, oh, oh yeah, I have no idea.
But Katie, you have to remember, Texas is the smallest
state in the Union. It has the least people, right,
so there's just not a lot of folks there, of course,
so few. It seems comprehensive, you know. It seems like

(07:55):
they got them all um corner. Yeah, one for every
town in Texas. I remember growing up. That's why. That's
why it's eight flags over Texas. A flag everybody knows
everybody in Texas. So that's right. It's like it's like Iceland,
like that, me and my good friend Matthew McConaughey talking

(08:15):
about True Detective, where I mostly just say Reggie la
do until he hangs up the phone because he is tired.
He's got stuff to do, He's got stuff to Reggie.
It's not because it's not because he Reggie doesn't like
that didn't work. Oh no, no, that was perfect. That

(08:36):
was perfect. I might have gone with Reggie La didn't.
But it's all good. Oh that's what I meant to
do on it. It's all a banger. Uh. This this
is a fun joke for the three of us. That's
to remember True Detective and mainly the way that you

(08:58):
guys should really check out True to One one little
sleeper show that no, two words from one line of
one season of a show from like six years ago.
It's not two lines. That's that's a name that gets
said a bunch sure, And to be clear, he never
says it's like a verb or whatever. It's nearly all

(09:22):
of this is just us because it's funny. Why would
start doing a bit in the middle of hard boil
Detective series. I don't know. Uh. So Bodo comes to
these sex abuse of IRUs and it's like, look, there's
just nothing we can do. Because of the nature of
how the Convention is structured. We can't make people keep

(09:44):
a central database. It's just not possible. It would be
outside of the traditions of our faith. Um, you want
to know something fun. Yeah. Maybe it turns out that
for years and probably decades, the Executive Committee leaders kept
a database of sex offenders who had worked for the
Southern Baptist Convention. Fucking it was my guess did they
show anyone this list? Of course right to say specifically

(10:08):
that it's like against our faith or whatever the justification
basically say it too hard against our faith, not what
we do, but we do it. Of course we do it.
Come on, um, And I'm gonna quote now from an
interview with Russell Moore. He's a former spokesman for the denomination.
It was now a critic of the SPC, and this
is him commenting on the Houston Chronicle expose quote. Allegations

(10:33):
of sexual violence and assault were placed, the report concludes,
in a secret file in the SPC Nashville headquarters. It
held over seven cases. Not only was nothing done to
stop these predators from continuing their hellish crimes, staff members
were reportedly not told to even engage those asking about
how to stop their child from being sexually violated by
a minister Roger. Rather than a database to protect sexual

(10:54):
abuse victims, the report reveals that these leaders had a
database to protect themselves. Yeah, for sure, Now that's always
the way. I'm not an expert on morality, but I
think it might be arguable that if a bunch of
people who were molested, many of whom were molested as children,
come to you and say, please, for the love of God,

(11:14):
do something to protect us and other children who are
a threat in other people who are at risk, and
you instead ignore them to protect yourself. That might be
the kind of thing that where I God, I would
shoot you with lightning bolts for whoa. Hey, you can't
just put actions into God's mouth and fingers. Come on.
You don't know. It's been a while since I was

(11:38):
in Sunday School, but that does strike me as a sin.
I think I think that might be a sin. It
in this scenario, you laid out the person said for
the love of God, and in that scenario they would
be taking the Lord's name in vain. And I don't know,
maybe it's true, that's true. I don't know. I never

(11:59):
have to remember. We have to remember Mark sixty four
in which Jesus Christ said, and I quote, fuck them kids. Yeah,
famous famous Jesus sake. That really stick. It's that's like
because it's also because it's I have a tattooed across
my back. Yeah, some kids, most courthouses have it. Yeah, honestly,

(12:23):
like a little open commercialized. Don't you think I do.
It's printed so much, I don't know. It's like, yeah, anyway,
and loses his power a little bit. You're right, we're
doing lots of fun bits that distract our fun topic.
So they made this database, which they claimed they couldn't do,
just to protect themselves. And here's the thing, they weren't

(12:43):
even very good at protecting themselves or the Southern Baptist
Convention because the same pedophiles and molesters kept getting hired
again and again. As this devastating segment from the Chronicle
investigation makes clear, quote Doug Myers was suspected of praying
on children at a church in Alabam, Emma, but he
went on to work at Southern Baptist churches in Florida
before police arrested him. Timothy Timothy Redden was convicted of

(13:06):
possessing child pornography, yet he was still able to serve
as pastor of a Baptist church in Arkansas. Charles Adcock
face twenty nine counts of sexually assaulting a fourteen year
old girl in Alabama. Then he volunteered as a worship
pastor at a Baptist church in Texas. You know, it's
a really good way to um uh protect yourselves against
this would be to fire those people. You might say, yeah,

(13:30):
that would be the best way to protect yourself against
allegations of sexual abuse would be to fire those people
and to make clear in no uncertain terms that there
is no room for predators in your faith. Yeah. I
don't know, I'm not a pr person, but well, of
those things, nobody there would be no realistic reason, even

(13:53):
given all the right wing ship, there'd be no realistic
reason to be angry if a church, if a if
a denomination with forties thousand churches on a semi regular
basis found that people who were volunteering or working where
child molesters and fired them. Right, there's fourteen million people.
You know, you can't avoid that to some extent. You know,
if they were firing them and taking it seriously, would

(14:15):
just be like, yeah, man, it's there's fourteen million people
in the faith. Sometimes predators are going to try to
get in there, and all you can do is try
to build resiliency around that and make sure those people
are are removed when they pop up, and and you know,
constantly be sort of evaluating the degree how you can
make people safer from that um. Instead, the SPC does nothing, well,
they don't do nothing. They enable these folks a lot

