The church that condemns openly gay clergy is now being led by a straight man accused of inappropriate behavior by his former children’s ministry director
Well, their goal is to create a White ethnostate by marriage-trapping girls young, a la Warren Jeffs, and breeding White babies en masse. Remember Justice Alito? Abortion threatens the “domestic supply of instants.” Those gosh-darn White drag queens and gays are wasting all that precious White DNA if they refuse to comply with the breeding program. And if we’re going to bring back indentured servitude via private prisons, Silicon Valley needs darker-skinned women pushing out future workers, too. Preferably Indians—as JD Vance said, Indian wives come with free Indian grandparent babysitting. 🙄 Someone’s gotta tend the AI and crypto servers. So logically it’s the LGBTQ people’s fault that we “cultural Marxists” blah blah teeming, heathen brown-skinned yadda yadda Great Replacement blah blah evils of feminism. Just get a Crusader tattoo and marry a 12 yo already. 🤮
As Captain Cassidy points out, conservative church views tend to want a strict othodoxy with everyone toeing the line. To get that strict orthodoxy, you need an authoritarian hierarchy which has the power to say what correct belief is and enforce it. That authoritarian structure in turn allows for greater corruption and people at the top with a 'rules don't apply to me' viewpoint.
So "a window open for abuse" is kind of an inevitable flip side of the coin of their demand for a single unified denomination in which leadership has the power to stifle dissent. You demand that, you often (regularly, predictably) get abusive leaders. Because by definition, you've given those leaders the power to squash any dissent.
And perhaps the irony here is it's a systemic bias in a group that doesn't believe in systemic biases. :)
And much of American fundamentalist Christianity is a cover for White Supremacy, and homosexuality puts a damper on their goal of mass-breeding a White ethnostate to counteract their Great Replacement Theory paranoia.
I doubt the one caused the other. I think instead the racist and orientation bigotry probably stem from the same psychological source - fear of the other, fear of difference, and the tendency to confuse feelings of bodily purity with morality.
Another interesting thing, though—a few years ago the Houston Chronicle had a 6 part series investigating the Southern Baptists and other non-denominational Christian groups. They are run like independent franchises so that those in charge can avoid responsibility and blame the “franchise-owner”/ pastor for any wrongdoing. So even when they don’t have an episcopal power structure, they find other ways to enable abuse and grift. I find the “Biblical entrepreneurs” to be the worst. The wife of the Recently Departed is one such example. They don’t even hide the fact that Christianity is all about the merch and the grift.
And that's why the church rejected Darwin's theory of Evolution in 1859 and still rejects it to this day. They don't like having themselves related to brown, yellow, and black "animals" from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Stories like this have come to be more expected than shocking. Members of the clergy were allowed to hide behind their clerical collars and Bibles for far too long, and get away with blaming their victims. At least now their victims are being listened to. I don't know what the solution is, but as long as there are people who are desperate to be led, and willing to delegate their thinking to the clergy, I don't see it ending any time soon.
I kind of recall that the Jesus of the Bible was very inclusive. ANCA, whatever the conservative Methodists call themselves, the entire SBC, the rest of the Evilgelicals, and the conservative Catholics and Orthodox… all of them are deliberately disavowing their purported lord and savior. How charming.
128,000 members in in the ACNA? Let's see how many of them finally have had enough of these shenanigans and not only flee the sect en masse but flee Christianity en masse.
Becase if you remain a Christian despite these seemingly-endless assaults by the clergy, you can no longer consider yourself a moral person and you are just as culpable by your aiding and abetting these white collar ogres.
I am expecting them to close ranks instead of leaving. These are people who have already made the choice to be in a church that was founded solely on bigotry. We now know that the bigots loves them a healthy helping of authoritarianism sprinkled liberally with loyalty and keeping the secrets.
Leave the ACNA when the whole point of creating it was to demonstrate how much better they are than LGBTQ folks?
No, they'll go with the "Satan hates us" mantra, because that reinforces their imagined superiority. They're so pure and moral Satan himself feels threatened.
That "comfort" is often used as a reason for religion. What is that? I spent a few years trying churches and I never felt anything like comfort. I felt that someone wanted me to read a book. I did. It was one of the worst books I ever read. Especially the last part.
Poisoned minds. Poisoned actions. That's about all I can think of from reading this piece. The leaders of the Anglican Church of North America are so dead set against any kind of "deviant" sexuality, yet their own behavior reveals a deviance all its own and one that has hurt members of their congregations and clearly pretty badly.
Brings to mind that old line about the speck in someone else's eye versus the log in their own.
So many evangelical tilted people I've met will switch one super conservative denomination for another. They frankly just really enjoy punishment and moral superiority.
When someone's exercise of free will (whether it exists or not) imposes negatively on someone else, correction is needed. That MAY involve having "good imposed upon him."
Or it may just mean restraining that person from doing evil, possibly indefinitely. This is one reasons why prisons exist.
Fine. If someone freely chooses to assault or rob me, I can equally freely choose to stop him, potentially using deadly force if necessary. I would prefer that local law enforcement do this, but if they're not available I know how.
