“I am not the Catholic can­di­date for pres­i­dent. I am the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty’s can­di­date for pres­i­dent, who hap­pens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on pub­lic mat­ters, and the church does not speak for me” Those were the kinds of words John F. Kennedy had to use when run­ning for the pres­i­dent in 1960. Words that feel almost quaint in 2023. Painful­ly quaint, as we’re going to see in this post.

Because as we’ve seen, Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism isn’t sim­ply on the rise in the Unit­ed States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the decades long efforts of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the myr­i­ad of groups oper­at­ing under its theo­crat­ic umbrel­la. The Supreme Court is dom­i­nat­ed by a hard right major­i­ty like­ly to be in place for decades to come at the same time Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is whol­ly main­stream inside the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty. We even have the CNP’s planned mass purges — start­ing with the gov­ern­ment but not end­ing there — under the ‘Sched­ule F’/Project 2025 label that is being open­ly report­ed and dis­cussed in the news. The mask dropped a while ago.

That’s all part of the grim con­text sur­round­ing a series of reports around the new Speak­er of the House, Mike John­son. The kind of reports that should raise seri­ous ques­tions about just how much influ­ence the lead­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist hold over new Speak­er of the House.

For starters, the whole intra-par­ty ker­fuf­fle that result­ed in Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as speak­er appears to have the CNP’s fin­ger­prints all over it. Recall how it was the CNP-backed Free­dom Cau­cus that orches­trat­ed the giant intra-par­ty show­down over Kevin McCarthy’s speak­er­ship nom­i­na­tion back in Jan­u­ary with exten­sive CNP sup­port. Flash for­ward to the new show­down over the Speak­er­ship, and it was again the Free­dom Cau­cus lead­ing ‘anti-estab­lish­ment’ oppo­si­tion, with CNP affil­i­ates like Amy Kre­mer and Russ Vought again play­ing a sup­port­ing role. And at the end of it all, back­bencher Mike John­son emerges as the par­ty’s con­sen­sus can­di­date with unan­i­mous par­ty sup­port. Some­one who hap­pened to call CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford his men­tor dur­ing an Octo­ber 2019 speach at a CNP con­fer­ence. John­son isn’t real­ly hid­ing his theo­crat­ic sen­ti­ments.

But he has­n’t exact­ly adver­tised the full scope of his com­mit­ment to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism either. But as we’re going to see, he’s com­mit­ted and he’s far from alone. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is the main­stream ide­ol­o­gy gov­ern­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty in 2023. Mike John­son’s Speak­er­ship is mere­ly one of its many man­i­fes­ta­tions. So when we got reports about the gen­uine­ly creepy “Covenant Eyes” spy­ware that John­son proud­ly installed on his phone, we should prob­a­bly start ask­ing ques­tions about who exact­ly Mike John­son is answer­ing to in his role as House Speak­er. Spy­ware that tracks all of the web­sites he vis­its, search­es he makes, and even takes screen­shots and tends them back to ‘Covenant Eyes’, where any signs of way­ward activ­i­ty (like search­ing for LGBTQ con­tent) will be report­ed to John­son’s “Account­abil­i­ty Part­ner”, who hap­pens to be his adopt­ed son.

Yes, the new Speak­er of the House put some sort of super-spy­ware on his phone that enforces ‘Chris­t­ian’ behav­ior. And that’s why, while it was absurd to think JFK was tak­ing order from the Pope, these kinds of ques­tions aren’t so absurd when it comes to politi­cians like Mike John­son. Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is, after all, about the for­mal end­ing of the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State and the trans­fer of real polit­i­cal pow­er into the church­es. Not all church­es, mind you. Spe­cif­ic church­es deemed to be the ves­sels of the theo­crat­ic ideals that under­pin the found­ing of the Unit­ed States are to receive the sup­port of the state. And, lo and behold, those spe­cif­ic church­es tend to be the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian church­es under the sway of the CNP net­work of lead­ers.

And as we should expect at this point, the par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual who deter­mines this ‘authen­tic the­ol­o­gy’ for church­es in the Unit­ed States is the same fig­ure who has long been the go-to pseu­do-his­to­ri­an for this move­ment: David Bar­ton. As we saw, Bar­ton has long been the defin­ing fig­ure for the CNP-backed his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism designed to under­mine the Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. And as we’re going to see below, Bar­ton’s vision for end­ing that sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is on the cusp of becom­ing a real­i­ty in his home state of Texas, thanks, in part to recent Supreme Court rul­ings that hint at a much greater will­ing­ness of the con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court major­i­ty to go much fur­ther in mak­ing this vision a real­i­ty. Worse, the plan is make Texas a tem­plate for the rest of the nation. With the Texas GOP firm­ly behind Bar­ton, it’s just a mat­ter of time. Things are in motion.

So it should come as no sur­prise to learn about anoth­er David Bar­ton super-fan: Mike John­son. Yes, it was just one day after John­son won the Speak­er­ship that Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cus­sion staffing with John­son, a long­time ally of Bar­ton. John­son even recent­ly spoke at an event for Bar­ton’s Wall­builders group where he praised Bar­ton’s “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do.”

Chill­ing words to hear from the new Speak­er, but not sur­pris­ing. John­son worked as the attor­ney and spokesper­son for the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF). Recall how the ADF received large dona­tions from the Bet­sy DeVos and Erik Prince and fun­neled that mon­ey into sup­port­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments in Europe and backed a 2016 Belize law that pun­ished homo­sex­u­al sex with 10 years in prison. Also recall how the ADF has been play­ing a major behind the scenes roll in shap­ing the cur­rent man­u­fac­tured anti-trans pan­ic. At the same time, the ADF shows up on the list of orga­ni­za­tions involved with the Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. CNP mem­ber Michael Far­ris, who co-found­ed the “Con­ven­tion of States” project designed to over­haul the Con­sti­tu­tion — has served as the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the ADF. John­son and Bar­ton have been oper­at­ing in the same CNP-run cir­cles for years. Of course Bar­ton has had a pro­found influ­ence on John­son’s life. They’re basi­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist co-work­ers.

All in all, it’s high­ly dis­turb­ing con­text for the new Speak­er. But it gets worse. As usu­al. Because as we’re going to also see, the par­tic­u­lar the­o­log­i­cal insti­tu­tion most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Bar­ton’s work — the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion — has an ongo­ing mega-scan­dal of the kind of nature that is going to be increas­ing impor­tant to under­stand as this move­ment accrues more and more very real polit­i­cal pow­er over the lives of the US pop­u­la­tion. To put it blunt­ly, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) — a denom­i­na­tion con­sist­ing of rough­ly 47,000 church­es — has a mas­sive sex­u­al abuse prob­lem. A large­ly unchecked prob­lem that has been ram­pant for decades thanks, in part, to the near com­plete lack of action of the part of the SBC lead­er­ship. When actions have been tak­en by the SBC lead­er­ship, they’ve typ­i­cal­ly been to cov­er up or deny the alle­ga­tions. It’s the kind of sys­tem­at­ic abuse of pow­er that should serve as a major warn­ing for what’s in store for the rest of US soci­ety as the strain of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism cham­pi­oned by the SBC con­tin­ues its polit­i­cal ascent.

Oh, and it turns out we’re learn­ing a lot about this his­toric of abuse and cov­er up thanks to an ongo­ing law­suit filed against a num­ber of SBC lead­ers and insti­tu­tions. The law­suit cen­ters around decades of abuse by Paul Pressler, a promi­nent mem­ber of the CNP and CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990. Pressler has been instru­men­tal in push­ing the SBC’s 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

This isn’t to say that the ascent of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism will nec­es­sar­i­ly bring wide­spread unchecked sex­u­al assaults on the rest of soci­ety. But it’s hard to ignore the deep tol­er­ance for sys­temic abus­es by the same lead­ers who per­son­i­fy the strains of Chris­tian­i­ty Bar­ton, John­son, and the rest of their Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist allies are aggres­sive­ly car­ry­ing out this theo­crat­ic pow­er grab. Lead­ers like Ed Young of the South­ern Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton. The Unit­ed States is in the midst of a theo­crat­ic pow­er grab decades in the mak­ing thanks to the exten­sive full-spec­trum work of the CNP’s pow­er­ful mem­ber­ship. And as we’re going to see, the peo­ple involved with the sys­temic cov­er up of these abus­es in the SBC com­mu­ni­ty includes one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er.

And bring­ing it all full cir­cle: there’s a rather amus­ing yet dis­turb­ing chap­ter of Mike John­son’s career as a Chris­t­ian legal activist that is only going to more and more amus­ing and/or dis­turb­ing as the case against Pressler plays out. It turns out Mike John­son was recruit­ed to be the dean of a new­ly form­ing Chris­t­ian law school back in 2010. Part of John­son’s role was to raise the funds need­ed to start the school. The prob­lem is some­one was embez­zling those fund. The school was ulti­mate­ly nev­er start­ed and John­son returned to his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal activism in 2012. The name of that school that nev­er was? The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law.

Here’s a quick review of the arti­cle excerpts we’re going to be review­ing in this post:

* Novem­ber 5, 2023: Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video

It’s shock­ing. Except not real­ly. The new Speak­er of the House actu­al­ly bragged about how he had the “Covenant Eyes” soft­ware installed on his phone, along with his son’s phone. That way, they could keep each oth­er ‘account­able’ by get­ting updates house should the oth­er brows­er any unac­cept­able web­sites or pornog­ra­phy. In oth­er words, the new Speak­er of the House installed theo­crat­ic spy­ware on his phone.

* Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022: The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps

You can call it ‘spy­ware’. But as this WIRED arti­cle warns, per­haps ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ is a more apt descrip­tion of the kind of app Mike John­son has run­ning on his phone. An app that does­n’t just send warn­ings about the view­ing of pornog­ra­phy. It mon­i­tors almost every­thing you do on your phone and sends that data back to the com­pa­ny. And while users are allowed to select their own per­son­al “account­abil­i­ty bud­dy” who will receive noti­fi­ca­tions of any ‘impure’ actions, the real­i­ty is that church lead­ers are fre­quent­ly the ones tapped to play that ‘bud­dy’ role, which has result­ed in sto­ries like teens get­ting ques­tioned by church elders over activ­i­ties like read­ing an arti­cle about athe­ism. It’s app-pow­ered ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’, and there­fore par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with SBC church­es like Gra­ce­point, where ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ is heav­i­ly prac­ticed.

* Novem­ber 3, 2023: Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.

For all the uproar over Mike John­son’s anti-porn ‘shame­ware’, there was a far more dis­turb­ing sto­ry about the new Speak­er’s theo­crat­ic ori­en­ta­tion. It turns out Mike John­son is a huge fan of David Bar­ton. He even recent­ly declared Bar­ton’s “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do” as an event put on by Bar­ton’s Wall­Builders orga­ni­za­tion. And with Texas Repub­li­cans already on board with Bar­ton’s agen­da too, it’s easy to see why Texas is poised to become the Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism tem­plate for the rest of the nation. Bar­ton is a super­star among Texas Repub­li­cans, where his brand of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is already the main­stream.

* May 4, 2023: Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.

With the Texas Repub­li­cans already ful­ly embrace David Bar­ton’s brand of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, what’s stand­ing their in way? Well, a lot less than before thanks to a series of recent Supreme Court rul­ings. In 2020, the court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Mon­tana woman who argued that her state’s Depart­ment of Rev­enue improp­er­ly barred her from using a tax-cred­it schol­ar­ship at a Chris­t­ian school. And in 2022, the court sim­i­lar­ly ruled that Maine could not bar reli­gious insti­tu­tions from pub­lic fund­ing. It’s reminder that tear­ing down the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is unlike­ly to come in a sin­gle blow. It will be a death by a thou­sand cuts. And with Texas Repub­li­cans active­ly work­ing on legal chal­lenges to the laws cur­rent­ly block­ing tax exempt enti­ties like church­es from engag­ing in par­ti­san activ­i­ty, it appears to be just a mat­ter of time before the Supreme Court deliv­ers anoth­er one of those cuts.

* Novem­ber 1, 2023: Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

And while Mike John­son’s improb­a­ble Speak­er­ship might seem like the improb­a­ble rise of a close Bar­ton ally, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that it’s not actu­al­ly that improb­a­ble to find out a Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House is a big Bar­ton fan. For­mer Speak­er Paul Ryan once said of Bar­ton, “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving.” Ryan went on to elab­o­rate that, because of Barton’s teach­ings, Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment that put restric­tions on the polit­i­cal activ­i­ties of pas­tors from their pul­pits, which has done so much dam­age to Amer­i­can cul­ture. So what appears to be a final push tak­ing place now to the end the restric­tions on church­es engag­ing in direct polit­i­cal action is the cul­mi­na­tion of long ongo­ing efforts.

* May 23, 2016: South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports

And as a reminder that we can’t real­ly sep­a­rate the cur­rent remark­able pow­er held by the move­ment from the impact of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and the pro­found role it played in reshap­ing the Supreme Court, it’s worth tak­ing a lit­tle at a fas­ci­nat­ing May 2016 arti­cle describ­ing plans for a del­e­ga­tion of lead­ers — includ­ing many SBC lead­ers — who were plan­ning on meet­ing then-can­di­date Trump. The del­e­gat­ed includ­ed:
* CNP Found­ing Mem­ber James Dob­son
* CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed
* CNP mem­ber Pen­ny Nance
* CNP Exec­u­tive Direc­to Bob McEwen
* CNP mem­ber Tim Wild­mon
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP VP start­ing in 2020) Kel­ly Shack­elford, who also hap­pens to be Mike John­son’s men­tor.
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP Pres­i­dent in 2018) Tony Perkins
* CNP mem­ber Bill Dal­las

Ed Young, long­stand­ing past of South Bap­tist Church Hous­ton and a major leader in the SBC, also attend­ed. In oth­er words, he’s obvi­ous­ly very close­ly tied to the CNP.

* March 27, 2023: Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner

And now we get to the oth­er chap­ter in this sto­ry. The ongo­ing sex­u­al abuse mega-scan­dal that con­tin­ues to rock the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. A mega-scan­dal that involves hun­dreds of fig­ures — pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers — inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty and which includes some extreme­ly promi­nent fig­ures. In par­tic­u­lar, Paul Pressler. Con­sid­ered one of the key fig­ures in the push to get to SBC to adopt Bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ism in the 80s and 90s, Pressler has become one of those peo­ple whose endorse­ment aspir­ing Repub­li­cans seek out. Long an impor­tant fig­ure in the CNP’s lead­er­ship, Pressler was the CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990. And a ser­i­al sex­u­al abuser of young men and teenage boys going back to at least 1978. And with the SBC lead­er­ship seem­ing­ly run­ning cov­er for Pressler the whole time. But, Pressler’s sex­u­al abuse did­n’t just take place with­in his role as an SBC youth pas­tor. A for­mer judge, Pressler was a part­ner in the law firm Wood­fill & Pressler, LLP, with fel­low Texas con­ser­v­a­tive activist Jared Wood­fill. It turns out Pressler was­n’t paid a salary for his work at the law firm. Instead, he was paid in the form of young male per­son­al assis­tants who would ‘assist the fam­i­ly’ at his home. And, yes, mul­ti­ple for­mer assis­tants have come for­ward alleg­ing abus­es. It’s far from the only sto­ry involv­ing sys­temic sex­u­al abuse and coverup inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. But it’s a big one, and with a law­suit still play­ing out it’s the kind of sto­ry that promis­es to deliv­er more and more sor­did details.

* Feb­ru­ary 10, 2023: Abuse of Faith

Next, we’re going to look at Part 1 of an explo­sive 6 Part inves­tiga­tive series pub­lished ear­li­er this year by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle. In an inves­ti­ga­tion that exam­ined court records, crim­i­nal records, and hun­dreds of inter­views describ­ing how hun­dreds of known abusers — some con­vict­ed sex offend­ers — were rou­tine­ly allowed into posi­tions of pow­er and author­i­ty inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty. And this was hap­pen­ing with the full aware­ness of SBC lead­er­ship — includ­ing fig­ures like Ed Young and CNP mem­ber Paige Pat­ter­son — who con­sis­tent­ly fell back on a doc­trine of ‘local church auton­o­my’ as an excuse for doing noth­ing. And if some­thing was done, it was typ­i­cal­ly some sort of cov­er up.

* April 20, 2023: SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing

While Rollins’s law­suit against Pressler and the SBC lead­er­ship is still ongo­ing, there was a set­tle­ment announced: Paige Pat­ter­son set­tle with Rollins back in April. The terms of the set­tle­ment have not been dis­closed. But this would mark at least the sec­ond instance we know of where Rollins brought a law­suit involv­ing Pressler that result in an undis­closed set­tle­ment.

* Octo­ber 31, 2023: House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors

Final­ly, a look back at a inter­est­ing chap­ter in Mike John­son’s Chris­t­ian activism legal career that is all the more inter­est­ing in light of the ongo­ing law­suits against Pressler and his SBC enablers. It turns out John­son was hired to be the dean of new­ly formed Chris­t­ian law school back in 2010. Except it nev­er actu­al­ly opened due to finan­cial issues (includ­ing pos­si­ble embez­zle­ment) and John­son left that role in 2012 to return to his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal career. The school was to be called the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law.

Mike Johnson Has Nothing to Hide...At Least Not from the Owners of Covenant Eyes

Ok, start­ing off, let’s take a look at a recent Rolling Stone arti­cle that asks the ques­tion: so what are the impli­ca­tions of the Speak­er of the House installing an app on his phone that sends almost every­thing he does to the ‘Covenant Eyes” com­pa­ny? It’s the kind of dis­turb­ing ques­tion we should­n’t real­ly have to ask. But we have to ask it. And while the con­cerns obvi­ous­ly include all sorts of gov­ern­ment-relat­ed con­cerns about the leak­ing of impor­tant gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion to this com­pa­ny (and any­one else they decide to share the info with), there’s also the oth­er obvi­ous con­cern here: the fact that the new Speak­er of the House is an active mem­ber of a hyper-con­trol­ling reli­gious sect that seeks to wield cult-like con­trol over the lives of its fol­low­ers:

The Rolling Stones

Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video

“I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate,” Speak­er of the House says of his “account­abil­i­ty part­ner”

By Daniel Kreps
Novem­ber 5, 2023

Speak­er of the House Mike John­son admit­ted that he and his son mon­i­tored each other’s porn intake in a resur­faced clip from 2022.

Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on the “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” at Ben­ton, Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana rep­re­sen­ta­tive talked about how he installed “account­abil­i­ty soft­ware” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from inter­net porn and oth­er unsa­vory web­sites.

“It scans all the activ­i­ty on your phone, or your devices, your lap­top, what have you; we do all of it,” John­son told the pan­el about the app.

“It sends a report to your account­abil­i­ty part­ner. My account­abil­i­ty part­ner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If any­thing objec­tion­able comes up, your account­abil­i­ty part­ner gets an imme­di­ate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”

COMPROMISE ALERT: Speak­er Mike John­son uses soft­ware Covenant Eyes (learned about at a Promise Keep­ers retreat) that scans all his elec­tron­ic devices & gives a week­ly report an “account­abil­i­ty part­ner” his 17 yr old son (so basi­cal­ly don’t watch porn or your son/dad will know??) pic.twitter.com/SSWpB9IIDB

— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) Octo­ber 31, 2023

...

“A US Con­gress­man is allow­ing a 3rd Par­ty tech com­pa­ny to scan ALL of his elec­tron­ic devices dai­ly and then upload­ing reports to his son about what he’s watch­ing or not watch­ing….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is access­ing that data?”

Since he was elect­ed Speak­er of the House in Octo­ber, Johnson’s his­to­ry as a faith-obsessed, elec­tion-deny­ing, far-right Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist has come under the micro­scope, from his time with the anti-LBGTQ orga­ni­za­tion Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom to his claim that school shoot­ings could be blamed on abor­tion and teach­ing evo­lu­tion.

In an inter­view Sun­day morn­ing on Fox News, John­son was asked about his his­to­ry on abor­tion, includ­ing claims that he was opposed to con­tra­cep­tion and IVF treat­ment. “I’m pro-life. I’ve said very clear­ly, I’m a Bible-believ­ing Chris­t­ian, I believe in the sanc­ti­ty of every sin­gle human life,” John­son said, but added, “I’ve not brought for­ward any mea­sure to address any of those issues.” How­ev­er, he didn’t deny whether he would vote against con­tra­cep­tion when the time comes.

Wow. Mike John­son on Fox News Sun­day does­n’t rule out vot­ing against access to con­tra­cep­tion but then says “I real­ly don’t remem­ber any of those mea­sures” when asked about his past votes against repro­duc­tive health care pic.twitter.com/4pDl3BGGD3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) Novem­ber 5, 2023

———–

“Mike John­son Admits He and His Son Mon­i­tor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resur­faced Video” By Daniel Kreps; The Rolling Stones; 11/05/2023

“Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on the “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” at Ben­ton, Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church — unearthed by X user Receipt Maven last week — the Louisiana rep­re­sen­ta­tive talked about how he installed “account­abil­i­ty soft­ware” called Covenant Eyes on his devices in order to abstain from inter­net porn and oth­er unsa­vory web­sites.”

Yes, dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk at Louisiana’s Cypress Bap­tist Church, the new Speak­er of the House open­ly bragged about using the “Covenant Eyes” app so he and his son can be “account­abil­i­ty part­ners”. Except Mike John­son isn’t just shar­ing all of this sen­si­tive data with his son (and vice ver­sa). He’s shar­ing it with the Covenant Eyes com­pa­ny too. Basi­cal­ly all of the data gen­er­at­ed by his phone is poten­tial­ly sent to this creepy com­pa­ny:

...
“It scans all the activ­i­ty on your phone, or your devices, your lap­top, what have you; we do all of it,” John­son told the pan­el about the app.

“It sends a report to your account­abil­i­ty part­ner. My account­abil­i­ty part­ner right now is Jack, my son. He’s 17. So he and I get a report about all the things that are on our phones, all of our devices, once a week. If any­thing objec­tion­able comes up, your account­abil­i­ty part­ner gets an imme­di­ate notice. I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate.”

...

“A US Con­gress­man is allow­ing a 3rd Par­ty tech com­pa­ny to scan ALL of his elec­tron­ic devices dai­ly and then upload­ing reports to his son about what he’s watch­ing or not watch­ing….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is access­ing that data?”
...

Now why did the top­ic of the Con­venant Eyes app come up dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk at a Bap­tist Church? Well, as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 2022 WIRED arti­cle, the Covenant Eyes app was actu­al­ly pulled from both the Google app store after WIRED report­ed on the incred­i­ble amount of infor­ma­tion being passed along to these third-par­ty com­pa­nies via these apps. Covenant Eyes has sub­se­quent­ly been restored to Google’s app store back in March. So that was pre­sum­ably part of why it came up dur­ing a “War on Tech­nol­o­gy” talk.

But as we’re also going to see, it appears that Covenant Eyes is par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with the South­ern Bap­tist church­es. That includes Gra­ce­point, a Cal­i­for­nia-based min­istry that focus­es on col­lege cam­pus­es and claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the US. Impor­tant­ly, Gra­ce­point hails prac­tices the kind of ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ or ‘shep­herd­ing’ prac­tices many for­mer mem­bers describe as cultish. This is a good time to recall how the “Peo­ple of Praise” Catholic com­mu­ni­ty that Supreme Court Jus­tice Amy Coney-Bar­rett hails from has also been accused of engag­ing in sim­i­lar cult-like ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ prac­tices.

Gra­ce­point’s ‘ser­vices’ include help­ing stu­dents secure afford­able apart­ments, and that’s where the creepi­ness of this sto­ry gets extra inter­est­ing. Because, based on this report, installing Covenant Eyes on their phones is some­thing Gra­ce­point asks of the stu­dents in its min­istry. Stu­dents poten­tial­ly receiv­ing assis­tance, like Grant Hao-Wei Lin who recounts the dis­turb­ing expe­ri­ences he had with the Covenant Eyes soft­ware and his church lead­er­ship. With­in a month of installing the app, Hao-Wei Lin start­ed start­ed receiv­ing emails from his church leader about the things he had viewed online. As Hao-Wei Lin describes, he did­n’t real­ly think he was in a posi­tion to refuse the Covenant Eyes app giv­en all the stu­dent assis­tance he was get­ting from Gra­ce­point. And Hao-Wei Lin’s sto­ry is just one exam­ple of a rapid­ly grow­ing ‘shame­ware’ app indus­try that is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty in reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties. A trend that includes church lead­ers typ­i­cal­ly end­ing up as the ‘account­abil­i­ty part­ner’ for church mem­bers.

And while the Covenant Eyes and sim­i­lar apps claim to be exclu­sive­ly focused on fight­ing pornog­ra­phy, it’s capa­ble of col­lect­ing a lot more infor­ma­tion, includ­ing what web­sites you vis­it or social media pages vis­it­ed. As one for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­ber put it, “It’s real­ly not about pornography...It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” This same per­son recounts, “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism.” Yes, church lead­ers are able to get noti­fied any time one of their ‘flock’ reads some­thing unap­proved. That’s the top-down lev­el of con­trol being tech­no­log­i­cal­ly enabled here.

It’s that much broad­er, and deep­er, pow­er grab over the per­son­al lives of the mem­bers of these com­mu­ni­ties that’s a big part of the sto­ry here. Because as we’re also going to see in the fol­low­ing arti­cles, when we’re talk­ing about the lead­er­ship of the South­ern Bap­tist Church com­mu­ni­ty, we are talk­ing about a major ele­ment of the Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States, with one CNP mem­ber after anoth­er after anoth­er, includ­ing major fig­ures like David Bar­ton. Which, of course, is the same com­mu­ni­ty of lead­ers behind the efforts to over­turn the 2020 and upcom­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 mass polit­i­cal purges. So as we are learn­ing about the eye­brow-rais­ing deci­sion by the new Speak­er of the House to install ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ on his, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that this is just one piece of a much larg­er sto­ry about the ongo­ing plans for a full-spec­trum cap­ture of soci­ety:

Wired

The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps

Church­es are using inva­sive phone-mon­i­tor­ing tech to dis­cour­age “sin­ful” behav­ior. Some soft­ware is see­ing more than con­gre­gants real­ize.

Dhruv Mehro­tra
Secu­ri­ty
Sep 22, 2022 1:00 PM

Gra­ce­point is the kind of evan­gel­i­cal South­ern Bap­tist church that’s com­pelled to pub­licly enu­mer­ate all of the ways it’s not a cult. “We’ll admit that we’re a bit crazy about the Great Com­mis­sion and shar­ing the Gospel,” reads an FAQ page titled, “Is Gra­ce­point a Cult?” So when Grant Hao-Wei Lin came out to a Gra­ce­point church leader dur­ing their week­ly one-on-one ses­sion, he was sur­prised to learn that he wasn’t going to be kicked out. Accord­ing to his church leader, Hao-Wei Lin says, God still loved him in spite of his “strug­gle with same-sex attrac­tion.”

But Gra­ce­point did not leave the mat­ter in God’s hands alone. At their next one-on-one the fol­low­ing week, Hao-Wei Lin says the church leader asked him to install an app called Covenant Eyes on his phone. The app is explic­it­ly mar­ket­ed as anti-pornog­ra­phy soft­ware, but accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, his church leader told him it would help “con­trol all of his urges.”

Covenant Eyes is part of a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ecosys­tem of so-called account­abil­i­ty apps. These apps are mar­ket­ed to both church­es and par­ents as tools to police online activ­i­ty, and they charge a month­ly fee to do so. Some of these apps mon­i­tor every­thing their users see and do on their devices, even tak­ing screen­shots (at least one per minute, in the case of Covenant Eyes) and eaves­drop­ping on web traf­fic, WIRED found. The apps then report a feed of all of the users’ online activ­i­ty direct­ly to a chaperone—an “account­abil­i­ty part­ner,” in the apps’ par­lance. When WIRED pre­sent­ed its find­ings to Google, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny deter­mined that two of the top account­abil­i­ty apps—Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You—vio­late its poli­cies.

