Note: I assume the author of the following comment is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. Regardless of his denominational affiliation, my comments still stand.
Over the weekend, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) man by the name of Tim Lee left the following comment on the post titled Woman Sexually Abused by First Baptist Church Deacon A.V. Ballenger Speaks Out:
I graduated from Purdue University in 1997 with a master’s degree. I attended Hyles Anderson College 1 year and worked on the “Bus Ministry ” 1993. I transferred to Purdue only because of the engineering program.
I can honestly say that I never saw anything inappropriate, but I’m sure some of the stories are true. It was a large church, maybe 20k or larger. So in proportion, it’s probably like finding all the sex offenders who attended Purdue, a 40k campus. I’m sure one can dig up 25 out of 40,000 over 25 years
Where oh where do I begin? First, just because YOU “never saw anything inappropriate” doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Second, Lee suggests that some of the claims of sexual assault, rape, and other sex crimes at Hyles-Anderson College and First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana, didn’t happen. How, exactly, does he know this to be true? What evidence does he have that women are lying about being assaulted?
Evidently, Lee doesn’t have the Internet where he lives. Had he bothered to do a bit of reading on this subject, he would have found a plethora of information about rampant sexual abuse in IFB churches, colleges, and ministries. Both the Chicago Tribune and the Houston Chronicle took an in-depth look at the sex scandal-plagued IFB church movement. I have spent the past fourteen years shining a light on sexual abuse (and non-criminal sexual misconduct) committed by IFB pastors, youth pastors, evangelists, missionaries, deacons, Sunday school teachers, and college professors. Others such as Julie Roys and Christa Brown have done the same. Even secular groups such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation have tracked and reported on sex crimes perpetrated by so-called men of God. All of this information was available to Lee, yet he either doesn’t have access to it, or he thinks all the reporting on sexual assault is much-to-do about nothing — an insignificant problem.
How can one read about Jack Hyles, Jack Schaap, David Hyles, and a host of other leaders at Hyles-Anderson and First Baptist and not conclude that the college and church have a systemic problem with sexual misconduct?
I also want to address Lee’s statements about sexual assault on the campuses of Purdue University. According to Lee’s “math,” Purdue averages one sexual assault per year: 25 out of 40,000 over 25 years. Surely he’s kidding, right? It took me all of thirty seconds to find stories about sexual assault at Purdue. Last October, there were four reports of sexual assault over a several-week period.
In 2015, the South Bend Tribune reported:
More than one in five Purdue University female undergraduates say they’ve experienced a sexual assault since beginning college, and about one in eight say it happened during the current year, the school said Monday.
Purdue released the findings of a Campus Climate Survey on sexual assault sponsored by the Association of American Universities to coincide with the AAU’s release of an aggregate report from 27 institutions nationwide. Purdue was the only Indiana institution participating in the survey.
At Purdue, 21.9 percent of female undergraduates on the main campus in West Lafayette who responded to the survey said they had been sexually assaulted since beginning college, slightly lower than the 23.1 percent AAU aggregate, the university said. Also, 13.2 percent reported they had been sexually assaulted during the current year, the same as the aggregate finding.
Sexual assault was defined as experiencing nonconsensual sexual penetration or sexual touching involving physical force or incapacitation.
….
The survey was sent this spring to nearly 780,000 students at the association’s member colleges, plus one additional university. About 150,000 participated in the online questionnaire.
The results were generally in line with past surveys on sexual assault and misconduct on college campuses — and confirmed that alcohol and drugs are important risk factors.
Lee might want to find his trusty calculator out and run the numbers. He will find that hundreds of sexual assaults occur each year at Purdue University — many of which, for obvious reasons, go unreported.
I have no idea if Lee is still a part of the IFB church movement. I hope not, but his comment reflects the thinking I have seen from countless IFB preachers and church members over the years. Such people will read the aforementioned South Bend Tribune story and what will they see? Why, alcohol and drugs played a big part in these sexual assaults. So what? Is that justification for rape and sexual assault? Or perhaps women will be blamed for dressing “immodestly” or putting themselves in compromising positions. In other words, these women were “asking” for it. Such thinking, of course, is vile and perverse, but defenders of the IFB church movement continue to make excuses for the sex crimes committed in the churches and institutions.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
What? Alcohol and drugs involved in sexual assaults… at an evangelical college?? Nooooo!
Bet there was also theft. Bet Lee “never saw anything inappropriate” like theft, either. Does he think theft rarely happened? Most people will talk about things gone missing, to warn others, see who else is a possible victim. But not sexual assault, and NOT on a campus where the victim might be blamed for something like lack of modesty that “compelled” a man to act.