I have been following this for the last week or so. What fun!!! You can almost take it to the bank that one of these high-control-moralizing-busy-body-sermon-plagiarizing churches is going to have a few scandals out the wazoo.
“One ACNA bishop was defrocked in 2020 due to his pornography use; in 2024, another bishop, Todd Atkinson, was ousted for inappropriate relationships with women.’ All right, give them credit. For once they weren’t abusing boys and men, at least as far as has been revealed. But give them time. They are a new denomination, and they may have to work up to it. Be fair!
But wait! There’s more! Hemant is not being fair! “A church that was founded in protest of inclusion and compassion was always destined to collapse under the weight of its own moral hypocrisy.” as I have written God-I-don’t-believe-in how many times, even unto these very electronic pages, this isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy would be refreshingly honest. This is absolute moral corruption. They don’t merely believe one way and act another. They are what they hate and that is the definition of corruption. They know that pornography is the devil’s work, and they embrace it. Inappropriate relationships with women? They are not inappropriate, they are deeply wrong by their own theology, which apparently they don’t believe in.
Corruption. Corruption. Corruption. And I’m not even talking about the money that seems to be getting stolen.
Now, just so you know how on top of this story I am, just yesterday I wrote this to Abbi Nye, the author of the story at religion news. It’s almost as if I’m a shark and I was smelling blood in the water, but it’s the holy blood of Jesus so I’m sure it’s OK.
Dear Ms. Nye:
“I read your article on ACNA and sexual abuse over at the Roys report.
I am writing to you here at sub stack because I’m not allowed to comment over at the Roy‘s report. Although I’m never rude, vicious, or dishonest, I do tend to say exactly what I think. And I’ve been thinking and saying a great deal on this very subject of clergy abuse for a number of years now. As a gay man who has been a gay rights activist for more than 50 years, I am sick to death of me and mine being accused of being a threat to children because we are not heterosexual.
That is not now true, nor has it ever been true. But I have been listening to this slander for more than 50 years, and I am well aware that it has been repeated for at least 1700 years. And once again, LGBT people are being scapegoated for political and religious dominionist reasons. Once again the religious are covering up the predators in their own ranks. And once again they are using our lives to distract attention from their own, and our alleged lack of faith to distract from their own very real moral corruption.
In reading your article, it surprised me that you seem surprised about any of this. ACNA blaming the victims, deflecting attention, covering it all up when they’re not outright ignoring it? ACNA was formed primarily because they were ever so upset about gay people being accepted into the religion. They were all for traditional sexual morality, and if that includes child molestation, abuse, adult molestation, and covering it all up, well, then, who am I to judge?
This is what really pisses me off. They’re still trying to blame us. And a reasonably thorough Google search, which I’ve done many times, will show that in fact there are something like 500 (AT LEAST!) clergy every year arrested, or convicted, or sentenced for sex crimes. You’ll only find this to be the case about a small number of LGBT people.
ACNA joins the hallowed ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the church of England. There was a reason Justin Welby resigned, and there was a reason why a woman was picked to replace him besides the obvious reason— that it was time.
There’s a great deal more I could say about this, but I will only say it if you wish to correspond.
Thank you.
—————————-
And thank you, gentle readers. Dr. Ben is on the case.
"They are what they hate and that is the definition of corruption. They know that pornography is the devil’s work, and they embrace it. Inappropriate relationships with women? They are not inappropriate, they are deeply wrong by their own theology, which apparently they don’t believe in."
Yes, they are what they hate. Malicious, evil, and thoroughly corrupt.
Thank you. There's not much I can do about this, but writing is one thing I can do. I've only heard back from a few of these people. I have a suspicion that they are too invested in "saving" to the church from a few bad apples, and not realizing that the barrel is the actual problem. But I do what I can
"There’s moral rot at the heart of the denomination."
You can't have an authoritarian system that gives some individuals nearly unlimited and unchecked power over others that doesn't become an abusive nightmare. It's impossible to do.
I wouldn't say that those of the ACNA had anything like absolute power, though the influence they had over their congregations was pretty considerable. Big surprise that their corruption was on a similar scale ... NOT.
"It was the responsibility of the bishops to vet him and they failed at it, horribly,”
They probably high fived him for being so manly.
"A verdict from the court’s seven-member panel of judges — a group of bishops, priests and parishioners — is expected to arrive later this year. Ruch declined to comment through a diocese spokeswoman, who cited a court directive prohibiting him from media interviews during the trial."
Since when the USA has religious tribunals ???
"These churches do not understand the dynamics of abuse"
On the contrary, they understand it very well. It's why most victims are afraid to talk, or they do it several years or decades later.
Since when? Ummm, maybe Salem, Massachusetts, around 1600-some-odd. They got a mad-on about witches in their midst, made worse by the fact that there were NO witches, just some screwed-up people!
I read parts of the book Hammer of the Witches. I come to the conclusion that the writer or writers (some people think there was two authors) hated women PERIOD. The claim of witches was a cover so they can attack and murder women without consequences! The worst part is the fact that they were able to convince other people (who actually believe in evil influencing people) to help and support their murder spree. This is an opinion, I have no way to prove this. It is impossible to use psychology to determine the motives of people who lived centuries ago!
