Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Since 1998, around 380 perpetrators within the SBC had left a trail of more than 700 victims. In the wake of these revelations, a number of SBC leaders denied collective culpability, drawing attention to the autonomy afforded local churches within the SBC. Yet the SBC had a record of promptly “removing from fellowship” churches that hired female pastors, even as they appeared unable to discipline those that hired known sex offenders. Many victims had been urged to forgive their abusers, and it was victims, rather than predators, who frequently ended up shunned by their churches. As one SBC victim testified, the crisis of abuse in the church was “an epidemic powered by a culture of our own making.”34