The omni­science of Covenant Eyes soon weighed heav­i­ly on Hao-Wei Lin, who has since left Gra­ce­point. With­in a month of installing the app, he start­ed receiv­ing accusato­ry emails from his church leader ref­er­enc­ing things he had viewed online. “Any­thing you need to tell me?” reads one email Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED. Attached was a report from Covenant Eyes that detailed every sin­gle piece of dig­i­tal con­tent Hao-Wei Lin had con­sumed the pri­or week. It was a trail of dig­i­tal minu­ti­ae accu­mu­lat­ed from nights spent aim­less­ly brows­ing the inter­net, things Hao-Wei Lin could bare­ly remem­ber hav­ing seen—and would have for­got­ten about had a mem­ber of his Church not con­front­ed him. The church leader zeroed in on a sin­gle piece of con­tent that Covenant Eyes had flagged as “Mature”: Hao-Wei Lin had searched “#Gay” on a web­site called Statigr.am, and the app had flagged it.

Gra­ce­point, which focus­es on col­leges, claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to emails between a Covenant Eyes rep­re­sen­ta­tive and a for­mer Gra­ce­point church leader that WIRED reviewed, the com­pa­ny said that in 2012 as many as 450 Gra­ce­point Church mem­bers were signed up to be mon­i­tored through Covenant Eyes.

“I wouldn’t quite call it spy­ware,” says a for­mer mem­ber of Gra­ce­point who was asked to use Covenant Eyes and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s more like ‘shame­ware,’ and it’s just anoth­er way the church con­trols you.”

Sim­i­lar to sur­veil­lance soft­ware like Bark or Net­Nan­ny, which is used to mon­i­tor chil­dren at home and school, “shame­ware” apps are less­er-known tools that are used to keep track of behav­iors par­ents or reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions deem unhealthy or immoral. For­ti­fy, for instance, was devel­oped by the founder of an anti-pornog­ra­phy non­prof­it called Fight the New Drug and tracks how often an indi­vid­ual mas­tur­bates in order to help them over­come “sex­u­al com­pul­siv­i­ty.” The app has been down­loaded over 100,000 times and has thou­sands of reviews on the Google Play store.

The cur­rent iter­a­tion of the Covenant Eyes app was devel­oped by Michael Holm, a for­mer NSA math­e­mati­cian who now serves as a data sci­en­tist for the com­pa­ny. The sys­tem is alleged­ly capa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing between porno­graph­ic and non-porno­graph­ic images. The soft­ware cap­tures every­thing vis­i­ble on a device’s screen, ana­lyz­ing the images local­ly before slight­ly blur­ring them and send­ing them to a serv­er to be saved. “Image-based pornog­ra­phy detec­tion was a huge con­cep­tu­al change for Covenant Eyes,” Holm told The Chris­t­ian Post, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian news out­let, in 2019. “While I didn’t yet know it, God had put me in that place at that time for a pur­pose high­er than myself, just as I and oth­ers had desired and prayed for.”

Covenant Eyes spokesper­son Dan Arm­strong says the com­pa­ny is “con­cerned” about “peo­ple being mon­i­tored with­out prop­er con­sent.” He adds that “account­abil­i­ty rela­tion­ships are bet­ter off between peo­ple who already know each oth­er and want the best for one anoth­er, such as close per­son­al friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers,” and that the com­pa­ny dis­cour­ages using its app in rela­tion­ships with a pow­er imbal­ance.

Among the top account­abil­i­ty apps—including Accountable2You and Ever­Ac­count­able—Covenant Eyes appears to be the largest play­er. The com­pa­ny orga­nizes con­fer­ences that are attend­ed by thou­sands of peo­ple and ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing atten­dees about the dan­gers of pornog­ra­phy while pitch­ing the company’s prod­uct as an urgent solu­tion to what it char­ac­ter­izes as a grow­ing moral cri­sis. Accord­ing to the app ana­lyt­ics firm App­Fig­ures, in the past year more than 50,000 peo­ple have down­loaded Covenant Eyes. Rock­e­treach esti­mates that the com­pa­ny has an annu­al rev­enue of $26 mil­lion.

Ed Kang, pas­tor of Gra­ce­point Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and a major fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion, says in an email that vol­un­teer staff mem­bers are required to install Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “as part of their staff agree­ment.” But he dis­putes that church lead­ers were instruct­ed to mon­i­tor con­gre­gants’ phone activ­i­ty. “Usu­al­ly it’s who­ev­er they [con­gre­gants] des­ig­nate, and we actu­al­ly dis­cour­age lead­ers from being the account­abil­i­ty part­ners as that seems a bit too heavy,” he writes. (All five for­mer Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who spoke to WIRED said a church leader was their account­abil­i­ty part­ner.) Kang adds that the num­ber of Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who use Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “may be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than 450 nowa­days” and that Accountable2You “has bet­ter pric­ing.”

What’s com­mon across Covenant Eyes, Accountable2You, and Ever­Ac­count­able is their zero-tol­er­ance approach to pornog­ra­phy. All three sug­gest in their mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als that not only is watch­ing porn a moral fail­ure, but any amount of porn con­sump­tion is bad for your health. Their solu­tion: Pro­mote puri­ty through what they call “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty,” a con­cept where­in a com­mu­ni­ty comes togeth­er to con­front a per­son who is liv­ing in sin. At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?

While these apps claim to have helped many peo­ple over­come pornog­ra­phy addic­tions, experts who study sex­u­al health are skep­ti­cal that the apps have a last­ing pos­i­tive effect. “I’ve nev­er seen any­one who’s been on one of these apps feel bet­ter about them­selves in the long term,” says Nicole Praus, a sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, who stud­ies the effects of pornog­ra­phy on the brain and the spread of dis­in­for­ma­tion on sex­u­al health. “These peo­ple just end up feel­ing like there’s some­thing wrong with them when the real­i­ty is that there like­ly isn’t.”

But Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You do much more than just police pornog­ra­phy. When WIRED down­loaded, decom­piled, and test­ed Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, we found that both apps are built to col­lect, mon­i­tor, and report all sorts of inno­cent behav­ior. The appli­ca­tions exploit­ed Android’s acces­si­bil­i­ty per­mis­sions to mon­i­tor almost every­thing some­one does on their phone. While the acces­si­bil­i­ty func­tion­al­i­ties are meant to help devel­op­ers build out fea­tures that assist peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, these apps take advan­tage of such per­mis­sions to either cap­ture screen­shots of every­thing active­ly being viewed on the device or detect the name of apps as they’re being used and record every web­site vis­it­ed in the device’s brows­er.

In Hao-Wei Lin’s case, that includ­ed his Ama­zon pur­chas­es, arti­cles he read, and even which friends’ accounts he looked at on Insta­gram. The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant he could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed “High­ly Mature,” the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for “anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.” The same was true of any­thing Hao-Wei Lin felt was “remote­ly gay,” like his Statigr.am search­es.

After WIRED con­tact­ed Google about Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, both apps were sus­pend­ed from the Google Play store. “Google Play per­mits the use of the Acces­si­bil­i­ty API for a wide range of appli­ca­tions,” spokesper­son Danielle Cohen says in an email. “How­ev­er, only ser­vices that are designed to help peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties access their device or oth­er­wise over­come chal­lenges stem­ming from their dis­abil­i­ties are eli­gi­ble to declare that they are acces­si­bil­i­ty tools.”

...

In our tests of Accountable2You pri­or to its sus­pen­sion, we found that the soft­ware sim­i­lar­ly flagged con­tent with key­words like “gay” or “les­bian” in the URL. For instance, when we set up a test account and nav­i­gat­ed to the US Cen­ters for Dis­ease Control’s web­site for LGBTQ youth resources, the phone we des­ig­nat­ed as our account­abil­i­ty part­ner was imme­di­ate­ly texted and emailed a “ques­tion­able activ­i­ty report” indi­cat­ing that our test phone had vis­it­ed a “High­ly Ques­tion­able” web­site.

“It’s real­ly not about pornog­ra­phy,” says Brit, a for­mer user of Accountable2You who asked to only be iden­ti­fied by her first name, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” Brit says she was asked to install the app by her par­ents after she was caught look­ing at pornog­ra­phy and that her moth­er and her pas­tor were both her des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners. “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism,” she says. “I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some kind of right to read what I want to read.”

While account­abil­i­ty apps are large­ly mar­ket­ed to par­ents and fam­i­lies, some also adver­tise their ser­vices to church­es. Accountable2You, for exam­ple, adver­tis­es group rates for church­es or small groups and has set up sev­er­al land­ing pages for spe­cif­ic church­es where mem­bers can sign up. Covenant Eyes, mean­while, employs a direc­tor of Church and Min­istry Out­reach to help onboard reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions.

Accountable2You did not respond to WIRED’s requests for com­ment.

Eva Galperin is direc­tor of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights non­prof­it, and cofounder of the Coali­tion Against Stalk­er­ware. Galperin says con­sent to such sur­veil­lance is a major con­cern. “One of the key ele­ments of con­sent is that a per­son can feel com­fort­able say­ing no,” she says. “You could argue that any app installed in a church set­ting is done in a coer­cive man­ner.” While WIRED did not speak to any­one who was unaware that the app was on their phone, which is often the case with spy­ware, Hao-Wei Lin says he didn’t feel like he was in a posi­tion where he could say no to his church leader when he was asked to install Covenant Eyes. Gra­ce­point had secured him a $400-a-month apart­ment in Berke­ley, where he was attend­ing col­lege. With­out the church’s sup­port, he might have had nowhere to live.

But this is not the expe­ri­ence of every­one we spoke to. James Nagy is a for­mer Gra­ce­point mem­ber who says he was on both sides of Covenant Eyes reports. Nagy, who is gay, was taught from a young age that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a sin. So when Gra­ce­point offered him a soft­ware solu­tion that claimed to be able to help what he then con­sid­ered to be a moral dilem­ma, he jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty. He says that while he believed many peo­ple at Gra­ce­point were pres­sured to install the app, in his case, the pres­sure came from him­self. “Gra­ce­point didn’t try to change me,” Nagy says. “I tried to change me.” Nagy is now an elder at the Pres­by­ter­ian Church (USA) and until 2021 was a facil­i­ta­tor with the Ref­or­ma­tion Project, a non­prof­it whose mis­sion is to advance LGBTQ inclu­sion in the church.

In the quest to curb behav­ior church­es deem immoral, these account­abil­i­ty apps will col­lect and store extreme­ly sen­si­tive per­son­al infor­ma­tion from their users, includ­ing from those under the age of 18. For­ti­fy, which describes itself as an addic­tion recov­ery app, asks its users to log infor­ma­tion about when they last mas­tur­bat­ed, where they were when it hap­pened, and what device they used. While Fortify’s pri­va­cy pol­i­cy states that the com­pa­ny doesn’t sell or oth­er­wise share this data with third par­ties, its pol­i­cy does allow it to share data with trust­ed third par­ties to per­form sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, though it does not men­tion who these trust­ed third par­ties are. In a phone call, Clay Olsen, the CEO of For­ti­fy par­ent com­pa­ny Impact Suite, clar­i­fied that these trust­ed third par­ties include com­pa­nies like Mix­pan­el, an ana­lyt­ics ser­vice com­pa­ny that tracks user inter­ac­tions with web and mobile appli­ca­tions.

...

When WIRED test­ed the For­ti­fy soft­ware, we found that the app also uti­lizes oth­er tech­nol­o­gy to track users. For instance, because it includes Facebook’s Pix­el, data relat­ed to Fortify’s mas­tur­ba­tion-track­ing form is sent to Face­book. While the data does not appear to include the con­tents of the track­ing form, it does have meta­da­ta about the form itself, includ­ing when it was filled out. Face­book appears to store that data and, when pos­si­ble, asso­ciates it with a user’s account. After set­ting up a test account with Face­book, log­ging in, and then inter­act­ing with For­ti­fy, we were able to see inter­ac­tions with For­ti­fy in a copy of the test account’s data obtained through Facebook’s pri­va­cy cen­ter.

Fortify’s inclu­sion of Facebook’s Pix­el isn’t just a pri­va­cy issue, it’s a secu­ri­ty prob­lem. While test­ing the app, we also noticed that the pass­word to our account was sent in plain­text to Face­book in the URL of the track­ing requests. Face­book claims to have fil­ter­ing mech­a­nisms to pre­vent its sys­tems from stor­ing this type of per­son­al infor­ma­tion, but Fortify’s appar­ent over­sight is still con­cern­ing to experts like Galperin. “That’s a huge vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” she says. “It’s the sort of behav­ior that makes me feel like they don’t have secu­ri­ty experts review­ing the app or its poli­cies.”

Face­book spokesper­son Emil Vazquez says com­pa­nies that share sen­si­tive user data with the Meta-owned social media plat­form are vio­lat­ing its poli­cies. “Adver­tis­ers should not send sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about peo­ple through our Busi­ness Tools. Doing so is against our poli­cies,” Vazquez says. “Our sys­tem is designed to fil­ter out poten­tial­ly sen­si­tive data it is able to detect.” Face­book did not say whether its fil­ters detect­ed the plain­text pass­words sent by For­ti­fy.

After being noti­fied of the pass­word issue, Olsen said For­ti­fy would stop trans­mit­ting users’ unen­crypt­ed pass­words to Face­book. As we went to press, the issue had not yet been addressed.

Hao-Wei Lin has since moved on from Gra­ce­point but is still pro­cess­ing the trau­ma he feels the church has caused him. I met him ear­li­er this month at his the­sis exhi­bi­tion at Par­sons School of Design in New York City, where he is about to get his Mas­ter of Fine Arts in pho­tog­ra­phy. He tells me that it was only after he went back to school that he felt he was in a safe enough space to start pro­cess­ing what he went through at Gra­ce­point.

Hao-Wei Lin’s pho­tog­ra­phy was somber, but not with­out humor. One was of a 3D ren­der­ing of a room where he says he and oth­er mem­bers of Gra­ce­point would meet after their Sun­day ser­vice. A soli­tary fig­ure is hunched over pray­ing, his head rest­ing in the seat of his plas­tic chair. As I look at the pho­to, Hao-Wei Lin tells me he wants the view­er to feel like they are a sur­veil­lance cam­era perched in the top cor­ner of the room. The name of his work: “Covenant Eyes.”

...

———–

“The Ungod­ly Sur­veil­lance of Anti-Porn ‘Shame­ware’ Apps” by Dhruv Mehro­tra; Wired; 09/22/2022

““I wouldn’t quite call it spy­ware,” says a for­mer mem­ber of Gra­ce­point who was asked to use Covenant Eyes and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s more like ‘shame­ware,’ and it’s just anoth­er way the church con­trols you.””

It’s not spy­ware. It’s much worse. It’s ‘shame­ware’ designed to be so overt­ly inva­sive that you’ll be too scared to view any ‘sin­ful’ con­tent in the first place. Or to use the ter­mi­nol­o­gy of this move­ment, puri­ty through “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty”. And that “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty” comes through apps watch­ing vir­tu­al­ly every­thing you do on your phone, includ­ing which arti­cles you read and the social media accounts you vis­it. It’s like giv­ing your church leader a ‘Gods eye’ view of your dig­i­tal life:

...
The cur­rent iter­a­tion of the Covenant Eyes app was devel­oped by Michael Holm, a for­mer NSA math­e­mati­cian who now serves as a data sci­en­tist for the com­pa­ny. The sys­tem is alleged­ly capa­ble of dis­tin­guish­ing between porno­graph­ic and non-porno­graph­ic images. The soft­ware cap­tures every­thing vis­i­ble on a device’s screen, ana­lyz­ing the images local­ly before slight­ly blur­ring them and send­ing them to a serv­er to be saved. “Image-based pornog­ra­phy detec­tion was a huge con­cep­tu­al change for Covenant Eyes,” Holm told The Chris­t­ian Post, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian news out­let, in 2019. “While I didn’t yet know it, God had put me in that place at that time for a pur­pose high­er than myself, just as I and oth­ers had desired and prayed for.”

...

What’s com­mon across Covenant Eyes, Accountable2You, and Ever­Ac­count­able is their zero-tol­er­ance approach to pornog­ra­phy. All three sug­gest in their mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als that not only is watch­ing porn a moral fail­ure, but any amount of porn con­sump­tion is bad for your health. Their solu­tion: Pro­mote puri­ty through what they call “rad­i­cal account­abil­i­ty,” a con­cept where­in a com­mu­ni­ty comes togeth­er to con­front a per­son who is liv­ing in sin. At its most basic lev­el, the idea is pret­ty straight­for­ward: Why would any­one watch porn if they are going to have to talk to their par­ents or pas­tor about it?

...

But Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You do much more than just police pornog­ra­phy. When WIRED down­loaded, decom­piled, and test­ed Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You, we found that both apps are built to col­lect, mon­i­tor, and report all sorts of inno­cent behav­ior. The appli­ca­tions exploit­ed Android’s acces­si­bil­i­ty per­mis­sions to mon­i­tor almost every­thing some­one does on their phone. While the acces­si­bil­i­ty func­tion­al­i­ties are meant to help devel­op­ers build out fea­tures that assist peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, these apps take advan­tage of such per­mis­sions to either cap­ture screen­shots of every­thing active­ly being viewed on the device or detect the name of apps as they’re being used and record every web­site vis­it­ed in the device’s brows­er.

In Hao-Wei Lin’s case, that includ­ed his Ama­zon pur­chas­es, arti­cles he read, and even which friends’ accounts he looked at on Insta­gram. The trou­ble is, accord­ing to Hao-Wei Lin, pro­vid­ing his church leader with a ledger of every­thing he did online meant he could always find some­thing to ask him about, and the way Covenant Eyes flagged con­tent didn’t help. For exam­ple, in Covenant Eyes reports that Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED, his online psy­chi­a­try text­book was rat­ed “High­ly Mature,” the most severe cat­e­go­ry of con­tent reserved for “anonymiz­ers, nudi­ty, erot­i­ca, and pornog­ra­phy.” The same was true of any­thing Hao-Wei Lin felt was “remote­ly gay,” like his Statigr.am search­es.

...

“It’s real­ly not about pornog­ra­phy,” says Brit, a for­mer user of Accountable2You who asked to only be iden­ti­fied by her first name, due to pri­va­cy con­cerns. “It’s about mak­ing you con­form to what your pas­tor wants.” Brit says she was asked to install the app by her par­ents after she was caught look­ing at pornog­ra­phy and that her moth­er and her pas­tor were both her des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners. “I remem­ber I had to sit down and have a con­ver­sa­tion with him [her pas­tor] after I Wikipedia’d an arti­cle about athe­ism,” she says. “I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some kind of right to read what I want to read.”
...

Now, if this was a pure­ly vol­un­tary arrange­ment, that would be one thing. Dis­turb­ing and cult­like, but at least not coer­cive. But when we read about how Gra­ce­point basi­cal­ly asks all of their stu­dent mem­bers — many of whom are receiv­ing Gra­ce­point’s assis­tance to attend col­lege — to install this soft­ware this soft­ware, it’s clear that this isn’t a pure­ly vol­un­tary trend. Instead, we’re look­ing at the lead­er­ship of a ‘discipleship’-based move­ment gain­ing an even deep­er direct stran­gle­hold over the lives of their ‘flock’. Hence the con­stant ‘We’re not a cult!’ dec­la­ra­tions:

...
Gra­ce­point is the kind of evan­gel­i­cal South­ern Bap­tist church that’s com­pelled to pub­licly enu­mer­ate all of the ways it’s not a cult. “We’ll admit that we’re a bit crazy about the Great Com­mis­sion and shar­ing the Gospel,” reads an FAQ page titled, “Is Gra­ce­point a Cult?” So when Grant Hao-Wei Lin came out to a Gra­ce­point church leader dur­ing their week­ly one-on-one ses­sion, he was sur­prised to learn that he wasn’t going to be kicked out. Accord­ing to his church leader, Hao-Wei Lin says, God still loved him in spite of his “strug­gle with same-sex attrac­tion.”

...

The omni­science of Covenant Eyes soon weighed heav­i­ly on Hao-Wei Lin, who has since left Gra­ce­point. With­in a month of installing the app, he start­ed receiv­ing accusato­ry emails from his church leader ref­er­enc­ing things he had viewed online. “Any­thing you need to tell me?” reads one email Hao-Wei Lin shared with WIRED. Attached was a report from Covenant Eyes that detailed every sin­gle piece of dig­i­tal con­tent Hao-Wei Lin had con­sumed the pri­or week. It was a trail of dig­i­tal minu­ti­ae accu­mu­lat­ed from nights spent aim­less­ly brows­ing the inter­net, things Hao-Wei Lin could bare­ly remem­ber hav­ing seen—and would have for­got­ten about had a mem­ber of his Church not con­front­ed him. The church leader zeroed in on a sin­gle piece of con­tent that Covenant Eyes had flagged as “Mature”: Hao-Wei Lin had searched “#Gay” on a web­site called Statigr.am, and the app had flagged it.

...

Gra­ce­point, which focus­es on col­leges, claims to “serve stu­dents” on more than 70 cam­pus­es across the Unit­ed States. Accord­ing to emails between a Covenant Eyes rep­re­sen­ta­tive and a for­mer Gra­ce­point church leader that WIRED reviewed, the com­pa­ny said that in 2012 as many as 450 Gra­ce­point Church mem­bers were signed up to be mon­i­tored through Covenant Eyes.

...

Ed Kang, pas­tor of Gra­ce­point Church in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, and a major fig­ure in the orga­ni­za­tion, says in an email that vol­un­teer staff mem­bers are required to install Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “as part of their staff agree­ment.” But he dis­putes that church lead­ers were instruct­ed to mon­i­tor con­gre­gants’ phone activ­i­ty. “Usu­al­ly it’s who­ev­er they [con­gre­gants] des­ig­nate, and we actu­al­ly dis­cour­age lead­ers from being the account­abil­i­ty part­ners as that seems a bit too heavy,” he writes. (All five for­mer Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who spoke to WIRED said a church leader was their account­abil­i­ty part­ner.) Kang adds that the num­ber of Gra­ce­point con­gre­gants who use Covenant Eyes or Accountable2You “may be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than 450 nowa­days” and that Accountable2You “has bet­ter pric­ing.”

...

Eva Galperin is direc­tor of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty at the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, a dig­i­tal rights non­prof­it, and cofounder of the Coali­tion Against Stalk­er­ware. Galperin says con­sent to such sur­veil­lance is a major con­cern. “One of the key ele­ments of con­sent is that a per­son can feel com­fort­able say­ing no,” she says. “You could argue that any app installed in a church set­ting is done in a coer­cive man­ner.” While WIRED did not speak to any­one who was unaware that the app was on their phone, which is often the case with spy­ware, Hao-Wei Lin says he didn’t feel like he was in a posi­tion where he could say no to his church leader when he was asked to install Covenant Eyes. Gra­ce­point had secured him a $400-a-month apart­ment in Berke­ley, where he was attend­ing col­lege. With­out the church’s sup­port, he might have had nowhere to live.
...

How much spy­ware will peo­ple allow in their lives for an afford­able apart­ment? These might seem like ques­tions spe­cif­ic to these ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ based com­mu­ni­ties of faith. But we aren’t just talk­ing about insu­lar reli­gious move­ments push­ing these kinds of ‘apps’ on their ‘flock’. We are talk­ing about a net­work of reli­gious lead­ers with deep ties to the CNP and the grow­ing polit­i­cal strength of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in Amer­i­ca.

Mike Johnson’s “Profound Influence”: David Bartons’s Christian Nationalist Texas Template

It’s that cru­cial con­text of the grow­ing polit­i­cal pow­er of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ists affil­i­at­ed with the CNP that we’re going to look at next. In par­tic­u­lar, the remark­able polit­i­cal influ­ence of some­one we’ve looked at before: David Bar­ton, lead­ing pseu­do-his­to­ri­an of the Chris­t­ian Right. As we’ve seen, “Covenant Eyes” is far from only Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist influ­ence in Mike John­son’s life. He’s sur­round­ed him­self with CNP fig­ures, includ­ing CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford, who John­son once described as a per­son­al men­tor. So it should come as no sur­prise to learn that John­son has described key CNP-mem­ber David Bar­ton as anoth­er source of “pro­found influ­ence” influ­ence in his life. A pro­found influ­ence who is cur­rent­ly work­ing on turn­ing the state of Texas into a kind of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist ‘tem­plate’ for the rest of the US. But as we’re going to see, this isn’t just David Bar­ton’s agen­da. It’s the Texas GOP’s agen­da too:

The Texas Tri­bune

Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.

Bar­ton has been a sta­ple of Texas’ Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions.

by Robert Dow­nen
Nov. 3, 2023
5 AM Cen­tral

For near­ly four decades, Texas activist David Bar­ton has barn­stormed state­hous­es and pul­pits across the nation, argu­ing that the sep­a­ra­tion between church and state is a myth and that Amer­i­ca should be run as a Chris­t­ian nation.

Now, he’s clos­er to pow­er than per­haps ever before.

One day after lit­tle-known Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Mike John­son of Louisiana was elect­ed as the new House speak­er last week, Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cussing staffing with John­son, his long­time ally in deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, Chris­t­ian caus­es.

“We have some tools at our dis­pos­al now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Bar­ton added.

John­son recent­ly spoke at an event host­ed by Barton’s non­prof­it, Wall­Builders; he’s praised Bar­ton and his “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do”; and, before his career as a law­mak­er, John­son worked for Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — a legal advo­ca­cy group that has helped infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic schools and gov­ern­ment, a key goal of Barton’s move­ment.

Bar­ton, who lives in Ale­do, has been a sta­ple of Texas’ own Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial pub­lic sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions — includ­ing in front of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Johnson’s elec­tion — and his prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton — is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for a grow­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment that claims the Unit­ed States’ foun­da­tion was ordained by God, and there­fore its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor their brand of Chris­tian­i­ty.

“John­son’s rise means that Bar­ton and his fel­low Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists now have unprece­dent­ed access to the levers of pow­er on the nation­al stage, par­al­lel­ing the access they already have here in Texas and some oth­er states,” said David Brock­man, a non-res­i­dent schol­ar in reli­gion and pub­lic pol­i­cy at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bak­er Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

...

In 1988, Bar­ton found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, to “exert a direct and pos­i­tive influ­ence in gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the fam­i­ly by edu­cat­ing the nation con­cern­ing the God­ly foun­da­tion of our coun­try” and “pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cials as they devel­op pub­lic poli­cies which reflect Bib­li­cal val­ues,” accord­ing to the group’s web­site.

Since then, Bar­ton has been arguably the most influ­en­tial fig­ure in a grow­ing move­ment to under­mine the estab­lish­ment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amend­ment, which states that “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion.”

Bar­ton claims the clause has been mis­un­der­stood. He argues that most of the Found­ing Fathers were “ortho­dox, evan­gel­i­cal” Chris­tians, and that it would thus be more accu­rate to read the estab­lish­ment clause’s use of the word “reli­gion” as a stand-in for “Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.”

“We would best under­stand the actu­al con­text of the First Amend­ment by say­ing, ‘Con­gress shall make no law estab­lish­ing one Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion as the nation­al denom­i­na­tion,’” he has said.

Bar­ton also argues that the coun­try’s founders “nev­er intend­ed the First Amend­ment to become a vehi­cle to pro­mote a plu­ral­ism of oth­er reli­gions.”

In his mind, the wall sep­a­rat­ing church and state was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — specif­i­cal­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, but not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

And he argues that most of what he con­sid­ers society’s ills — from school shoot­ings, low stan­dard­ized test scores and drug use to divorce, crime and LGBTQ+ peo­ple — are the nat­ur­al con­se­quences of aban­don­ing the Judeo-Chris­t­ian virtues, as artic­u­lat­ed in his form of Chris­tian­i­ty, that he says are the bedrock of the nation’s found­ing. Some­times, he’s drawn fire for those views — such as when he said the lack of cure for AIDS was God’s vengeance for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty or when he com­pared the Third Reich’s “evils” to the “homo­sex­u­al lifestyle” in 2017.

