Pastor: If we "publicly execute a few women," false rape allegations would end

Joel Webbon wants to see Old Testament law adopted in order to punish certain women

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Proving once again that patriarchal culture is alive and well in white evangelical churches, Christian pastor Joel Webbon said during a recent sermon that women who falsely accuse men of rape should be murdered by the government.

Webbon, pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas (not far from Austin), argued that ancient Israeli law mandated this. If you accused someone of a crime, and your allegation was found to be false, you would face whatever punishment the accused would have suffered. If the alleged crime warranted the death penalty, then the lying accuser would be put to death. And it would be done in public.

That, he continued, should apply to women who falsely accuse men of rape.

"In Israel, and this should be the law of the land in our country and every country still to this day, this is a timeless principle, a timeless, universal truth," Webbon preached. "If you perjure yourself by bearing false witness accusing somebody else, whatever the penalty would have been for that person had they been found guilty, then that penalty should fall on your head for falsely accusing them."

…

"If that were to occur and the just penalties were to be enforced, you, the false accuser, is now put to death," Webbon declared. "And that's a public death. It's a public sentence, publicly carried out, then the citizens of these United States of America, you know what they would do? #MeToo would end real fast. False accusing, playing the victim when you're actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied."

Upon hearing the reaction from the congregation, Webbon added in the original sermon, “There are nicer ways to say that… The reason I say things the way I do is because I'm convinced there's not a better way to say it. I think that's precisely the way to say it." 

Even though Webbon believes rapists should suffer the same fate—state-sponsored execution—you can tell that it’s the women who lie, not the men who actually commit those crimes, that get him more riled up.

After Right Wing Watch shared that clip, Webbon responded by basically saying, Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant: “The biblical penalty for rape is death. Therefore, if a woman lies about being raped, the biblical penalty for her is also death.”

There are obviously all kinds of problems with his Christian fantasy here, none of which garnered any bit of thought. The obvious one is that rapists today aren’t put to death. Even if that was the penalty in the Bible, it’s not our law. And conservative Christian pastors, no matter how much they whine about being persecuted, have never spent much time pushing for harsher sentences for men who commit sins. If they did, they might have to say goodbye to a bunch of their religious colleagues and preferred political candidates.

He also said “#MeToo would end real fast.” Why would it end? The movement wasn’t abuse false allegations. It was about women sharing stories about how they’ve been survivors of abuse in order to let others know they’re not alone. Unless, of course, you believe that the women telling those stories include a whole bunch of liars.

Then, there’s a question of how they would know the woman is lying. Many women don’t speak up at all after being assaulted because they’re aware of the negative repercussions awaiting them. If they speak up at all, we’ve seen what happens: They’re often targeted, harassed, threatened. Even if they have the courage to deal with all that, it’s still incredibly hard to prove that a man committed the crime. (Just ask all the prominent atheists who have been accused of sexual assault, only to bounce right back from it. Or Brett Kavanaugh. Or Donald Trump.) What happens if a woman makes a true allegation, but backs away from it due to the threats she’s receiving? Does that now count as a lie?

If a man isn’t legally charged with rape, is that enough for the government to execute his accuser? Webbon didn’t elaborate. And that’s before we even get into genuinely hazy situations in which the assault doesn’t become obvious until well after the fact.

If Webbon’s law went into effect, the end result would be more men raping women because women would be pressured to keep quiet about it lest they be accused of telling a lie. He doesn’t care.

As the Houston Chronicle notes, even if we removed all the nuance, false rape accusations are exceedingly rare (and accurate statistics about the topic are almost impossible to come by).

None of this is surprising coming from Webbon, though. He is, as Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler memorably described, a TheoBro. He’s a guy who keeps a running list of his own controversies, like when he says husbands should control what their wives read and that Christians who willingly live in California are stupid.

Joel Webbon (screenshot via YouTube)

He’s also a proud Christian Nationalist, and his partner-in-theology, Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers, filed a bill earlier this year that would have enacted Webbon’s little fantasy, subjecting false accusers to whatever punishment their accusation warranted. (That bill, thankfully, went nowhere.) Deevers said he just wanted to enact biblical Old Testament law. Even though Oklahoma already punishes false criminal allegations with a fine and/or imprisonment, he wanted to go even further to please his God.

Right Wing Watch says this is all just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the future Webbon wants:

In 2023, Webbon was among the contributors to a document called “The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel.” Drafted by Christian nationalists like Deevers, former Trump administration official William Wolfe, and others, the document declared that the United States must formally  “acknowledge the Lordship of Christ” in all its laws, “abolish abortion,” outlaw marriage equality, and “recapture our national sovereignty from godless, global entities who present a grave threat to civilization.”

To put that another way, women who exercise any kind of control over their body would lose it if he had his way. He doesn’t trust them to begin with and he expects them to be controlled fully by their father, then by their husbands.

Webbon is not considered a fringe pastor like the New Independent Fundamentalist Baptists I’ve covered in the past, but he too shares their bloodlust. Those guys fantasize about the government executing gay men and Webbon wants the government to execute lying women. But they’re all basing their dreams on Old Testament law, as if that’s the best way to go.

By the way, his church is not big. As the Daily Mail once put it, “The bearded cleric runs his church from a roadside restaurant outside Austin, but boasts nearly 200,000 followers on social media.” That’s what this is all about. He’s a right-wing wannabe influencer who cosplays as a pastor and knows the best way to get attention is by linking the Bible to the most outrageous things he can think of—like when he said he doesn’t trust Black doctors because he assumes they’re less likely to be qualified than white ones.

But his brand of faith is the kind that’s on the ascendance when we talk about Christian Nationalism.

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