Ah, the Good Olde Days when the Abusers made sure victims wouldn't talk years later. Nothing like hanging a witch or two to make you feel powerful and manly.
The Salem Witch Trials in 1692? Of the more than 200 people who were falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, 20 of them were executed by hanging (one man was squeezed to death by heavy stones). Mainland Europe preferred burning their victims. Other methods such as strangling (used in Scotland) and drowning were also employed.
From what I understand it was a class issue/local issue between Salem Town and Salem Village. Witch hangings just helped preserve the social order. Since most of the victims were female, it was a good way to get rid of odd or bothersome women.
Occulture (French YouTubers) dug through numerised archives and have another hypothesis. It was a feud between two families, later their In-laws and friends were implicated too, for land and social power. I would put the link but this one is not dubbed in English and I am not sure about captions.
C'est comme le vélo, ça ne s'oublie pas. You just need to reawaken what you learned. Start with song lyrics or English kids books that were translated in French. It's how I learned the US slang I know.
This is a private club deciding whether a private club member can hold an office in the club. They are free to use a tribunal to do so, there's nothing local, state, or federal government about it. They can't impose any criminal penalty on him and their ability to impose fines is probably limited to whatever his employment contract with them agrees they are allowed to do.
Yes they are using legal titles and terms, but as far as I can tell this particular case is an 'in-house' process run by the church, not a civil suit in the US or state judicial system.
Employment contracts can sometimes require a person to go through in-house arbitration or mediation before going to the legal system, so it could be that sort of situation. So that could be how they 'order' him to stay silent. Otherwise, it's 'just a good idea' - i.e. If his club's court prohibits him from speaking about it, then he best abide by that court's decision if he wants to stay in good standing in his club.
Note that the article talks about *other* cases that were official, did go through the legal system and in some cases did result in criminal penalties, so yep, the article could have been a bit clearer on it.
Note also that the WashPo article is behind a paywall, so I'm only analyzing Hemant's article, I can't get to the original piece to check it. So I could be wrong.
There it is. That's why the scandal broke. Sexual abuse? Cover it up, make sure the Church looks good. Steal from the Church? Heinous crime, prosecute to the fullest extent possible.
“These churches do not understand the dynamics of abuse, and they are incredibly unsafe for wounded people.” No kidding! This is why they shouldn’t be in charge of social services. But this can happen anywhere. I was strict about not letting my kids around Christian youth pastors or going to church with friends. When they were young, my then-husband and I wanted some kind of community for them, something like the atheist Sunday Assembly, but it was too hard to organize. For a few years I took my kids to the local UU congregation, which had a secular humanist minister. He was great—taught me that religious trauma is a thing and preached that we lived in a “post-religious” world, moving towards a future where religion wasn’t needed. The Sunday School taught progressive values and, for the older kids, how to define religion and thus to refute the argument that “atheism is a religion too.” Alas. He retired, and the Board hired a manipulative, toxic Southern Baptist who claimed to have converted. She proceeded to tear the church apart—because the Board absolutely “did not understand the dynamics of abuse” or her effect on the many “wounded people” taking refuge in UU congregations.
I think that there’s an assumption that people who work in non-profit or volunteer organizations, including religious ones, have altruistic motivations and will be in their best behavior. In fact, I believe it’s the opposite: The lack of professionalism and outside oversight allows people to play out their most dysfunctional power fantasies.
But authoritarian structures lack councils, independent IGs, and/or reporting requirements that can find and stop such behavior by leadership. So in those organizations it tends to continue longer and be worse. As you note in your example, your UU congregation suffered when the Board meant to oversee the minister got weak or stopped doing its job.
I just saw a video/reel about your last paragraph, the people running charities not actually being charitable, and the person used an episode of Bob’s Burgers to illustrate the point. It was the episode where Linda joins the PTA and then gets elected treasurer but finds the PTA president is stealing from the fundraiser and even the fundraiser itself was a grift as it was to pay for the science packs Linda made for free to donate to the school.
Sorry I can’t remember the person who made the reel. But it was a good point.
"This is why they shouldn’t be in charge of social services."
But they want to be,* and the government wants them to be. That way, they don't have to deal with all those undeserving losers who can't pull their own weight and they don't care what the church does to them.
*I recall a couple of sermons from my youth that decried the government providing charity services, which the church should be doing, because it meant people didn't have to turn to Gawd for help.
It’s almost as if the christstain cult exists solely to provide shelter and aid to child rapists and misogynistic bigots, when it’s not parting its followers from their cash.
"We got A problem with the Virgin Islands...bad, very Bad, they Have a corrupt government, very Corrupt...they have antifa Actors in their govErnment and they've done a bad Thing, they're Listening to...they listened to bad People and now they've Been overrun by the Gay aGenda and they're building all these stupid elEctrics, the're SpendinG billions of dollars On all these stupid electrics they're building them and they're trafficking drugs To the mainland, to Venezuela, bad people, the Virgin Islands, they're A hotbed of crime, Jamaica is a war Zone, cries are are overrun with gangs And gay agendas and they're using fishing boats with these stupid Electrics they're buying from other very Bad people we've ordered air Strikes against these criminals, they're targeting our citizens With...they're spending billions On these stupid elEctrics they're Building so they can...they're bad people, very bad people...."