Bar­ton, a self-styled “ama­teur his­to­ri­an,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actu­al his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars, who note that he has no for­mal train­ing and that his work is filled with selec­tive quotes, mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and inac­cu­ra­cies — cri­tiques that Bar­ton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of white­wash­ing the Found­ing Fathers — par­tic­u­lar­ly, their slave own­ing — to fit his nar­ra­tive of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowl­edged using uncon­firmed quotes from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was so wide­ly panned by Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics that it prompt­ed a sep­a­rate book, “Get­ting Jef­fer­son Right,” to debunk all of his inac­cu­ra­cies, and was lat­er pulled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because “the basic truths just were not there.”

Despite that, Bar­ton has remained a fix­ture in con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cir­cles and Repub­li­can Par­ty pol­i­tics. He served as vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for cler­gy out­reach by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign. In 2010, his fel­low Tex­an and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive per­son­al­i­ty Glenn Beck praised him as “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now.” Bar­ton was an ear­ly and impor­tant endors­er of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unex­pect­ed first win in 2012. And in 2016, Bar­ton ran one of mul­ti­ple super PACs that were cru­cial to Cruz’s reelec­tion.

...

In Texas, Bar­ton has become increas­ing­ly instru­men­tal among GOP politi­cians. He and Wall­Builders cur­rent­ly work close­ly with Rick Green, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and cur­rent leader of Patri­ot Acad­e­my, a Drip­ping Springs-based group that trains young adults, church­es and oth­ers how to “influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy with a Bib­li­cal world­view” and bor­rows heav­i­ly from Barton’s teach­ings.

Bar­ton has also railed against the John­son Amend­ment, which pro­hibits tax-exempt groups, includ­ing church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. And he is fre­quent­ly called on to sup­port laws that would infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life — includ­ing in pub­lic schools. In May, he and his son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, tes­ti­fied in favor of a bill — which lat­er failed — that would have required all Texas pub­lic school class­rooms to dis­play the Ten Com­mand­ments.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels. His the­o­ries were echoed by Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, who said that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine.” And the bil­l’s spon­sor, Sen. Phil King, R‑Weatherford, extolled Bar­ton and his son as “esteemed wit­ness­es.”

Oth­er promi­nent Texas Repub­li­cans have sim­i­lar­ly echoed Bar­ton’s views, includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.

The main­stream­ing of Barton’s views has cor­re­spond­ed with a series of U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions that have allowed for a greater infu­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere, and a bur­geon­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment on the right that was tur­bocharged by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his promise to white evan­gel­i­cals that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” should they sup­port him.

Feb­ru­ary polling from the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that more than half of Repub­li­cans adhere to or sym­pa­thize with foun­da­tion­al aspects of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, includ­ing beliefs that the U.S. should be a strict­ly Chris­t­ian nation. Of those respon­dents, PRRI found, rough­ly half sup­port­ed hav­ing an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. Experts have also found strong cor­re­la­tions between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs and oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion, racial jus­tice and reli­gious diver­si­ty.

Johnson’s elec­tion to House Speak­er shows how nor­mal­ized such beliefs have become, said Aman­da Tyler, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bap­tist Joint Com­mit­tee for Reli­gious Lib­er­ty, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based group that advo­cates for a strong wall between gov­ern­ment and reli­gion. She not­ed that some Repub­li­cans — includ­ing U.S. Rep. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene, R‑Georgia, have embraced the title of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist in recent years.

Tyler said that Johnson’s views are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing because of his back­ground as both a South­ern Bap­tist and as a con­sti­tu­tion­al lawyer. Bap­tists, she not­ed, have a long his­to­ry of advo­ca­cy for strong church-state sep­a­ra­tions because of the per­se­cu­tion they faced dur­ing the country’s found­ing — a stance that she said John­son has betrayed through­out his legal and polit­i­cal career.

“He has worked active­ly for these prin­ci­ples that fur­ther Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism,” Tyler said. “I am also a Bap­tist, and to see some­one who is a Bap­tist real­ly reject foun­da­tion­al con­cepts of reli­gious free­dom for all — con­cepts which are real­ly core to what it means to be a Bap­tist — is also very dis­heart­en­ing.”

John­son played a cen­tral role in attempts to over­turn the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by craft­ing a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Repub­li­cans in sup­port of a law­suit filed by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton that sought to have elec­tion results thrown out in four swing states by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

At the same time that he was aid­ing the legal charge to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, John­son was also cul­ti­vat­ing clos­er ties to fig­ures in the New Apolostolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a fast-grow­ing move­ment of ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive preach­ers, tel­e­van­ge­lists, self-described prophets and faith heal­ers who abide by the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist-adja­cent the­ol­o­gy that says Chris­tians must ful­fill a divine man­date to rule over all sev­en aspects of soci­ety (fam­i­ly, reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment) in order to ush­er in the “end times.”

Dri­ven by that the­ol­o­gy, New Apolostic Ref­or­ma­tion fig­ures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, com­bin­ing Trump’s lies about a stolen elec­tion with claims that they were engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare” with their polit­i­cal ene­mies and, thus, extreme and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic mea­sures were not only nec­es­sary, but God-ordained.

———-

“Texas activist David Bar­ton wants to end sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He has the ear of the new U.S. House speak­er.” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 11/03/2023

“Johnson’s elec­tion — and his prox­im­i­ty to Bar­ton — is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for a grow­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment that claims the Unit­ed States’ foun­da­tion was ordained by God, and there­fore its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor their brand of Chris­tian­i­ty.”

The Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist move­ment just keeps accru­ing more and more pow­er and influ­ence. It took the ele­va­tion of Mike John­son — a rel­a­tive­ly unknown mem­ber of the House until now who pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the CNP-dom­i­nat­ed Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — to end the par­ty squab­ble. Why Jon­son, of all peo­ple? That’s part of the sig­nif­i­cance of John­son’s unlike­ly abil­i­ty to gar­ner the unan­i­mous sup­port of the GOP cau­cus to end this bizarre intra-par­ty speak­er­ship fight.

And a day lat­er, we have Bar­ton open­ly brag­ging on a pod­cast about how his long­time ally just become the speak­er and how Bar­ton was already involved with staffing dis­cus­sions with John­son. So John­son chose to put ‘discipleship’-style apps on his phone and has now been con­sult­ing Bar­ton about staffing deci­sions. What kind of ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ role is Bar­ton play­ing for the new Speak­er of the House?

...
One day after lit­tle-known Repub­li­can U.S. Rep. Mike John­son of Louisiana was elect­ed as the new House speak­er last week, Bar­ton said on a pod­cast that he was already dis­cussing staffing with John­son, his long­time ally in deeply con­ser­v­a­tive, Chris­t­ian caus­es.

“We have some tools at our dis­pos­al now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Bar­ton added.

John­son recent­ly spoke at an event host­ed by Barton’s non­prof­it, Wall­Builders; he’s praised Bar­ton and his “pro­found influ­ence on me, and my work, and my life and every­thing I do”; and, before his career as a law­mak­er, John­son worked for Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom — a legal advo­ca­cy group that has helped infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic schools and gov­ern­ment, a key goal of Barton’s move­ment.
...

And, of course, when we see David Bar­ton cit­ed as a pro­found influ­ence on Mike John­son’s life, that influ­ence isn’t lim­it­ed to John­son. Bar­ton is a cen­tral char­ac­ter in con­tem­po­rary Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, and in par­tic­u­lar in Tex­as­’s pow­er­ful Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist com­mu­ni­ty, and has been for years. He was vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and declared “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now” in 2010 by Glenn Beck:

...
Bar­ton, who lives in Ale­do, has been a sta­ple of Texas’ own Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, offer­ing cru­cial pub­lic sup­port to politi­cians and fre­quent­ly being cit­ed or called on to tes­ti­fy in favor of bills that crit­ics say would erode church-state sep­a­ra­tions — includ­ing in front of the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

...

“John­son’s rise means that Bar­ton and his fel­low Chris­t­ian nation­al­ists now have unprece­dent­ed access to the levers of pow­er on the nation­al stage, par­al­lel­ing the access they already have here in Texas and some oth­er states,” said David Brock­man, a non-res­i­dent schol­ar in reli­gion and pub­lic pol­i­cy at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty’s Bak­er Insti­tute for Pub­lic Pol­i­cy.

...

Bar­ton, a self-styled “ama­teur his­to­ri­an,” has for years been debunked and ridiculed by actu­al his­to­ri­ans and schol­ars, who note that he has no for­mal train­ing and that his work is filled with selec­tive quotes, mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tions and inac­cu­ra­cies — cri­tiques that Bar­ton has claimed are mere attacks on his faith. He has been accused of white­wash­ing the Found­ing Fathers — par­tic­u­lar­ly, their slave own­ing — to fit his nar­ra­tive of a God-ordained nation. He has acknowl­edged using uncon­firmed quotes from his­tor­i­cal fig­ures. And Barton’s 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was so wide­ly panned by Chris­t­ian aca­d­e­mics that it prompt­ed a sep­a­rate book, “Get­ting Jef­fer­son Right,” to debunk all of his inac­cu­ra­cies, and was lat­er pulled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because “the basic truths just were not there.”

Despite that, Bar­ton has remained a fix­ture in con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cir­cles and Repub­li­can Par­ty pol­i­tics. He served as vice chair of the Repub­li­can Par­ty of Texas from 1997 to 2006 and, in 2004, was tapped for cler­gy out­reach by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign. In 2010, his fel­low Tex­an and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive per­son­al­i­ty Glenn Beck praised him as “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now.” Bar­ton was an ear­ly and impor­tant endors­er of Sen. Ted Cruz’s unex­pect­ed first win in 2012. And in 2016, Bar­ton ran one of mul­ti­ple super PACs that were cru­cial to Cruz’s reelec­tion.
...

And what was “the most impor­tant man in Amer­i­ca right now” work­ing on at the time that made him so impor­tant? The same thing he’s been work­ing on since he found­ed Wall­Builders in 1988: over­turn­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State, allow­ing for the state back­ing of spe­cif­ic Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions:

...
In 1988, Bar­ton found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, to “exert a direct and pos­i­tive influ­ence in gov­ern­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the fam­i­ly by edu­cat­ing the nation con­cern­ing the God­ly foun­da­tion of our coun­try” and “pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion to fed­er­al, state, and local offi­cials as they devel­op pub­lic poli­cies which reflect Bib­li­cal val­ues,” accord­ing to the group’s web­site.

Since then, Bar­ton has been arguably the most influ­en­tial fig­ure in a grow­ing move­ment to under­mine the estab­lish­ment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amend­ment, which states that “Con­gress shall make no law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion.”

Bar­ton claims the clause has been mis­un­der­stood. He argues that most of the Found­ing Fathers were “ortho­dox, evan­gel­i­cal” Chris­tians, and that it would thus be more accu­rate to read the estab­lish­ment clause’s use of the word “reli­gion” as a stand-in for “Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.”

“We would best under­stand the actu­al con­text of the First Amend­ment by say­ing, ‘Con­gress shall make no law estab­lish­ing one Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion as the nation­al denom­i­na­tion,’” he has said.

Bar­ton also argues that the coun­try’s founders “nev­er intend­ed the First Amend­ment to become a vehi­cle to pro­mote a plu­ral­ism of oth­er reli­gions.”

In his mind, the wall sep­a­rat­ing church and state was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — specif­i­cal­ly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, but not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

...

In Texas, Bar­ton has become increas­ing­ly instru­men­tal among GOP politi­cians. He and Wall­Builders cur­rent­ly work close­ly with Rick Green, a for­mer state rep­re­sen­ta­tive and cur­rent leader of Patri­ot Acad­e­my, a Drip­ping Springs-based group that trains young adults, church­es and oth­ers how to “influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy with a Bib­li­cal world­view” and bor­rows heav­i­ly from Barton’s teach­ings.
...

And then there’s Bar­ton’s cru­sade against the laws ban­ning tax-exempt groups, like church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. Or his push to get the Ten Com­mand­ments post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms, a move that earned him praise from Texas Law­mak­ers like CNP-mem­ber Mayes Mid­dle­ton, who declared that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine”:

...
Bar­ton has also railed against the John­son Amend­ment, which pro­hibits tax-exempt groups, includ­ing church­es, from direct polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy. And he is fre­quent­ly called on to sup­port laws that would infuse more Chris­tian­i­ty into pub­lic life — includ­ing in pub­lic schools. In May, he and his son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, tes­ti­fied in favor of a bill — which lat­er failed — that would have required all Texas pub­lic school class­rooms to dis­play the Ten Com­mand­ments.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Barton’s work was praised as “great” by Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels. His the­o­ries were echoed by Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, who said that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is “not a real doc­trine.” And the bil­l’s spon­sor, Sen. Phil King, R‑Weatherford, extolled Bar­ton and his son as “esteemed wit­ness­es.”
...

Even Lt. Gov­er­nor Dan Patrick is com­fort­able being open about his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism. David Bar­ton’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist agen­da real­ly is the Texas GOP’s agen­da. Bar­ton is just the fig­ure­head pro­vid­ing alleged his­tor­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for that shared agen­da:

...
Oth­er promi­nent Texas Repub­li­cans have sim­i­lar­ly echoed Bar­ton’s views, includ­ing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.
...

But it’s not just the Texas GOP behind this agen­da. Polls reveal a major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers sup­port the idea of an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. David Bar­ton has A LOT of fans:

...
The main­stream­ing of Barton’s views has cor­re­spond­ed with a series of U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions that have allowed for a greater infu­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere, and a bur­geon­ing Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ment on the right that was tur­bocharged by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his promise to white evan­gel­i­cals that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” should they sup­port him.

Feb­ru­ary polling from the Pub­lic Reli­gion Research Insti­tute found that more than half of Repub­li­cans adhere to or sym­pa­thize with foun­da­tion­al aspects of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, includ­ing beliefs that the U.S. should be a strict­ly Chris­t­ian nation. Of those respon­dents, PRRI found, rough­ly half sup­port­ed hav­ing an author­i­tar­i­an leader who main­tains Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance in soci­ety. Experts have also found strong cor­re­la­tions between Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist beliefs and oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion, racial jus­tice and reli­gious diver­si­ty.
...

And when Mike John­son craft­ed that legal brief in sup­port of a law­suit seek­ing to over­turn the elec­tion results of four swing states, it was Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton who waged that law­suit. The Texas GOP is a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist cau­cus:

...
John­son played a cen­tral role in attempts to over­turn the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion by craft­ing a legal brief that was signed by more than 100 U.S. House Repub­li­cans in sup­port of a law­suit filed by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton that sought to have elec­tion results thrown out in four swing states by Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

At the same time that he was aid­ing the legal charge to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion, John­son was also cul­ti­vat­ing clos­er ties to fig­ures in the New Apolostolic Ref­or­ma­tion, a fast-grow­ing move­ment of ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive preach­ers, tel­e­van­ge­lists, self-described prophets and faith heal­ers who abide by the “Sev­en Moun­tains Man­date” — a Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist-adja­cent the­ol­o­gy that says Chris­tians must ful­fill a divine man­date to rule over all sev­en aspects of soci­ety (fam­i­ly, reli­gion, edu­ca­tion, media, enter­tain­ment, busi­ness, and gov­ern­ment) in order to ush­er in the “end times.”

Dri­ven by that the­ol­o­gy, New Apolostic Ref­or­ma­tion fig­ures played major roles in the lead up to the Jan. 6, 2021 insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol, com­bin­ing Trump’s lies about a stolen elec­tion with claims that they were engaged in “spir­i­tu­al war­fare” with their polit­i­cal ene­mies and, thus, extreme and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic mea­sures were not only nec­es­sary, but God-ordained.
...

As we can see, David Bar­ton’s polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed fan base is much larg­er than the new Speak­er of the House. He’s got the Texas Repub­li­can del­e­ga­tion more or less total­ly on board. And as the fol­low­ing May 2023 Texas Tri­bune arti­cle excerpt describes, that vision of turn­ing Texas into a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism tem­plate of the nation is clos­er to fruition than ever before thanks, in part, to the CNP-select­ed con­ser­v­a­tive Supreme Court major­i­ty that has made a num­ber of recent ‘Chris­t­ian Nationalist’-friendly rul­ings worth plen­ty more pre­sum­ably on the way:

The Texas Tri­bune

Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.

Oppo­nents of church-state sep­a­ra­tion have been embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right.

by Robert Dow­nen
May 4, 2023
5 AM Cen­tral

Wav­ing a copy of the Ten Com­mand­ments and a 17th-cen­tu­ry text­book, ama­teur his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton recent­ly argued that Chris­tian­i­ty has always formed the basis of Amer­i­can moral­i­ty and thus is essen­tial to Texas class­rooms.

“This is tra­di­tion­al, his­tor­i­cal stuff,” he told a Texas Sen­ate Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee last month. “It’s hard to say that any­thing is more tra­di­tion­al in Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion than was the Ten Com­mand­ments.”

For near­ly four decades, Bar­ton has preached that mes­sage to politi­cians and pews across the coun­try, argu­ing that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is a “myth” that is dis­proven by cen­turies-old texts, like the school book he showed sen­a­tors, that ref­er­ence the Ten Com­mand­ments and oth­er reli­gious texts.

Now, Barton’s once-fringe the­o­ries could be cod­i­fied into Texas law.

Embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right, Bar­ton and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians could see mon­u­men­tal vic­to­ries in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Already this leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Texas Sen­ate has approved bills that would require the Ten Com­mand­ments to be post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms and allow unli­censed reli­gious chap­lains to sup­plant the role of school coun­selors. Mean­while, there are numer­ous efforts to elim­i­nate or weak­en two state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that pro­hib­it direct state sup­port of reli­gious schools and orga­ni­za­tions, a key plank of the broad­er school-choice move­ment.

In leg­isla­tive hear­ings, law­mak­ers have called church-state sep­a­ra­tion a “false doc­trine,” and bill sup­port­ers have blamed it for school shoot­ings, crime and grow­ing LGBTQ accep­tance.

In Texas, they believe they can cre­ate a nation­al mod­el for infus­ing Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere.

“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that,” for­mer state Rep. Matt Krause tes­ti­fied last month. “We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try.”

A new legal and polit­i­cal land­scape

It’s the lat­est bat­tle in what Bar­ton and oth­er Chris­t­ian lead­ers have framed as a long-run­ning and exis­ten­tial war with the sec­u­lar world, rhetoric that has helped fuel Repub­li­can move­ments to crack down on LGBTQ rights, ban books, push back against gun con­trol and lim­it the teach­ing of Amer­i­can his­to­ry in class­rooms, among oth­er oft-framed “cul­ture war” issues.

And it comes amid grow­ing accep­tance on the right of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism, the belief that the Unit­ed States’ found­ing was ordained by God and, thus, its laws and insti­tu­tions should favor Chris­tians.

Bol­stered by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — who shored up evan­gel­i­cal sup­port through his vow that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship — and ani­mat­ed by a rapid­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing and diver­si­fy­ing soci­ety, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments have become main­stream among large fac­tions of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

...

“The nation has start­ed to become con­scious of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism with­in the last hand­ful of years,” said David Brock­man, a non­res­i­dent schol­ar at the Reli­gion and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Pro­gram at Rice University’s Bak­er Insti­tute. “But we’ve been pret­ty much under the thumb of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism here in Texas for at least a decade.”

He notes that Texas is home to a litany of well-known pur­vey­ors of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism or relat­ed ide­olo­gies, includ­ing BlazeTV founder Glenn Beck; U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz; and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has called the Unit­ed States “a Chris­t­ian nation” and said “there is no sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. It was not in the con­sti­tu­tion.”

“We were a nation found­ed upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Patrick said last year.

Such claims have been ele­vat­ed by a cadre of far-right financiers who have shov­eled small for­tunes into polit­i­cal cam­paigns and insti­tu­tions that seek to erode the wall between church and state, includ­ing through can­di­dates for the State Board of Edu­ca­tion and local school boards.

Those efforts have found an avid audi­ence with­in the state’s mas­sive evan­gel­i­cal — and most­ly white — con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ing bloc and have been rou­tine­ly ampli­fied by Texas megachurch pas­tors who’ve made no bones about pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit, even after oth­ers have said they’re run­ning afoul of restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by tax-exempt non­prof­its.

A 2022 Texas Tri­bune and ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found that at least 20 church­es in Texas may have vio­lat­ed such rules. Among them was Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which has host­ed Kel­ly Shack­elford — whose First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute has been instru­men­tal in legal chal­lenges to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Krause, the for­mer Texas rep­re­sen­ta­tive who tes­ti­fied last month in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill, recent­ly took a job at First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute after a decade in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture.

On Sun­day, Krause’s suc­ces­sor, state Rep. Nate Schat­z­line, also spoke at the church.

“The dev­il is not afraid of a church that stays with­in the four walls,” Schat­z­line said before tout­ing a wave of suc­cess­ful con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in Tar­rant Coun­ty and anti-LGBTQ bills he’s sup­port­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture. “That’s what hap­pens when the church wakes up. That’s what hap­pens when men and women of God get behind oth­er men and women of God.”

Found­ing fathers: A wall of sep­a­ra­tion

But few fig­ures have been as instru­men­tal in the push to erode church-state sep­a­ra­tion as Bar­ton, a self-taught his­to­ri­an who found­ed his group, Wall­Builders, in 1988 with a mis­sion to “present America’s for­got­ten his­to­ry and heroes, with an empha­sis on the moral, reli­gious, and con­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tion on which Amer­i­ca was built.”

Bar­ton served as vice chair of the Texas GOP from 1997 to 2006 and has pushed back for decades against con­ven­tion­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the First Amendment’s estab­lish­ment clause, which pro­hibits the gov­ern­ment from estab­lish­ing a state reli­gion. Bar­ton argues the “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” that the Found­ing Fathers envi­sioned has been mis­con­strued. In his view, that sep­a­ra­tion was only meant to extend one way, pro­tect­ing reli­gion — osten­si­bly, Chris­tian­i­ty — from the gov­ern­ment, not vice ver­sa.

“‘Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state’ cur­rent­ly means almost exact­ly the oppo­site of what it orig­i­nal­ly meant,” his group’s web­site claims.

Among Barton’s favorite tac­tics: cit­ing cen­turies-old texts, such as the one he pre­sent­ed to the Texas Sen­ate com­mit­tee, that he says men­tion Chris­tian­i­ty or the Ten Com­mand­ments. That, he says, sug­gests a long­stand­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian influ­ence on Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion, law and moral­i­ty. Aban­don­ing those uni­ver­sal moral stan­dards, he and oth­er Wall­Builders lead­ers claim, helps explain most of America’s ills — includ­ing the recent mass shoot­ing at a Nashville, Ten­nessee, Chris­t­ian school.

“Our young peo­ple are hav­ing a very hard time deter­min­ing what’s right and wrong,” David Barton’s son, Tim­o­thy Bar­ton, told the Sen­ate com­mit­tee last month. “We’re see­ing peo­ple do what they think is right. But what they think is right is often things like what result­ed in Nashville. … Instead we should be pre­sent­ing those morals [in the Ten Com­mand­ments] in front of stu­dents so they know there is a basis of moral­i­ty and killing is always wrong.”

Barton’s broad­er the­o­ries have been wide­ly ridiculed and debunked by his­to­ri­ans and oth­er schol­ars who note that he has no for­mal his­tor­i­cal train­ing and that his 2012 book, “The Jef­fer­son Lies,” was recalled by its Chris­t­ian pub­lish­er because of fac­tu­al errors.

Even so, he’s been court­ed by polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Cruz, and his the­o­ries have been rou­tine­ly ele­vat­ed by oth­ers in the Texas GOP.

In just one hear­ing last month, state Sen. Don­na Camp­bell, R‑New Braun­fels, praised one of Barton’s books as “great”; Sen. Mayes Mid­dle­ton, R‑Galveston, called sep­a­ra­tion of church and state “not a real doc­trine” ; and Weath­er­ford Repub­li­can Sen. Phil King brought forth Bar­ton — an “esteemed” wit­ness — to sup­port King’s bill to post the Ten Com­mand­ments in pub­lic school class­rooms.

Such a pro­pos­al, King said, would not have been fea­si­ble a few years ago.

“How­ev­er, the legal land­scape has changed,” he added.

A “mas­sive shift” in the law?

King has a point.

In 2022’s Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Wash­ing­ton state high school foot­ball coach who argued that his reli­gious rights were vio­lat­ed because his employ­er, a pub­lic school, sought to lim­it his prac­tice of silent­ly pray­ing in the mid­dle of the foot­ball field imme­di­ate­ly after games. The dis­trict had asked Kennedy to pray at a lat­er time to avoid the appear­ance that the school was endors­ing his beliefs, then declined to renew his con­tract after he refused to do so.

In a 6–3 rul­ing, the court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty said Kennedy’s prayers were pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, reject­ing the district’s con­tention that allow­ing the prayers amount­ed to an offi­cial endorse­ment of reli­gion.

The rul­ing dealt a sub­stan­tial blow to the so-called Lemon test. Estab­lished by the court’s 1971 deci­sion in Lemon v. Kurtz­man, the Lemon test held that the gov­ern­ment could inter­act with reli­gion so long as it served a sec­u­lar pur­pose, did not advance or inhib­it reli­gion, and did not cre­ate an exces­sive gov­ern­ment entan­gle­ment with reli­gion.

In the Kennedy deci­sion, the Supreme Court also ruled that restric­tions on reli­gious expres­sion must take into account his­tor­i­cal con­text and prac­tices — a direc­tive that some have tak­en as a green light to put reli­gion in the class­room, includ­ing Krause and First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, which rep­re­sent­ed Kennedy.

“The law has under­gone a mas­sive shift,” Krause said dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill. “It’s not too much to say that the Kennedy case for reli­gious lib­er­ty was much like the Dobbs case was for the pro-life move­ment. It was a fun­da­men­tal shift.”

Experts aren’t yet sold on that claim.

“Any­one who tells you that the law in this area is clear, or has ever been clear, is prob­a­bly try­ing to sell you some­thing,” said pro­fes­sor Steven Col­lis, direc­tor of both the First Amend­ment Cen­ter and the Law and Reli­gion Clin­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin.

While Col­lis added that the Lemon test was often ignored or dis­put­ed by courts because of its vague lan­guage, he said the Kennedy rul­ing neutered much of it, as well as the government’s abil­i­ty to lim­it reli­gious expres­sion based on claims that doing so amounts to a state-sanc­tioned endorse­ment of reli­gion.

But Col­lis not­ed that part of the Kennedy rul­ing was pred­i­cat­ed on the idea that the coach was not forc­ing play­ers to pray with him, an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion to the court’s major­i­ty. He said there’s a case to be made that post­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments or oth­er reli­gious texts in a class­room — where chil­dren are required to remain — is far dif­fer­ent. And he expects such leg­is­la­tion would face court chal­lenges in which oppo­nents say that it amounts to a “coer­cion of reli­gion upon stu­dents.”

“There has been a long tra­di­tion in the Unit­ed States of say­ing, what­ev­er gov­ern­ment is doing, it has to do neu­tral­ly between reli­gions — it can’t treat one reli­gion dif­fer­ent­ly than anoth­er. And cer­tain­ly, it can’t favor one reli­gion over anoth­er,” he said. “One of the chal­lenges with hav­ing some­thing like the Ten Com­mand­ments up in a pub­lic school — or real­ly any reli­gious texts up on the wall in a pub­lic school — is you imme­di­ate­ly have to ask the ques­tion, whose reli­gion is it going to be?”

...

