William Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"News broke on Saturday that Paul Pressler, a major leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and a key Republican activist, died on June 7 at age 94. In 1967, Pressler, a Texas judge, and Paige Patterson, a seminary student, met in New Orleans to plan a takeover of the Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.,"

~ Heather Cox Richardson

#SouthernBaptists #Republicans #PaigePressler
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https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2024

June 18, 2024

First, a follow-up to last night’s letter on foreign affairs: Russian president Vladimir Putin visited North Korea today for a meeting with leader Kim Jong Un, who greeted his visitor personally as he got off the plane. Putin is looking for more weapons for his war on Ukraine. U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby expressed concern about “the deepening relationship between these two countries.”

Letters from an American
Show threadWilliam Lindsey 

(continued from /1):

"to rid it of liberals, purging those who believed in abortion rights, women’s rights, and gay rights.

By 1979 their candidate was elected head of the organization, and in the 1980s, Southern Baptists, who then numbered about 15 million people, were active in politics and were staunch supporters of the Republican Party."

#SouthernBaptists #Republicans #PaigePressler
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Jun 19, 2024 at 10:29amWeb
Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"In Robert Downen’s obituary of Pressler for the Texas Tribune, he notes that as Pressler’s influence in the Republican Party grew, he also allegedly groped, solicited, or raped at least six men, including one who said he was 14 when Pressler first sexually abused him. Pressler denied the allegations, but he and the Southern Baptist Convention settled a lawsuit brought by that accuser just last December."

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Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"A 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News inspired by that lawsuit found more than 400 Southern Baptist church leaders or volunteers had been charged with sex crimes since 2000.

In March 2021 the hugely popular leader Beth Moore, herself a survivor of sexual assault, left the church, saying, 'You have betrayed your women.'”

#SouthernBaptists #Republicans #PaigePressler #BethMoore
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Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"That May, Russell Moore (no relation to Ms. Moore) left the church leadership and then, the following month, left the church itself over its handling of sexual abuse allegations and racism. A 2022 report on the church and sex abuse was so damning that Russell Moore wrote: 'I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.'”

#SouthernBaptists #Republicans #PaigePressler #RussellMoore
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Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"The investigation, he says, 'uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.'

The patriarchal model of society embraced by the Republican Party in the 1980s enabled the sorts of abuse uncovered in the Southern Baptist Convention, but Pressler’s death suggests that the era might be ending."

#SouthernBaptists #Republicans #PaigePressler
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Show threadWilliam Lindsey Jun 19, 2024

"Today, Robert Morris, the pastor of Texas megachurch Gateway Church, resigned after news broke on Friday that a woman has accused him of sexually abusing her for several years in the 1980s beginning when she was 12."

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