(How did I Do With the random capitalization this Time?)
“This would be disturbing news for any denomination, but it’s wild that it’s happening in one that only exists because they believe homosexuality as an unforgivable sin. And the rot now goes all the way to the top.”
The sin is not having sex with men, it is treating men as though they are women, you know, property. It isn’t the sex, it’s the dehumanization of men, because women aren’t human, children aren’t human, we’re all property. And as property, men can do as they like to them, so the abuse at the hands of these leaders is not an issue when it is done to women and children.
It is worse optics for them to try to defend these men’s promotions by saying it happened before they got promoted… to us. But to them, it’s plausible deniability. They aren’t abusing in their current positions (ha!) therefore the choices were sound. Nevermind that these issues are things that needed to be taken into account in the decision making process. It’s not even them saying they didn’t know, just that they thought the abuse was over, or inconsequential.
They looked bad before, just by throwing a tantrum over tolerance, but they keep digging the hole and now they look like the villains they are. But then, that’s par for the course for all religions, but especially for the more fundamentalist sects. Since the morality of Christianity (and other religions) is based solely on obey the authorities, this is what that morality leads to.
"It is worse optics for them to try to defend these men’s promotions by saying it happened before they got promoted… to us. But to them, it’s plausible deniability. They aren’t abusing in their current positions (ha!) therefore the choices were sound. Nevermind that these issues are things that needed to be taken into account in the decision making process. It’s not even them saying they didn’t know, just that they thought the abuse was over, or inconsequential."
THIS!!!
It's like hiring a CFO with a history of embezzlement. The first reaction there would be "DIDN'T ANY OF YOU (ON THE HIRING COMMITTEE) CHECK HIM/HER OUT FIRST?!?!?" and probably sanctioning those who voted to hire without a thorough back ground check.
𝗡𝗢𝗧. 𝗔. 𝗗𝗥𝗔𝗚. 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗘𝗡.
I don't know how much louder I need to be before they get it.
Well, their goal is to create a White ethnostate by marriage-trapping girls young, a la Warren Jeffs, and breeding White babies en masse. Remember Justice Alito? Abortion threatens the “domestic supply of instants.” Those gosh-darn White drag queens and gays are wasting all that precious White DNA if they refuse to comply with the breeding program. And if we’re going to bring back indentured servitude via private prisons, Silicon Valley needs darker-skinned women pushing out future workers, too. Preferably Indians—as JD Vance said, Indian wives come with free Indian grandparent babysitting. 🙄 Someone’s gotta tend the AI and crypto servers. So logically it’s the LGBTQ people’s fault that we “cultural Marxists” blah blah teeming, heathen brown-skinned yadda yadda Great Replacement blah blah evils of feminism. Just get a Crusader tattoo and marry a 12 yo already. 🤮
"Indian wives come with free Indian grandparent babysitting"
Classy... I wish his wife gave him hell for that, but I don't have high hopes.
He conveniently overlooks the fact that families of all ethnicities often do this for their young married relatives.
That doesn't make his comment any less gross. And he probably thought he was making a clever, amusing joke....
He always appears to enjoy his own wit.
He could hardly be less funny.
Agreed. The problem is HE thinks he is. The only reason other people don’t agree and laugh along with him is they’re woke lib socialists.
Hahaha. She married him. That tells me all I need to know about her.
Also willing to bet he's not LGBTQ (unless he's deeply closeted).
They have ears but do not hear.
𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑢𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛
Not wild, predictable.
As Captain Cassidy points out, conservative church views tend to want a strict othodoxy with everyone toeing the line. To get that strict orthodoxy, you need an authoritarian hierarchy which has the power to say what correct belief is and enforce it. That authoritarian structure in turn allows for greater corruption and people at the top with a 'rules don't apply to me' viewpoint.
So "a window open for abuse" is kind of an inevitable flip side of the coin of their demand for a single unified denomination in which leadership has the power to stifle dissent. You demand that, you often (regularly, predictably) get abusive leaders. Because by definition, you've given those leaders the power to squash any dissent.
And perhaps the irony here is it's a systemic bias in a group that doesn't believe in systemic biases. :)
And much of American fundamentalist Christianity is a cover for White Supremacy, and homosexuality puts a damper on their goal of mass-breeding a White ethnostate to counteract their Great Replacement Theory paranoia.
Wasn't it white skinned Europeans that forced the great replacement by moving, killing and demeaning the people living there already?
Pretty sure the white supremacist fear is that everyone else is as evil as they wish to be.
Genocide, yes. The entire history of the U.S. includes genocide of First Nations Peoples. FYI - https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/united-states-independence-masked-genocide-and-imperialism
I doubt the one caused the other. I think instead the racist and orientation bigotry probably stem from the same psychological source - fear of the other, fear of difference, and the tendency to confuse feelings of bodily purity with morality.
Another interesting thing, though—a few years ago the Houston Chronicle had a 6 part series investigating the Southern Baptists and other non-denominational Christian groups. They are run like independent franchises so that those in charge can avoid responsibility and blame the “franchise-owner”/ pastor for any wrongdoing. So even when they don’t have an episcopal power structure, they find other ways to enable abuse and grift. I find the “Biblical entrepreneurs” to be the worst. The wife of the Recently Departed is one such example. They don’t even hide the fact that Christianity is all about the merch and the grift.