Rul­ings embraced by school choice advo­cates

A poten­tial legal chal­lenge to the Ten Com­mand­ments or a sim­i­lar bill would come amid a broad­er shift in how the U.S. Supreme Court and some state leg­is­la­tures treat reli­gious expres­sion.

The series of moves has deeply con­cerned advo­cates for church-state sep­a­ra­tion. Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, for exam­ple, Con­gress made the his­toric deci­sion to let reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions — includ­ing some of the nation’s largest and most influ­en­tial con­gre­ga­tions — receive for­giv­able fed­er­al dis­as­ter loans.

In 2021, Texas law­mak­ers passed leg­is­la­tion that required donat­ed “In God We Trust” signs to be placed in pub­lic class­rooms. Not long after, a North Texas school dis­trict reject­ed signs in Ara­bic that were donat­ed by a local par­ent while allow­ing Eng­lish ver­sions that were pro­vid­ed by Patri­ot Mobile, a Grapevine-based con­ser­v­a­tive cell­phone com­pa­ny that has fund­ed numer­ous Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist cam­paigns in the state, includ­ing anti-LGBTQ school board can­di­dates.

Mean­while, the Supreme Court, dri­ven by its con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty, has hand­ed down a series of con­se­quen­tial rul­ings that have raised ques­tions about so-called Blaine amend­ments in 37 state con­sti­tu­tions, includ­ing Texas’, that pro­hib­it or lim­it state fund­ing of reli­gious insti­tu­tions, includ­ing schools:

* In 2020, the court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Mon­tana woman, Kendra Espinoza, who argued that her state’s Depart­ment of Rev­enue improp­er­ly barred her from using a tax-cred­it schol­ar­ship at a Chris­t­ian school.

* In 2022, jus­tices sim­i­lar­ly ruled that Maine could not bar reli­gious insti­tu­tions from pub­lic fund­ing, a sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion to ongo­ing debates over pub­lic edu­ca­tion financ­ing in Texas.

Those rul­ings have been embraced by the broad­er school choice move­ment.

The same week that state Sen. Bran­don Creighton, R‑Conroe, filed Sen­ate Bill 8 — a mas­sive over­haul of the Texas edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that would allow reli­gious schools to receive state fund­ing via edu­ca­tion­al sav­ings accounts — he request­ed an expe­dit­ed opin­ion from Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton about whether the state’s Blaine amend­ments were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

Days pri­or, state Sen. Angela Pax­ton — a McK­in­ney Repub­li­can who is mar­ried to the attor­ney gen­er­al — filed leg­is­la­tion that would repeal “the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion that pro­hibits the appro­pri­a­tion of state mon­ey or prop­er­ty for the ben­e­fit of any sect, reli­gious soci­ety, or the­o­log­i­cal or reli­gious sem­i­nary.”

The next week, the attor­ney gen­er­al released an opin­ion that said Texas’ Blaine amend­ments vio­lat­ed the U.S. Constitution’s free-exer­cise clause.

There are also two bills, one in the House and one in the Sen­ate, that sim­i­lar­ly chal­lenge the state’s Blaine amend­ments.

...

———-

“Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians want more reli­gion in pub­lic life. Texas law­mak­ers are lis­ten­ing.” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 05/04/2023

“Bol­stered by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump — who shored up evan­gel­i­cal sup­port through his vow that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship — and ani­mat­ed by a rapid­ly sec­u­lar­iz­ing and diver­si­fy­ing soci­ety, Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist move­ments have become main­stream among large fac­tions of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.”

It may be a cult. But it’s a main­stream cult. At least with­in the con­tem­po­rary Repub­li­can Par­ty. The kind of cult that was more than hap­py to make a deal with a fig­ure like Don­ald Trump and his promis­es that “Chris­tian­i­ty will have pow­er” under his lead­er­ship. And Trump is far from the only major polit­i­cal force pro­pelling Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism at a nation­al lev­el. The hard right Supreme Court major­i­ty has Bar­ton and his allies in Texas poised for much greater vic­to­ries to come. They’re embold­ened for a rea­son. Texas has been head­ing toward this moment for well over a decade. Or, as CNP mem­ber Matt Krause tes­ti­fied back in April dur­ing a leg­isla­tive hear­ing on a bill to put the 10 Com­mand­ments in Texas pub­lic school class­rooms ‚“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that...We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try”:

...
For near­ly four decades, Bar­ton has preached that mes­sage to politi­cians and pews across the coun­try, argu­ing that church-state sep­a­ra­tion is a “myth” that is dis­proven by cen­turies-old texts, like the school book he showed sen­a­tors, that ref­er­ence the Ten Com­mand­ments and oth­er reli­gious texts.

Now, Barton’s once-fringe the­o­ries could be cod­i­fied into Texas law.

Embold­ened by recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions and the grow­ing accep­tance of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism on the right, Bar­ton and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians could see mon­u­men­tal vic­to­ries in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture this year.

Already this leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Texas Sen­ate has approved bills that would require the Ten Com­mand­ments to be post­ed in all pub­lic school class­rooms and allow unli­censed reli­gious chap­lains to sup­plant the role of school coun­selors. Mean­while, there are numer­ous efforts to elim­i­nate or weak­en two state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that pro­hib­it direct state sup­port of reli­gious schools and orga­ni­za­tions, a key plank of the broad­er school-choice move­ment.

In leg­isla­tive hear­ings, law­mak­ers have called church-state sep­a­ra­tion a “false doc­trine,” and bill sup­port­ers have blamed it for school shoot­ings, crime and grow­ing LGBTQ accep­tance.

In Texas, they believe they can cre­ate a nation­al mod­el for infus­ing Chris­tian­i­ty into the pub­lic sphere.

“We think there can be a restora­tion of faith in Amer­i­ca, and we think get­ting Ten Com­mand­ments on these walls is a great way to do that,” for­mer state Rep. Matt Krause tes­ti­fied last month. “We think we can real­ly set a trend for the rest of the coun­try.”

...

“The nation has start­ed to become con­scious of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism with­in the last hand­ful of years,” said David Brock­man, a non­res­i­dent schol­ar at the Reli­gion and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Pro­gram at Rice University’s Bak­er Insti­tute. “But we’ve been pret­ty much under the thumb of Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism here in Texas for at least a decade.”
...

And it appears that allow­ing the bla­tant pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit is one of the ways Texas is push­ing that Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist enve­lope, with a 2022 inves­ti­ga­tion find­ing at least 20 church­es in Texas vio­lat­ing those rules, includ­ing the Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which fea­tured talks by CNP Vice Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­elford who has long argued against the sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State. Again, recall how Mike John­son referred to Shack­elford has a men­tor. That’s who was invit­ed to give a talk at a megachurch that is in open defi­ance of laws pro­hib­it­ed pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit:

...
Such claims have been ele­vat­ed by a cadre of far-right financiers who have shov­eled small for­tunes into polit­i­cal cam­paigns and insti­tu­tions that seek to erode the wall between church and state, includ­ing through can­di­dates for the State Board of Edu­ca­tion and local school boards.

Those efforts have found an avid audi­ence with­in the state’s mas­sive evan­gel­i­cal — and most­ly white — con­ser­v­a­tive vot­ing bloc and have been rou­tine­ly ampli­fied by Texas megachurch pas­tors who’ve made no bones about pol­i­tick­ing from the pul­pit, even after oth­ers have said they’re run­ning afoul of restric­tions on polit­i­cal activ­i­ty by tax-exempt non­prof­its.

A 2022 Texas Tri­bune and ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion found that at least 20 church­es in Texas may have vio­lat­ed such rules. Among them was Mer­cy Cul­ture Church in Fort Worth, which has host­ed Kel­ly Shack­elford — whose First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute has been instru­men­tal in legal chal­lenges to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Krause, the for­mer Texas rep­re­sen­ta­tive who tes­ti­fied last month in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill, recent­ly took a job at First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute after a decade in the Texas Leg­is­la­ture.

On Sun­day, Krause’s suc­ces­sor, state Rep. Nate Schat­z­line, also spoke at the church.

“The dev­il is not afraid of a church that stays with­in the four walls,” Schat­z­line said before tout­ing a wave of suc­cess­ful con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates in Tar­rant Coun­ty and anti-LGBTQ bills he’s sup­port­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture. “That’s what hap­pens when the church wakes up. That’s what hap­pens when men and women of God get behind oth­er men and women of God.”
...

And when we look at the recent Supreme Court rul­ings that have fueled this move­ment, look at who was behind those law­suits: the plain­tiffs in the 2022 Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict rul­ing were rep­re­sent­ed by Kel­ly Shack­elford’s Lib­er­ty insti­tute, which at that point had Matt Krause work­ing for them. This was a CNP-backed law­suit:

...
“How­ev­er, the legal land­scape has changed,” he added.

A “mas­sive shift” in the law?

King has a point.

In 2022’s Kennedy v. Bre­mer­ton School Dis­trict, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Wash­ing­ton state high school foot­ball coach who argued that his reli­gious rights were vio­lat­ed because his employ­er, a pub­lic school, sought to lim­it his prac­tice of silent­ly pray­ing in the mid­dle of the foot­ball field imme­di­ate­ly after games. The dis­trict had asked Kennedy to pray at a lat­er time to avoid the appear­ance that the school was endors­ing his beliefs, then declined to renew his con­tract after he refused to do so.

In a 6–3 rul­ing, the court’s con­ser­v­a­tive super­ma­jor­i­ty said Kennedy’s prayers were pro­tect­ed by the First Amend­ment, reject­ing the district’s con­tention that allow­ing the prayers amount­ed to an offi­cial endorse­ment of reli­gion.

The rul­ing dealt a sub­stan­tial blow to the so-called Lemon test. Estab­lished by the court’s 1971 deci­sion in Lemon v. Kurtz­man, the Lemon test held that the gov­ern­ment could inter­act with reli­gion so long as it served a sec­u­lar pur­pose, did not advance or inhib­it reli­gion, and did not cre­ate an exces­sive gov­ern­ment entan­gle­ment with reli­gion.

In the Kennedy deci­sion, the Supreme Court also ruled that restric­tions on reli­gious expres­sion must take into account his­tor­i­cal con­text and prac­tices — a direc­tive that some have tak­en as a green light to put reli­gion in the class­room, includ­ing Krause and First Lib­er­ty Insti­tute, which rep­re­sent­ed Kennedy.

“The law has under­gone a mas­sive shift,” Krause said dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port of the Ten Com­mand­ments bill. “It’s not too much to say that the Kennedy case for reli­gious lib­er­ty was much like the Dobbs case was for the pro-life move­ment. It was a fun­da­men­tal shift.”
...

Texas Repub­li­cans are clear­ly enthu­si­as­tic about turn­ing their state into a mod­el for the nation. David Bar­ton’s mod­el for the nation. A mod­el that implic­it­ly got a big endorse­ment with Mike John­son’s new role as Speak­er of the House.

But, for addi­tion­al con­text, don’t over­in­ter­pret the sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance of a Bar­ton super-fan becom­ing speak­er. Because as the fol­low­ing piece in Cur­rent reminds us, Bar­ton has been quite pop­u­lar among Repub­li­can speak­ers for years:

Cur­rent

Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

John Fea | Novem­ber 1, 2023

I was recent­ly talk­ing with a reporter who asked me if Mike John­son was the first Speak­er of the House to embrace the teach­ings of David Bar­ton. I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head so after the call I decid­ed to do some research. Here’s what I found:

Paul Ryan, who served as Speak­er from 2015–2019, was also a fan of the con­ser­v­a­tive activist who invokes the past to advance his polit­i­cal agen­da. Or at least this is what he told Dan Cum­mins of Charis­ma mag­a­zine in 2016:

Though we may nev­er agree total­ly with everyone’s pol­i­tics, let me tell you why I’m thank­ful that Paul Ryan is speak­er of the House and that he won his pri­ma­ry race. Speak­er Ryan, a Roman Catholic, is a pas­sion­ate dis­ci­ple and fol­low­er of Jesus Christ. He is sur­round­ing him­self with god­ly spir­i­tu­al pas­tors.

He said, “The only hope for Amer­i­ca is a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing. … We must have spir­i­tu­al solu­tions to our prob­lems, or we’re in for trou­bled times as a nation” (spo­ken to JoAnn and me alone in a pri­vate, 30-minute con­ver­sa­tion). He asked that I help him invite pas­tors to the Capi­tol for spir­i­tu­al advice. So far, we have had more than 200 pas­tors vis­it the Capi­tol, and we plan for many more for this fall.

Ryan makes meet­ing pas­tors a top pri­or­i­ty in his busy sched­ule. JoAnn and I have an open work­ing rela­tion­ship with his staff. They told us that in six weeks’ time, they had to turn down more than 500 invi­ta­tions to var­i­ous impor­tant events (I saw the print out sheets), “but he’s doing the pas­tors brief­in­gs because he’s pas­sion­ate about it,” a top staffer told us.

Speak­er Ryan is an avid fan of his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving,” he said. Because of Barton’s teach­ings, Speak­er Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment (putting polit­i­cal speech restric­tions on pas­tors from their pul­pits) and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on our cul­ture.

...

But wait, there’s more:

In Jan­u­ary 2009, John Boehn­er, who was speak­er from 2011–2015, appeared on Barton’s radio show Wall­builders Live when he was the House minor­i­ty leader to talk about the cen­sus:

To be fair, Boehn­er did not say, as Mike John­son did, that Bar­ton and com­pa­ny had a “pro­found influ­ence” on his life. The inter­view actu­al­ly had noth­ing to do with Chris­t­ian nation­al­ism direct­ly, but it is still worth not­ing that Wall­builders Live was on Boehner’s radar screen.

Bar­ton has had an influ­ence on con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics for a long time. If you can find any­thing about his con­nec­tions to Den­ny Hastert or Kevin McCarthy let me know.

———–

“Mike John­son is not the only David Bar­ton fan to be Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives” by John Fea; Cur­rent; 11/01/2023

“Speak­er Ryan is an avid fan of his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. “I lis­ten to him all the time, even in my car while dri­ving,” he said. Because of Barton’s teach­ings, Speak­er Ryan is very knowl­edge­able of the 1954 John­son Amend­ment (putting polit­i­cal speech restric­tions on pas­tors from their pul­pits) and its dev­as­tat­ing effects on our cul­ture.”

David Bar­ton is quite the celebri­ty when it comes to Repub­li­can Speak­ers of the House. He almost sounds like a men­tor to Paul Ryan. Was Bar­ton involved in Ryan­s’s staffing deci­sion too?

All in all, it’s quite a love fest between Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist lead­ers and Repub­li­can politi­cians. Even more so after the pres­i­den­cy of Don­ald Trump and the pro­found impact his term in office had the com­po­si­tion of the Supreme Court. And as the fol­low­ing May 2016 arti­cle about plans for a June gath­er­ing of evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet then-can­di­date Don­ald Trump reminds us, this same net­work of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist lead­ers was bear hug­ging Trump’s polit­i­cal ascent from the very begin­ning. It was ‘Who’s Who’ of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism:

* CNP Found­ing Mem­ber James Dob­son
* CNP mem­ber Ralph Reed
* CNP mem­ber Pen­ny Nance
* CNP Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen
* CNP mem­ber Tim Wild­mon
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP VP start­ing in 2020) Kel­ly Shack­elford, who also hap­pens to be Mike John­son’s men­tor.
* CNP mem­ber (and CNP Pres­i­dent in 2018) Tony Perkins
* CNP mem­ber Bill Dal­las

That was the del­e­ga­tion of Chris­t­ian lead­ers who gath­ered to meet with Don­ald Trump back in May of 2016. It was a CNP del­e­ga­tion sent to assess Don­ald Trump. And the rest is his­to­ry. Specif­i­cal­ly, the his­to­ry of the ongo­ing love sto­ry between Trump and his Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism base that even­tu­al­ly result­ed in the CNP-orches­trat­ed attempts to over­turn in 2020 elec­tion:

AL.com

South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports

By Lea­da Gore
Pub­lished: May. 23, 2016, 11:41 a.m.

Don­ald Trump will meet with some of the nation’s most promi­nent Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive reli­gious groups.

The meet­ing comes as sev­er­al Evan­gel­i­cal leader have spo­ken out against Trump, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee.

The gath­er­ing, first report­ed by Fox News, will include South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion Pres­i­dent Ron­nie Floyd; Focus on the Fam­i­ly founder James Dob­son; Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion founder Ralph Reed; Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca CEO Pen­ny Nance; Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen; Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tim Wild­mon; First Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­le­ford; and pas­tors Jack Gra­ham of Pre­ston­wood Bap­tist Church in Plano, Texas and Ed Young in Grapevine, Texas.

South­ern Bap­tist pres­i­dent Floyd told Fox News he wants to learn more about Trump’s poli­cies and plans.

...

Set for June 21 in New York, the meet­ing is being orga­nized by Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins. For­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date turned Trump sup­port­er Dr. Ben Car­son and Bill Dal­las of Unit­ed in Pur­pose assist­ed in plan­ning the event, which is expect­ed to include as many as 500 reli­gious lead­ers. The meet­ing will not include an endorse­ment or straw poll but rather pro­vide atten­dees time to ask ques­tions about Trump, who has main­tained his poli­cies will align with those of Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.

———–

“South­ern Bap­tist, oth­er evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers to meet with Don­ald Trump: Reports” by Lea­da Gore; AL.com; 05/23/2016

“Set for June 21 in New York, the meet­ing is being orga­nized by Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins.> For­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date turned Trump sup­port­er Dr. Ben Car­son and Bill Dal­las of Unit­ed in Pur­pose assist­ed in plan­ning the event, which is expect­ed to include as many as 500 reli­gious lead­ers. The meet­ing will not include an endorse­ment or straw poll but rather pro­vide atten­dees time to ask ques­tions about Trump, who has main­tained his poli­cies will align with those of Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.”

Orga­nized by CNP mem­bers Perkins and Dal­las, and attend­ed by CNP mem­bers Dob­son, Reed, Nance, McEwen, Wild­mon, and Shack­elford. This was the CNP’s oppor­tu­ni­ty to for­mal­ly gov­ern­ment Trump their bless­ing:

...
“The gath­er­ing, first report­ed by Fox News, will include South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion Pres­i­dent Ron­nie Floyd; Focus on the Fam­i­ly founder James Dob­son; Faith and Free­dom Coali­tion founder Ralph Reed; Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca CEO Pen­ny Nance; Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Bob McEwen; Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Tim Wild­mon; First Lib­er­ty Pres­i­dent Kel­ly Shack­le­ford; and pas­tors Jack Gra­ham of Pre­ston­wood Bap­tist Church in Plano, Texas and Ed Young in Grapevine, Texas.”
...

And note the two pas­tors who also attend­ed: Jack Gra­ham and Ed Young. While Ed Young’s name does­n’t show up on the avail­able leaked CNP mem­ber­ship lists, there are indi­ca­tions that Young is indeed a CNP mem­ber includ­ing a 2015 doc­u­ment put out by the CNP sum­ma­riz­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion on mar­riage equal­i­ty. But whether or not Young is a for­mal CNP mem­ber, he’s clear­ly a play­er in this agen­da. A rather sig­nif­i­cant one, as we’re going to see below. And some­one with an atro­cious track record of cov­er­ing up sys­tem­at­ic abus­es inside the South­ern Bap­tist Con­fer­ence (SBC) net­work of church­es. Sys­temic abus­es, includ­ing abus­es by a promi­nent Texas CNP mem­ber, the SBC lead­er­ship was very aware of very many years.

The SBC’s Megachurch Sexual Abuse Mega-scandal. It’s the CNP’s Mega-scandal Too

Paul Pressler isn’t a house­hold name. Unless you have to come from the house­hold of an aspir­ing Texas Repub­li­can politi­cian, in which case you may have heard of the promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer and SBC leader. Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, is the kind of fig­ure whose sup­port GOP hope­ful have long sought out out and brag about should they get it. That includes Texas Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, who has report­ed­ly known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler — who was CNP pres­i­dent from 1988–1990 — host­ed a meet­ing at his ranch where con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port the CNP mem­ber Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. Pressler is described as hav­ing been instru­men­tal in push­ing the SBC’s 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And as we’re going to see in the fol­low­ing March 2023 Hous­ton Pub­lic Radio arti­cle, Pressler has been using his pow­er and influ­ence inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty to sex­u­al­ly assault young men for decades, going back to at least the 1978 when he was forced out of Hous­ton church for molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

For years, Pressler’s law firm part­ners paid him in young men. That’s right, Paul Pressler was­n’t paid a salary for his work at Wood­fill & Pressler LLP. He was instead paid in the form of a string of employ­ees tasked to serve him as per­son­al assis­tants. Most of these assis­tants are described as young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two of those assis­tants have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assaults. They are among at least six men who have now come for­ward to accuse Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct includ­ing two who say they were minors at the time. Notably, Pressler’s for­mer per­son­al assis­tant, John Fields, also shows up on the CNP mem­ber­ship list. You have to won­der what’s under that rock.

Jared Wood­fill — Pressler’s part­ner of Wood­fill & Pressler LLP — is no stranger to Pressler’s pol­i­tics or sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties. Wood­fill, who led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014, is him­self a promi­nent Hous­ton con­ser­v­a­tive activist who led the cam­paign against a Hous­ton 2015 ordi­nance on the bal­lot that would have pro­tect­ed the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. And based on what we’re learn­ing from the doc­u­ments released in a law­suit against Pressler, Wood­fill was no stranger to Pressler’s pat­tern of prey­ing on young men. Worse, he appar­ent­ly enabled it, often arrang­ing for meet­ings between Pressler and young male con­ser­v­a­tives in his cir­cle.

Nor is the cur­rent law­suit the first against Pressler. Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed him in a 2004 law­suit stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room. As Wood­fill admit­ted dur­ing a tes­ti­mo­ny back in Feb­ru­ary, Wood­fill helped set­tle the 2004 suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. It was a notable dis­clo­sure giv­en that Wood­fill has been assert­ing since 2016 that he knew noth­ing about Pressler’s groom­ing behav­ior.

2016 is also the year Pressler report­ed­ly invit­ed a young male attor­ney who had just joined Wood­fil­l’s law­firm back to his Drip­ping Springs ranch where they have a 10-per­son hot tub for a naked boys-only hot tub­bing expe­ri­ence. When the young man brought up the inci­dent with a long­time Wood­fill law firm employ­ee, he learned this was not the first time they heard such alle­ga­tions. “I dis­cov­ered that this was not unusu­al behav­ior for Pressler, and that he had a long his­to­ry of lech­er­ous behav­ior towards young men. Even going as far as bring­ing scant­i­ly clad men and parad­ing them through the office,” accord­ing to the man’s affi­davit.

The invite to this young attor­ney took place at the home of CNP mem­ber Steven Hotze, anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive activist who co-led the 2015 anti-LBGTQ cam­paign with Wood­fill. Wood­fill is also rep­re­sent­ing Hotze in a sep­a­rate crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion over an Octo­ber 2020 inci­dent in which a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Mark Aguirre held at gun­point an A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots. Aguiree was paid $266,400 by the group Lib­er­ty Cen­ter for God and Coun­try, whose CEO is Hotze.

But it’s just inci­dents that hap­pens to these young attor­neys that trig­gered the cur­rent ongo­ing law­suit play­ing out. Decades of rape and molesta­tion start­ed, accord­ing to Duane Rollins, when he was 14 and a mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group. Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14. Notably, Rollins is the same per­son who sued Pressler back in 2004, which end­ed in the $450,000 settlemen/confidentiality agree­ment. Also notable is that Rollins did actu­al­ly end up going to work at Wood­fill & Pressler in 2002, so Rollins’s case against against Pressler poten­tial­ly involves abus­es that took place in both church and law office set­tings.

And that brings us to anoth­er oth­er major facet of this sto­ry: Pressler’s abuse inside the SBC net­work of church­es almost sure­ly could have gone unchecked for decades because that’s the giant scan­dal that’s been unfold­ing for the SBC com­mu­ni­ty for years now. Unchecked sex­u­al abuse, often at the hands of known abusers and con­vict­ed sex offend­ed repeat­ed­ly allowed back into posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence inside the SBC’s 47k church­es. And all of this is wide­ly tol­er­at­ed by the SBC lead­er­ship, includ­ing promi­nent SBC lead­ers like Ed Young. Pressler’s decades of unchecked abuse did­n’t just hap­pen because Paul Pressler is a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial man. He’s instead a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial exam­ple of some­thing that is appar­ent­ly ram­pant inside the SBC com­mu­ni­ty with almost no effort by the SBC lead­er­ship to do any­thing oth­er than cov­er it up.

And that brings us to anoth­er SBC leader impli­cat­ed in Rollins’s lat­est law­suit: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent. Pat­ter­son and Pressler are described as two of fig­ures who pushed the SBC to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible back in the 1980s and 90s. Pat­ter­son, and his wife Dorothy Kel­ly Pat­ter­son, are both mem­bers of the CNP. Pat­ter­son has been ignor­ing and cov­er­ing up sex­u­al abuse claims in the SBC for decades, accord­ing to the law­suit, includ­ed accu­sa­tions made by mul­ti­ple women against his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard. In May of 2018, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, after it was revealed he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down.”

It’s the ‘Catholic Church’ cri­sis for Bap­tists. But it’s also awful con­text for this broad­er sto­ry we’ve been look­ing at of the pro­found ascen­den­cy of the CNP’s pow­er and influ­ence as exem­pli­fied by the ascen­sion of a back­bencher David Bar­ton-fan with creepy theo­crat­ic spy­ware on his phone to the House Speak­er­ship. But also exem­pli­fied by the CNP’s abil­i­ty to orches­trate the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion and get away with almost no scruti­ny and then pro­ceed to open­ly plan a Sched­ule F/Project 2025 mass purge. And then there’s the CNP’s sol­id grip on the Supreme Court for decades to come. It’s a meta cri­sis of sys­temic abus­es of pow­er under the guise of piety:

Hous­ton Pub­lic Radio

Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner

Under oath, out­spo­ken anti-gay activist Jared Wood­fill said he was told in 2004 that Paul Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a minor. But Wood­fill did not cut ties with the South­ern Bap­tist leader — and said he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged behav­ior when anoth­er young man came for­ward about alleged sex­u­al mis­con­duct in 2016.

Robert Dow­nen, The Texas Tri­bune
Post­ed on March 27, 2023, 11:46 AM (Last Updat­ed: March 27, 2023, 12:50 PM)

In 2016, for­mer Har­ris Coun­ty GOP chair Jared Wood­fill received an urgent warn­ing about Paul Pressler, his long­time law part­ner and a South­ern Bap­tist leader. In an email, a 25-year-old attor­ney from Wood­fil­l’s Hous­ton firm said he’d recent­ly gone to lunch with Pressler, who told him “lewd sto­ries about being naked on beach­es with young men” and then invit­ed him to skin­ny-dip at his ranch.

Wood­fill — an out­spo­ken anti-gay politi­cian and promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive activist who’d just played a key role defeat­ing an equal rights ordi­nance for LGBTQ Hous­to­ni­ans — respond­ed to the young man’s request for help with shock and indig­na­tion. “This 85-year-old man has nev­er made any inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments or actions toward me or any one I know of,” he wrote of Pressler at the time.

...

In recent sworn tes­ti­mo­ny, Wood­fill said he’d known since 2004 of an alle­ga­tion that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a child. Wood­fill learned of those claims, he said, dur­ing medi­a­tion of an assault law­suit filed against Pressler that he helped qui­et­ly set­tle for near­ly a half-mil­lion dol­lars at the time. Despite his knowl­edge of the accu­sa­tion, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to work with Pressler for near­ly a decade — lean­ing on Pressler’s name and rep­u­ta­tion to bol­ster their firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP.

Rather than pay him a salary, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, the firm pro­vid­ed Pressler a string of employ­ees to serve as per­son­al assis­tants, most of them young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two have accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct.