(14:36):
of the time. So yeah, yeah, the other of the
the the opposite. Yeah, I'm gonna continue that quote from
the investigation quote. In Georgia, the pastor of the SPC
affiliated East Side Baptist Church near Atlanta announced it was
re examining its hiring practices after Alexander Edwards, a volunteer
youth pastor, was arrested in two thousand sixteen on charges
of sexual battery involving an eleven year old boy he

(14:58):
had met at the church. It wasn't Edwards this first
criminal charge while serving as a youth pastor at another
Baptist church a hundred and sixty miles away in Lee County,
south of Atlanta. Edwards was arrested in August two thirteen
and charged with using the Internet to find a child
for a sex act. That case was still pending when
Edwards began volunteering at east Side. He was convicted of
the two thousand and sixteen charges, and the charge in

(15:20):
Lee County was dismissed. So that's all good, It seems fine.
Oh it's bad. It really seems bad. What's it is bad, Katie?
But what's interesting about it here to me it was
on a kind of an intellectual level, is that obviously
this is all like Catholic Church ship right, like you

(15:40):
can find switch the names up and these are all
stories that you can find within you know, abuse by
Catholic priests. Um. But on paper at least, this, the
Southern Baptist Convention is basically has the opposite structure of
the Catholic Church, right, it's supposed to at least Catholic Church.
It doesn't get much more centralized, right, you have a
hyper atralized religious bureaucracy that vets and teaches every single

(16:03):
priest and also acts to shuffle them around and hide
what they're doing to protect church assets and resources. Among
Southern Baptists, pastoral assignment is, in one expert's words, kind
of the wild West. There's no regulation, there's no central authority.
Churches make their own policies for deciding who could be
a pastor there in many smaller congregation, all congregations. All
it takes is being a good speaker and getting enough

(16:24):
congregants to say, yeah, this guy. Um. The spc's response
to allegations has likewise been decentralized, with some leaders like
Paige Patterson taking action to help abusers, but with most
abusers seeming to slip through the cracks because there's nothing
but cracks. Um. Now, one thing I find fascinating here
is that, as different as the SPC system is, at

(16:45):
least on paper, from Catholicism, the guy who was probably
the leading expert on why the Catholic Church is a
funked up din of molestation immediately realized the SPC had
the same problems. Have you guys heard of the Reverend
Thomas Doyle for cool dude. He is a priest and
a former lawyer for the Catholic Church in the nineteen eighties.
He was the first major insider to blow the whistle

(17:07):
on child sex abuse by priests. Um. And so he
gets my coveted Good Catholic Priest Award, which I have
only given out to him and the guys from the
beginning of Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, which is a pretty
good thing. Printed. Yeah, I did well. I mean, I'm
gonna be honest, Katie, I had a couple of storage
facilities full of awards. Here, I'm taking a bath on

(17:27):
this one. I'm looking. I keep trying to give him out,
but I'm underwater here. I can't get my head above.
Life is long. Maybe you'll be surprised. The Good Reverend
became an activist after leaving the church, and he wound
up working with a number of victims of Southern Baptist pastors.

(17:48):
The stories they told him and the actions taken by
the SPC to keep things quiet sounded familiar. In two
thousand seven, he wrote letters, including one to SPC President
Frank Page, warning him, Hey, I think you guys are
doing a Catholic church right. So Page responded that they
were quote taking the issue seriously, but that there were
serious limitations to what they could do because of course,

(18:11):
we don't have any power over the churches that are,
you know, obviously right, obviously even yeah. In March of
two thousand nineteen, Page resigned as President and CEO of
the SPC Executive Committee for what we currently know only
as quote, a morally inappropriate relationship in the recent past.

(18:31):
Oh what part of surprising? So this guy who fucking
this this good, this Catholic church whistle whistle blower reaches
out to Frank Page, who's the head of the SPC. Right,
he's their their president, which is like an elected kind
of position, reaches out to him in two and seven
and says, hey, there is a sex abuse problem. It
is systemic. You guys need to deal with it. Pages like,

(18:52):
we're taking it seriously. This is a challenge. There's a
lot of limitations on what we can do, but trust me,
I take this seriously. Twelve years later, he has to
resign from the SBC Executive Committee because he has a
morally inappropriate relationship. We don't know anything else. We don't
know the age of that person, we don't know the
degree to which consent was it was not involved, We
don't know what exactly happened. Right that could mean, because

(19:12):
again of how these kind of people defined sex, a
morally inappropriate relationship could be he had a perfectly consensual
relationship with an adult that was outside of the bounds
of marriage. Or it could be that he was diddling
like a nine year old, right, like all of that, Yeah,
no idea. What he did. One of the most important
things for Southern Baptists is what's called the Great Commission

(19:33):
now as and in fact a lot of them call
themselves great Commission Southern or Great Commission Baptists now instead
of Southern Baptists, and this believe that the Great Commission
is like the super special mission that God left for
them to do, to like recruit all the people that
you can um And obviously evangelicals believe the most important
thing you can do with the Gospel is to win
souls for Christ right like nothing else matters more than that.

(19:56):
This is why groups like the Joshua Project keep a
database of uncon tacted people's so they can convince dumb
young missionaries to go and get killed or spread disease
trying to share Jesus stuff with people who are perfectly
happy living wherever the funk they already are. Now, the
legitimate belief is that people they're legitimate belief. The legitimate
belief here that kind of drives this um is that

(20:16):
people cannot be saved without choice, and they can't choose
to accept God without knowing about it. So the logic goes,
since the afterlife is eternal and this life is not,
no amount of suffering in this world is worth more
than preventing damnation in the life after this. On a
small scale, this does lead some individual missionaries to take
on terrible risks and live in privation, to share their
faith on a big scale. It means that true believers

(20:40):
in this might do anything to avoid fucking up, say
the money that funds missionary activities. And this brings us
to the story. If Timothy Retton, the director of Missions
for the Central Baptist Association, now this is I think
it's time for an ad break. Maybe it brings you
to an ad break. Speaking of evangelism, you know what.