And that's why the church rejected Darwin's theory of Evolution in 1859 and still rejects it to this day. They don't like having themselves related to brown, yellow, and black "animals" from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Eh maybe. I think it's more like Galileo and before that heliocentrism; they rejected ToE because it removed man from the center of the universe.
👆👆👆🎯
Where is Captain Cassidy these days? I used to read her blog when blogs were a thing…
Enjoy https://rolltodisbelieve.com/
Stories like this have come to be more expected than shocking. Members of the clergy were allowed to hide behind their clerical collars and Bibles for far too long, and get away with blaming their victims. At least now their victims are being listened to. I don't know what the solution is, but as long as there are people who are desperate to be led, and willing to delegate their thinking to the clergy, I don't see it ending any time soon.
I kind of recall that the Jesus of the Bible was very inclusive. ANCA, whatever the conservative Methodists call themselves, the entire SBC, the rest of the Evilgelicals, and the conservative Catholics and Orthodox… all of them are deliberately disavowing their purported lord and savior. How charming.
"all of them are deliberately disavowing their purported lord and savior."
So they can kiss the arse of a certain orange man.
That Vile Orange Cretin needs his ass kicked up around his ears, not kissed.
Four point leathers is what he deserves.(what they use in the hospital when a patient is extremely dangerous.)
I wasn't dangerous!
Yes. To "What do you expect us to do, turn the other cheek?" we can now add "What do you expect us to do, open to everyone who knocks?"
Jesus was right about one thing: the Stupid shall inherit the earth.
Christian clergy want their flocks to rein in their urges while simultanously indulging their own.
Once again, Christianity and morality find themselves miles apart.
The rules are different for patriarchal men, don’tchaknow?
The rules are different for men who decide that the rules are different for THEM.
And the fools that enable that bad behavior.
128,000 members in in the ACNA? Let's see how many of them finally have had enough of these shenanigans and not only flee the sect en masse but flee Christianity en masse.
Becase if you remain a Christian despite these seemingly-endless assaults by the clergy, you can no longer consider yourself a moral person and you are just as culpable by your aiding and abetting these white collar ogres.
I am expecting them to close ranks instead of leaving. These are people who have already made the choice to be in a church that was founded solely on bigotry. We now know that the bigots loves them a healthy helping of authoritarianism sprinkled liberally with loyalty and keeping the secrets.
Leave the ACNA when the whole point of creating it was to demonstrate how much better they are than LGBTQ folks?
No, they'll go with the "Satan hates us" mantra, because that reinforces their imagined superiority. They're so pure and moral Satan himself feels threatened.
They stay for the music and comfort it gives them. What's wrong with that?(TM)
That "comfort" is often used as a reason for religion. What is that? I spent a few years trying churches and I never felt anything like comfort. I felt that someone wanted me to read a book. I did. It was one of the worst books I ever read. Especially the last part.
Then they wanted money. Every week.
They had a social hierarchy. Stupid.
I gave up.
Another of Pedodent tRump's spiritual advisors. Grabeth them by the pussy, so sayeth the Lard.
Poisoned minds. Poisoned actions. That's about all I can think of from reading this piece. The leaders of the Anglican Church of North America are so dead set against any kind of "deviant" sexuality, yet their own behavior reveals a deviance all its own and one that has hurt members of their congregations and clearly pretty badly.
Brings to mind that old line about the speck in someone else's eye versus the log in their own.
They wouldn’t know about that - it would require reading some old book which tells them to do things they don’t want to.
OR ... reading a book with passages they've already decided they weren't concerned with or were opposed to their own interests.
So many evangelical tilted people I've met will switch one super conservative denomination for another. They frankly just really enjoy punishment and moral superiority.
As long as they only "bless" girls and women, it's not a big deal.
Past time it was MADE a big deal ... TO THEM.
“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
When someone's exercise of free will (whether it exists or not) imposes negatively on someone else, correction is needed. That MAY involve having "good imposed upon him."
Or it may just mean restraining that person from doing evil, possibly indefinitely. This is one reasons why prisons exist.
I’m a firm believer that the ability to choose is what makes a person human and a good act has no moral value if it is not freely chosen.
More in reference to why we often see church goers and other religious folks not follow their own teachings.
Fine. If someone freely chooses to assault or rob me, I can equally freely choose to stop him, potentially using deadly force if necessary. I would prefer that local law enforcement do this, but if they're not available I know how.
A Clockwork Orange does not promote violence without consequences. I think you are missing the point if that’s all you take away from it…
A Clockwork Orange is a MOVIE. I live in the real world, thankyverymuch.
I have been following this for the last week or so. What fun!!! You can almost take it to the bank that one of these high-control-moralizing-busy-body-sermon-plagiarizing churches is going to have a few scandals out the wazoo.