Ref­er­ence

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Wood­fill led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014 and has for years been at the helm of anti-LGBTQ and oth­er hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments in Hous­ton and Texas. In 2015, amid tense debate over a Hous­ton equal rights ordi­nance that would have made LGBTQ work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion ille­gal, he and well-known GOP pow­er bro­ker Steven Hotze co-led a cam­paign that, among oth­er things, said the mea­sure would allow chil­dren to be sex­u­al­ly groomed and abused in bath­rooms, paid for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in oppo­si­tion adver­tise­ments and com­pared the gay rights move­ment to Nazis.

Since then, Wood­fill has remained a fix­ture in Texas GOP pol­i­tics: Dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic, he and Hotze filed numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing COVID-19 man­dates, and he’s cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal can­di­dates chal­leng­ing the 2022 elec­tion results in Har­ris Coun­ty. Wood­fill is also rep­re­sent­ing Hotze in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion stem­ming from a 2020 inci­dent in which a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, alleged­ly act­ing at Hotze’s behest, held at gun­point an A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots.

Wood­fil­l’s depo­si­tion came as part of an ongo­ing, six-year-old law­suit in which a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group accus­es him of decades of rape begin­ning when he was 14. The suit also accus­es Wood­fill and oth­ers, includ­ing lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, of con­ceal­ing and enabling Pressler’s behav­ior — claims that prompt­ed a 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and San Anto­nio Express-News inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread sex­u­al abuse in the SBC, the nation’s sec­ond-largest faith group.

Released over the last few weeks, the thou­sands of pages of new court records show how Wood­fill leaned on his Pressler con­nec­tions to bol­ster his polit­i­cal and legal career — despite warn­ings about his law part­ner’s behav­ior. And they shed new light on how Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, alleged­ly used his pres­tige and influ­ence to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty amid repeat­ed accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and assault dat­ing back to at least 1978, when he was forced out of a Hous­ton church for alleged­ly molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

Pressler is best known for his work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, where he was instru­men­tal in push­ing its 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, strong­ly denounce homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And for decades, he was a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an uber-secre­tive net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, mega donors, media fig­ures and reli­gious elites led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil.

The new records show that in 2004, lead­ers of First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive South­ern Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion, inves­ti­gat­ed claims that Pressler, then a dea­con, had groped and undressed a col­lege stu­dent at his Hous­ton man­sion. The church lead­ers deemed the behav­ior “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate and warned Pressler but took no fur­ther action, cit­ing dif­fer­ing accounts of the inci­dent and Pressler’s stature in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. In recent depo­si­tions, plain­tiffs attor­neys also briefly men­tion new com­plaints from two oth­ers about Pressler, though those doc­u­ments remain sealed ahead of the loom­ing civ­il tri­al in the case.

At least six men have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct, includ­ing two who say they were molest­ed while minors and two who say they were solicit­ed for sex in inci­dents after 2004, when Wood­fill and First Bap­tist lead­ers were sep­a­rate­ly made aware of com­plaints about Pressler.

Pressler has not been crim­i­nal­ly charged in any of the inci­dents. Nei­ther Wood­fill nor his attor­ney respond­ed to a list of ques­tions about Wood­fil­l’s han­dling of the alle­ga­tions against Pressler. In a Wednes­day email, Wood­fil­l’s lawyer David Oubre said they are “con­fi­dent Mr. Wood­fill will be suc­cess­ful in defeat­ing these claims.”

“A big name”

The new alle­ga­tions came as part of an ongo­ing law­suit in which Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of rape and molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14 and a mem­ber of the church youth group led by Pressler, who was then in his late 40s. Those alleged attacks, Rollins says in court doc­u­ments, pushed him into years of drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison for much of his adult life. While in prison ther­a­py ses­sions in 2015, Rollins says he uncov­ered repressed mem­o­ries of sex­u­al abuse by Pressler. He was lat­er diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” accord­ing to med­ical records filed in court.

In 2017, Rollins sued Pressler, Wood­fill and South­ern Bap­tist fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that he says enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior, argu­ing that, because of trau­ma and manip­u­la­tion by Pressler, it took him decades to rec­on­cile that he was sex­u­al­ly abused. Last year, after the defen­dants fought to have the suit tossed by argu­ing the assault claims were out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with Rollins‘ argu­ments and allowed the law­suit to go for­ward.

The new fil­ings give insight into Wood­fil­l’s long rela­tion­ship with Pressler begin­ning in the mid-1990s. At the time, Pressler, then 65, was phas­ing out of years of work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and focus­ing more on pol­i­tics. Wood­fill was still in his 20s and said Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive bona fides were a valu­able asset.

Pressler’s sup­port has long been sought and tout­ed by Repub­li­can polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Sen. Ted Cruz, who has known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler host­ed a retreat at his Texas ranch, where a group of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.

...

Over the course of their law part­ner­ship, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, Pressler did almost no work for the firm, but was pro­vid­ed numer­ous young, male assis­tants who tend­ed to his and his fam­i­ly’s needs — includ­ing his son who has a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied. “He may have gone to one hear­ing in his entire time with us, two at the most. Real­ly, it was his name. ... He got an employ­ee that worked for him. So he did­n’t get a salary. He did­n’t get a draw. He did­n’t get a bonus. We paid for some­one to come and assist him. That’s how he got com­pen­sat­ed.”

The lat­est law­suit marks the sec­ond time Rollins has sued Pressler over alle­ga­tions of assault.

In 2004, Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in a law­suit in which Rollins accused him of assault stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room, dur­ing which Rollins says Pressler injured him dur­ing a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion and, cit­ing his stature as a for­mer Texas judge, threat­ened him if he came for­ward. In order to avoid pub­lic­i­ty, Wood­fill helped set­tle the suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment, he said in tes­ti­mo­ny last month.

Copies of the law­suit did not refer to the inci­dent as sex­u­al assault. But as the case was being medi­at­ed, Wood­fill said under oath last month, he was told by Rollins’ then-attor­ney that Pressler had “been sex­u­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate” with Rollins, had “done some things to him when he was a child” and “sex­u­al­ly abused (Rollins) … when he was a child or in a youth group or some­thing.”

Dur­ing his depo­si­tion, Wood­fill declined to dis­cuss most oth­er details of the 2004 law­suit, cit­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Even so, Wood­fil­l’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts his pre­vi­ous asser­tions that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged groom­ing and sex­u­al mis­con­duct toward young men — claims that he has repeat­ed since at least 2016, when he denied any knowl­edge of such behav­ior after the young attor­ney detailed Pressler’s alleged invi­ta­tion to hot tub naked, as well as in sub­se­quent media inter­views and court fil­ings.

Rollins’ attor­neys say Wood­fill “had an incen­tive to turn a blind eye to Mr. Pressler’s abuse.”

...

Records show that Pressler remained a lim­it­ed part­ner at the firm until around 2012, when Wood­fill said Pressler retired. The firm was renamed Wood­fill Law Firm and has been involved in numer­ous law­suits involv­ing con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es over the years. The firm has also faced accu­sa­tions of impro­pri­ety, includ­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing alle­ga­tions that sparked a 2018 raid and inves­ti­ga­tion by the Har­ris Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office, though no charges were ever filed in the mat­ter.

“If brought to light”

Rollins’ lat­est law­suit also brought to light oth­er sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against Pressler, includ­ing an affi­davit that was sub­mit­ted as part of the 2004 law­suit. Wood­fill declined to com­ment on the affi­davit while under oath, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rules.

In the affi­davit, which was made pub­lic this year, anoth­er col­lege stu­dent says Pressler pres­sured him to get naked and then groped him at his Hous­ton man­sion. Accord­ing to court records, the young man met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and then was hired by Wood­fil­l’s law firm as Pressler’s assis­tant. The Texas Tri­bune does not iden­ti­fy vic­tims of alleged sex­u­al assault with­out their con­sent.

In the new­ly-sur­faced affi­davit, the young man said he was invit­ed to live with the Presslers. “Mov­ing into the Pressler home was in the fash­ion of being invit­ed to be a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly which, by that time and owing to the church rela­tion­ship, I had become,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

One night in May 2004, he was asked by Pressler to give him a neck mas­sage on his bed, he said in the affi­davit. Pressler then removed his pants and began to give the young man a mas­sage, the man said. Pressler lat­er invit­ed him on a trip to Europe, and the col­lege stu­dent said he was “non-com­mit­tal.” When he went out­side after, Pressler fol­lowed him and sug­gest­ed they undress to get him “adjust­ed to trav­el­ing in Europe,” where he said nudi­ty among men was com­mon, accord­ing to the affi­davit.

The young man said he declined mul­ti­ple times but even­tu­al­ly gave in to Pressler’s requests and briefly undressed. Pressler lat­er sug­gest­ed they pray togeth­er naked, he said in the affi­davit, after which the col­lege stu­dent got dressed and hur­ried into the home. Pressler fol­lowed him inside, he said, and “reached to hug me good­night.”

He said Pressler then “quick­ly and with­out warn­ing or invi­ta­tion, grabbed my swim trunks and pulled them down far enough to expose my gen­i­tals and but­tocks.”

“I was hor­ri­fied and froze,” he said. “Appar­ent­ly, in response to my reac­tion, he backed away and went upstairs.”

Court records show that, after the col­lege stu­dent men­tioned the inci­dent to a church leader, a small group of top First Bap­tist lead­ers briefly looked into the mat­ter but deter­mined it was a “he said, she said” type of ordeal that would be dam­ag­ing to Pressler if made pub­lic. Pressler was beloved by many at the church and had just served on a search com­mit­tee that brought the church’s new pas­tor on around the same time.

“Giv­en your stature and var­i­ous lead­er­ship roles in our church, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and oth­er Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions, it is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that this kind of behav­ior, if brought to light, might dis­tort your tes­ti­mo­ny or cause oth­ers to stum­ble,” First Bap­tist lead­ers wrote in a 2004 let­ter to Pressler that was recent­ly made pub­lic as part of Rollins’ law­suit. “We desire nei­ther, but, rather, pray that God con­tin­ues to use your gifts and tal­ents to accom­plish His will and pur­pose.”

In an inter­view, a lawyer for First Bap­tist defend­ed the church’s actions, say­ing lead­ers imme­di­ate­ly looked into the alle­ga­tions and, after inter­view­ing both Pressler and the col­lege stu­dent, found noth­ing that was con­clu­sive or crim­i­nal.

“The church act­ed prompt­ly when we heard this alleged behav­ior,” Hous­ton attor­ney Bar­ry Fly­nn said. “Remem­ber: We did­n’t know if this was true or untrue.”

Fly­nn said the church has strict rules on back­ground checks for any­one who works with chil­dren — but not­ed that Pressler pri­mar­i­ly taught adult Bible study class­es. And, he added, even if the church had checked his back­ground, they would not have found any­thing crim­i­nal.

In a depo­si­tion, a top church leader reit­er­at­ed that stance and com­pared Pressler’s behav­ior to boys who play­ful­ly “depants” one anoth­er. He said Pressler’s defense — that he was ready­ing the young man for a trip to Europe — was believ­able.

Pressler remained a dea­con at the church, First Bap­tist lead­ers tes­ti­fied, but sig­nif­i­cant­ly cur­tailed his involve­ment there until around 2007, when he trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive net­work of Hous­ton-area church­es that’s led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young, and has been pre­vi­ous­ly accused of con­ceal­ing oth­er sex­u­al abus­es. Fly­nn, the First Bap­tist attor­ney, said there was “no com­mu­ni­ca­tion” between the two church­es about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler.

A pat­tern of behav­ior

In the years after leav­ing First Bap­tist, Pressler was accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by at least two oth­er young men — includ­ing a young Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent who tes­ti­fied that, as a result of Pressler’s sex­u­al advances, he stopped pur­su­ing a career in min­istry, fre­quent­ly had pan­ic attacks and attempt­ed sui­cide.

That man’s alle­ga­tions are sim­i­lar in detail to those described by the 25-year-old attor­ney who wrote to Wood­fill in 2016. The attor­ney, whom the Tri­bune is not nam­ing, was a recent law school grad­u­ate who said in an affi­davit that he moved to Texas in 2016 for a job at Wood­fil­l’s law firm. Dur­ing that time, he said, Wood­fill intro­duced him to Pressler, call­ing him his “men­tor for over 25 years,” a “hero of the faith” and a “great man.”

Two months lat­er, the young attor­ney said he ran into Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of Hotze, and was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, he said, he arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up. Pressler answered the door with­out pants on and invit­ed him inside, after which he showed him pic­tures of “impor­tant peo­ple” he knew and talked about swim­ming naked in Europe numer­ous times, the attor­ney wrote in his 2018 sworn affi­davit.

At lunch, Pressler told the attor­ney about a 10-per­son hot tub at his Drip­ping Springs ranch and invit­ed him there, say­ing “when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub com­plete­ly naked,” he said.

Hor­ri­fied, the attor­ney addressed the inci­dent with a long­time employ­ee of Wood­fil­l’s law firm, who made it clear that this was not the first time he’d heard such alle­ga­tions, the attor­ney said in the affi­davit.

“I dis­cov­ered that this was not unusu­al behav­ior for Pressler, and that he had a long his­to­ry of lech­er­ous behav­ior towards young men. Even going as far as bring­ing scant­i­ly clad men and parad­ing them through the office,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

Emails show that the attor­ney reached out to Wood­fill, who claimed it was the first time he’d heard of such alleged behav­ior by Pressler. Wood­fill lat­er offered the attor­ney a $10,000 raise, court records show, and said he’d talk to Pressler and keep him away.

“How­ev­er,” the attor­ney wrote, “with­in two weeks Pressler was at a polit­i­cal lun­cheon that Wood­fill required me to attend.”

———–

“Hous­ton GOP offi­cial knew for years of child sex abuse claims against South­ern Bap­tist leader, law part­ner” by Robert Dow­nen; The Texas Tri­bune; 03/27/2023

“Pressler is best known for his work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, where he was instru­men­tal in push­ing its 16 mil­lion mem­bers and 47,000 church­es to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, strong­ly denounce homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and align more close­ly with the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And for decades, he was a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, an uber-secre­tive net­work of con­ser­v­a­tive judges, mega donors, media fig­ures and reli­gious elites led by Tony Perkins, head of the anti-LGBTQ Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil.”

Judge Pressler, a long­stand­ing leader in the SBC com­mu­ni­ty, isn’t just a high-rank­ing mem­ber of the CNP. He was the CNP’s pres­i­dent from 1988–1990 and a major fig­ure in Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. He even helped orches­trate an obvi­ous­ly failed attempt to shore up sup­port for CNP mem­ber Rick San­to­rum’s 2012 pres­i­den­tial run:

...
Pressler’s sup­port has long been sought and tout­ed by Repub­li­can polit­i­cal hope­fuls, includ­ing Sen. Ted Cruz, who has known Pressler since he was a teenag­er. In 2012, Pressler host­ed a retreat at his Texas ranch, where a group of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers agreed to sup­port Rick San­to­rum over Mitt Rom­ney in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion.
...

So it’s a pret­ty big deal for the SBC and Texas Repub­li­can pol­i­tics that Paul Pressler is now the sub­ject of an ongo­ing law­suit that is bring­ing out one damn­ing tes­ti­mo­ny after anoth­er and paints of pic­ture of unchecked abus­es of pow­er going back decades. Bla­tant abus­es of pow­er that were effec­tive­ly hid­den in plain sight. Like the fact that Pressler was appar­ent­ly nev­er paid a salary by his law firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP, but instead was paid in the form of young male assis­tants who would serve at his man­sion, osten­si­bly to help with the fam­i­ly’s needs. That’s just one of the details Pressler’s law part­ner Jared Wood­fill had to reveal in sworn tes­ti­mo­ny this year as part of an ongo­ing law­suit that has been bring­ing to light evi­dence of abuse by Pressler going back to at least 1978:

...
In recent sworn tes­ti­mo­ny, Wood­fill said he’d known since 2004 of an alle­ga­tion that Pressler had sex­u­al­ly abused a child. Wood­fill learned of those claims, he said, dur­ing medi­a­tion of an assault law­suit filed against Pressler that he helped qui­et­ly set­tle for near­ly a half-mil­lion dol­lars at the time. Despite his knowl­edge of the accu­sa­tion, Wood­fill con­tin­ued to work with Pressler for near­ly a decade — lean­ing on Pressler’s name and rep­u­ta­tion to bol­ster their firm, Wood­fill & Pressler LLP.

Rather than pay him a salary, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, the firm pro­vid­ed Pressler a string of employ­ees to serve as per­son­al assis­tants, most of them young men who typ­i­cal­ly worked out of his Riv­er Oaks man­sion. Two have accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct.

...

Wood­fil­l’s depo­si­tion came as part of an ongo­ing, six-year-old law­suit in which a for­mer mem­ber of Pressler’s church youth group accus­es him of decades of rape begin­ning when he was 14. The suit also accus­es Wood­fill and oth­ers, includ­ing lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, of con­ceal­ing and enabling Pressler’s behav­ior — claims that prompt­ed a 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and San Anto­nio Express-News inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread sex­u­al abuse in the SBC, the nation’s sec­ond-largest faith group.

Released over the last few weeks, the thou­sands of pages of new court records show how Wood­fill leaned on his Pressler con­nec­tions to bol­ster his polit­i­cal and legal career — despite warn­ings about his law part­ner’s behav­ior. And they shed new light on how Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge and one-time White House nom­i­nee under George H.W. Bush, alleged­ly used his pres­tige and influ­ence to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty amid repeat­ed accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct and assault dat­ing back to at least 1978, when he was forced out of a Hous­ton church for alleged­ly molest­ing a teenag­er in a sauna.

...

Over the course of their law part­ner­ship, Wood­fill tes­ti­fied, Pressler did almost no work for the firm, but was pro­vid­ed numer­ous young, male assis­tants who tend­ed to his and his fam­i­ly’s needs — includ­ing his son who has a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty.

“I can think of one or two cas­es that he brought in,” Wood­fill tes­ti­fied. “He may have gone to one hear­ing in his entire time with us, two at the most. Real­ly, it was his name. ... He got an employ­ee that worked for him. So he did­n’t get a salary. He did­n’t get a draw. He did­n’t get a bonus. We paid for some­one to come and assist him. That’s how he got com­pen­sat­ed.”

...

Records show that Pressler remained a lim­it­ed part­ner at the firm until around 2012, when Wood­fill said Pressler retired. The firm was renamed Wood­fill Law Firm and has been involved in numer­ous law­suits involv­ing con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es over the years. The firm has also faced accu­sa­tions of impro­pri­ety, includ­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing alle­ga­tions that sparked a 2018 raid and inves­ti­ga­tion by the Har­ris Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office, though no charges were ever filed in the mat­ter.
...

It’s an ongo­ing law­suit stem­ming from abuse alle­ga­tions around Pressler’s church youth group. Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of abuse start­ing when he was 14. It’s not the first time Rollins sued Pressler over these alle­ga­tions. Rollins first sued in 2004. But Rollins isn’t just suing Pressler in the ongo­ing law­suit. He’s suing Wood­fill, and oth­er SBC fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior. It’s the kind of giant scan­dal that huge, in part, because it could obvi­ous­ly get a lot big­ger:

...
The new records show that in 2004, lead­ers of First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive South­ern Bap­tist con­gre­ga­tion, inves­ti­gat­ed claims that Pressler, then a dea­con, had groped and undressed a col­lege stu­dent at his Hous­ton man­sion. The church lead­ers deemed the behav­ior “moral­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly” inap­pro­pri­ate and warned Pressler but took no fur­ther action, cit­ing dif­fer­ing accounts of the inci­dent and Pressler’s stature in their church and the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. In recent depo­si­tions, plain­tiffs attor­neys also briefly men­tion new com­plaints from two oth­ers about Pressler, though those doc­u­ments remain sealed ahead of the loom­ing civ­il tri­al in the case.

At least six men have now accused Pressler of sex­u­al assault or mis­con­duct, includ­ing two who say they were molest­ed while minors and two who say they were solicit­ed for sex in inci­dents after 2004, when Wood­fill and First Bap­tist lead­ers were sep­a­rate­ly made aware of com­plaints about Pressler.

...

The new alle­ga­tions came as part of an ongo­ing law­suit in which Duane Rollins accus­es Pressler of decades of rape and molesta­tion begin­ning when Rollins was 14 and a mem­ber of the church youth group led by Pressler, who was then in his late 40s. Those alleged attacks, Rollins says in court doc­u­ments, pushed him into years of drug and alco­hol addic­tions that kept him in prison for much of his adult life. While in prison ther­a­py ses­sions in 2015, Rollins says he uncov­ered repressed mem­o­ries of sex­u­al abuse by Pressler. He was lat­er diag­nosed with post-trau­mat­ic stress as a “direct result of the child­hood sex­u­al trau­ma he suf­fered,” accord­ing to med­ical records filed in court.

In 2017, Rollins sued Pressler, Wood­fill and South­ern Bap­tist fig­ures and insti­tu­tions that he says enabled and con­cealed Pressler’s behav­ior, argu­ing that, because of trau­ma and manip­u­la­tion by Pressler, it took him decades to rec­on­cile that he was sex­u­al­ly abused. Last year, after the defen­dants fought to have the suit tossed by argu­ing the assault claims were out­side the statute of lim­i­ta­tions, the Texas Supreme Court agreed with Rollins‘ argu­ments and allowed the law­suit to go for­ward.

The new fil­ings give insight into Wood­fil­l’s long rela­tion­ship with Pressler begin­ning in the mid-1990s. At the time, Pressler, then 65, was phas­ing out of years of work in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and focus­ing more on pol­i­tics. Wood­fill was still in his 20s and said Pressler’s con­ser­v­a­tive bona fides were a valu­able asset.
...

Wood­fill was even forced to reveal dur­ing tes­ti­mo­ny that he helped to arrange the 2004 $450,000 settlement/confidentiality agree­ment in the face of Rollins’s first suit, which direct­ly con­tra­dicts the claims Wood­fill has been mak­ing since 2016 that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s his­to­ry of abuse:

...
The lat­est law­suit marks the sec­ond time Rollins has sued Pressler over alle­ga­tions of assault.

In 2004, Wood­fill rep­re­sent­ed Pressler in a law­suit in which Rollins accused him of assault stem­ming from a 2003 inci­dent in a Dal­las hotel room, dur­ing which Rollins says Pressler injured him dur­ing a phys­i­cal alter­ca­tion and, cit­ing his stature as a for­mer Texas judge, threat­ened him if he came for­ward. In order to avoid pub­lic­i­ty, Wood­fill helped set­tle the suit for $450,000 in a one-day medi­a­tion that also includ­ed a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment, he said in tes­ti­mo­ny last month.

Copies of the law­suit did not refer to the inci­dent as sex­u­al assault. But as the case was being medi­at­ed, Wood­fill said under oath last month, he was told by Rollins’ then-attor­ney that Pressler had “been sex­u­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate” with Rollins, had “done some things to him when he was a child” and “sex­u­al­ly abused (Rollins) … when he was a child or in a youth group or some­thing.”

Dur­ing his depo­si­tion, Wood­fill declined to dis­cuss most oth­er details of the 2004 law­suit, cit­ing the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Even so, Wood­fil­l’s tes­ti­mo­ny direct­ly con­tra­dicts his pre­vi­ous asser­tions that he had no knowl­edge of Pressler’s alleged groom­ing and sex­u­al mis­con­duct toward young men — claims that he has repeat­ed since at least 2016, when he denied any knowl­edge of such behav­ior after the young attor­ney detailed Pressler’s alleged invi­ta­tion to hot tub naked, as well as in sub­se­quent media inter­views and court fil­ings.

Rollins’ attor­neys say Wood­fill “had an incen­tive to turn a blind eye to Mr. Pressler’s abuse.”
...

And as we can see with the range of addi­tion­al accu­sa­tion that have come to light in the affi­davits pro­vid­ed to the court, Pressler’s abuse was­n’t just cov­ered up. He was allowed to con­tin­ue his role as a dea­con at First Bap­tist until around 2007, when he was trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young. No com­mu­ni­ca­tion was made to SBC about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler. That’s despite the fact that anoth­er col­lege stu­dent who met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church and end­ed up serv­ing as one of Pressler’s “per­son­al assis­tants” at Wood­fil­l’s law­firm told church lead­ers about a grop­ing inci­dent. The lead­ers dis­missed it as a “he said, she said” inci­dent that should be kept pri­vate:

...
Rollins’ lat­est law­suit also brought to light oth­er sex­u­al mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions against Pressler, includ­ing an affi­davit that was sub­mit­ted as part of the 2004 law­suit. Wood­fill declined to com­ment on the affi­davit while under oath, cit­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rules.

In the affi­davit, which was made pub­lic this year, anoth­er col­lege stu­dent says Pressler pres­sured him to get naked and then groped him at his Hous­ton man­sion. Accord­ing to court records, the young man met Pressler through First Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton and then was hired by Wood­fil­l’s law firm as Pressler’s assis­tant. The Texas Tri­bune does not iden­ti­fy vic­tims of alleged sex­u­al assault with­out their con­sent.

...

Court records show that, after the col­lege stu­dent men­tioned the inci­dent to a church leader, a small group of top First Bap­tist lead­ers briefly looked into the mat­ter but deter­mined it was a “he said, she said” type of ordeal that would be dam­ag­ing to Pressler if made pub­lic. Pressler was beloved by many at the church and had just served on a search com­mit­tee that brought the church’s new pas­tor on around the same time.

...

Pressler remained a dea­con at the church, First Bap­tist lead­ers tes­ti­fied, but sig­nif­i­cant­ly cur­tailed his involve­ment there until around 2007, when he trans­ferred to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, a mas­sive net­work of Hous­ton-area church­es that’s led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young, and has been pre­vi­ous­ly accused of con­ceal­ing oth­er sex­u­al abus­es. Fly­nn, the First Bap­tist attor­ney, said there was “no com­mu­ni­ca­tion” between the two church­es about the alle­ga­tions against Pressler.
...

And based on the accu­sa­tions against him, Pressler con­tin­ued to prey on young men until at least 2016. That’s what we can con­clude based on inci­dent involv­ing a young attor­ney who had just joined Wood­fil­l’s law­firm (Pressler was retired by then). Wood­fill intro­duced the young lawyer to Pressler. Two months lat­er, the young lawyer met Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of CNP mem­ber Steven Hotze, where the lawyer was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, the lawyer arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up for lunch. It was dur­ing that encounter when Pressler invit­ed to lawyer to his ranch for some naked boys-only hot tub­bing. Again, this was 2016, 12 years after the 2004 set­tle­ment. It’s a the kind of anec­dote that rais­es seri­ous ques­tions about just per­va­sive Pressler’s abus­es tru­ly were. We’re pre­sum­ably not hear­ing from all of his vic­tims:

...

In the years after leav­ing First Bap­tist, Pressler was accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct by at least two oth­er young men — includ­ing a young Hous­ton Bap­tist Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent who tes­ti­fied that, as a result of Pressler’s sex­u­al advances, he stopped pur­su­ing a career in min­istry, fre­quent­ly had pan­ic attacks and attempt­ed sui­cide.

That man’s alle­ga­tions are sim­i­lar in detail to those described by the 25-year-old attor­ney who wrote to Wood­fill in 2016. The attor­ney, whom the Tri­bune is not nam­ing, was a recent law school grad­u­ate who said in an affi­davit that he moved to Texas in 2016 for a job at Wood­fil­l’s law firm. Dur­ing that time, he said, Wood­fill intro­duced him to Pressler, call­ing him his “men­tor for over 25 years,” a “hero of the faith” and a “great man.”

