What Next: Abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention

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Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.6 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Department of Justice announced this month that they were investigating allegations that leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention mishandled sexual abuse accusations for decades. How have abusers exploited the church’s decentralized structure and notions of forgiveness to avoid accountability, and how have church teachings about sexuality and “purity culture” allowed the abuse to continue? Guest: Robert Downen, reporter at the Houston Chronicle. Jules Woodson, co-Founder & COO of Help;Hear;Heal, a nonprofit providing therapy funding for survivors of sexual abuse. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:23.8	Available November 28th on PC and Mac, learn more at worldofwarcraft.com.
0:32.1	Hi listeners, today's episode contains descriptions of sexual assault.
0:37.0	At the end of the show, we'll give you a resource in case you or someone you love needs some support.
0:46.9	When Jules Woodson was growing up in the 80s and 90s, her church was everything.
0:53.4	The church was my family outside of my biological family.
1:00.3	I was basically born into the church.
1:05.1	Her family moved to the Woodlands, Texas when she was five and joined a local Baptist church,
1:10.2	Woodlands Parkway.
1:11.6	It was part of the Southern Baptist Convention, also known as the SPC, the largest Protestant
1:16.7	denomination in the US, and one of the most conservative.
1:20.7	When Jules was 14, a new youth pastor, Andy Savage joined Woodlands Parkway.
1:26.2	Her mom was on the committee who picked him.
1:29.2	Here we have this energetic, charismatic youth pastor coming on who is going to grow
1:36.3	the youth group, and that was just exciting.
1:39.1	And of course, I wanted to please him.
1:43.2	I definitely looked up to him as a role model, as a leader.
1:48.7	The youth group spent a ton of time together, even when there were no organized events.
	...

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