“One ACNA bishop was defrocked in 2020 due to his pornography use; in 2024, another bishop, Todd Atkinson, was ousted for inappropriate relationships with women.’ All right, give them credit. For once they weren’t abusing boys and men, at least as far as has been revealed. But give them time. They are a new denomination, and they may have to work up to it. Be fair!
But wait! There’s more! Hemant is not being fair! “A church that was founded in protest of inclusion and compassion was always destined to collapse under the weight of its own moral hypocrisy.” as I have written God-I-don’t-believe-in how many times, even unto these very electronic pages, this isn’t hypocrisy. Hypocrisy would be refreshingly honest. This is absolute moral corruption. They don’t merely believe one way and act another. They are what they hate and that is the definition of corruption. They know that pornography is the devil’s work, and they embrace it. Inappropriate relationships with women? They are not inappropriate, they are deeply wrong by their own theology, which apparently they don’t believe in.
Corruption. Corruption. Corruption. And I’m not even talking about the money that seems to be getting stolen.
Now, just so you know how on top of this story I am, just yesterday I wrote this to Abbi Nye, the author of the story at religion news. It’s almost as if I’m a shark and I was smelling blood in the water, but it’s the holy blood of Jesus so I’m sure it’s OK.
Dear Ms. Nye:
“I read your article on ACNA and sexual abuse over at the Roys report.
I am writing to you here at sub stack because I’m not allowed to comment over at the Roy‘s report. Although I’m never rude, vicious, or dishonest, I do tend to say exactly what I think. And I’ve been thinking and saying a great deal on this very subject of clergy abuse for a number of years now. As a gay man who has been a gay rights activist for more than 50 years, I am sick to death of me and mine being accused of being a threat to children because we are not heterosexual.
That is not now true, nor has it ever been true. But I have been listening to this slander for more than 50 years, and I am well aware that it has been repeated for at least 1700 years. And once again, LGBT people are being scapegoated for political and religious dominionist reasons. Once again the religious are covering up the predators in their own ranks. And once again they are using our lives to distract attention from their own, and our alleged lack of faith to distract from their own very real moral corruption.
In reading your article, it surprised me that you seem surprised about any of this. ACNA blaming the victims, deflecting attention, covering it all up when they’re not outright ignoring it? ACNA was formed primarily because they were ever so upset about gay people being accepted into the religion. They were all for traditional sexual morality, and if that includes child molestation, abuse, adult molestation, and covering it all up, well, then, who am I to judge?
This is what really pisses me off. They’re still trying to blame us. And a reasonably thorough Google search, which I’ve done many times, will show that in fact there are something like 500 (AT LEAST!) clergy every year arrested, or convicted, or sentenced for sex crimes. You’ll only find this to be the case about a small number of LGBT people.
ACNA joins the hallowed ranks of the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the church of England. There was a reason Justin Welby resigned, and there was a reason why a woman was picked to replace him besides the obvious reason— that it was time.
There’s a great deal more I could say about this, but I will only say it if you wish to correspond.
Thank you.
—————————-
And thank you, gentle readers. Dr. Ben is on the case.
That's how it's done! Fry 'em on BOTH SIDES!!!
Don’t you think steaming them would be more energy efficient?
Yes, but it doesn't have that satisfying sizzle.
THERE you go!
👏👏👏👏👏👏
"They are what they hate and that is the definition of corruption. They know that pornography is the devil’s work, and they embrace it. Inappropriate relationships with women? They are not inappropriate, they are deeply wrong by their own theology, which apparently they don’t believe in."
Yes, they are what they hate. Malicious, evil, and thoroughly corrupt.
Well done!
Thank you. There's not much I can do about this, but writing is one thing I can do. I've only heard back from a few of these people. I have a suspicion that they are too invested in "saving" to the church from a few bad apples, and not realizing that the barrel is the actual problem. But I do what I can
"There’s moral rot at the heart of the denomination."
You can't have an authoritarian system that gives some individuals nearly unlimited and unchecked power over others that doesn't become an abusive nightmare. It's impossible to do.
𝑃𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑢𝑝𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦.
-- Lord Acton
I wouldn't say that those of the ACNA had anything like absolute power, though the influence they had over their congregations was pretty considerable. Big surprise that their corruption was on a similar scale ... NOT.
A grad school professor of mine had a wonderful corollary to Acton’s observation.
“Not only does power corrupt but so does the loss of power and, indeed, even the threat of the loss of power.”
Interesting observation and likely true.
And I've long subscribed to Plato's statement, 'Power is best held by those who do not desire it.'
"It was the responsibility of the bishops to vet him and they failed at it, horribly,”
They probably high fived him for being so manly.
"A verdict from the court’s seven-member panel of judges — a group of bishops, priests and parishioners — is expected to arrive later this year. Ruch declined to comment through a diocese spokeswoman, who cited a court directive prohibiting him from media interviews during the trial."
Since when the USA has religious tribunals ???
"These churches do not understand the dynamics of abuse"
On the contrary, they understand it very well. It's why most victims are afraid to talk, or they do it several years or decades later.
Since when? Ummm, maybe Salem, Massachusetts, around 1600-some-odd. They got a mad-on about witches in their midst, made worse by the fact that there were NO witches, just some screwed-up people!
But you knew that.