Two months lat­er, the young attor­ney said he ran into Pressler at a polit­i­cal fundrais­er at the home of Hotze, and was encour­aged by Wood­fill to go to lunch with Pressler. The fol­low­ing week, he said, he arrived at Pressler’s home to pick him up. Pressler answered the door with­out pants on and invit­ed him inside, after which he showed him pic­tures of “impor­tant peo­ple” he knew and talked about swim­ming naked in Europe numer­ous times, the attor­ney wrote in his 2018 sworn affi­davit.

At lunch, Pressler told the attor­ney about a 10-per­son hot tub at his Drip­ping Springs ranch and invit­ed him there, say­ing “when the ladies are not around, us boys all go in the hot tub com­plete­ly naked,” he said.

Hor­ri­fied, the attor­ney addressed the inci­dent with a long­time employ­ee of Wood­fil­l’s law firm, who made it clear that this was not the first time he’d heard such alle­ga­tions, the attor­ney said in the affi­davit.

“I dis­cov­ered that this was not unusu­al behav­ior for Pressler, and that he had a long his­to­ry of lech­er­ous behav­ior towards young men. Even going as far as bring­ing scant­i­ly clad men and parad­ing them through the office,” he wrote in his affi­davit.

Emails show that the attor­ney reached out to Wood­fill, who claimed it was the first time he’d heard of such alleged behav­ior by Pressler. Wood­fill lat­er offered the attor­ney a $10,000 raise, court records show, and said he’d talk to Pressler and keep him away.

“How­ev­er,” the attor­ney wrote, “with­in two weeks Pressler was at a polit­i­cal lun­cheon that Wood­fill required me to attend.”
...

And we can’t help not­ing the gross hypocrisy involved with this whole sit­u­a­tion: Jared Wood­fill and Steven Hotze were co-lead­ers of 2015 cam­paign oppos­ing a Hous­ton ref­er­en­dum that would have pro­tect­ed bath­room access rights for the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty:

...
Wood­fill led the Har­ris Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2002 to 2014 and has for years been at the helm of anti-LGBTQ and oth­er hard­line con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments in Hous­ton and Texas. In 2015, amid tense debate over a Hous­ton equal rights ordi­nance that would have made LGBTQ work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion ille­gal, he and well-known GOP pow­er bro­ker Steven Hotze co-led a cam­paign that, among oth­er things, said the mea­sure would allow chil­dren to be sex­u­al­ly groomed and abused in bath­rooms, paid for hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in oppo­si­tion adver­tise­ments and com­pared the gay rights move­ment to Nazis.

Since then, Wood­fill has remained a fix­ture in Texas GOP pol­i­tics: Dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic, he and Hotze filed numer­ous law­suits chal­leng­ing COVID-19 man­dates, and he’s cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ing con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal can­di­dates chal­leng­ing the 2022 elec­tion results in Har­ris Coun­ty. Wood­fill is also rep­re­sent­ing Hotze in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion stem­ming from a 2020 inci­dent in which a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, alleged­ly act­ing at Hotze’s behest, held at gun­point an A/C repair­man who he believed was trans­port­ing fake bal­lots.
...

How many more rev­e­la­tions are we going to get thanks to this law­suit? Time will tell. But as the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary 2019 Hous­ton Chron­i­cle inves­tiga­tive piece lays out, this was already a mega-scan­dal that goes far beyond Paul Pressler. The SBC lead­er­ship — includ­ing Ed Young and CNP mem­ber Paige Pat­ter­son — has been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­tect­ing and cov­er­ing up hun­dreds abusers with­in its ranks going back decades. In fact, there’s a spe­cif­ic doc­trine they cite to excuse the lack of action: local church auton­o­my. As far as the SBC is con­cerned, each of its rough­ly 47,000 mem­ber church have exclu­sive author­i­ty over their inter­nal oper­a­tions and, as such, the SBC lead­er­ship has nev­er had the author­i­ty to do any­thing about reports of abuse. Either the local lead­ers han­dle it or no one will. And, typ­i­cal­ly, no one did. Hence the ongo­ing unfold­ing mega-scan­dal:

The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle

Abuse of Faith

20 years, 700 vic­tims: South­ern Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse spreads as lead­ers resist reforms

By Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco
Pub­lished Feb. 10, 2019

First of six parts

Thir­ty-five years lat­er, Deb­bie Vasquez’s voice trem­bled as she described her trau­ma to a group of South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers.

She was 14, she said, when she was first molest­ed by her pas­tor in Sanger, a tiny prairie town an hour north of Dal­las. It was the first of many assaults that Vasquez said destroyed her teenage years and, at 18, left her preg­nant by the South­ern Bap­tist pas­tor, a mar­ried man more than a dozen years old­er.

In June 2008, she paid her way to Indi­anapo­lis, where she and oth­ers asked lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and its 47,000 church­es to track sex­u­al preda­tors and take action against con­gre­ga­tions that har­bored or con­cealed abusers. Vasquez, by then in her 40s, implored them to con­sid­er pre­ven­tion poli­cies like those adopt­ed by faiths that include the Catholic Church.

“Lis­ten to what God has to say,” she said, accord­ing to audio of the meet­ing, which she record­ed. “... All that evil needs is for good to do noth­ing. ... Please help me and oth­ers that will be hurt.”

Days lat­er, South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers reject­ed near­ly every pro­posed reform.

The abusers haven’t stopped. They’ve hurt hun­dreds more.

In the decade since Vasquez’s appeal for help, more than 250 peo­ple who worked or vol­un­teered in South­ern Bap­tist church­es have been charged with sex crimes, an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle and the San Anto­nio Express-News reveals.

It’s not just a recent prob­lem: In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state.

They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions.

About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing. They were pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers.

How we did this sto­ry:

Cur­rent as of June 2019

In 2007, vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse by South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors request­ed cre­ation of a reg­istry con­tain­ing the names of cur­rent and for­mer lead­ers of South­ern Bap­tist church­es who had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes or who had been cred­i­bly accused. That did­n’t hap­pen; the last time any such list was made pub­lic was by the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas. It con­tained the names of eight sex crim­i­nals.

In 2018, as advo­cates again pressed SBC offi­cials for such a reg­istry, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle reporters began to search news archives, web­sites and data­bas­es nation­wide to com­pile an archive of alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al abuse, sex­u­al assault and oth­er seri­ous mis­con­duct involv­ing South­ern Bap­tist pas­tors and oth­er church offi­cials. We found com­plaints made against hun­dreds of pas­tors, church offi­cials and vol­un­teers at South­ern Bap­tist church­es nation­wide.

We focused our search on the 10 years pre­ced­ing the vic­tims’ first call for a reg­istry and on the 10-plus years since. And we con­cen­trat­ed on indi­vid­u­als who had a doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tion to a church list­ed in an SBC direc­to­ry pub­lished by a state or nation­al asso­ci­a­tion.

We ver­i­fied details in hun­dreds of accounts of abuse by exam­in­ing fed­er­al and state court data­bas­es, prison records and offi­cial doc­u­ments from more than 20 states and by search­ing sex offend­er reg­istries nation­wide. In Texas, we vis­it­ed more than a dozen coun­ty cour­t­hous­es. We inter­viewed dis­trict attor­neys and police in more than 40 Texas coun­ties. We filed dozens of pub­lic records requests in Texas and nation­wide.

Ulti­mate­ly, we com­piled infor­ma­tion on rough­ly 400 cred­i­bly accused offi­cials in South­ern Bap­tist church­es, includ­ing pas­tors, dea­cons, Sun­day school teach­ers and vol­un­teers.

We ver­i­fied that about 260 had been con­vict­ed of sex crimes or received deferred pros­e­cu­tions in plea deals and sent let­ters to all of them solic­it­ing their respons­es to sum­maries we com­piled. We received writ­ten respons­es from more than 30 and inter­viewed three in Texas pris­ons.

Find our records that relate to those con­vict­ed or forced to reg­is­ter as sex offend­ers at HoustonChronicle.com/AbuseofFaith

Near­ly 100 are still held in pris­ons stretch­ing from Sacra­men­to Coun­ty, Calif., to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, Fla., state and fed­er­al records show. Scores of oth­ers cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are reg­is­tered sex offend­ers. Some still work in South­ern Bap­tist church­es today.

Jour­nal­ists in the two news­rooms spent more than six months review­ing thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. They built a data­base of for­mer lead­ers in South­ern Bap­tist church­es who have been con­vict­ed of sex crimes.

The inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that:

• At least 35 church pas­tors, employ­ees and vol­un­teers who exhib­it­ed preda­to­ry behav­ior were still able to find jobs at church­es dur­ing the past two decades. In some cas­es, church lead­ers appar­ent­ly failed to alert law enforce­ment about com­plaints or to warn oth­er con­gre­ga­tions about alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

• Sev­er­al past pres­i­dents and promi­nent lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion are among those crit­i­cized by vic­tims for con­ceal­ing or mis­han­dling abuse com­plaints with­in their own church­es or sem­i­nar­ies.

• Some reg­is­tered sex offend­ers returned to the pul­pit. Oth­ers remain there, includ­ing a Hous­ton preach­er who sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a teenag­er and now is the prin­ci­pal offi­cer of a Hous­ton non­prof­it that works with stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions, fed­er­al records show. Its name: Touch­ing the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the vic­tims were ado­les­cents who were molest­ed, sent explic­it pho­tos or texts, exposed to pornog­ra­phy, pho­tographed nude, or repeat­ed­ly raped by youth pas­tors. Some vic­tims as young as 3 were molest­ed or raped inside pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school class­rooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pas­toral guid­ance and instead say they were seduced or sex­u­al­ly assault­ed.

Heather Schnei­der was 14 when she was molest­ed in a choir room at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist Church, accord­ing to crim­i­nal and civ­il court records. Her moth­er, Gwen Casa­dos, said church lead­ers wait­ed months to fire the attack­er, who lat­er plead­ed no con­test. In response to her law­suit, church lead­ers also denied respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Schnei­der slit her wrists the day after that attack in 1994, Casa­dos said. She sur­vived, but she died 14 years lat­er from a drug over­dose that her moth­er blames on the trau­ma.

“I nev­er got her back,” Casa­dos said.

Oth­ers took decades to come for­ward, and only after their lives had unrav­eled. David Pittman was 12, he says, when a youth min­is­ter from his Geor­gia church first molest­ed him in 1981. Two oth­er for­mer mem­bers of the man’s church­es said in inter­views that they also were abused by him. But by the time Pittman spoke out in 2006, it was too late to press crim­i­nal charges.

The min­is­ter still works at an SBC church.

Pittman won’t soon for­give those who have offered prayers but tak­en no action. He only recent­ly stopped hat­ing God.

“That is the great­est tragedy of all,” he said. “So many peo­ple’s faith is mur­dered. I mean, their faith is slaugh­tered by these preda­tors.”

August “Augie” Boto, inter­im pres­i­dent of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, helped draft the rejec­tion of reform pro­pos­als in 2008. In an inter­view, he expressed “sor­row” about some of the news­pa­pers’ find­ings but said the con­ven­tion’s lead­er­ship can do only so much to stop sex­u­al abus­es.

“It would be sor­row if it were 200 or 600” cas­es, Boto said. “Sor­row. What we’re talk­ing about is crim­i­nal. The fact that crim­i­nal activ­i­ty occurs in a church con­text is always the basis of grief. But it’s going to hap­pen. And that state­ment does not mean that we must be resigned to it.”

‘A porous sieve’

At the core of South­ern Bap­tist doc­trine is local church auton­o­my, the idea that each church is inde­pen­dent and self-gov­ern­ing. It’s one of the main rea­sons that Boto said most of the pro­pos­als a decade ago were viewed as flawed by the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee because the com­mit­tee does­n’t have the author­i­ty to force church­es to report sex­u­al abuse to a cen­tral reg­istry.

Because of that, Boto said, the com­mit­tee “real­ized that lift­ing up a mod­el that could not be enforced was an exer­cise in futil­i­ty,” and so instead draft­ed a report that “accept­ed the exis­tence of the prob­lem rather than attempt­ing to define its mag­ni­tude.”

SBC church­es and orga­ni­za­tions share resources and mate­ri­als, and togeth­er they fund mis­sion­ary trips and sem­i­nar­ies. Most pas­tors are ordained local­ly after they’ve con­vinced a small group of church elders that they’ve been called to ser­vice by God. There is no cen­tral data­base that tracks ordi­na­tions, or sex­u­al abuse con­vic­tions or alle­ga­tions.

All of that makes South­ern Bap­tist church­es high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to preda­tors, says Christa Brown, an activist who wrote a book about being molest­ed as a child by a pas­tor at her SBC church in Farm­ers Branch, a Dal­las sub­urb.

“It’s a per­fect pro­fes­sion for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and con­vince peo­ple that he’s been called by God, and bin­go, he gets to be a South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ter,” said Brown, who lives in Col­orado. “Then he can infil­trate the entire­ty of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to big­ger church­es and more promi­nent church­es where he has more influ­ence and pow­er, and it all starts in some small church.

“It’s a porous sieve of a denom­i­na­tion.”

To try to mea­sure the prob­lem, the news­pa­pers col­lect­ed and cross-checked news reports, prison records, court records, sex offend­er reg­istries and oth­er doc­u­ments. Reporters also con­duct­ed hun­dreds of inter­views with vic­tims, church lead­ers, inves­ti­ga­tors and offend­ers.

Sev­er­al fac­tors make it like­ly that the abuse is even more wide­spread than can be doc­u­ment­ed: Vic­tims of sex­u­al assault come for­ward at a low rate; many cas­es in church­es are han­dled inter­nal­ly; and many South­ern Bap­tist church­es are in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where media cov­er­age is sparse.

It’s clear, how­ev­er, that SBC lead­ers have long been aware of the prob­lem. Bow­ing to pres­sure from activists, the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas, one of the largest SBC state orga­ni­za­tions, in 2007 pub­lished a list of eight sex offend­ers who had served in South­ern Bap­tist church­es in Texas.

Around the same time, the Rev. Thomas Doyle wrote to SBC lead­ers, implor­ing them to act. A priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church, Doyle in the 1980s was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on child sex­u­al abuse in the church. But Catholic lead­ers “lied about it ... cov­ered it up and ignored the vic­tims,” said Doyle, now retired and liv­ing in north­ern Vir­ginia.

Doyle turned to activism because of his expe­ri­ences, work that brought him clos­er to those abused in South­ern Bap­tist church­es. Their sto­ries — and how the SBC han­dled them — felt haunt­ing­ly famil­iar, he said.

“I saw the same type of behav­ior going on with the South­ern Bap­tists,” he said.

The respons­es were pre­dictable, Doyle said. In one, Frank Page, then the SBC pres­i­dent, wrote that they were “tak­ing this issue seri­ous­ly” but that local church auton­o­my pre­sent­ed “seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions.” In March, Page resigned as pres­i­dent and CEO of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for “a moral­ly inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship in the recent past,” accord­ing to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

Details have not been dis­closed, but SBC offi­cials said they had “no rea­son to sus­pect any legal impro­pri­ety.” Page declined to be inter­viewed.

[see doc­u­ment]

Oth­er lead­ers have acknowl­edged that Bap­tist church­es are trou­bled by preda­tors but that they could not inter­fere in local church affairs. Even so, the SBC has end­ed its affil­i­a­tion with at least four church­es in the past 10 years for affirm­ing or endors­ing homo­sex­u­al behav­ior. The SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments ban gay or female pas­tors, but they do not out­law con­vict­ed sex offend­ers from work­ing in church­es.

In one email to Deb­bie Vasquez, Augie Boto assured her that “no Bap­tist I know of is pre­tend­ing that ‘the prob­lem does not exist.’ ”

“There is no ques­tion that some South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ters have done crim­i­nal things, includ­ing sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren,” he wrote in a May 2007 email. “It is a sad and trag­ic truth. Hope­ful­ly, the harm ema­nat­ing from such occur­rences will cause the local church­es to be more aggres­sive­ly vig­i­lant.”

Offend­ers return to preach

The SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee also wrote in 2008 that it “would cer­tain­ly be jus­ti­fied” to end affil­i­a­tions with church­es that “inten­tion­al­ly employed a known sex­u­al offend­er or know­ing­ly placed one in a posi­tion of lead­er­ship over chil­dren or oth­er vul­ner­a­ble par­tic­i­pants in its min­istries.”

Cur­rent SBC Pres­i­dent J.D. Greear reaf­firmed that stance in an email to the Chron­i­cle, writ­ing that any church that “proves a pat­tern of sin­ful neglect — regard­ing abuse or any oth­er mat­ter — should absolute­ly be removed from fel­low­ship from the broad­er denom­i­na­tion.”

“The Bible calls for pas­tors to be peo­ple of integri­ty, known for their self-con­trol and kind­ness,” Greear wrote. “A con­vict­ed sex offend­er would cer­tain­ly not meet those qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Church­es that ignore that are out of line with both Scrip­ture and Bap­tist prin­ci­ples of coop­er­a­tion.”

But the news­pa­pers found at least 10 SBC church­es that wel­comed pas­tors, min­is­ters and vol­un­teers since 1998 who had pre­vi­ous­ly faced charges of sex­u­al mis­con­duct. In some cas­es, they were reg­is­tered sex offend­ers.

In Illi­nois, Leslie Mason returned to the pul­pit a few years after he was con­vict­ed in 2003 on two counts of crim­i­nal sex­u­al assault. Mason had been a ris­ing star in local South­ern Bap­tist cir­cles until the charges were pub­li­cized by Michael Leathers, who was then edi­tor of the state’s Bap­tist news­pa­per.

Let­ters from angry read­ers poured in. Among those upset by Leathers’ deci­sion to pub­lish the sto­ry was Glenn Akins, the inter­im exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Illi­nois Bap­tist State Asso­ci­a­tion.

“To have sin­gled Les out in such a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic man­ner ignores many oth­ers who have done the same thing,” Akins wrote in a memo, a copy of which Leathers pro­vid­ed. “You could have asked near­ly any staff mem­ber and got­ten the names of sev­er­al oth­er promi­nent church­es where the same sort of sex­u­al mis­con­duct has occurred recent­ly in our state.”

Akins, now the assis­tant exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Vir­ginia, declined an inter­view request.

Leathers resigned after state Bap­tist con­ven­tion lead­ers told him he might be fired and lose his sev­er­ance pay, he said. Mason, mean­while, admit­ted to inves­ti­ga­tors that he had rela­tion­ships with four dif­fer­ent girls, records show.

Mason received a sev­en-year prison sen­tence under a plea deal in which inves­ti­ga­tors dropped all but two of his charges. After his release, he returned to the pul­pit of a dif­fer­ent SBC church a few miles away.

“That just appalled me,” Leathers said. “They had to have known they put a con­vict­ed sex offend­er behind the pul­pit. ... If a church calls a woman to pas­tor their church, there are a lot of South­ern Bap­tist orga­ni­za­tions that, sad­ly, would dis­as­so­ci­ate with them imme­di­ate­ly. Why would­n’t they do the same for con­vict­ed sex offend­ers?”

Mason has since preached at mul­ti­ple SBC church­es in cen­tral Illi­nois. He said in an inter­view that those church­es “absolute­ly know about my past,” and said church­es and oth­er insti­tu­tions need “to be bet­ter at han­dling” sex­u­al abuse.

Mason said that “nobody is above reproach in all things” and that church lead­ers — par­tic­u­lar­ly those who work with chil­dren — “des­per­ate­ly need account­abil­i­ty.”

In Hous­ton, Michael Lee Jones start­ed a South­ern Bap­tist church, Cathe­dral of Faith, after his 1998 con­vic­tion for hav­ing sex with a teenage female con­gre­gant at a dif­fer­ent SBC church near­by. Jones, also leader of a non­prof­it called Touch­ing the Future Today, was includ­ed on the list of con­vict­ed min­is­ters released by the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas a decade ago.

In Decem­ber, Cathe­dral of Faith cel­e­brat­ed its 20th anniver­sary at a down­town Hous­ton hotel, accord­ing to the church’s web­site. A fly­er for the event tout­ed ser­mons from Jones, anoth­er pas­tor and Joseph S. Ratliff, the long­time pas­tor of Hous­ton’s Brent­wood Bap­tist Church.

Ratliff was sued in 2003 for sex­u­al mis­con­duct with a man he was coun­sel­ing. The law­suit was set­tled and dis­missed by agree­ment of the par­ties, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court records and inter­views. The set­tle­ment is sub­ject to a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Ratliff has been sued two oth­er times, one involv­ing anoth­er per­son who had come in for coun­sel­ing; the oth­er involved his han­dling of alle­ga­tions against anoth­er church offi­cial, Har­ris Coun­ty records show. The dis­po­si­tion of those two cas­es was not avail­able.

...

‘A known prob­lem’

Wade Burleson, a for­mer pres­i­dent of Okla­homa’s South­ern Bap­tist con­ven­tion, says it has long been clear that South­ern Bap­tist church­es face a cri­sis. In 2007 and 2018, he asked SBC lead­ers to study sex­u­al abuse in church­es and bring pre­ven­tion mea­sures to a vote at the SBC’s annu­al meet­ing.

Lead­ers pushed back both times, he said. Some cit­ed local church auton­o­my; oth­ers feared law­suits if the reforms did­n’t pre­vent abuse.

Burleson could­n’t help but won­der if there have been “ulte­ri­or motives” at play.

“There’s a known prob­lem, but it’s too messy to deal with,” he said in a recent inter­view. “It’s not that we can’t do it as much as we don’t want to do it. ... To me, that’s a prob­lem. You must want to do it, to do it.”

Doyle, the Catholic whistle­blow­er, was sim­i­lar­ly sus­pi­cious, if more blunt: “I under­stand the fear, because it’s going to make the lead­er­ship look bad,” he said. “Well, they are bad, and they should look bad. Because they have ignored this issue. They have demo­nized the vic­tims.”

Sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers and their church­es have been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing the abused or cov­er­ing for alleged preda­tors, includ­ing at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist, where for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young has been pas­tor since 1978. Young built the church into one of the largest and most impor­tant in the SBC; today, it counts more than 60,000 mem­bers who attend at mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es.

Before she was molest­ed in the choir room at Sec­ond Bap­tist in 1994, Heather Schnei­der filled a black note­book with poems. The sev­enth-grad­er, with long white-blond hair and sparkling green eyes, had begun to work as a mod­el. She soon attract­ed atten­tion from John Forse, who coor­di­nat­ed church pageants and pro­grams at Sec­ond Bap­tist.

He also used his posi­tion to recruit girls for pri­vate act­ing lessons, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court doc­u­ments.

A day after she was attacked, Schnei­der told her moth­er, Casa­dos, that Forse had touched her inap­pro­pri­ate­ly and tried to force her to do “hor­ren­dous things.” Casa­dos called police.

Casa­dos, who was raised a Bap­tist, said she received a call from Young, who ini­tial­ly offered to do what­ev­er he could to help her daugh­ter. But after she told Young she already had called police, he hung up and “we nev­er heard from him again,” she said in an inter­view.

It took months — and the threat of crim­i­nal charges — before Forse left his posi­tion at the church, accord­ing to state­ments made by Forse’s attor­ney at the time and Schnei­der’s respons­es to ques­tions in a relat­ed civ­il law­suit.

In August 1994, Forse received deferred adju­di­ca­tion and 10 years’ pro­ba­tion after plead­ing no con­test to two counts of inde­cen­cy with a child by con­tact. He remains a reg­is­tered sex offend­er and was lat­er con­vict­ed of a pornog­ra­phy charge. He is list­ed in the sex offend­er reg­istry as tran­sient; he could not be reached for com­ment.

Church offi­cials declined inter­view requests. In a state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist stat­ed that it takes “alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct or abuse very seri­ous­ly and con­stant­ly strives to pro­vide and main­tain a safe, Chris­t­ian envi­ron­ment for all employ­ees, church mem­bers and guests.”

IN THEIR WORDS: Vic­tims, fam­i­lies and law enforce­ment explain the dev­as­ta­tion that occurs when a child is abused by a reli­gious leader

The church declined to release its employ­ment poli­cies but described Forse as a “short-term con­tract work­er” when he was accused of sex abuse. “After Sec­ond Bap­tist became aware of the alle­ga­tions made against Forse his con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed,” the state­ment says. “Upon noti­fi­ca­tion, Sec­ond Bap­tist Church coop­er­at­ed ful­ly with law enforce­ment in this mat­ter.”

Schnei­der’s par­ents filed a civ­il law­suit against the church, Forse and a mod­el­ing agency. The case against the church was dis­missed; its lawyers argued that Forse was not act­ing as a church employ­ee. Sec­ond Bap­tist was not part of an even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

In 1992, before Schnei­der was molest­ed, a lawyer for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion wrote in a court fil­ing that the SBC did not dis­trib­ute instruc­tions to its mem­ber church­es on han­dling sex­u­al abuse claims. He said Sec­ond Bap­tist had no writ­ten pro­ce­dures on the top­ic.

The lawyer, Neil Mar­tin, was writ­ing in response to a law­suit that accused First Bap­tist Church of Con­roe of con­tin­u­ing to employ Riley Edward Cox Jr. as a youth pas­tor after a fam­i­ly said that he had molest­ed their child. In a court fil­ing, Cox admit­ted to molest­ing three boys in the late 1980s.

Young, SBC pres­i­dent at the time of the law­suit, was asked to out­line the orga­ni­za­tion’s poli­cies on child sex­u­al abuse as part of the law­suit. He declined to tes­ti­fy, cit­ing “local church auton­o­my” and say­ing in an affi­davit that he had “no edu­ca­tion­al train­ing in the area of sex­u­al abuse or the inves­ti­ga­tion of sex­u­al abuse claims.”

Young also said he feared tes­ti­fy­ing could jeop­ar­dize his blos­som­ing TV min­istry.

[see doc­u­ment]

Lead­ers of Sec­ond Bap­tist have been sim­i­lar­ly reluc­tant to release or dis­cuss their poli­cies on sex­u­al abuse in response to two oth­er civ­il law­suits relat­ed to sex­u­al assault claims filed in the last five years, court records show. Those suits accuse the church of ignor­ing or con­ceal­ing abus­es com­mit­ted by youth pas­tor Chad Fos­ter, who was lat­er con­vict­ed.

Anoth­er civ­il law­suit assert­ed that Sec­ond Bap­tist helped con­ceal alleged rapes by Paul Pressler, a for­mer Texas state judge and for­mer SBC vice pres­i­dent. In that suit, brought by a mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group, three oth­er men have said in affi­davits that Pressler groped them or tried to pres­sure them into sex. Sec­ond Bap­tist, how­ev­er, has been dis­missed from the suit, and the plain­tiff’s sex­u­al abuse claims against Pressler have been dis­missed because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired.

Pressler has been a promi­nent mem­ber of Sec­ond Bap­tist for much of his adult life.

In its state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist said “our pol­i­cy and prac­tice have been and will con­tin­ue to be that any com­plaint of sex­u­al mis­con­duct will be heard, inves­ti­gat­ed and han­dled in a law­ful and appro­pri­ate way. Reports of sex­u­al abuse are imme­di­ate­ly report­ed to law enforce­ment offi­cials as required by law.”

‘Break her down’

Anoth­er defen­dant in the law­suit against Pressler: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC pres­i­dent who, with Pressler, pushed the con­ven­tion in the 1980s and 1990s to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

In May of last year, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth after he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down,” accord­ing to a state­ment from sem­i­nary trustees.

But his han­dling of sex­u­al abuse dates back decades. Sev­er­al women have said that Pat­ter­son ignored their claims that his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard, assault­ed them at Texas church­es in the 1980s; some of those alle­ga­tions were detailed in a 1991 Dal­las Morn­ing News arti­cle.

The Gilyard case both­ered Deb­bie Vasquez. She feared oth­er vic­tims had been ignored or left to han­dle their trau­ma alone.

When Vasquez became preg­nant, she said, lead­ers of her church forced her to stand in front of the con­gre­ga­tion and ask for for­give­ness with­out say­ing who had fathered the child.