Sexual assault does not usually happen in front of witnesses unless those witnesses are part of the assault. Same for for theft, vandalism, etc.
Honestly? I’m getting to a point where I want to eject all these sexual abuse deniers into the sun.
Darcy— You made an important point: “Sexual assault does not usually happen in front of witnesses unless those witnesses are part of the assault.” That is a reason why for too many of us, sexual assault leaves trauma that lasts for the rest of our lives: We are isolated. If it happens when we’re children, we may not have the language to express it; if it happens to us as adults—or if we finally talk about our childhood terror when we’re adults—our credibility is attacked, in either case because there’s nobody to corroborate what we say.
I’m sorry to know your story, MJ. And never was a truer sentence uttered than that the survivor will suffer the consequences for a lifetime. I make no excuse for quoting from a 2017 official UK government report into child sexual abuse in high places . They took evidence from over 1000 survivors and found high incidences of mental health problems, self-harm, eating disorders etc. One said this ‘I can be at a party, having the best time, and one touch, sound or smell and I’m right back in the abuse and that’s not going to change till the day I die.’
I want to ask defenders of abusers, like Lee here this question. What happened to that verse in his beloved book of fairy tales about millstones and innocent children? Did his jesus say ‘Yeah, abusing just a few is OK, you don’t need to be drowned for just a few over 25yrs…..’ The ‘few bad apples’ argument disgusts me….especially as most of us can see that the whole tree, the whole barrel is so horribly bad whilst its members claim the moral high ground.
“I’m sure one can dig up 25 out of 40,000 over 25 years”
well, thanks, Christian, for showing your god and religion impotent.
When I still attend d church, that was for many years- I never saw any sex acts or heard of any personally. However, the mistreatment of children and babies was another story ! I DID see plants of slapping, hair- pulling, and the ritual spanking of babies brought up to the front of the church for all to see. No Baptist church s were involved, just Pentecostal, Apostolic, and Assembly of God churches. Later down the road I went to an L.A. Baptist church, didn’t have to see any of that, happy to say ! This person who says he’s unaware of sex abuse is just lucky, that’s all. It took survivors speaking out to being attention to this sick stuff. Surely by now, everyone who can read understands that denial won’t work anymore. The day of reckoning is here.
I don’t think sexual abusers walk down church aisles, yank someone out of a pew, and commence with sexually abusing the person in the middle of church service. It happens when witnesses aren’t around. Many victims are groomed by their abusers. Many are too young to have words for what happened to them. Most are afraid of the person who abused them, or they’re hushed up, or just not believed. Many are told they are the problem, not the abuser.
And now we are in a world where sexual immorality is rampant and even being made legal 🤮😢.
7 years ago the satanic atrocity of sodom and Gomorrah was legalized in the USA.
It’s just a matter of time before Bestiality is legal and considered “LOVE”. 🤢
Because hey marriage is redefined and can be anything! (And don’t throw in the lists about concubines and raped women in the Old Testament etc. Christ’s original plan was and still is ONE BIOLOGICAL MAN AND OND BIOLOGICAL WOMAN. Those in scripture that participated in polygamy were against God’s will)
Rest of comment deleted. Another fake name/fake email address from Pastor James Thompson/Deacon John/Asshole for Jesus
Proof that many Christian’s say a prayer of confession and then become a bigoted, knuckle dragging, troglodyte.
Don’t conflate homosexuality and bestiality, you damn fool. Does the term ‘consent’ mean nothing to you?
They don’t care about consent. As long as it is between a man and woman, they are fine with sex, with a minor or even rape of legal adults. Oh, they won’t admit it but they will ignore, lie, downplay, and hassle women who are abused.
Dude. There are numerous biblical types of marriage besides one man and one woman. One man and several women, one man and a girl, etc etc. Just because you hate everyone who isn’t like you doesn’t mean everyone else does. Also, you can live mostly in your Christian ghetto and avoid the types you can’t stand, except at your workplace (unless family run). I assure you that the rest of us are perfectly happy for you to live your life away from us, and we aren’t interested in changing you. How about you just leave us alone? If you’re right and we all go to hell, why, you can gloat all you want in the afterlife. Doesn’t seem very Christ-like but then, you lot don’t care about that, only about forcing people to be miserable in the service of your god.
I have an alias for this Shepherd/Thompson dude: Jean-Luc Canard.
I mean, really, where is there evidence that same-sex leads to bestiality or, for that matter, anything besides same-sex marriage?