I read parts of the book Hammer of the Witches. I come to the conclusion that the writer or writers (some people think there was two authors) hated women PERIOD. The claim of witches was a cover so they can attack and murder women without consequences! The worst part is the fact that they were able to convince other people (who actually believe in evil influencing people) to help and support their murder spree. This is an opinion, I have no way to prove this. It is impossible to use psychology to determine the motives of people who lived centuries ago!
My family has the documents written by the two families that started that mess. And the documents from their adventures in England.
It really has next to nothing to do with witches.
It was about a few young women who misbehaved. As young people do.
The myth grew because in England, attacking witches was sport.
I will have to check* but I think that in "Les putains du diable" two monks are credited for the Malleus Maleficarum.
*I read it before the pandemic and I am not sure where I put it.
https://www.amazon.fr/putains-Diable-proc%C3%A8s-sorcellerie-femmes/dp/2259204015
Ah, the Good Olde Days when the Abusers made sure victims wouldn't talk years later. Nothing like hanging a witch or two to make you feel powerful and manly.
Hanging? Weren’t they burned?
The Salem Witch Trials in 1692? Of the more than 200 people who were falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, 20 of them were executed by hanging (one man was squeezed to death by heavy stones). Mainland Europe preferred burning their victims. Other methods such as strangling (used in Scotland) and drowning were also employed.
Ghastly.
And the Puritans still walk among us. Thanks for the clarification.
From what I understand it was a class issue/local issue between Salem Town and Salem Village. Witch hangings just helped preserve the social order. Since most of the victims were female, it was a good way to get rid of odd or bothersome women.
Occulture (French YouTubers) dug through numerised archives and have another hypothesis. It was a feud between two families, later their In-laws and friends were implicated too, for land and social power. I would put the link but this one is not dubbed in English and I am not sure about captions.
Try to watch it with the app, not your browser
settings ---> captions ---> auto-translated ---> English.
https://youtu.be/ZepvkHpGfNI?si=0aB6tSYrx5H_SjSX
50 years ago, I was reading Voltaire in French. Wish I still could.
C'est comme le vélo, ça ne s'oublie pas. You just need to reawaken what you learned. Start with song lyrics or English kids books that were translated in French. It's how I learned the US slang I know.
Nah, no witches. Just horny time travelers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg0Jwv70-po
☝️
𝑆𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑆𝐴 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑠 ???
Sarcasm, or real question?
This is a private club deciding whether a private club member can hold an office in the club. They are free to use a tribunal to do so, there's nothing local, state, or federal government about it. They can't impose any criminal penalty on him and their ability to impose fines is probably limited to whatever his employment contract with them agrees they are allowed to do.
Mostly sarcasm, but then why the spokesman said "a court directive prohibiting him from media interviews during the trial."
You are the expert in law, I am lost here.
Yes they are using legal titles and terms, but as far as I can tell this particular case is an 'in-house' process run by the church, not a civil suit in the US or state judicial system.
Employment contracts can sometimes require a person to go through in-house arbitration or mediation before going to the legal system, so it could be that sort of situation. So that could be how they 'order' him to stay silent. Otherwise, it's 'just a good idea' - i.e. If his club's court prohibits him from speaking about it, then he best abide by that court's decision if he wants to stay in good standing in his club.
Note that the article talks about *other* cases that were official, did go through the legal system and in some cases did result in criminal penalties, so yep, the article could have been a bit clearer on it.
Note also that the WashPo article is behind a paywall, so I'm only analyzing Hemant's article, I can't get to the original piece to check it. So I could be wrong.
Late add: here is a free article that covers the same material, and makes it clearer that what Wood is going through is an internal club/church process, not a federal or state judicial process: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/10/anglican-archbishop-steve-wood-abuse-allegations-acna/
Though it's a good bet that if the internal process leads to a result one side really doesn't like or thinks is unfair, they will sue.
Thanks, you really helped.
𝑊𝑜𝑜𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑔𝑢𝑒𝑠’ 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑜𝑓𝑓 𝑎𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛… 𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑜𝑓 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑠𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒.
There it is. That's why the scandal broke. Sexual abuse? Cover it up, make sure the Church looks good. Steal from the Church? Heinous crime, prosecute to the fullest extent possible.
Those were Men's Sermons stolen.
“These churches do not understand the dynamics of abuse, and they are incredibly unsafe for wounded people.” No kidding! This is why they shouldn’t be in charge of social services. But this can happen anywhere. I was strict about not letting my kids around Christian youth pastors or going to church with friends. When they were young, my then-husband and I wanted some kind of community for them, something like the atheist Sunday Assembly, but it was too hard to organize. For a few years I took my kids to the local UU congregation, which had a secular humanist minister. He was great—taught me that religious trauma is a thing and preached that we lived in a “post-religious” world, moving towards a future where religion wasn’t needed. The Sunday School taught progressive values and, for the older kids, how to define religion and thus to refute the argument that “atheism is a religion too.” Alas. He retired, and the Board hired a manipulative, toxic Southern Baptist who claimed to have converted. She proceeded to tear the church apart—because the Board absolutely “did not understand the dynamics of abuse” or her effect on the many “wounded people” taking refuge in UU congregations.