(21:03):
I'm a missionary for Katie Cody. Mm hmm. Products and
services that support this podcast. You're spreading good news. Let
me quote from Isaiah Jesus Christ cannot save your soul,
but the incredible products offered by Blue Apron and Shopify.

(21:25):
Can amen? Amen, praise him him being Blue Apron. Um. Yes,
before we come back, sorry, yeah, we're back at Cody

(21:49):
was just regaling us with the story of the years
he spent as a rodeo clown in Arizona. Not a joke.
Look it up. You can find the videos online. They
are out there. Um, let's get back to the story.
All right. I guess I've got more, so I got
more to say about it. But people can listen to
the Some More News episode that we can find it.
It's easy. Just talked about this. We have all talked

(22:11):
about it, of course we have constantly. Now, so we
were talking about how obviously, if nothing matters more than
winning souls for Christ, then nothing that the Southern Baptist
Convention does matters more than funding missionaries. Right, and so
anything is justified if it stops fucking up the money
that allows you to send missionaries places. And this brings

(22:31):
us to the story of Timothy Redden, the director of
Missions for the Central Baptist Association. This is a very
prestigious position, coordinating the activity of missionaries for twenty two
pretty prominent churches. Uh Now, in n while he was
doing that job, he was caught with child pornography and
sent to prison for more than two years. Now, I

(22:52):
might say that one thing that being caught with child
pornography means is that you should not be the head
of a sending people to missions um or maybe ever
close to children. Uh So, he did say, he did
promise if this makes you feel better. During the sentencing,
he told a federal judge that he would never molest
a child. Didn't make me feel doesn't make you feel better,

(23:13):
So I tried. He's prepared for it. But he serves
his term, he leaves prison, and he gets a job
as a pastor for one of the churches. He had
previously been a mission cord in Nigger four. So you
would assume they might have fucking known about the child
porn arrest. Shouldn't ex convicts have a chance to do
some things? Yes, perhaps not teach children if the arrest

(23:35):
is for child pornography. Not go back to if he
wanted to be I don't know, putting in dry wall
or something right, And again that's not think he gets
putting in dry wall, But you don't tend to spend
a lot of time teaching children as a contractor. Um.
You know, whatever job he has after getting out of prison,
it probably shouldn't involve little kids at occasions that are

(24:01):
a certain distance from schools. From from schools. Sure, yes,
a number of things he could do that that don't
put him near children. Instead, he becomes a pastor. Um
so uh yeah, um, he becomes a pastor at one
of these churches he had worked for before, and in
July of two thousand and eighteen, he was arrested for
attempting to solicit a fourteen year old for sex in
an online chat. Um. Thankfully that fourteen year old was

(24:22):
actually a homeland security agent, but who knows what he
actually got up to, even it was just being creepy.
Outside of that, fingers crossed, he didn't actually get to
molest anybody, but you know, we'll never know. Coordinating missionary
work de facto puts you in contact with lots and
lots of young people, right, that's kind of who does
mission work. Mostly most missionaries are young adults. There's a

(24:43):
lot of teenagers and young children who go on mission
trips sometimes because their parents are missionaries, right, and they
all live in you know, whatever foreign country they're doing
a mission. And obviously, by the way, there's a huge
ethical question about like colonialism and mission work, and we're
not really going to get into that today, um, because
that's much too big of a subject um for for
right now, but we will be talking about because of

(25:03):
what mission work is. There's a lot of little kids
around if you're going to be working in that kind
of environment. Um. And this brings us to our next story.
And I'm gonna quote again from the Houston Chronicle George
Thomas Wade Jr. Had been spreading the gospel as a
missionary on African training farms and in bush villages for
six years when his Southern Baptist supervisors learned a horrifying secret.
The supposedly devout man of God was molesting his own daughter.

(25:27):
Supervisors met once privately with the girl, who was attending
boarding school in Johannesburg, and later consulted leaders based fifty
leaders based fifty or seven thousand, five hundred miles away
at the Richmond, Virginia headquarters of what's now called the
International Mission Board. Wade promised to stop. The supervisor said
his daughter said she was told to forgive Wade and

(25:47):
was sworn to secrecy. Here's the fucking kicker. Are you
guys ready for this ship? There's a kicker. No one
told Wade's wife, also a missionary, what he had done. What. Wow,
he molests their daughter. Everyone at the church knows. They
don't tell his fucking wife's horrifying. That's a fucking nightmare

(26:12):
business to tell her, you know, that is a fucking nightmare. Yeah,
it's outrageous when you do learn and to know that everybody, everybody,
Oh God, oh god, and you've liked this is again
as problematic as mission work is. This is you've dedicated
your whole life to mission work and like this, like
my god, what a fucking yeah. That's a betrayal right there.

(26:34):
That's like right up high, high level betrayal. That gets
you know, one of the things I am running out
of is my awards for greatest betrayal, um, which I get.
So yeah that warehouses Yeah definitely, that was very empty.
Yeah yeah, um, I may move some of the best
priest awards over there. Just seems like maximize your space,

(26:57):
you know, yeah, exactly, that seems art. Um So, his
daughter was never again asked about the abuse, which, by
the way, continued. He keeps molesting his daughter. She attempts
to kill herself when she is fifteen. She's still alive.
This is oh boy, um, I think this is the
early two thousand's. Uh. I just like to know where

(27:18):
when we are in time. Um. So, his his daughter, Uh,
you know, he keeps being molested by him, she attempts suicide,
she does does live. Um And she later testifies, quote,
I felt stupid for having told anything to anybody. The
concern was for my father. It didn't matter what happened
to me. And again, her soul saved, right, she's been baptized.