She said church mem­bers were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive but were nev­er told the child was their pas­tor’s. Church lead­er­ship shunned her, asked her to get an abor­tion and, when she said no, threat­ened her and her child, she said. She moved abroad soon after.

Vasquez sued her for­mer pas­tor and his church in 2006. In a depo­si­tion, the pas­tor, Dale “Dick­ie” Amyx, admit­ted to hav­ing sex with her when she was a teenag­er, though he main­tained that it was con­sen­su­al. He acknowl­edged pater­ni­ty of her child but was nev­er charged with any crime. Amyx was list­ed as the church’s pas­tor as late as 2016, state Bap­tist records show. He could not be reached for com­ment.

Amyx denies that he threat­ened or phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed Vasquez. He and his employ­er at the time of the law­suit — an SBC church Vasquez nev­er attend­ed — argued that Vasquez exag­ger­at­ed her sto­ry in an attempt to get pub­lic­i­ty for her fight for reforms, court records show.

Amyx wrote an apol­o­gy let­ter that Vasquez pro­vid­ed to the news­pa­pers; her law­suit was even­tu­al­ly dis­missed, but she con­tin­ued press­ing SBC lead­ers, includ­ing Pat­ter­son, to act. In one series of emails, she asked Pat­ter­son why lead­ers did­n’t inter­vene in cas­es such as Gilyard’s.

Pat­ter­son respond­ed force­ful­ly, writ­ing in 2008 that he “forced Gilyard to resign his church” and “called pas­tors all over the USA and since that day (Gilyard) has nev­er preached for any South­ern Bap­tist orga­ni­za­tion.”

In fact, Gilyard preached after his Texas ouster at var­i­ous church­es, includ­ing Jack­sonville’s First Bap­tist Church, which was led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Jer­ry Vines. It was there that Tiffany Thig­pen said she met Gilyard, who she said lat­er “vicious­ly” attacked her.

Thig­pen, who was 18 at the time, said that Vines tried to shame her into silence after she dis­closed the abuse to him. “How embar­rass­ing this will be for you,” she recalled Vines telling her. As far as Thig­pen knows, police were nev­er noti­fied.

Gilyard was con­vict­ed in 2009 of lewd and las­civ­i­ous molesta­tion of two oth­er teenage girls, both under 16, while pas­tor­ing a Flori­da church. He found work at an SBC church after his three-year prison sen­tence, prompt­ing the local South­ern Bap­tist asso­ci­a­tion to end its affil­i­a­tion.

...

Vasquez: “They made excus­es and did noth­ing.”

Thig­pen said of Vines in a recent inter­view: “You left this lit­tle sheep to get hurt and then you pro­tect­ed your­self. And I hope when you lay your head on your pil­low you think of every girl (Gilyard) hurt and life he ruined. And I hope you can’t sleep.”

...

‘Lethal’ abuse

Defen­sive respons­es from church lead­ers rank among the worst things the abused can endure, says Har­vey Rosen­stock, a Hous­ton psy­chi­a­trist who has worked for decades with vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors of cler­gy sex­u­al abuse. They can rewire a devel­op­ing brain to for­ev­er asso­ciate faith or author­i­ty with trau­ma or betray­al, he says.

“If some­one is iden­ti­fied as a man of God, then there are no holds barred,” he said. “Your defense sys­tem is com­plete­ly par­a­lyzed. This man is speak­ing with the voice of God. ... So a per­son who is not only an author­i­ty fig­ure, but God’s ser­vant, is telling you this is between us, this is a spe­cial rela­tion­ship, this has been sanc­tioned by the Lord. That allows a young vic­tim to have almost zero defens­es. Total­ly vul­ner­a­ble.”

Rosen­stock is among a grow­ing num­ber of expert clin­i­cians who advo­cate for changes in statute of lim­i­ta­tions laws in sex­u­al abuse cas­es. They cite decades of neu­ro­science to show that those abused as chil­dren — par­tic­u­lar­ly by cler­gy — can devel­op a sort of Stock­holm syn­drome that pre­vents them for decades from rec­og­niz­ing them­selves as vic­tims.

Such was the case for most of David Pittman’s life.

...

An ath­let­ic child with an incar­cer­at­ed father, Pittman said he had dreamed about join­ing the youth group at his church near Atlanta since he was bap­tized there at age 8.

There, he could play any sport he want­ed, and at 12 he found in the youth pas­tor a much-sought father fig­ure. The groom­ing start­ed almost imme­di­ate­ly, he said: front-seat rides in the youth pas­tor’s Camaro; trips to see the Doo­bie Broth­ers and Kansas in con­cert; and, even­tu­al­ly, sleep­overs dur­ing which Pittman said he was first molest­ed. Pittman said the assaults con­tin­ued until he turned 15 and the youth pas­tor qui­et­ly moved to a new church near­by.

...

Three decades lat­er, in 2006, Pittman learned that his alleged abuser was work­ing as a youth min­is­ter in Geor­gia. Though Geor­gia’s statute of lim­i­ta­tions had by then elapsed, Pittman and oth­ers came for­ward with alle­ga­tions.

Like Pittman, Ray Har­rell grew up with­out a male fig­ure in his life. His father left ear­ly, he said, and his moth­er lat­er “threw her­self” into the church. Even­tu­al­ly the youth min­is­ter start­ed babysit­ting Har­rell, then a pre-teen. Har­rell still remem­bers the min­is­ter’s stuffed mon­key, which was used to “break the ice,” he said.

...

Pittman reached out to the church’s lead pas­tor and chair­man of the church’s dea­cons.

The dea­con said in an inter­view that he con­front­ed the youth min­is­ter and “asked him if there had ever been any­thing in his past and he acknowl­edged that there had been.” The min­is­ter also told the dea­con that he had got­ten “dis­creet” coun­sel­ing, the dea­con said.

The youth min­is­ter resigned, after which the dea­con and oth­ers began look­ing through a Myspace account that he had while employed at the church. On it, the dea­con found mes­sages “that the police should have,” he said.

The dea­con said he pro­vid­ed the Geor­gia State Bap­tist Con­ven­tion with evi­dence that the youth min­is­ter should be barred from work­ing in church­es.

The youth min­is­ter who Pittman and Har­rell say abused them still works at an SBC church in Geor­gia. The church’s lead pas­tor declined to say if he was ever made aware of the alle­ga­tions, though Pittman pro­vid­ed emails that show he reached out to the pas­tor repeat­ed­ly.

The youth min­is­ter did not return phone calls. Reached by email, he declined to be inter­viewed. The news­pa­pers are not iden­ti­fy­ing him because he has not been charged.

Anne Marie Miller says she, too, has been denied jus­tice. In July, Mark Ader­holt, a for­mer employ­ee of the South Car­oli­na Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and a for­mer mis­sion­ary, was charged in Tar­rant Coun­ty with sex­u­al­ly assault­ing Miller in the late 1990s, when she was a teenag­er. Texas elim­i­nat­ed its statute of lim­i­ta­tions for most sex crimes against chil­dren in 2007.

In 2007, Miller told the SBC’s Inter­na­tion­al Mis­sion Board about Ader­holt after he was hired there, prompt­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that offi­cials said sup­port­ed her sto­ry. Ader­holt resigned and worked at SBC church­es in Arkansas before mov­ing to South Car­oli­na, where he worked for the state’s Bap­tist con­ven­tion.

Miller, mean­while, was told to “let it go” when she asked mis­sion board offi­cials about the inves­ti­ga­tion.

“For­give­ness is up to you alone,” gen­er­al coun­sel Derek Gaubatz wrote in one 2007 email. “It involves a deci­sion by you to for­give the oth­er per­son of the wrongs done to you, just as Christ has for­giv­en you.”

After Ader­holt’s arrest, a mis­sion board spokes­woman said it did not noti­fy his future SBC employ­ers about the alle­ga­tions in 2007 because of local church auton­o­my. The board also said that Miller at the time did not want to talk with police. She says that was because she was still trau­ma­tized.

The charges against Ader­holt are pend­ing.

Miller, 38, lives in the Fort Worth area. She says she has received sup­port from Greear, the new SBC pres­i­dent. But she’s skep­ti­cal that the SBC will act deci­sive­ly.

“I was real­ly, real­ly hope­ful that it was a turn­ing point, but I’ve been dis­ap­point­ed that there has­n’t been any mean­ing­ful action oth­er than form­ing com­mit­tees and assign­ing bud­gets, which is just good old Bap­tist red tape,” Miller said. “That’s just what you do — you form a com­mit­tee, and you put some mon­ey towards it and no change actu­al­ly hap­pens.”

The elec­tion last year of Greear, the 45-year-old pas­tor of The Sum­mit Church in Durham, N.C., was seen as a sig­nal that the SBC was mov­ing away from more rigid con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers such as Pat­ter­son. Greear has launched a group that is study­ing sex­u­al abuse at the request of Burleson and oth­ers.

Unlike in 2008, Burleson last year direct­ed his request for a sex offend­er reg­istry to the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion, which does moral advo­ca­cy on behalf of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion. For the first time, the study of his pro­pos­al has been fund­ed.

But Greear said in an email that he is lim­it­ed by local church auton­o­my.

“Change has to begin at the ground lev­el with church­es and orga­ni­za­tions,” he wrote. “Our church­es must start stand­ing togeth­er with a com­mit­ment to take this issue much more seri­ous­ly than ever before.”

Part 2: South­ern Bap­tist church­es hired min­is­ters accused of past sex offens­es

Part 3: All too often, South­ern Bap­tist youth pas­tors take advan­tage of chil­dren

Part 4: Mis­sion­ar­ies left trail of abuse, but lead­ers stayed qui­et

Part 5: South­ern Bap­tist church­es har­bored sex offend­ers

Part 6: Sur­vivors of Bap­tist sex­u­al abuse come for­ward to help oth­ers

———

“Abuse of Faith” By Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco; The Hous­ton Chron­i­cle; 02/10/2019

“It’s not just a recent prob­lem: In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state.”

This is not a new scan­dal. Paul Pressler pow­er and influ­ence may have helped him evade jus­tice over the decades, but he had a lot of help. The same help kind of sys­tem­at­ic help that was like­ly pro­vid­ed to the rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers who have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct since 1998 alone. Don’t for­get that Pressler’s abuse alle­ga­tions go back to 1978. Those were the find­ings of a six month long jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tion first pub­lished back in Feb­ru­ary of 2019 that exam­ined thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. Decades of sys­temic coverup and denials going all the way to the top of the SBC lead­er­ship:

...
They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions.

About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing. They were pas­tors. Min­is­ters. Youth pas­tors. Sun­day school teach­ers. Dea­cons. Church vol­un­teers.

...

Near­ly 100 are still held in pris­ons stretch­ing from Sacra­men­to Coun­ty, Calif., to Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty, Fla., state and fed­er­al records show. Scores of oth­ers cut deals and served no time. More than 100 are reg­is­tered sex offend­ers. Some still work in South­ern Bap­tist church­es today.

Jour­nal­ists in the two news­rooms spent more than six months review­ing thou­sands of pages of court, prison and police records and con­duct­ing hun­dreds of inter­views. They built a data­base of for­mer lead­ers in South­ern Bap­tist church­es who have been con­vict­ed of sex crimes.

The inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that:

• At least 35 church pas­tors, employ­ees and vol­un­teers who exhib­it­ed preda­to­ry behav­ior were still able to find jobs at church­es dur­ing the past two decades. In some cas­es, church lead­ers appar­ent­ly failed to alert law enforce­ment about com­plaints or to warn oth­er con­gre­ga­tions about alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct.

• Sev­er­al past pres­i­dents and promi­nent lead­ers of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion are among those crit­i­cized by vic­tims for con­ceal­ing or mis­han­dling abuse com­plaints with­in their own church­es or sem­i­nar­ies.

• Some reg­is­tered sex offend­ers returned to the pul­pit. Oth­ers remain there, includ­ing a Hous­ton preach­er who sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a teenag­er and now is the prin­ci­pal offi­cer of a Hous­ton non­prof­it that works with stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions, fed­er­al records show. Its name: Touch­ing the Future Today Inc.

• Many of the vic­tims were ado­les­cents who were molest­ed, sent explic­it pho­tos or texts, exposed to pornog­ra­phy, pho­tographed nude, or repeat­ed­ly raped by youth pas­tors. Some vic­tims as young as 3 were molest­ed or raped inside pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school class­rooms. A few were adults — women and men who sought pas­toral guid­ance and instead say they were seduced or sex­u­al­ly assault­ed.
...

“Local church auton­o­my” appears to be the slo­gan SBC lead­er­ship is falling back on to jus­ti­fy its decades of inac­tion. Despite all the claims of abus­es, SBC lead­ers con­clud­ed they nev­er had any author­i­ty to do any­thing. And it’s not actu­al­ly clear that stance has even changed to this day:

...
At the core of South­ern Bap­tist doc­trine is local church auton­o­my, the idea that each church is inde­pen­dent and self-gov­ern­ing. It’s one of the main rea­sons that Boto said most of the pro­pos­als a decade ago were viewed as flawed by the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee because the com­mit­tee does­n’t have the author­i­ty to force church­es to report sex­u­al abuse to a cen­tral reg­istry.

Because of that, Boto said, the com­mit­tee “real­ized that lift­ing up a mod­el that could not be enforced was an exer­cise in futil­i­ty,” and so instead draft­ed a report that “accept­ed the exis­tence of the prob­lem rather than attempt­ing to define its mag­ni­tude.”

SBC church­es and orga­ni­za­tions share resources and mate­ri­als, and togeth­er they fund mis­sion­ary trips and sem­i­nar­ies. Most pas­tors are ordained local­ly after they’ve con­vinced a small group of church elders that they’ve been called to ser­vice by God. There is no cen­tral data­base that tracks ordi­na­tions, or sex­u­al abuse con­vic­tions or alle­ga­tions.

All of that makes South­ern Bap­tist church­es high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to preda­tors, says Christa Brown, an activist who wrote a book about being molest­ed as a child by a pas­tor at her SBC church in Farm­ers Branch, a Dal­las sub­urb.

“It’s a per­fect pro­fes­sion for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and con­vince peo­ple that he’s been called by God, and bin­go, he gets to be a South­ern Bap­tist min­is­ter,” said Brown, who lives in Col­orado. “Then he can infil­trate the entire­ty of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to big­ger church­es and more promi­nent church­es where he has more influ­ence and pow­er, and it all starts in some small church.

“It’s a porous sieve of a denom­i­na­tion.”
...

Note how Rev. Thomas Doyle — a priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church who was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on the ram­pant child sex­u­al abuse in the Catholic church — even wrote to SBC lead­ers back in 2007 fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a list of eight sex offend­ers who served in SBC church­es in Texas. Doyle recounts how haunt­ing­ly famil­iar the lack of action was from the SBC lead­er­ship. This real­ly is the ‘Catholic cri­sis’ for the SBC com­mu­ni­ty:

...
Sev­er­al fac­tors make it like­ly that the abuse is even more wide­spread than can be doc­u­ment­ed: Vic­tims of sex­u­al assault come for­ward at a low rate; many cas­es in church­es are han­dled inter­nal­ly; and many South­ern Bap­tist church­es are in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties where media cov­er­age is sparse.

It’s clear, how­ev­er, that SBC lead­ers have long been aware of the prob­lem. Bow­ing to pres­sure from activists, the Bap­tist Gen­er­al Con­ven­tion of Texas, one of the largest SBC state orga­ni­za­tions, in 2007 pub­lished a list of eight sex offend­ers who had served in South­ern Bap­tist church­es in Texas.

Around the same time, the Rev. Thomas Doyle wrote to SBC lead­ers, implor­ing them to act. A priest and for­mer high-rank­ing lawyer for the Catholic Church, Doyle in the 1980s was one of the ear­li­est to blow the whis­tle on child sex­u­al abuse in the church. But Catholic lead­ers “lied about it ... cov­ered it up and ignored the vic­tims,” said Doyle, now retired and liv­ing in north­ern Vir­ginia.

Doyle turned to activism because of his expe­ri­ences, work that brought him clos­er to those abused in South­ern Bap­tist church­es. Their sto­ries — and how the SBC han­dled them — felt haunt­ing­ly famil­iar, he said.

“I saw the same type of behav­ior going on with the South­ern Bap­tists,” he said.

The respons­es were pre­dictable, Doyle said. In one, Frank Page, then the SBC pres­i­dent, wrote that they were “tak­ing this issue seri­ous­ly” but that local church auton­o­my pre­sent­ed “seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions.” In March, Page resigned as pres­i­dent and CEO of the SBC’s Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee for “a moral­ly inap­pro­pri­ate rela­tion­ship in the recent past,” accord­ing to the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee.

Details have not been dis­closed, but SBC offi­cials said they had “no rea­son to sus­pect any legal impro­pri­ety.” Page declined to be inter­viewed.
...

Also keep in mind that 2007 is the year Paul Pressler was trans­ferred from First Bap­tist to Sec­ond Bap­tist Church of Hous­ton, which is led by for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young. So we should­n’t be sur­prised to find Ed Young sin­gled out by a vic­tim for being par­tic­u­lar­ly unhelp­ful when she came for­ward with an abuse alle­ga­tion. As a long-time SBC leader going back to 1978, it’s hard to think of some­one more impli­cat­ed in this than Young:

...
Sev­er­al South­ern Bap­tist lead­ers and their church­es have been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing the abused or cov­er­ing for alleged preda­tors, includ­ing at Hous­ton’s Sec­ond Bap­tist, where for­mer SBC Pres­i­dent Ed Young has been pas­tor since 1978. Young built the church into one of the largest and most impor­tant in the SBC; today, it counts more than 60,000 mem­bers who attend at mul­ti­ple cam­pus­es.

Before she was molest­ed in the choir room at Sec­ond Bap­tist in 1994, Heather Schnei­der filled a black note­book with poems. The sev­enth-grad­er, with long white-blond hair and sparkling green eyes, had begun to work as a mod­el. She soon attract­ed atten­tion from John Forse, who coor­di­nat­ed church pageants and pro­grams at Sec­ond Bap­tist.

He also used his posi­tion to recruit girls for pri­vate act­ing lessons, accord­ing to Har­ris Coun­ty court doc­u­ments.

A day after she was attacked, Schnei­der told her moth­er, Casa­dos, that Forse had touched her inap­pro­pri­ate­ly and tried to force her to do “hor­ren­dous things.” Casa­dos called police.

Casa­dos, who was raised a Bap­tist, said she received a call from Young, who ini­tial­ly offered to do what­ev­er he could to help her daugh­ter. But after she told Young she already had called police, he hung up and “we nev­er heard from him again,” she said in an inter­view.

It took months — and the threat of crim­i­nal charges — before Forse left his posi­tion at the church, accord­ing to state­ments made by Forse’s attor­ney at the time and Schnei­der’s respons­es to ques­tions in a relat­ed civ­il law­suit.

...

Schnei­der’s par­ents filed a civ­il law­suit against the church, Forse and a mod­el­ing agency. The case against the church was dis­missed; its lawyers argued that Forse was not act­ing as a church employ­ee. Sec­ond Bap­tist was not part of an even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

In 1992, before Schnei­der was molest­ed, a lawyer for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion wrote in a court fil­ing that the SBC did not dis­trib­ute instruc­tions to its mem­ber church­es on han­dling sex­u­al abuse claims. He said Sec­ond Bap­tist had no writ­ten pro­ce­dures on the top­ic.

The lawyer, Neil Mar­tin, was writ­ing in response to a law­suit that accused First Bap­tist Church of Con­roe of con­tin­u­ing to employ Riley Edward Cox Jr. as a youth pas­tor after a fam­i­ly said that he had molest­ed their child. In a court fil­ing, Cox admit­ted to molest­ing three boys in the late 1980s.

Young, SBC pres­i­dent at the time of the law­suit, was asked to out­line the orga­ni­za­tion’s poli­cies on child sex­u­al abuse as part of the law­suit. He declined to tes­ti­fy, cit­ing “local church auton­o­my” and say­ing in an affi­davit that he had “no edu­ca­tion­al train­ing in the area of sex­u­al abuse or the inves­ti­ga­tion of sex­u­al abuse claims.”

Young also said he feared tes­ti­fy­ing could jeop­ar­dize his blos­som­ing TV min­istry.
...

But Young obvi­ous­ly isn’t the only SBC leader impli­cat­ed in this. And that brings us to for­mer SBC pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, one of the oth­er defen­dants in Rollins’s law­suit against Paul Pressler and the SBC lead­er­ship. Pat­ter­son, and his wife Dorothy Kel­ly Pat­ter­son, are both mem­bers of the CNP. In May of 2018, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas, after it was revealed he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down”:

...
Anoth­er civ­il law­suit assert­ed that Sec­ond Bap­tist helped con­ceal alleged rapes by Paul Pressler, a for­mer Texas state judge and for­mer SBC vice pres­i­dent. In that suit, brought by a mem­ber of Pressler’s youth group, three oth­er men have said in affi­davits that Pressler groped them or tried to pres­sure them into sex. Sec­ond Bap­tist, how­ev­er, has been dis­missed from the suit, and the plain­tiff’s sex­u­al abuse claims against Pressler have been dis­missed because the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had expired.

Pressler has been a promi­nent mem­ber of Sec­ond Bap­tist for much of his adult life.

In its state­ment to the Chron­i­cle, Sec­ond Bap­tist said “our pol­i­cy and prac­tice have been and will con­tin­ue to be that any com­plaint of sex­u­al mis­con­duct will be heard, inves­ti­gat­ed and han­dled in a law­ful and appro­pri­ate way. Reports of sex­u­al abuse are imme­di­ate­ly report­ed to law enforce­ment offi­cials as required by law.”

‘Break her down’

Anoth­er defen­dant in the law­suit against Pressler: Paige Pat­ter­son, a for­mer SBC pres­i­dent who, with Pressler, pushed the con­ven­tion in the 1980s and 1990s to adopt lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible.

In May of last year, Pat­ter­son was oust­ed as pres­i­dent of South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth after he said he want­ed to meet alone with a female stu­dent who said she was raped so he could “break her down,” accord­ing to a state­ment from sem­i­nary trustees.

But his han­dling of sex­u­al abuse dates back decades. Sev­er­al women have said that Pat­ter­son ignored their claims that his ex-pro­tégé, Dar­rell Gilyard, assault­ed them at Texas church­es in the 1980s; some of those alle­ga­tions were detailed in a 1991 Dal­las Morn­ing News arti­cle.
...

Final­ly, again, note the gross hypocrisy here: the SBC lead­er­ship is unwill­ing to take actions against sys­temic sex­u­al abuse tak­ing place with­in its mem­ber church­es thanks to the “local church auton­o­my” doc­trine. But it’s fine with kick­ing out church­es for affirm­ing the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. It’s weird how that local auton­o­my works:

...
[see doc­u­ment]

Oth­er lead­ers have acknowl­edged that Bap­tist church­es are trou­bled by preda­tors but that they could not inter­fere in local church affairs. Even so, the SBC has end­ed its affil­i­a­tion with at least four church­es in the past 10 years for affirm­ing or endors­ing homo­sex­u­al behav­ior. The SBC gov­ern­ing doc­u­ments ban gay or female pas­tors, but they do not out­law con­vict­ed sex offend­ers from work­ing in church­es.
...

And don’t for­get, that was just Part 1 in the Hous­ton Chron­i­cle’s amaz­ing 6 Part series. There’s a lot more on this sto­ry.

Although we did get an update back in April. It’s a some­what mys­te­ri­ous update: Rollins agreed to set­tle in his suit against Paige Pat­ter­son in an undis­closed set­tle­ment. The law­suits against Pressler, the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and oth­ers involved in suit is still ongo­ing. So in 2004, Rollins man­aged to get Pressler to set­tle in an undis­closed set­tle­ment. And almost 20 years lat­er, his­to­ry sort of repeats itself:

The Ten­nessean

SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing

Liam Adams
Nashville Ten­nessean
Pub­lished 5:00 a.m. CT April 20, 2023

Key Points

* Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. is suing Paul Pressler, a promi­nent for­mer SBC leader and for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, over abuse alle­ga­tions, and the SBC and oth­ers for fail­ure to pre­vent abuse.
* Rollins set­tled with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary and Paige Pat­ter­son, for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent and who led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC with Pressler.
* Rollins is still suing Pressler, SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and oth­ers in case that’s sched­uled for tri­al in May.

A promi­nent for­mer leader in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion and an SBC sem­i­nary set­tled a law­suit with an alleged sex­u­al abuse vic­tim. But the high-stakes case remains pend­ing against two oth­ers — anoth­er promi­nent South­ern Bap­tist leader and the denom­i­na­tion itself.

Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. agreed to an undis­closed set­tle­ment with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas and for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, a major devel­op­ment in a six-year-long case against Paul Pressler.

The set­tle­ment leaves Pressler, the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and First Bap­tist Church Hous­ton as defen­dants in the case, which is set for tri­al in May. The case’s even­tu­al con­clu­sion is poten­tial­ly prece­dent set­ting for the Nashville-based SBC and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of its top lead­ers to address sex­u­al abuse.

Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, and Pat­ter­son famous­ly led the late 20th-cen­tu­ry Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC that pulled the denom­i­na­tion fur­ther to the right. It was dur­ing that same time Pressler alleged­ly repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins, accord­ing to the law­suit.

Rollins’ case has sent shock­waves in the SBC and in Texas. It led to an adja­cent Texas Supreme Court case over the statute of lim­i­ta­tions and Rollins’ abil­i­ty to sue Pressler. The Texas Supreme Court ruled last April in favor of Rollins, who argued the trau­ma of the abuse caused him to sup­press mem­o­ries until 2016.

For the SBC, Rollins’ law­suit, through which addi­tion­al abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler have emerged, helped spark a reck­on­ing over abuse through­out the con­ven­tion and cov­er-up by its top lead­ers. That reck­on­ing is recent­ly marked by a his­toric report in May fol­low­ing a third-par­ty inves­ti­ga­tion and ongo­ing reform led by a task force.

“Dr. Pat­ter­son is grate­ful that he has been removed from a suit that he should nev­er have been includ­ed,” J. Shel­by Sharpe, Pat­ter­son­’s attor­ney, said in a state­ment. “No mon­ey was paid on Dr. Pat­ter­son­’s behalf or by him to have him non-suit­ed.”

...

Suing South­west­ern and Pat­ter­son

Rollins’ case against South­west­ern and Pat­ter­son was part of a larg­er effort to hold SBC insti­tu­tions respon­si­ble for Pressler’s alleged abuse.

“Rather than report­ing, they col­lec­tive­ly con­cealed,” Rollins said in an amend­ed com­plaint about sev­en defen­dants. “Rather than coop­er­at­ing in the work­ings of jus­tice, they col­lec­tive­ly obstruct­ed it.”

Rollins sued Pat­ter­son because of his rela­tion­ship with Pressler. Rollins sued South­west­ern most­ly because Pat­ter­son was its pres­i­dent between 2003–2018.

Due to Pat­ter­son and Pressler’s tight rela­tion­ship as they led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, Rollins calls Pat­ter­son a “joint enter­pris­er” in the law­suit, a term that places lia­bil­i­ty on Pat­ter­son for not speak­ing up about sus­pect­ed abuse.

Rollins said he inter­act­ed with Pat­ter­son on sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing the time of Pressler’s alleged abuse between 1979–2004, accord­ing to Rollins’ amend­ed com­plaint. Lat­er, when Pressler hired Rollins at his law firm in 2002, Pressler alleged­ly called Rollins his “spe­cial office assis­tant” to Pat­ter­son, the com­plaint said.

But Pat­ter­son denies abuse alle­ga­tions against Pressler and any pri­or knowl­edge of Pressler’s abu­sive behav­ior, accord­ing to recent­ly released court fil­ings, includ­ing a depo­si­tion tran­script.