I think that there’s an assumption that people who work in non-profit or volunteer organizations, including religious ones, have altruistic motivations and will be in their best behavior. In fact, I believe it’s the opposite: The lack of professionalism and outside oversight allows people to play out their most dysfunctional power fantasies.
It can happen anywhere.
But authoritarian structures lack councils, independent IGs, and/or reporting requirements that can find and stop such behavior by leadership. So in those organizations it tends to continue longer and be worse. As you note in your example, your UU congregation suffered when the Board meant to oversee the minister got weak or stopped doing its job.
It was shocking to see how many people will choose to comply with authority instead of stand up for what is right. It was quite depressing.
I just saw a video/reel about your last paragraph, the people running charities not actually being charitable, and the person used an episode of Bob’s Burgers to illustrate the point. It was the episode where Linda joins the PTA and then gets elected treasurer but finds the PTA president is stealing from the fundraiser and even the fundraiser itself was a grift as it was to pay for the science packs Linda made for free to donate to the school.
Sorry I can’t remember the person who made the reel. But it was a good point.
"This is why they shouldn’t be in charge of social services."
But they want to be,* and the government wants them to be. That way, they don't have to deal with all those undeserving losers who can't pull their own weight and they don't care what the church does to them.
*I recall a couple of sermons from my youth that decried the government providing charity services, which the church should be doing, because it meant people didn't have to turn to Gawd for help.
It’s almost as if the christstain cult exists solely to provide shelter and aid to child rapists and misogynistic bigots, when it’s not parting its followers from their cash.
That covers it.
Virgin Isands
https://scontent-ord5-3.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/571177704_1277445651079687_9208436220438868205_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640_tt6&_nc_cat=1&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=dGY_DSjVT6sQ7kNvwHIOVmw&_nc_oc=AdnTShfDejz3cI_TtyejK5GhB9BzUar9dg2AdnqGJY5u_gD8iX4cS1b8DKNM42XzMQA&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-ord5-3.xx&_nc_gid=A6TEa71oz_U_HthsxCRnWA&oh=00_Afep4-ev1HQ9vzoElgo7eg5nrkmcOH57a2zndIMHf4mUAw&oe=6906A905
Gosh ... and they're virgins. just shows eh?
OUTSTANDING!!! 👍👍👍 🌈🌈🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
*Waiting for drumpster's meltdown.
"We got A problem with the Virgin Islands...bad, very Bad, they Have a corrupt government, very Corrupt...they have antifa Actors in their govErnment and they've done a bad Thing, they're Listening to...they listened to bad People and now they've Been overrun by the Gay aGenda and they're building all these stupid elEctrics, the're SpendinG billions of dollars On all these stupid electrics they're building them and they're trafficking drugs To the mainland, to Venezuela, bad people, the Virgin Islands, they're A hotbed of crime, Jamaica is a war Zone, cries are are overrun with gangs And gay agendas and they're using fishing boats with these stupid Electrics they're buying from other very Bad people we've ordered air Strikes against these criminals, they're targeting our citizens With...they're spending billions On these stupid elEctrics they're Building so they can...they're bad people, very bad people...."
(How did I Do With the random capitalization this Time?)
You should include some ALL CAPS.
Oi...Yeah, I guess so, FORGOT about THOSE.
That’s real good, it’s scary how you are channeling Micropenis. Be careful that channeling doesn’t take over otherwise you are deep deep trurdland!
Thanks…I think. ;-)
👍
“This would be disturbing news for any denomination, but it’s wild that it’s happening in one that only exists because they believe homosexuality as an unforgivable sin. And the rot now goes all the way to the top.”
The sin is not having sex with men, it is treating men as though they are women, you know, property. It isn’t the sex, it’s the dehumanization of men, because women aren’t human, children aren’t human, we’re all property. And as property, men can do as they like to them, so the abuse at the hands of these leaders is not an issue when it is done to women and children.
It is worse optics for them to try to defend these men’s promotions by saying it happened before they got promoted… to us. But to them, it’s plausible deniability. They aren’t abusing in their current positions (ha!) therefore the choices were sound. Nevermind that these issues are things that needed to be taken into account in the decision making process. It’s not even them saying they didn’t know, just that they thought the abuse was over, or inconsequential.
They looked bad before, just by throwing a tantrum over tolerance, but they keep digging the hole and now they look like the villains they are. But then, that’s par for the course for all religions, but especially for the more fundamentalist sects. Since the morality of Christianity (and other religions) is based solely on obey the authorities, this is what that morality leads to.
"It is worse optics for them to try to defend these men’s promotions by saying it happened before they got promoted… to us. But to them, it’s plausible deniability. They aren’t abusing in their current positions (ha!) therefore the choices were sound. Nevermind that these issues are things that needed to be taken into account in the decision making process. It’s not even them saying they didn’t know, just that they thought the abuse was over, or inconsequential."
THIS!!!
It's like hiring a CFO with a history of embezzlement. The first reaction there would be "DIDN'T ANY OF YOU (ON THE HIRING COMMITTEE) CHECK HIM/HER OUT FIRST?!?!?" and probably sanctioning those who voted to hire without a thorough back ground check.
Plausible deniability my ass.
tuesdaY