(27:40):
Her dad is winning souls. So whatever he does, whatever
he does, it's just so baked in this misogyny, this
idea that the man the ruler is the rule of
the household, and he specifically is the ruler of this congregation.
And look, I'm not a believer in the divinity of

(28:01):
Jesus Christ, but there's a historical case. There were certainly
a guy in individuals that some of those stories were
written about. And I have to think that any one
of those people who was like the the actual historical
you know, uh, individuals rebels in a lot of ways,
who you know, we get our stories about Jesus from
if explained to this, if you could go back in
time and explain this story to them, would like get

(28:25):
a stick and start swinging, you know, like they would
they this this is like fun, right, Like this is
fuck them up behavior, you know, like by anyone, right,
any moderately. Again, that's the thing like you to talk
about like like I don't know what goddamn fucking atheist
or degenerate weirdo hippie in the world who wouldn't like
fucking burn down a building if this was done like

(28:46):
to their family, you know. Um, But these people, these
men of God, love this ship. They're totally down. So.
The Southern Baptist Mission Board is the world's largest sponsor
of Protestant missionaries, and their official policy is revealed in
two housand nineteen, was to keep misconduct reports allegations of
rape and child molestation inside the church hierarchy, rather than

(29:07):
involving law enforcement or often even telling both parents. Um.
The focus was on protecting the Great Commission, not the victims.
In Wade's case, he was sent back home quietly. His
wife did not find out for three years until oh sorry,
here's the day of Katie. In June of nineteen five,
she learned her husband had abused three additional girls as
well as her daughter. So she finds out not as

(29:29):
only that her husband's molested their girl, but now three
other girls have been molested. Whow she's been married to
this guy? Um, and no one had told her. This
all comes out because her daughter gets pregnant at age seventeen,
not with anyway, but she's preparing to get married to
like the father of the baby. Uh. And dad decides

(29:52):
he's going to officiate the wedding, and for whatever reason,
this is like kind of the straw that breaks her back,
and she suddenly blurts out to her mom that like,
I can't, I cannot let my dad perform the wedding
ceremony because he's been sucking molested me for years. And
that's when Diana Wade finds out what fucking happened. So again,
she calls the cops right away. Her husband is arrested,

(30:13):
he is charged and convicted on five counts of felony
sex abuse, and he goes to fucking prison. Next, Diana
does the natural thing and files for divorce, right pretty clearly,
I don't think that needs explaining to reasonable people one
of the first steps, right, yeah, yeah not. According to
the church. The church who is her employer warns her

(30:33):
that her divorcing her husband is quote an unpardonable sin.
This is really upset. Not that I don't know that
this ship happens or happen. It's a fucking outrageous so
is Diana had, by her own admission, never wanted to
be anything but a missionary, but she was traumatized, as
was her daughter, and so She asks the church that

(30:54):
she had given so much of her life too, if
they could compensate her for the counseling and medical bills
that she and her kid are going to have to
go through, right baar fucking minimum. The SPC says no,
and they forced her to resign alongside her imprisoned husband.
In a letter she sent to her employer, Diana wrote, quote,
I am deeply hurt. I find it difficult to accept
it because of what Tom Malone did. My calling and

(31:16):
commitment and ministry are of no account and are to
be thrown away along with his. She's still saving souls,
She's still good for your math. Sounds very illegal. Ship
doesn't sound illegal? Yeah, it does sound like concealing a
serial child molester might have. There might be some things

(31:40):
that you could get in trouble for if you do that.
Firing someone for wanting to divorce their husband, well, actually
I think that probably is because it's a church, you know,
maybe they may have they may be unsafe ground there.
I don't know. Again, not a lawyer, but I am.
In a quote next from the Chronicles reporting, Diana Wade
filed a lawsuit alleging that the mission board had broken contract,
true promises to protect her family, and increased harm to

(32:02):
her children by concealing her husband's criminal behavior. A jury
decision favored the family, but the Wades lost in nineteen
ninety one after the board appealed with the Virginia Supreme Court.
Mission board leaders were forced to address the allegations publicly
only because of the lawsuit. Board officials never said whether
they had later investigated if other children were abused by
Wade uh in all five cases, the Crown or sorry

(32:25):
board officials, they never said whether they'd investigated if other
kids had been abused by Wade while he was a
missionary in Kenya and bought Swanna from nineteen four Right,
They never investigated did he like molest any local kids?
This guy with power and effectively a lot of legal
immunity being a white missionary and like Kenya and Botswanda.
Did anyone like look into whether or not he did

(32:47):
anything there where this started? They didn't. Yeah, And in fact,
the Chronicle looked into five cases of missionaries who were
definitely abusing kids, um and yeah and no. At no
point in none of these cases was there evidence that
they had been investigated to see if they abused local children. Right,

(33:09):
So in five cases of people who abused missionary kids,
there were no investigations to see like they do anything
else else? Yeah, nothing else, looks nobody again, look at that.
They're not the only reason they look into this is
because they get caught. They're not open any lids. And
they certainly don't care pretty vile, non white, absolutely not.

(33:31):
They care about them not going to hell, but you
can get molested and go to heaven. Don't actually care
about that, do they? Yeah? I mean, I mean, but
don't they make it's about money and power, Like if
you're willing to funk a kid, you're actually not concerned
whether you might make that case. Right, that's a strong argument, Katie,

(33:55):
thank you now. In two thousand eighteen, the board sent
more than thirty missionaries over seas and managed a budget
of a hundred and fifty eight million dollars, which was
provided by tithes from church members. That is a big
bag to protect, right, And over the years, the Chronicles
investigation shows at least five salaried employees of the mission
Board were accused of or convicted of abusing two dozen victims,

(34:16):
most of whom were children. The problem was bad enough
that in two thousand four, the IMB established an abuse hotline.
The inciting incident for putting this together was a scandal
over a missionary named William mcel wrath, one of the
mission Board's most dedicated evangelists. He had been stationed in
Indonesia for decades, where as it turns out, he repeatedly
molested his colleagues children. Letters the man sent to his

