15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Frightening, heart breaking, gripping, and an incredibly thorough account, June 6, 2009
This review is from: This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang (Paperback)
This book is a "must read" for survivors of clergy abuse and for all professing Christians who believe in the congregational style of church government stipulated by Baptist denominations. Without self pity or self indulgence, Christa Brown maps out exactly how she was manipulated as an innocent, guileless teenager into becoming the obedient, submissive sexual partner to a Southern Baptist youth pastor who continually used Scripture to assure her that this was God's will for her, and who answered her doubts and questions by demanding that she needed to trust God.
I wish that Christa's story were a new story or a rare story, but it is not. It has been more than eight years since I started advocating for adults who are childhood victims of Christian Fundamentalist clergy abuse (mostly Independent Baptist), and I have seen stories similar to this so many times that I no longer count them. But Christa's account is clear, vivid, even suspenseful at times, as another reviewer noted.
She breaks her book into five parts, but for me it was really two basic parts: the abuse, and then her realization and confrontation of what happened to her. It's in this second half that Christa Brown's account really launches into something new for abuse survivors and those who are concerned about the growing incidents of clergy sex abuse in Baptist and Evangelical denominations.
A lawyer by profession, Christa maps out and documents, step by step, in every corner where she searched for honesty, compassion, biblical church discipline, and accountability of ministers in the Southern Baptist Convention, the utter indifference of the SBC and the outright contempt it has demonstrated for victims of abuse by its own clergy.
The level of evidence is amazing, and Christa Brown ably proves that at the local, state, regional, and national level, the Southern Baptist Convention is simply not going to act in obedience to the Bible and in conformity to the nature of Christ to confront, rebuke, and expel these pastors who commit sins of unspeakable perversion.
In my own experience, I have learned that there are two topics Baptists never preach on: child abuse, and their own need to repent of any sin, ever. It is an unspoken doctrine in the SBC that other people abuse children, not them, and that other people need to repent of sin, not them.
My only point of disagreement with Christa Brown, a woman I profoundly respect and am indebted to for her supportiveness of my work with clergy abuse victims, is the concluding sections of the book. I understand that victims of clergy abuse have had their faith taken from them. I would urge all victims of Southern Baptist Clergy abuse and Christian Fundamentalist clergy abuse, to throw out the Disney version of God and Christ that these corrupt denominations push. The greatest blasphemy of these religions is that they have turned the Lord God of Heaven into a corporate president, and they have made the Lord Jesus Christ a Republican, and with that corrupted view of deity, they have directed their branch of Christianity towards materialistic, shallow, banal, vengeful, military, and political pursuits.
Still, I believe that, over time, the suffering saints who have been sexually abused by corrupt clergy will unlearn, learn, and relearn Jesus Christ and have joy in Him, our Savior. That is my prayer.
Read this book!
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazing wake-up call for churchgoers everywhere, June 8, 2009
This review is from: This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang (Paperback)
Christa Brown's story is an amazing wake-up call to those who have children in a Baptist church, and who mistakenly think their children are safe there. Brown's account of her own experience with a sexual predator masquerading as a minister is unsettling enough, but the more disturbing story is the response of the Southern Baptist convention. First there was denial, and then an elaborate cover-up. Even while her predator's name sat in a file of "known offenders" at Baptist headquarters in Texas, he was able to continue working in children's ministry in Florida. Instead of responding gratefully to the revelation that a predator was in their ranks, as any church member and every parent would expect of their church, the entire Baptist machinery strived to silence Brown. Baptist leaders prayed not for guidance, but prayed that Brown would just go away. Even if you are not a Baptist believer, this book is a fascinating insight into the inner workings of a powerful religious machine. And if you think the Catholic Church cover-up of abusive priests was unique to the Catholic faith, and if you thought that such a thing could never occur in the Baptist church, think again.
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