“I can­not make a judg­ment about whether it’s true,” Pat­ter­son said in a depo­si­tion on Jan. 11, 2023. It was only on a trip to North Africa that includ­ed Pressler, Pat­ter­son and Rollins that Pat­ter­son said he inter­act­ed with Rollins.

Pat­ter­son has faced his own series of scan­dal relat­ed to abuse in the SBC.

When he was pres­i­dent of South­west­ern in 2015 and pres­i­dent of South­east­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in 2003, he report­ed­ly treat­ed female sem­i­nar­i­ans with hos­til­i­ty after they came for­ward with reports of sex­u­al assault and down­played their reports.

Reports of both inci­dents led South­west­ern to fire Pat­ter­son in 2018, and the lat­ter case led to a law­suit against Pat­ter­son in fed­er­al court. A judge in that case dis­missed some claims against Pat­ter­son ahead of a tri­al sched­uled for ear­ly April.

Suing the SBC

Rollins’ suit still includes the SBC, SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton and Pressler’s for­mer law part­ners.

Rollins’ argu­ment against the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee is based on mul­ti­ple fac­tors, such as that Pressler served on the SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee. The exec­u­tive com­mit­tee man­ages denom­i­na­tion busi­ness out­side the SBC annu­al meet­ing.

...

The SBC denies all alle­ga­tions it’s fac­ing from Rollins, accord­ing to a recent court fil­ing. Due to the bot­tom-up struc­ture of the SBC, it’s always been a high bar for sur­vivors to sue the SBC for inci­dents of abuse at a local South­ern Bap­tist church.

How­ev­er, Rollins’ suit and oth­ers have cit­ed the report from Guide­post in May to argue the SBC has a hier­ar­chy and a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent abuse in local church­es. The con­ven­tion is also fac­ing two defama­tion law­suits from alleged abusers.

———-

“SBC sem­i­nary and promi­nent for­mer leader set­tle in high-pro­file abuse law­suit, SBC still defend­ing” by Liam Adams; The Ten­nessean; 04/20/2023

“Ger­ald D. Rollins, Jr. agreed to an undis­closed set­tle­ment with South­west­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Fort Worth, Texas and for­mer South­west­ern pres­i­dent Paige Pat­ter­son, a major devel­op­ment in a six-year-long case against Paul Pressler.”

We don’t know what exact­ly the set­tle­ment was, but we know Paige Pat­ter­son set­tled. And based on every­thing else we know about this case, that was prob­a­bly a for­tu­itous turn of events for Pat­ter­son, who worked so close­ly to Pressler over the decades that Rollins called them a “joint enter­prise” in the law­suit. And note how Rollins’s abuse at the hands of Pressler did­n’t just include his inter­ac­tions with Pressler as his youth pas­tor. Rollins got a job at Wood­fill & Pressler in 2002, where Pressler made Rollins his “spe­cial office assis­tant” to Pat­ter­son:

...
Pressler, a for­mer Texas Court of Appeals judge, and Pat­ter­son famous­ly led the late 20th-cen­tu­ry Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence move­ment in the SBC that pulled the denom­i­na­tion fur­ther to the right. It was dur­ing that same time Pressler alleged­ly repeat­ed­ly sex­u­al­ly abused Rollins, accord­ing to the law­suit.

...

Due to Pat­ter­son and Pressler’s tight rela­tion­ship as they led the Con­ser­v­a­tive Resur­gence, Rollins calls Pat­ter­son a “joint enter­pris­er” in the law­suit, a term that places lia­bil­i­ty on Pat­ter­son for not speak­ing up about sus­pect­ed abuse.

Rollins said he inter­act­ed with Pat­ter­son on sev­er­al occa­sions dur­ing the time of Pressler’s alleged abuse between 1979–2004, accord­ing to Rollins’ amend­ed com­plaint. Lat­er, when Pressler hired Rollins at his law firm in 2002, Pressler alleged­ly called Rollins his “spe­cial office assis­tant” to Pat­ter­son, the com­plaint said.
...

But this set­tle­ment was­n’t a set­tle­ment for Pressler, or the rest of the defend­ents in the case. This case isn’t over:

...
The set­tle­ment leaves Pressler, the SBC and SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, and First Bap­tist Church Hous­ton as defen­dants in the case, which is set for tri­al in May. The case’s even­tu­al con­clu­sion is poten­tial­ly prece­dent set­ting for the Nashville-based SBC and the respon­si­bil­i­ty of its top lead­ers to address sex­u­al abuse.

...

Rollins sued Pat­ter­son because of his rela­tion­ship with Pressler. Rollins sued South­west­ern most­ly because Pat­ter­son was its pres­i­dent between 2003–2018.

...

Rollins’ suit still includes the SBC, SBC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee, First Bap­tist Church in Hous­ton and Pressler’s for­mer law part­ners.
...

You have to won­der if some future law­suit against Pat­ter­son, Pressler, or the SBC will ulti­mate­ly end up reveal­ing the nature of this undis­closed set­tle­ment. It’s pos­si­ble. Just ask Jared Wood­fill.

The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law: Mike Johnson’s College that Never Was

So that was our look at the broad­er con­text sur­round­ing Mike John­son’s sur­prise Speak­er­ship. But we aren’t quite done yet. There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of Mike John­son’s his­to­ry worth recount­ing here: the time Mike John­son was hired back in 2010 to lead a Chris­t­ian legal school that nev­er exist­ed. It tried to exist, mind you. But real­i­ty got in the way. Real­i­ties like embez­zle­ment of the funds need­ed to get the school start­ed. John­son was­n’t per­son­al­ly charged with any wrong­do­ing and end­ed up resign­ing from the posi­tion in 2012 and return­ing to his role as a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal advo­cate.

Now here’s the part that’s sad­ly poignant giv­en every­thing we just looked at: the name of law school to be was the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. It was sup­posed to be the kind of law school that admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.”

Five years after John­son left that role, of course, Pressler and much of the rest of the SBC found them­selves fac­ing Rollins’s sec­ond still-ongo­ing law­suit. So while it was pre­sum­ably seen as mis­for­tune when the school was pre­emp­tive­ly shut­tered, that may not have been the worst out­come all things con­sid­ered:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors

By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Updat­ed 8:25 PM CST, Octo­ber 31, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before House Speak­er Mike John­son was elect­ed to pub­lic office, he was the dean of a small Bap­tist law school that didn’t exist.

The estab­lish­ment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was sup­posed to be a cap­stone achieve­ment for Louisiana Col­lege, which admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.” Instead, it col­lapsed rough­ly a decade ago with­out enrolling stu­dents or open­ing its doors amid infight­ing by offi­cials, accu­sa­tions of finan­cial impro­pri­ety and dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing accred­i­ta­tion, which fright­ened away would-be donors.

There is no indi­ca­tion that John­son engaged in wrong­do­ing while employed by the pri­vate col­lege, now known as Louisiana Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ty. But as a vir­tu­al­ly unknown play­er in Wash­ing­ton, the episode offers insight into how John­son nav­i­gat­ed lead­er­ship chal­lenges that echo the chaos, feud­ing and hard-right pol­i­tics that have come to define the Repub­li­can House major­i­ty he now leads.

The chap­ter is just the lat­est to sur­face since the four-term congressman’s improb­a­ble elec­tion as speak­er last week fol­low­ing the ouster of for­mer Speak­er Kevin McCarthy, a reminder of his long­stand­ing ties to the Chris­t­ian right, which is now a dom­i­nant force in GOP pol­i­tics.

It’s also a mile­stone that he does not typ­i­cal­ly men­tion when dis­cussing a pre-Con­gress resume that includes work as lit­i­ga­tor for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian groups that fierce­ly opposed gay rights and abor­tion, as well as his brief tenure as a Louisiana law­mak­er who pushed leg­is­la­tion that sanc­tioned dis­crim­i­na­tion for reli­gious rea­sons.

...

“The law school deal was real­ly an anom­aly,” said Gene Mills, a long­time friend of Johnson’s. “It was a great idea. But due to issues that were out of Mike’s hands that came unrav­eled.”

J. Michael John­son Esq., as he was then known pro­fes­sion­al­ly, was hired in 2010 to be the “inau­gur­al dean” of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion lumi­nary who was instru­men­tal in the faith group’s turn to the polit­i­cal right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought John­son onboard includ­ed Tony Perkins, a long­time men­tor who is now the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil in Wash­ing­ton, a pow­er­house Chris­t­ian lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as an anti-gay “hate group.”

In ear­ly pub­lic remarks, John­son pre­dict­ed a bright future for the school, and col­lege offi­cials hoped it would some­day rival the law school at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty, the evan­gel­i­cal insti­tu­tion found­ed by the Rev. Jer­ry Fal­well.

“From a pure fea­si­bil­i­ty stand­point,” John­son said, “I’m not sure how this can fail.” Accord­ing to the Dai­ly Town Talk, a news­pa­per in Alexan­dria, Louisiana, he added that it looked “like the per­fect storm for our law school.”

Real­i­ty soon intrud­ed.

For sev­er­al years before Johnson’s arrival, the col­lege had been in a state of tur­moil fol­low­ing a board takeover by con­ser­v­a­tives who felt the school had become too lib­er­al. They imple­ment­ed poli­cies that restrict­ed aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms, includ­ing the poten­tial fir­ing of instruc­tors whose cur­ricu­lum touched upon sex­u­al moral­i­ty or teach­ings con­tra­dic­to­ry to the Bible.

The school’s pres­i­dent and oth­er fac­ul­ty resigned, and the col­lege was placed on pro­ba­tion by an accred­i­ta­tion agency.

But a shale oil boom in the area also brought a wave of pros­per­i­ty from new­ly enriched donors. And school offi­cials, led by pres­i­dent Joe Aguil­lard, had grand ambi­tions beyond just the law school, which includ­ed open­ing a med­ical school, a film school and mak­ing a movie adap­ta­tion of the 1960s pas­toral com­e­dy TV show “Green Acres.”

Bring­ing John­son into the school’s lead­er­ship helped fur­ther those ambi­tions. As dean of the pro­posed law school, John­son embarked on a major fundrais­ing cam­paign and described a big-dol­lar event in Hous­ton with for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal and Pressler, accord­ing to an account John­son wrote in a 2011 alum­ni mag­a­zine.

But he strug­gled to draw an ade­quate amount of cash while dra­ma per­co­lat­ed behind the scenes. That cul­mi­nat­ed in a flur­ry of law­suits, includ­ing a whistle­blow­er claim by a school vice pres­i­dent, who accused Aguil­lard of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing mon­ey and lying to the board, accord­ing to court records.

A law firm brought in to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion lat­er con­clud­ed in a 2013 report that Aguil­lard had inap­pro­pri­ate­ly divert­ed funds to a school the insti­tu­tion hoped to build in Africa, as well as for per­son­al expens­es.

...

Mean­while, the his­toric for­mer fed­er­al cour­t­house in Shreve­port that was select­ed as the law school’s cam­pus required at least $20 mil­lion in ren­o­va­tions. The envi­ron­ment turned unten­able after the school was denied accred­i­ta­tion to issue juris doc­tor­ate degrees and major donors backed away from their finan­cial pledges.

“Mike worked dili­gent­ly to assem­ble a very elite fac­ul­ty and cur­ricu­lum,” said Gilbert Lit­tle, who was involved in the effort. But “fundrais­ing for a small pri­vate col­lege is very, very dif­fi­cult.”

John­son resigned in the fall of 2012 and went back to lit­i­gat­ing for Chris­t­ian caus­es. He also start­ed a new pro-bono firm, Free­dom Guard, which Perkins served as a direc­tor, busi­ness fil­ings show.

Five years lat­er, Pressler, the school’s name­sake, was sued in a civ­il case that has since grown to include alle­ga­tions of abuse by mul­ti­ple men who say he sex­u­al­ly assault­ed them, some when they were chil­dren. The mat­ter, which is still pend­ing in court, helped spark a broad­er reck­on­ing by the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion over its han­dling of claims of sex­u­al abuse.

Lit­tle said the school was named after Pressler because he had a close rela­tion­ship with the institution’s lead­ers. John­son didn’t stray entire­ly from the school. He rep­re­sent­ed the col­lege for six more years in a case chal­leng­ing a man­date in then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law that required employ­ers to pro­vide work­ers access to birth con­trol, court records show.

It was the type of case that has defined his legal career.

The 51-year-old John­son was born in Shreve­port, Louisiana, the eldest of four chil­dren in what he has described as a “tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian house­hold.” Tragedy struck when John­son was 12.

His father, Pat, a Shreve­port fire­fight­er and haz­ardous mate­ri­als spe­cial­ist, was crit­i­cal­ly injured when ammo­nia gas leak­ing inside a cold stor­age facil­i­ty explod­ed dur­ing an emer­gency repair — leav­ing him per­ma­nent­ly dis­abled, while killing his part­ner.

“None of our lives would ever be the same again,” his son wrote years lat­er in a com­men­tary piece pub­lished in the Shreve­port Times.

John­son and his wife, Kel­ly, mar­ried in 1999, enter­ing into a covenant mar­riage, which both have tout­ed for the dif­fi­cul­ty it pos­es to obtain­ing a divorce, and the cou­ple served as a pub­lic face of an effort by evan­gel­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives to pro­mote such mar­riages. In 2005, Kel­ly John­son told ABC News that she viewed any­thing less as “mar­riage-light.”

John­son has said he was the first in his fam­i­ly to grad­u­ate col­lege, enrolling at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty, where he earned a law degree in 1998. He also worked on the 1996 Sen­ate cam­paign of Louis “Woody” Jenk­ins, where he had an ear­ly brush with a con­test­ed elec­tion.

Jenk­ins, a con­ser­v­a­tive state law­mak­er, nar­row­ly lost to Demo­c­rat Mary Lan­drieu amid alle­ga­tions of vot­er fraud, includ­ing bal­lots cast by dead peo­ple and vot­ers who were paid. A sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion by the Senate’s then-Repub­li­can major­i­ty found no evi­dence “to prove that fraud or irreg­u­lar­i­ties affect­ed the out­come of the elec­tion.”

But in the wake of Trump’s 2020 elec­tion loss, which John­son played a lead­ing role in dis­put­ing, the con­gress­man offered a dif­fer­ing view of the decades-old con­test while describ­ing him­self as a young law stu­dent “car­ry­ing around everyone’s brief­cas­es.”

“Even though we had all the evi­dence all wrapped up,” John­son, told Louisiana radio host Moon Grif­fon in 2020, the Sen­ate “put it in a clos­et and nev­er looked at it again.”

Even though Jenk­ins lost, John­son drew notice from con­ser­v­a­tive activists who worked on the cam­paign.

Among them was Perkins, the founder of the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum, who has long pro­mot­ed an exis­ten­tial clash between pious Chris­tians and deca­dent lib­er­als. He did not respond to a request for com­ment.

Mills, a long­time Perkins con­fi­dant who now leads the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum, called Johnson’s ascen­sion to House speak­er “a won­der­ful day in Amer­i­ca,” adding, “if you don’t believe God is at work in the midst of this, then you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion.”

Of his ini­tial inter­ac­tions with John­son, Mills said, “he just glowed.“

“The real­i­ty is Mike added val­ue every­where he went. And that was evi­dent from the ear­ly days,” Mills said.

Soon John­son was rep­re­sent­ing the group and oth­ers dur­ing his rough­ly decade-long tenure as an attor­ney for the Alliance Defense Fund, a non­prof­it legal orga­ni­za­tion still in its infan­cy, which pre­sent­ed itself as a bul­wark for tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly val­ues.

The group is no longer an upstart. Now known as the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom, or ADF, the orga­ni­za­tion raised over $100 mil­lion in 2022 and con­ceived the legal strat­e­gy that led to the Supreme Court last year over­turn­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an abor­tion, among oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive wins it helped secure from the high court.

Much of Johnson’s ear­ly work for ADF was far more pro­sa­ic. In court and before pub­lic boards, he rep­re­sent­ed con­ser­v­a­tives on issues relat­ed to the exer­cise of faith in schools and alco­hol reg­u­la­tions, as well as zon­ing dis­putes over casi­nos and strip clubs.

But Johnson’s vehe­ment oppo­si­tion to the bur­geon­ing gay rights move­ment in the mid-2000s soon gar­nered greater atten­tion.

In 2004, John­son and the ADF filed suit, seek­ing to over­turn a New Orleans law that allowed same-sex part­ners of city work­ers to receive health ben­e­fits, which a judge reject­ed.

He also wrote a semi-reg­u­lar guest col­umn in the Shreve­port Times, where his defens­es of “reli­gious lib­er­ty” includ­ed stri­dent­ly anti-gay rhetoric, includ­ing a pre­dic­tion that same-sex mar­riage would be a “dark har­bin­ger of chaos and sex­u­al anar­chy that could doom even the strongest repub­lic.”

...

Anoth­er col­umn lament­ed the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in 2004 to over­turn a Texas law that out­lawed same-sex inti­ma­cy, which John­son referred to as “devi­ate sex­u­al inter­course.”

His advo­ca­cy did not occur in a polit­i­cal vac­u­um. Then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s reelec­tion cam­paign was look­ing to ener­gize turnout among social con­ser­v­a­tives, tap­ping allies across the U.S. to place ref­er­en­dums oppos­ing gay mar­riage on the bal­lot in hopes of doing so. It’s a role John­son leaned into.

In 2004, he rep­re­sent­ed the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum in oppos­ing a case filed by gay rights sup­port­ers who sought to block a vot­er-approved state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that pro­hib­it­ed “civ­il unions” — a legal pre­cur­sor to same-sex mar­riage — and cod­i­fied mar­riage as between one man and one woman.

The amend­ment was over­whelm­ing­ly approved in an unusu­al and low-turnout elec­tion, held weeks before the 2004 pres­i­den­tial con­test, in which it was the only issue on the bal­lot. The elec­tion was marred by the late deliv­ery of vot­ing machines to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold of Orleans Parish.

In a legal brief, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court.

“Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned,” he wrote. Near­ly two decades lat­er, John­son, then in Trump’s cor­ner, would effec­tive­ly argue the oppo­site.

Johnson’s harsh rhetoric in the ear­ly 2000s sur­round­ing the issue of gay rights con­trasts stark­ly with the ami­able image he cul­ti­vat­ed fol­low­ing his elec­tion to pub­lic office, which is punc­tu­at­ed with appeals for “a respect­ful, diverse soci­ety where cit­i­zens from all view­points can peace­ful­ly coex­ist.”

Yet his argu­ments often obscure a far more strik­ing real­i­ty.

The Mar­riage and Con­science Act, which he spon­sored as a fresh­man state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in 2015, would have effec­tive­ly blocked Louisiana from pun­ish­ing busi­ness own­ers and work­ers who dis­crim­i­nat­ed against gay cou­ples, so long as it was for reli­gious rea­sons — sim­i­lar to argu­ments invoked dur­ing the Civ­il Rights era against inter­ra­cial mar­riage. The bill was reject­ed by law­mak­ers in both par­ties.

The fol­low­ing year, crit­ics charged that his “Pas­tor Pro­tec­tion Act,” which was focused on gay mar­riage, would also cre­ate a legal defense for cler­gy who opposed inter­ra­cial mar­riage. John­son, who has an adopt­ed Black son, acknowl­edged the point but argued it wasn’t a big deal because oppo­si­tion to inter­ra­cial mar­riage was an issue of the past — unlike gay mar­riage.

“Maybe there are some peo­ple out there who do that. But it’s not a big cur­rent issue, I think we would agree, at least in the courts and the court of pub­lic opin­ion,” John­son said dur­ing a 2016 com­mit­tee hear­ing.

The bill was reject­ed by law­mak­ers in both par­ties. John­son was elect­ed to Con­gress the next fall, draw­ing his short tenure as a law­mak­er in Baton Rouge to a close.

Lamar White Jr., a pro­gres­sive who wrote a wide­ly read Louisiana polit­i­cal blog, said his inter­ac­tions with John­son were always pleas­ant, even if he “dis­agreed with every­thing he stood for.”

“His climb to the top is not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing his per­son­al charm, his charis­ma and intel­lect, which were dis­arm­ing,” said White. “That obscured the end goal and what he was real­ly up to.”

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“House Speak­er Mike John­son was once the dean of a Chris­t­ian law school. It nev­er opened its doors” by BRIAN SLODYSKO; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 10/31/2023

“The estab­lish­ment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was sup­posed to be a cap­stone achieve­ment for Louisiana Col­lege, which admin­is­tra­tors boast­ed would “unashamed­ly embrace” a “bib­li­cal world­view.” Instead, it col­lapsed rough­ly a decade ago with­out enrolling stu­dents or open­ing its doors amid infight­ing by offi­cials, accu­sa­tions of finan­cial impro­pri­ety and dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing accred­i­ta­tion, which fright­ened away would-be donors.”

Well look at that. The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law. The school that nev­er was. It was going to be Mike John­son’s next big project back in 2010:

...
J. Michael John­son Esq., as he was then known pro­fes­sion­al­ly, was hired in 2010 to be the “inau­gur­al dean” of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion lumi­nary who was instru­men­tal in the faith group’s turn to the polit­i­cal right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought John­son onboard includ­ed Tony Perkins, a long­time men­tor who is now the pres­i­dent of the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil in Wash­ing­ton, a pow­er­house Chris­t­ian lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter clas­si­fies as an anti-gay “hate group.”

...

For sev­er­al years before Johnson’s arrival, the col­lege had been in a state of tur­moil fol­low­ing a board takeover by con­ser­v­a­tives who felt the school had become too lib­er­al. They imple­ment­ed poli­cies that restrict­ed aca­d­e­m­ic free­doms, includ­ing the poten­tial fir­ing of instruc­tors whose cur­ricu­lum touched upon sex­u­al moral­i­ty or teach­ings con­tra­dic­to­ry to the Bible.

The school’s pres­i­dent and oth­er fac­ul­ty resigned, and the col­lege was placed on pro­ba­tion by an accred­i­ta­tion agency.

But a shale oil boom in the area also brought a wave of pros­per­i­ty from new­ly enriched donors. And school offi­cials, led by pres­i­dent Joe Aguil­lard, had grand ambi­tions beyond just the law school, which includ­ed open­ing a med­ical school, a film school and mak­ing a movie adap­ta­tion of the 1960s pas­toral com­e­dy TV show “Green Acres.”

Bring­ing John­son into the school’s lead­er­ship helped fur­ther those ambi­tions. As dean of the pro­posed law school, John­son embarked on a major fundrais­ing cam­paign and described a big-dol­lar event in Hous­ton with for­mer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huck­abee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal and Pressler, accord­ing to an account John­son wrote in a 2011 alum­ni mag­a­zine.
...

But then the embez­zle­ment charges came, along with costs for get­ting the cam­pus ready that the school could­n’t afford. John­son end­ed up resign­ing in 2012, return­ing to his career as a Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist legal cru­sad­er:

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But he strug­gled to draw an ade­quate amount of cash while dra­ma per­co­lat­ed behind the scenes. That cul­mi­nat­ed in a flur­ry of law­suits, includ­ing a whistle­blow­er claim by a school vice pres­i­dent, who accused Aguil­lard of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing mon­ey and lying to the board, accord­ing to court records.

A law firm brought in to con­duct an inves­ti­ga­tion lat­er con­clud­ed in a 2013 report that Aguil­lard had inap­pro­pri­ate­ly divert­ed funds to a school the insti­tu­tion hoped to build in Africa, as well as for per­son­al expens­es.

...

Mean­while, the his­toric for­mer fed­er­al cour­t­house in Shreve­port that was select­ed as the law school’s cam­pus required at least $20 mil­lion in ren­o­va­tions. The envi­ron­ment turned unten­able after the school was denied accred­i­ta­tion to issue juris doc­tor­ate degrees and major donors backed away from their finan­cial pledges.

“Mike worked dili­gent­ly to assem­ble a very elite fac­ul­ty and cur­ricu­lum,” said Gilbert Lit­tle, who was involved in the effort. But “fundrais­ing for a small pri­vate col­lege is very, very dif­fi­cult.”

John­son resigned in the fall of 2012 and went back to lit­i­gat­ing for Chris­t­ian caus­es. He also start­ed a new pro-bono firm, Free­dom Guard, which Perkins served as a direc­tor, busi­ness fil­ings show.

Five years lat­er, Pressler, the school’s name­sake, was sued in a civ­il case that has since grown to include alle­ga­tions of abuse by mul­ti­ple men who say he sex­u­al­ly assault­ed them, some when they were chil­dren. The mat­ter, which is still pend­ing in court, helped spark a broad­er reck­on­ing by the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion over its han­dling of claims of sex­u­al abuse.

Lit­tle said the school was named after Pressler because he had a close rela­tion­ship with the institution’s lead­ers. John­son didn’t stray entire­ly from the school. He rep­re­sent­ed the col­lege for six more years in a case chal­leng­ing a man­date in then-Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law that required employ­ers to pro­vide work­ers access to birth con­trol, court records show.
...

Final­ly, note one final bit of John­son’s gross hypocrisy in the name of his Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist cause: in 2004, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court, writ­ing, “Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned.” 16 years lat­er, he’s the guy writ­ing legal mem­os argu­ing the oppo­site in an effort that cul­mi­nat­ed in an insur­rec­tion:

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In 2004, he rep­re­sent­ed the Louisiana Fam­i­ly Forum in oppos­ing a case filed by gay rights sup­port­ers who sought to block a vot­er-approved state con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that pro­hib­it­ed “civ­il unions” — a legal pre­cur­sor to same-sex mar­riage — and cod­i­fied mar­riage as between one man and one woman.

The amend­ment was over­whelm­ing­ly approved in an unusu­al and low-turnout elec­tion, held weeks before the 2004 pres­i­den­tial con­test, in which it was the only issue on the bal­lot. The elec­tion was marred by the late deliv­ery of vot­ing machines to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic strong­hold of Orleans Parish.

In a legal brief, John­son chid­ed gay rights sup­port­ers for chal­leng­ing the out­come in court.

“Dis­con­tent with an election’s results does not enti­tle one to have it over­turned,” he wrote. Near­ly two decades lat­er, John­son, then in Trump’s cor­ner, would effec­tive­ly argue the oppo­site.
...

But, of course, this isn’t about the hypocrisy of Mike John­son. It’s about the exis­ten­tial threat to the fab­ric of the Unit­ed States posed by the CNP and its vision for for the impo­si­tion of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism. A threat that seems to keep grow­ing whether Repub­li­cans win or lose elec­tions. Because that’s the kind of game the CNP is play­ing. It’s not a game cen­tered around gain­ing pow­er by win­ning elec­tions. It’s about gain­ing pow­er through any means nec­es­sary. With David Bar­ton’s Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism there to jus­ti­fy what­ev­er is done in the name of Chris­tian­i­ty. Or at least the arch-con­ser­v­a­tive ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ cult-like genre of Chris­tian­i­ty cham­pi­oned for decades by CNP stal­warts like Paul Pressler and Paige Pat­ter­son.

It’s God’s Pow­er Grab. The kind of pow­er grab that starts with grab­bing the state but does­n’t end there. The kind of pow­er grab where the pow­er­ful are free to ‘grab’ what­ev­er they want, and who­ev­er they want, with­out any real con­se­quences. A soci­ety run by pow­er preda­tors cyn­i­cal­ly oper­at­ing in the name of God. So if you find the idea of the Speak­er of the House vol­un­tar­i­ly installing a creepy ‘dis­ci­ple­ship shame­ware’ app on his phone high­ly dis­turb­ing, imag­ine how dis­turb­ing it’s going to be when it’s your phone get­ting the creepy shame­ware app and it’s not at all vol­un­tar­i­ly because soci­ety is now run by a bunch of pow­er­ful cultist who seized pow­er and now demand that every­one else join their cult or face the con­se­quences. It’s hap­pen­ing. This cult with very big plans for the future real­ly is steadi­ly tak­ing over. It’s a long-game. And the fur­ther it goes, the more ‘old school’ those con­se­quences are going to get.