(34:39):
own coworkers showed that he privately admitted to abusing colleagues
children thirty years before the story became public. He's like
righting his fellow missionaries, like, molested some kids the other day.
I feel a little bad about it. Well yeah, like well,
like this is like a casual correspondence, just like I
did this and I feel bad or I did this
and like everything's cool. Yeah, I think it's I think

(35:00):
it's I did this, and like I'm feeling kind of
kind of funky about it. Maybe it's bad to molest children. Um, look, Cody,
nobody's perfect. Or as I say perfect, I was going
to I was gonna explay black. One of his victims
was Linda de Varth. She had moved to Indonesia at

(35:20):
age eight with her brother and missionary parents. Mcel wrath
was the elder missionary there, and at first she thought
he was an admirable figure. He was a good writer,
he played the banjo. He was a very friendly, charismatic guy. Right.
He's kind of like the head missionary more or less,
because he's been there since for forever, and he's just
this this very charismatic person um. One of the things
she recalls about him is that he always had a

(35:40):
kid on his lap. In two, when she was nine,
Devrath became that kid, and mcel wrath fondled her. She
said nothing for five years, but when she did tell
her parents, her father, to his credit, reported mcel wrath
tow mission board officials in Indonesia. No action was taken,
the chronicle continues. By the time de Vart reported mcl

(36:01):
wrath in nineteen seventy seven, mission board leaders had already
heard similar accusations. Letters and other records show in nineteen
seventy three, he confessed to molesting another child and a
note was placed in his file, but mission leaders let
him continue to serve. In nineteen seventy eight, another incident
caused the organization to restrict mcel Wrath's interactions with children. Still,
he remained in the field. Board records and correspondence provided

(36:22):
by victims shows. Finally, in n de Vart and several
others wrote Jerry Rankin, mission board president from June nine
to July two thousand ten, complaining about mcel Wrath. That
same year, the board fired mcel wrath four in a
moral lifestyle unbecoming to a missionary. He immediately set to
work playing. Yeah so that's good, right, Yeah, this is fun.

(36:43):
Just like the phrasing for all this stuff is like
so uttered down. It's ultimate weasel word ship again for
these people who are all like fire and brimstone and
the inerrant word of God. There's a lot of like
a mistake was made and people were impacted. It's like
the best way to protect, the best way to respond
would be too loudly and boldly say there is no

(37:07):
place for this in our community. That's the I thought.
It's the only way to respond. If you're not responding,
if you're not saying that, then you're allowing it to
happen because people are aggressive response. Yeah, like I would
like to hear at least once that like, oh hey,
it came out that this this missionary or this pastor

(37:27):
had been a lesting kids, and one of his coworkers
hit him in the fucking face repeatedly, like some some examples,
like people are like outraged, Yeah, like yeah, what do
you do? Yeah? I mean obviously that doesn't isn't the
only solution that you should do. But would be nice
to know that like some of these people cared that much. Um.

(37:49):
He immediately set to work mcel wrath playing contrite because
again he knew that doing so was going to let
him get another position with the church and then he
could molest more kids. The way he does this is
by sending letters to six families he described as having
been impacted by his actions. One of these kids was
Linda to Vart. He wrote, please forgive me for having
touched you too intimately when you were a child many

(38:10):
years ago. I regret having abused a family like situation.
What kind of got an issue with that? You don't
think that's good? No, it's not good. He could Maybe
he's a second draft, a second draft, maybe a second
draft where I say I am walking into the sea
because the weight of my sins has has has so

(38:32):
shamed me. I don't know, maybe they'd be better at
least so de Vart's brother sent a letter to the
president of the Missionary Board, a former missionary named Rankin
who had worked in Indonesia with McElrath. He admitted he'd
heard quote ugly rumors about the man, but did not
support making a big deal about what had happened. Quote,
I see no constructive purpose by making a general accounting

(38:52):
of this matter to all our missionaries and a Southern
Baptists in general. Again, if you let people know they
might like protect themselves better again, then you don't care.
That's not your job. I gotta get that your flock.
You gotta get gotta get that flock, flock out with
your cock at Um they left probably well, I mean

(39:18):
they do that. Um. So after they left Indonesia, mcel
wrath and his wife moved to North Carolina, where he
joined a Southern Baptist church and started teaching piano lessons
to children. Um, that's probably fine. You know, kids never
sit in your lap when you're playing piano. That's not
a thing that could clearly happen. That's also very clearly
his fucking imo in two thousand to a group of
survivors learned that Micel Wrath was still volunteering with the church,

(39:41):
and they caused an uproar, demanding changes to the policy. No, no, no, no,
his actions caused the uproar. Yeah, yeah, right, well sorry,
that's that's my bad phrase. Apologize. You're right. Yes, the
fact that like, well, his actions and also the fact
that the church was allowing him to still volunteer rights
that is called that is definitely caused uproar. Yes, yes, um,

(40:04):
And these survivors are like, you need to like appoint
an independent advisory committee and commit to monitor perpetrators after
they're caught so that they don't keep getting positions in
different Southern Baptist churches. The board says no to all
of this, but they do set up a hotline. They
set up a hotline for mission abuse. You know, they
have a hotline, Katie. What more are they supposed to do?
The hotline? Yeah? Maybe I listen to this this American

(40:30):
Life recently where they put up a tattle phone in um,
a kid's kindergarten classroom just to record what the kids say,
and it just goes to nowhere. It's just laughed at.
Oh that's cool. I mean that's pretty cute. But I'm
just saying, yeah, a hotline, what the hell? Yeah. So

(40:50):
the board sets up this hotline and their attorney sends
an email to mcel wrath's victims. We want to affirm
our commitment to promptly and completely investigate any new charges
of sexual use made against missionaries, and to terminate or
and publicly expose any missionary found guilty of such abuse. Um. Which,
if you've done that, that might have been good. Five
years after they make this statement. So five years later

