Biblical Blasphemy of Baptist Clergy Sex Abuse

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding."
Proverbs 3:5

Former President Gerald Ford said this was one of his favorite Bible verses. It's a verse I loathe.

It was used as a weapon against me when I was a young church girl. Now, whenever I encounter it, I can scarcely breathe.

Asa kid, I loved God with all my heart and wanted only to do whatever Godcalled me to do. My faith was pure, true and absolute. God was as realto me as any flesh-and-blood person.

So when my minister told meGod had called me for a special role, I believed him and listened.Doesn't every kid want to believe they're somehow special?

Week after week, he wore me down telling me how I was called to serve as his helpmate. It was "God's will."

I didn't understand. But he said men in the Bible sometimes had more than one wife and even had concubines.

He also admonished me that I wasn't supposed to try to understand. "Lean not unto thine own understanding."

Dozens of times, that verse rang in my ears. God wanted me to "live by faith," he said.

So that's what I tried to do. I guess you could say that, sip by sip, I drank the Kool-aid.

Asthe abuse escalated, I would sometimes balk. But he would invariablychastise me with "Oh ye of little faith." And he would remind me of howit wasn't my place to try to understand.

So, like the good Baptist girl I was, I deferred to male pastoral authority. Of course, he was also older, bigger, and stronger.

Hesaid God was testing me, and I wanted God to see that I was willing togo the distance in matters of faith. I was a girl who would have laiddown on that altar without so much as a whimper and let Abraham plungein a knife.

In fact, that was another thing he often said."Think of Abraham - think of Moses - think of Noah. Do you think whatGod wanted made sense to them?" He pointed out how God was able to usethese men in great ways because they had the faith to do whatever Godwanted even when they couldn't understand it.

He threw inMary, too. "Where would we all be if Mary hadn't trusted God even whenher special role was something she couldn't understand?"

Iremember thinking about that one quite a lot. I wanted to serve God,and it's certainly true that faith is the very essence of things notunderstood. So over and over again, I relinquished my own attempts atunderstanding.

I tried to ponder it all in my heart, like Mary did.

Thatpath of faith ultimately led to a bottomless pit of darkness anddegradation. Clergy sex abuse rips the very soul out of kids andbludgeons it into oblivion. It's no wonder so many victims eventuallycommit suicide.

Like many combat veterans, I relive pieces ofthe trauma in a fragmented nightmare. Unable to move, unable to scream,and suffocating, I have died a thousand times in that dreaded dream.

Butmy story isn't unusual. I've heard so many similar ones that I'vewondered whether Baptist seminaries might be teaching a class on suchblasphemous tactics. What I really believe is that it's simply whathappens when a predatory mind carries religious authority as a weapon.

WhatI cannot comprehend is why Southern Baptist leaders don't seem to careabout taking that weapon out of clergy predators' hands.

Fourmonths ago, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)asked Baptist leaders to take action to rid their ranks of clergypredators. Baptist leaders haven't even bothered to respond.

Catholicsand other mainline Protestant groups are beginning to implementprocedures to combat clergy sex abuse. Why not Southern Baptists?

Perhapsthey don't want to address it because they think it's about sex. It'snot. It's about power. It's about brutality. It's about having absolutecontrol over another human being – a kid.

What was done to me –in the name of God and with words of God – was utterly blasphemousbeyond what most people can imagine. Certainly, it was way beyond myown capacity for understanding when I was an adolescent church girl.Besides, I wasn't supposed to even try. "Lean not unto thine ownunderstanding."

So far, Southern Baptist leaders have chosendenominational inaction in the face of widespread clergy sex abuse. Itappears they just don't care about the brutality and brainwashing ofit.

But how can leaders who profess belief in the inerrantword of God not care about stopping the horrific biblical blasphemy ofit?

www.stopbaptistpredators.org

Christa Brown is the nationalcoordinator for SNAP-Baptist and the founder of Voice to Stop BaptistPredators. She is a wife, mother, attorney, jazz-lover, slow-runner,and a Southern Baptist abuse survivor. www.stopbaptistpredators.org