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Clergy sex abuse and "the silence of the many"
By Christa Brown
Stop Baptist Predators
January 19, 2015
http://stopbaptistpredators.blogspot.com/
"True evil lies not in the depraved act of the one,
but in the silence of the many."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hello to all of you!
It's been a long time since I visited my blog, but today is Martin Luther King Day and I found myself reconnecting with a column I wrote for MLK day in 2013. It was previously picked up and published by the Associated Baptist Press -- now known as Baptist News Global -- which by the way is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. I think this may just be the best job I ever managed to do in succinctly summarizing the complex issues at work in the problem of Baptist clergy sex abuse and denominational complicity. An excerpt:
"In countless stories of Baptist clergy sex abuse, we have seen the sad truth of King’s words made manifest. Even with childhood histories of horrific abuse – of having been molested, raped and sodomized by Baptist preachers – countless such victims have said that the worst of their experience came when they tried to tell about the abuse within the faith community.
That was when they faced 'the silence of the many.'
That was when the relational fabric of community, and often even of family, was torn asunder.
That was when faith itself was deemed a fraud."
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