(41:14):
in Fort Worth, Texas, and Miller reports the missionary named
Mark Aderholt to the i MB. She said that he
had sexually assaulted She said that he had sexually assaulted
her when she was a teenage girl. The IMB investigates
her complaint found substantiates it. Right. The investigatory're like, yeah,
this definitely happened. And then they say nothing and do
not contact the police. Um, well you got to know

(41:37):
the guy did it. But then there's nothing else to do,
you know. Um. In their investigation, the Chronicle found a
litany of victims, like former missionary Dane Miller, who had
tried to report abuse and run into a stone wall
of silence meant to protect the great commission quote. Miller,
now seventy two, was born into the Southern Baptist world.
Her father and grandfather were both pastors. By age ten,

(41:57):
she knew she wanted to be a missionary, one of
the few leadership opportunities open to women. She and her husband,
Ron were thrilled to be appointed to Malawi in nineteen
seventy eight. There she met Jean Kingsley, a missionary since
nineteen sixty. She visited his house in made nineteen eighty
four and he hugged her as usual. Then Kingsley quote
assaulted me quickly and skillfully, pulling me a foot off
the floor, continuing to tighten his arms as I struggled,

(42:19):
and he groped me until I yelled, commanding him to
put me down, Miller said in an email to the Chronicle. Miller,
who had worked with sexual predators as a nurse, reported
him to other mission personnel, nothing happened. Two years later,
she decided to make a written complaint after learning that
others in her mission family also had reported being inappropriately
touched or worse. Her complaint went up the chain of

(42:39):
command to leaders enrichment. Kingsley was permitted to resign rather
than be terminated. Miller described in interviews and in her
book how two other women, as well as a teenaged girl,
also complained, but said those reports were initially ignored and
inadequately investigated. Kingsley died in Texas in two thousand sixteen.
It's period when fermade and expose these people. But yeah, yeah,

(43:04):
the the thought of somebody that profits makes their career
off of being a certain person and positioning themselves within
the community in such a way. Two just be so violent. Um,

(43:26):
because it is violent like that. It's yeah, anyway, it's
it's ghastly. And then everybody that allows for it. But
just the just the act of yeah, I know, it's
like you run out of things to say that it's
new to react to all these horrifying stories. It's it's

(43:46):
um good, I would say, I'm good. Yeah, first, very
un good man. When you when you read all these
allegations in tandem, it's very clear what's going on here.
Predators have recognized for close to half a century that
missions provide them with a steady carousel of people who
are isolated from their families and support networks, and that
the structure of the Mission Board means that allegations will

(44:09):
be hushed up to avoid fucking with the money or
the sacred calling. Um. So obviously it's a great place
to be a predator. And you will also note that
these perpetrators tend to be decades long veteran missionaries. Miller
describes Kingsley as well practiced like the way that he
abuses her. She says, like it is, he knew what
he's fucking doing, right. This wasn't like a crime of passion.
This was a guy who had perfected a method. You know,

(44:30):
um anyway, you know who else has protected perfected their methods?
The fine folks at a company Sears robot. That's right.
That's why Sears is still the most relevant name department stores.
Why Sears now? Yes, by Sears, Ah, we're back. So.

(45:00):
In two thousand nineteen, as I've noted a couple of times,
the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News published
a massive expose of sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention.
One of their articles and these stuff still coming out,
dealt entirely with sex abuse cover ups within the Mission Board.
In response to this, a series of new proposals were
put forward to finally do what survivors had been urging

(45:22):
them to do for twenty years. The president of the
i MB responded by warning that these proposals would cut
four and a half million dollars out of their budget
for the next fifteen months. This Baptist News reported, You
remember the Baptist News meant that seventy five fewer missionaries
regarding it sent into the field. Paul Chitwood, the president
of the Mission Board after the last guy had to

(45:43):
resign for sexual misconduct, told the faithful, we are praying
that through the growing generosity of Southern Baptists giving through
the lotty offering, a hundred percent of which goes to
fund our missionaries and their work overseas, we can continue
to fund not only our existing missionary work, but the
goal of growing that force by five hundred new missionaries.
That's concerned one. We should like stop shipped for a

(46:06):
minute until we figure out why all these kids are
getting molested. It's not like, shoot, how can we make
up for this loss of income. Let's let's expand plug
the followers, some of whom were molested by our missionaries.
When people don't get it, you love to see it now.

(46:28):
While all of this fais going on, decades of abuses
and cover ups and repeated fails to deal with entirely
foreseeable problems, the Southern Baptist Convention continued to hail the
conservative resurgence that had saved them from liberalism. The SPC
leadership said it was helpless to stop sex abuse, but
resolutely attacked any sign of liberalism from within the faith.

(46:48):
In public, they continued their long standing tradition of claiming
to want only the best for the people they condemned.
A good example of this came in two thousand fourteen
when the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution on transgender people,
declaring that God had created two distinct and complementary sexes,
and that distinctions and masculine and feminine roles is ordained
by God, are not are are part of the created order,

(47:09):
and should find expression in every human art. And I'm
gonna quote from the Baptist standard here for that reason.
The resolution says cultural currents, including medical treatments of gender dysphoria,
attempts by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender activists to normalize the
transgender experience in public schools, allowing access to restrooms and
locker rooms according to children's self perception of gender and
not according to their biological sex. All run contrary to

(47:31):
biblical teaching. A summarized in the Baptist Faith and Message,
the spc's official doctrinal statement. The SBC resolution invites all
transgender persons to trust in Christ and to experienced renewal
in the Gospel. It affirms that we love our transgender neighbors,
seek their good, always, welcome them to our churches, and
as they repent and believe in Christ, receive them into
church membership. We love you, repent. However, the resolution does

(48:00):
mention off handedly that it opposes bullying transpeople. So that's
they didn't just like they didn't like lynching. That'll work.
That that nail it. None of the unpleasant unpleasantness thinking,
keep your big injury a little bit contained, a little bit.

