Bryan Slaton: just another day at the Southern Baptist Convention

A state House committee found Bryan Slaton did have sex with an intern early this month and eventually unanimously expelled him.

 

That second link notes that he was a former Baptist youth pastor for more than a decade, I wonder if this was the first virgin he deflowered. Or even "just" the second. Or third. And ditto for getting them blotto drunk as part of that.

 

So, where is the Southern Baptist Convention in all of this?

 

Apparently, twiddling its thumbs, and apparently, likely to continue to do so.

 

Per a freelance PR guy who mass-blasts Texas newspapers, it's not like the SBC's sheets on this issue are a hell of a lot cleaner than those of Rome. He references this story by the Daily Mail, with a long quote tweet, which I shall break up into parts, starting with this:

Southern Baptist congregations shed nearly half a million members in 2022, the denomination's biggest one-year loss in more than a century, amid a damaging sex abuse scandal, new data show. Research from Lifeway Christian Resources shows that America's biggest Protestant and second-biggest Christian denomination lost 457,371 members to end the year with some 13.2 million members.

The Mail notes that part of the decline is due to the rise of the Nones, but much of it is due to the scandal within the scandal, namely the SBC's refusal to address the sex-abuse scandal.

First, the percentages? That's 3.5 percent in a year. Second, other  context? Yes, it's a fundagelical church, but it's also a mainline, or mainline-ish, denominational church. And, its grown had been declining for 15  years, per the chart at the piece.

 

The SBC hierarchy is probably afraid that clamping down on the problem might drive out more buck-passing old-timers.

And, losing other members, even while downplaying the losses, and ignoring the members who say this is why they left:

Scott McConnell, director of (Lifeway), which worked with SBC on the study, downplayed the losses, saying that many of last year's lost members had actually dropped out years ago and 'record keeping is finally catching up.' 

But on social media, former churchgoers posted about the declined, saying they were driven away by church leaders and its executive committee failing members by mishandling sexual abuse cases and mistreating victims and survivors. 

'The SBC still have not answered for this,' said a Pennsylvania-based Twitter user called Paul Young, who could not be verified. 

'That is why I left.'

There you go.

 

The shamelessness isn't limited to Slayton himself and the SBC, though, per this new site riffing on Texas Scorecard. Seriously, click that link, which I saw via Chris Tomlinson. Mucus, Christofascist Tim Dunn, nutbar-squared talking head Luke Macias, and, natch, Former Fetus Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland all come out as being as morally loathsome as Slaton. My one business email account got signed up for Macias' blasts and I referenced that as well as tagging him on Twitter. Crickets. I also said on Twitter that he looked like Mucus' bastard love child.