Leaders were correctly drawing direct connections between gossip and their own potential downfalls and preemptively demonizing it to protect themselves. This seems to be the heart of the Evangelical church’s insistence that gossip be quashed at every level on every topic. If gossip always distorted the truth, then their crusade would make perfect sense. But anyone privy to gossip that matters knows that often the only truth that exists can be found in the gossip mills because it is often the only kind of power a marginalized or subjugated group can grab hold of.