(48:20):
Let the cops you like, you know, because they structure
of laws do it, you know. Yeah, contained enough, not
bring us dishonored by like doing it in an uncontrolled man. Yeah. So,
as a rule, the Southern Baptist Convention has stood to
the right of progress and every meaningful issue for the

(48:40):
last like forty years, there are just enough moderates that
they tend to count or have been just enough moderates.
They tend to couch their language in such a way
as to excuse the worst natural conclusions of their logic.
And um, you know, it's probably not surprising to note
that since two thousand eight the Conventions membership has has
shifted twenty points for the Republican Party. Um, like it
is gotten far right. Um. All of this is thanks

(49:03):
to the architects of the conservative resurgence, Paul Pressler and
Paige Patterson. They did this to stop what they saw
as the satanic immoral influence of liberalism. And in this
case that also that means like politically, they do mean
political liberalism in the way we're talking about, but they
also more directly mean like liberalism and interpretation of the Bible,
the idea that like, yeah, anyway, both men spent decades couching.

(49:25):
What they did is the only proper actions of godly
men trying to protect their flocks. You know, we're we
are acting morally, That's why we're doing this. In two
thousand eighteen, Paige Patterson was the former president of the
Southern Baptist Convention and preparing to retire as President Emeritus
of the South of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Dallas.
A special house had been built for him on campus

(49:47):
to live in in his retirement. It seemed as if
he was going to be one of those bastards who
retires ancient, wealthy and proud. But then his life fell apart.
A student came forward to report her rape three times
at gunpoint by a fellow student. She went to the
seminary and Patterson wound up having a one on one
talk about her. He told staffords that he wanted to
break her down, talked about how hot she was, and then,

(50:09):
in the victim's words, he demanded in graphic detail to
hear about the rape right um. Other employees report that
he made comments about her body. She issuing him for
inflicted emotional distress and for interfering with the police investigation
of her case. Because he also interfered with the police
investigation of what was an armed rape, this sparked a
broader investigation into the man, and a shipload of stuff

(50:32):
that was barely hidden beneath the surface came up and
I'm gonna quote from a write up in The Advocate. Here,
Patterson came under fire for his years of advice to
women who had been abused or raped. He would tell
the woman to pray for their abusers. In one instance,
a woman approached him with two black eyes after going
back to her husband on Patterson's advice. She asked Patterson
if he was happy. He said, he told her yes,
and part of his reason was because the husband had

(50:52):
attended church that Sunday for the first time. I don't
like this real bummer episode. Man. The good news is
when all this comes out, he gets fired and he
loses his fucking house too. He doesn't get to live
in that house um the seminary. He gave his life
life to his distance itself from him and the lawsuit

(51:14):
against him. His ongoing news stories break on a weekly
basis about known sex offenders that he sheltered or outright
helped into the seminary. The current president of the Southwestern
Theological Seminary or whatever refers to him just as a
previous administration when he regularly makes apologies about stuff that happened.
And then, of course there's our other founder of the

(51:36):
Conservative resurgence, Judge Paul Pressley. He is a former judge.
Now he's also a former SPC vice president, and he
has been accused by three members of a youth group
he used to run for groping or pressuring them into sex.
Three male members of a youth group. Um, yeah, I'm
not going to say this. Yeah yeah, oh god, I

(51:56):
mean for all of these guys, right, and it is
it is, it is continueing to come out right like
there there's a good chance there will be a new
article in the chronicle about all this ship but by
the time you hear the episode, so I'm not gonna
say this story has a happy ending. Um. As of
the day this say is more than seven people have
reported being victimized by clergy employees are volunteers of SPC churches.
But there is some good news at the end of

(52:17):
all this horror and frustration. The poison that Pressler and
Patterson spilled into the SPC may in fact be waning
in potency. Now. I mentioned earlier that the denomination has
shifted twenty Republican by almost the last two over the
class like two decades. That is true, but in the
same time frame, the size of the faith has also
shrunk by more than two million members, and I'm gonna
quote from the Atlantic here. For more than a decade,

(52:40):
the denomination has been ex experiencing a precipitous decline by
almost every metric. Baptisms are at a seventy year low
and Sunday attendance is at a twenty year low. Southern
Baptist churches lost almost eighty million or Southern Baptist churches
lost almost eighty thousand members from two thousand and sixteen
to two thousand and seventeen, and they've hemorrhaged a whopping
one million members since two thousand three, four years. Southern

(53:01):
Baptists have criticized more liberal denominations for their declines, but
their own trends are now running parallel. The next crop
of leaders knows something must be done, and every year
if they have this convention right, that's why they're called
the SBC. They do a convention every year and they
vote on ship right. In two thousands and there's a
conservative faction. These are guys who today are constantly on

(53:24):
one American News and embrace Trump. And then there is
they're also conservatives, but the more liberal faction, and in
two thousand eighteen they defeated the Conservatives in the elections
that year, and a forty five year old pastor named J. D.
Greer was elected. He won sevent of the vote against
a fundamentalist and stated that the denomination had to repent
for its quote failure to listen to an honor women

(53:46):
and racial minorities and to include them proportionally in leadership roles.
I mean also also stuff is like yeah, yeah, yeah,
you like yeah, it's just like that's good. It's it's
depressing that this is in reaction to their numbers dropping. Yeah,

(54:06):
it's like the math issue that we've been discussing this
whole time. Was like, oh, so they've noticed that, like
people are leaving, so they need to do something about it. Um,
It's like it is and that's said. I'm not going
to say that that's all Greer is concerned with. He
is the guy I quoted earlier from a document by
the Theological Seminary that was like going into detail about

(54:27):
their history with slavery and stuff that all happens under
a Greer because he or he's like says like, look,
we have to reckon with the fucking racism in our back,
and like they do certainly a much better job under him,
of that kind of sure, and like I'm not yet
saying like one of the things that should be noted.
The SBC is where a lot of conservative bell weather

