A ‘terrible situation’ for all involved

Until Holy Week brought news Steven Smith resigned, the last thing I read about the sex abuse scandal at Immanuel Baptist Church indicated the pastor was staying and the church was looking at changing to one Sunday morning service because so many of its members are bleeding out.

Investigations seem to be ongoing. I feel sure if anything else comes of those, Frank Lockwood will let us know.

I continue to be haunted by the specter of it all as I process my upbringing in the Southern Baptist Church, political awakening as I watched Christians I respected come under the thrall of Donald Trump, then suspect me of devil worship when I ran for office as a Democrat; and most recently, personally, and painfully, the implications of these things regarding my ideas about female submission, a Christian wife and mother’s role, and what is acceptable in a marriage.

There was a letter to the editor in February that struck a chord, and I find myself returning to it in this context. It was from a woman whose name I recognized from one of Lockwood’s earlier stories, “Prominent Immanuel Baptist members rallied behind former staffer accused of abuse.”

Lockwood reported that, when the previous Immanuel Baptist associate pastor was arrested for sexual assault in 2018, “former Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Beth Coulson and her husband, deacon Mike Coulson, alerted friends to the ‘terrible situation’ faced by the former staffer, Mark Aderholt, and urged them to contribute to help pay his family’s expenses ‘if the Lord is directing you to help.’” The email touted a special “giving tool” for donations for Aderholt, and said, “Mike and I are totally supportive of Mark and his family as are many others.”

Here is her letter to the editor: “As we approach the anniversary of the tornado that violently hit Little Rock last March, I am reminded that my church, Immanuel Baptist Church, was at the center of the city helping those in need. Hundreds of our members worked tirelessly for days in the City Center helping those displaced and in need. We walked through neighborhoods giving out water, food, boxes and clothes, ministering to anyone in need. This is my Immanuel, not the one a lone Democrat-Gazette reporter has chosen to attack.

“I have attended Immanuel since I was two weeks old and am almost 70, and am proud to support our wonderful pastor who preaches God’s word so humbly. As an attorney for 48 years, and a past municipal, juvenile and Arkansas Court of Appeals judge, I’ve had years of experience dealing with victims and families. Every situation is painful, different and private to families. Mistakes are often made in handling delicate situations, but honest people try to do their best. I am thankful for our pastor, his wife and his precious family. I am thankful for the vast majority of our members standing strongly behind him. I am thankful for the countless kind comments I’ve received from folks all over our community about the good work Immanuel is doing and how we are standing tall against the devil. Immanuel will continue to do so.”

There are many things I could say about this letter. And I might as well say that I find it abhorrent. Sanctimonious. Egregious in its jab at the reporter and far worse in its omission of responsibility toward the abused. In some very real ways, nothing else it says even matters considering that, just as for whatever extenuating factors may exist, Immanuel has lost any witness it had in Little Rock.

But for the purposes of this column I want to use a different lens, which is empathy with Ms. Coulson, and focus on a few specifics in the letter that speak to the phenomenon of growing up female and Southern Baptist. I believe I understand some of where she is coming from because I also come from those two places. And recognizing the empathy I feel for her in this situation indicates the problems in the SBC are even uglier, even more profound, than I imagined.

First is the fact that this woman is nearly 70 and has attended Immanuel Baptist since she was two weeks old. Second, she is a lawyer and judge, with the high level of education these professions require, and 48 years of experience. Finally, there is the clear agony she feels over her church, which she knows to be a center of outreach and service to those in need, being perceived as a place that harbors criminal behavior.

She backs the pastor who covered up allegations of sex abuse and seems to say he, and I guess others involved, did their best. She avoids admitting any mistakes were made but acknowledges they often happen “in handling delicate situations,” artful diction reminiscent of Bill Clinton, who I read appointed her to the judgeship.

And the conclusion she draws is that “standing strongly” behind the pastor who hid the truth about a possible sex crime is “standing tall against the devil.”

How does an intelligent person trained in critical thinking and logic—as law school graduates are— deduce this?

I think it is a question that mystifies non-evangelicals regarding many positions Southern Baptists construe. Perhaps it even enables them to write Southern Baptists off as stupid or evil, and some are.

But I do not believe that is true of most Southern Baptists, based on personal experience. I too attended a Southern Baptist church from the time I was a fetus. I too am a highly trained professional in a field that requires constant critical thinking and communication with all kinds of people. I too loved my church and deeply identified—still identify—with the good it represents in the world. The ministry to those in need. The things I learned about Jesus and the Bible that formed my foundation; a foundation that remains firm even as the life I built is under renovation.

I cannot say whether this woman who defends her church and pastor who covered up so much shares anything in common with me. But what I can say is this: Until the SBC embraced Trump I had no inkling that could happen—I believed our standards of virtue too high.

Because my parents were wonderful, and I had many Sunday School teachers and others in my life who instilled Jesus’ love in me, I never imagined the toxic nature of some Southern Baptist doctrine to be far-reaching, certainly not to the point it affected me. I was always taught to think for myself and navigate my own relationship with God.

Because I believed it a biblical directive, I accepted the idea that women were of equal worth as human beings but should submit to men’s authority, and aspired to do this in my family and church, even as I excelled in leadership outside those places. I felt valued by my church community until so many pledged their allegiance to Trump and subsequently “could not vote for a Demon-rat,” even a local one. Even me.

It dawns on me that the break with my church after that experience was a response to much deeper disease, though I didn’t see it then. Now, however, I believe the rot inside the SBC that could bring its members to elect a man who brags about sexual assault extends to the rot in me, and cultivated the wrong ideas I had about marriage.

It is the same rot in anyone who could justify protecting an abuser—supporting him at the expense of actual and potential victims—in the name of Christian virtue. I know this probably makes no sense to a non-evangelical who sees it written down.

But when pleasing God means trusting male leadership over your own judgment from the moment you are born into a church, things like this happen. Even to people who truly long to follow Jesus. Maybe especially those.