Cultivated Abuse: Dallas Pastors Have a Problem
If I were an apple grower, I'd declare a state of emergency in the Dallas orchard
Rick Pidcock wrote, “What’s happening to megachurch pastors in Dallas?” because three dirty-birds in as many weeks resigned from their pastorships, admitting to “falling short,” their word for pedophilia, theft, abuse, etc.
Falling short is a big-ish deal in an environment where size matters most. These three churches alone report a combined 155,000 members. Twenty-five of the largest megachurches in the world are in Dallas, a city of 1.3 million.
On Instagram I replied, “Seems like a lot of them like touching children, have been enabled to do so, and survivors are finding ways to hold them accountable when their institution will not. I wonder how many apples prove it’s an apple tree?”
Southern Baptists are known more for condemning women than protecting them. Holding abusers accountable isn’t their priority. Pastors who “fall short” are forgiven, often relocated, and permitted to couch their offenses in soft language like “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.” She was 12.
I’ve rasied four 12 year olds; 12 is a child. 12 is barely old enough to stay home alone. 12 is too young to drive. 12 may not have her period yet. When I was 12, I still secretly played with dolls.
Part of what’s happening in Dallas is the heavy-on-the-tree-juicy-fruit of Paul Pressler, who died the same week these birds started dropping. Pressler led the way to the conservative track the SBC chose. He also “fell short,” accused of abusing 7 boys. Nevertheless, he was a key player in Dallas, Paige Patterson’s theological seminary, and the Christian Nationalism threatening democracy today. I wrote about it in “What’s Mike Johnson Hiding?” Scroll to the bottom of that piece for the tangled web of evangelical fundamentalism.
“How you like them apples?” is a colloquial saying that makes light of a serious situtation in a mocking way. Matt Damon says it in Good Will Hunting when he flaunts he got Skylar’s phone number. It means you’re in good. You won. You’ve gained serious ground over your opponent and you’d like to rub it in their face a bit.
There’s an apple metaphor I learned in youth group at the church where these pastors used to visit for our annual Pastor’s Conference, First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Florida. I was thinking about apples when I commented on Rick’s post because the bad apple story comes up when Southern Baptists talk about bad pastors.
First Baptist really likes it’s metaphors. They became so fixiated on the idea of being a light to a darkened world that they built an actual, fully-operational lighthouse downtown, anchoring a parking garage, to draw attention to the church. The neighbors caught in the rotating glare at night had things to say. Had things to say in this instance is to protest what falling short is to pedophilia: an understatement.
Anyway, the apple metaphor goes like this: One bad apple spoils the whole bunch. If you allow a bad apple in your midst, you’ll “catch” how they live, adopting their choices and becoming contaminated. You’ll rot because of who you associate with. Sometimes there’s an apple that goes bad in a bunch of otherwise good fruit, because they’re bad on the inside no matter what, and we (as good fruit) are supposed to watch out for them.
This story was used in sermon after sermon to encourge us to make good friends who lived according to our Biblical values.
The science behind it involves a horomone apples emit as they ripen—ethylene—and how one apple giving off ethylene will cause an entire bushel to ripen and eventually rot.
The story has holes where little worms can crawl in. For example, the assumption that maturation and ripening is a bad thing. For example, the liklihood that even without external influence, apples ripen. And, for example, the fact that apples can rot right on the tree, because of their environment.
Gomerella Leaf Spot is a fungal infection that invades trees through the soil they’re grown in, the amount of moisture the tree receieves in a season, and the tempreture where it’s rooted. GLS starts as faint lavender bruises; yellowed, discolored leaves that prematurely fall off; and circlular lesions that rot the fruit before it ever makes it to a bushel basket. GLS is regional.
What’s happening to the fruit in Dallas?
Climatically, Dallas stays pretty hot and humid; it’s subtropical. They get about 80 days of rain a year there, which is more rain than Jacksonville. Every once in awhile, Dallas sees snow. Because the winters are mild, not every kind of apple thrives in Dallas: experts recommend Gala, Crispin, Pink Lady, and “Mollie’s Delicious”—a crispy, tart, heart-shaped apple descended from Golden Delicious. Incidentally, these varieties are also the most susceptible to Gomerella Leaf Rot. Isn’t that interesting?
In addition to the baddies who broke in June, along with Matt Chandler, Josh Howerton, and Joel Webbon, there’s another “bad apple” in Texas. In Seagoville, a suburb of Dallas, resides inmate Joshua Duggar at the FCI Federal Prison. Joshie’s appeal was recently rejected. Fundamentalist outcry at the time of his original sentencing was that Josh was a “single bad apple.” I took issue with that back then, and also in my book.
“The fundamentalists and evangelicals, now one and the same since the Trump administration, wanted to cast the fallen son of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting as a single bad apple. But he wasn’t a single bad apple—he was a product of his making. Duggar was the fruit of a high-control system that taught children from infancy to suppress their needs and conform or be beaten. It taught firstborn sons would become eventual patriarchs. It gave young children a premature and inappropriate amount of authority over their younger siblings. It taught men are entiteled to gratification and servitude from females who can’t say no either to men or to God. Josh Duggar registered no guilt for his crimes because since childhood, he’d grown up with an external moral compass, and a feeling of entitlement to women’s bodies.” — A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings
That bad apple thing keeps happening, and someone ought to look into why the apples in Texas have a such a blight. Clearly, there’s something going on with the trees.
Preach sister!! Texas is rotten to the core with evangelical bull^*%#