(54:49):
cultural issues get tested out, right, where they start to
work on the wording. Um, you may note that, like
in two thousand fourteen they issue a resolution condemning the
idea that trans people should be able to use bathrooms.
Um that's two and fourteen, right, that's a couple of
years before it becomes the you know, the big national
like issue that it becomes, right. Um, So it happens

(55:09):
here earlier. Um. In two nineteen, Republicans within the Southern
Baptist Convention forced a vote on a resolution condemning critical
race theory. Right again like a little bit, a little bit,
And here's the fucking thing. The Convention refuses to condemn it. Um. Instead,

(55:29):
they issue admittedly a somewhat compromise statement, but in which
they say that the concept may be useful and valuable. Um.
Whereas the resolution the Conservatives had wanted to pass described
it as neo Marxist and post like, yeah, no, it's
it's all Jordan B. Peterson A little bit or that
seems to be what's happening. Yeah, and also feel as

(55:53):
in nineteen is the year that the story drops, for
the story starts dropping about all these stations. So the
SPCs new leadership issued a number of statements condemning past
racism and the racism of the founders of the denomination.
More than that, they commissioned a large report on racism
in the founding of the SPC, which I have quoted
from earlier in these episodes. There's probably nothing I can

(56:16):
quote that will do a better job of showing the
positive trend than by noting quoting right wing ghoul Tom
Askell writing for Founders Ministries about the convention in Nashville.
Several things happened at SPC twenty one, and many, if
not most, of them are deeply concerning to grassroots Southern
Baptists who love Christ, fear God, tremble at his word,
and want to cooperate for the cause of missions and

(56:37):
evangelism with others who are like minded. Um. And obviously
he's complaining that another person who is not a fucking fascist,
uh won the election, and and the week that we
are doing this reading, um, they have just had another election. Um.
At the spc um and the uh the guy who

(56:59):
uh one second, sure that's right? Uh yeah. Um. So
the guy who runs for the right wing side is
Florida pastor Tom Askell, who we just heard from right,
um and askole like runs specifically ran specifically by attacking
the left word drift of the Southern Baptist Convention on

(57:22):
issues of gender, sexuality, abortion, and critical race theory. Right yeah. Yeah.
He loses to a small town Texas preacher um named Barber,
who is a once I want to read you a
quote from this because this all just came out like
I just read this today. Um. So Askell run like

(57:43):
calling for Baptist to be culturally uncompromising. He's in like
he's he does interviews for One American News, Real America's
Voice and the Daily Wire. Um. You know he's he's
going hard into all of this culture worship, right um.
And this is like the guy he runs against is um,
this guy Barbara who's a pastor in rural Texas. And

(58:04):
despite what that might make you think, is like he
he runs on, among other things, fundamentally changing the way
things are done at the SBC because of the sex
abuse scandal. He wants to expand the role of women
and like stop the kind of war on women pastors
and stuff. He wants to continue the discussions they're having
about race, um, and he doesn't want the Southern Baptist
Convention to just keep plunging into the culture wars on

(58:27):
behalf of the Republican Party. Sounds like a pretty good guy,
and he within, at least within the context of the
Southern Baptist Convention, a better guy for sure than Askell,
who's a real asshole. He Barbara wins six. That's what
happened today, very recently, the last like day or two

(58:48):
this week. That's great. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's broadly speaking,
better than how the news could be. Yeah, good for them.
I love this, uh sorry, just this this Daily Wire
headline about this earlier which I think it's very telling.
Its Southern Baptist nominated Tom Askell to leadership to combat

(59:09):
woke drift in the largest Protestants of nomination. It's very funny. Yeah,
well he lost pretty pretty badly. Not a close election
nine or whatever, not not super close. Um, it's not
a nailed by down like to combat woke drift is
what it said. No, it sounds like they want to

(59:29):
listen Cody Katie, there's like a wokeyo drift joke somewhere.
We should put a penalty. Figure that out later. Um.
I wanted to end by quoting that Atlantic article that
I quoted from earlier, cited a pastor named Adrian Rodgers
who said, quote, as the West goes, so goes the world.
As America goes, so goes the West. As Christianity goes,
so goes America. As Evangelicals goes, so goes Christianity. And

(59:52):
as Southern Baptist goes, so do Evangelicals. Obviously that's a
very Western, shavunous way of looking at things. But within
the context of as Southern Baptist go, so go Evangelicals
and perhaps even Christianity, there's some truth in that. And
it's not a bad sign that the Southern Baptist, for
like four years now, as America's culture worse have gotten worse,

(01:00:14):
have like pretty consistently been rejecting the idea that their
faith should lean into that ship. Yeah, like tempering that
sort of impulse. It's not a bad sign. Right, there
are worse things happening. That's a really insightful and lovely
way to wrap this horror horrible story. Betty bad story,

(01:00:36):
pretty bad story. Yeah, something hopeful a little bit but
a little bit, you know, something hopeful. All Yeah, So
I don't know, you know, who knows what's going to
happen in the future. Um, if you're a Southern Baptist
who's plugging to turn your faith back to its roots
as the faith where they were going to abolish gender

(01:00:58):
and destroy the male supremacy, good luck. Yeah, there's some
some power to you, right. Um, I don't know you
guys got any plug doubles? That's nice? Um, yeah, they
know plug This Daily Wire piece, Um, yeah, the Daily
Wire You gotta check it out Matt Welsh's documentary What

(01:01:19):
Is a Woman Real Gina Corono. We have a podcast
Acting More News, and a YouTube channel called Some More News, uh,
and the Patreon and all sorts of fun stuff that
goes along with it and also tweet all kinds of
Starting in July, you can listen to our new podcast,

(01:01:42):
Cancel Gasm, where every week we'll talk to a new
victim of cancel culture. The book Rise Up like zombies,
like these, they're kind of all the same. It might
I recommend you actually just like Order After the Revolution

(01:02:03):
from a K Press Robert Roberto before I get canceled
for it for telling the truth about fiction all right.
Lovely Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

(01:02:24):
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