Patriarchy and purity culture combine to silence women in the Southern Baptist Convention - and are
blocking efforts to address the sexual abuse scandal
A devastating yearlong investigation into the executive committee of the largest conservative evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, has documented widespread claims of sex abuse including accusations of rape, cover-ups and gross mistreatment of women seeking justice.
In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News partnered on a series of investigative reports on sexual misconduct by Southern Baptists with formal church roles. Subsequently, the annual meeting of the SBC held in June 2021 voted to authorize an investigations firm, Guidepost Solutions, to conduct an independent probe of its executive committee and its handling of sex abuse. The report and the list of alleged offenders has recently been made public.
I am a scholar of evangelicalism, gender and American culture, and over several years of my research I have seen how deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism force women to stay silent. In researching my two books, Evangelical Christian Women and Building Gods Kingdom, I found how structures of patriarchy force women to stay silent.
These deeply ingrained aspects of conservative white evangelicalism include complementarianism, or the patriarchal view that God gives authority to men and requires submission from women, and purity culture, an extreme version of sexual abstinence.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/patriarchy-purity-culture-combine-silence-122840118.html