Behold the Righteousness of Conservative Christianity: Fall of the Southern Baptists


Conservative Catholics and the Southern Baptist Convention are united about the role of women. Eve sinned. There is no place for women in the hierarchy of either denomination. Women being sinners made women ripe for sexual abuse. Both denominations knew this had to be kept under wraps--no publicity meant the holy missions went forward. 

Degrading women was not part of either the original Catholics or Baptists. It happened only after men hatched schemes to pull it off. The Southern Baptist scheme began over coffee in the French Quarter in 1967. Paige Patterson and Paul Press mapped out a long process to take the SBC backwards in time to their version of Biblical literacy and the purging of women from leadership. The gambit waw improbable at the time. They succeeded and in 1985 they marched into high positions and out marched women and moderate men. An actual purge took place. Tenured women were removed the University positions. New Presidents of the SBC seminaries were appointed and the current ones went packing. Patternson and Press were successful beyond anyone's dreams. 

That is until now. Paige Patterson has been named as one of a small army of SBC officials for sexual abuse. The number of creditable accusations is in the hundreds. Religious men who believed they were superior to women behaved in a predictable way. The theology of the 1985 SBC was wrong. It fit self-serving men the same way male superiority fit Catholic Bishops.  

It is often repeated that women in the faith like being low in status. There is a mental condition with the name "Stockholm Syndrome" where those suppressed came to think it best if their status is lower. It was ascribed to Patty Hearst of the Hearst business empire when she defended her captures after being kidnapped.  

Both the male dominated Catholic and Southern Baptist denominations are falling in membership. One would have to say the men in both groups played successfully what we call "the long game." Anti abortion politics is doing that now. So is President Trump as he tries to install state attorneys general who will over turn elections. 

The long game is successful unless one's opponents play a longer game than you. That seems to be happening with Catholics and SBC. My guess is anti abortion's long game which has been quite successful will get tripped up, like the Catholics and SBC, by a longer game.  

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