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Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson fired over handling of sex abuse allegation
Source: Washington Post
Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson fired over handling of sex abuse allegation
By Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey
May 30 at 11:34 PM
A major Southern Baptist seminary has fired one of the movement’s giants of the last quarter-century, Paige Patterson, after new information came to light regarding how Patterson handled a sexual abuse allegation while he led another institution, the school said in a statement Wednesday night.
Patterson was demoted one week ago from his position as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary following the publication of a flurry of statements he made starting in 2000 about the Bible’s view of women and his beliefs about spousal abuse and why it’s not grounds for divorce. The school’s trustees moved him from being president to president emeritus, framing it as a desire for change and fresh blood.
Patterson supporters seemed willing to live with the decision but it infuriated many, especially conservative Christian women, who said Patterson had not been explicitly held accountable and had been allowed to retire with his stature intact. Ironically Patterson, leader of a historic conservative purifying in the 1980s and 1990s of Southern Baptism that called for male-only pastors and women to “submit graciously” to their husbands, was being held under the public light by conservative women, who by the thousand signed a May 6 petition calling for him to lose his job.
On Wednesday, some said they finally felt heard.
“It’s a sigh of relief. Maybe we feel somewhat dignified. They listened to us,” said Lauren Chandler, wife of Dallas megachurch pastor Matt Chandler and one of the first to sign the petition. Last week’s decision, she said, was a case of “the punishment didn’t fit the crime…There was a lot of damage to women in particular… I’m saddened for people who have been bullied or silenced or made to feel less. I’m saddened for the loss of [the Pattersons] a couple who had led the way in the SBC for a while.”
-snip-
By Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey
May 30 at 11:34 PM
A major Southern Baptist seminary has fired one of the movement’s giants of the last quarter-century, Paige Patterson, after new information came to light regarding how Patterson handled a sexual abuse allegation while he led another institution, the school said in a statement Wednesday night.
Patterson was demoted one week ago from his position as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary following the publication of a flurry of statements he made starting in 2000 about the Bible’s view of women and his beliefs about spousal abuse and why it’s not grounds for divorce. The school’s trustees moved him from being president to president emeritus, framing it as a desire for change and fresh blood.
Patterson supporters seemed willing to live with the decision but it infuriated many, especially conservative Christian women, who said Patterson had not been explicitly held accountable and had been allowed to retire with his stature intact. Ironically Patterson, leader of a historic conservative purifying in the 1980s and 1990s of Southern Baptism that called for male-only pastors and women to “submit graciously” to their husbands, was being held under the public light by conservative women, who by the thousand signed a May 6 petition calling for him to lose his job.
On Wednesday, some said they finally felt heard.
“It’s a sigh of relief. Maybe we feel somewhat dignified. They listened to us,” said Lauren Chandler, wife of Dallas megachurch pastor Matt Chandler and one of the first to sign the petition. Last week’s decision, she said, was a case of “the punishment didn’t fit the crime…There was a lot of damage to women in particular… I’m saddened for people who have been bullied or silenced or made to feel less. I’m saddened for the loss of [the Pattersons] a couple who had led the way in the SBC for a while.”
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/05/30/southern-baptist-seminary-fires-paige-patterson-over-handling-of-sex-abuse-case/
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