Local Churches are Being Autonomous out There and Vox is NOT OK with That. Here’s why.
Now we have a Vox explainer on the SBC’s SATF situation. Vox basically patented the methodology of using neutral-sounding technocratic language to import values laden progressive policy priorities, and it’s on full display here.
They say the quiet part out loud. Complementarianism, they explain to us, is at the heart of discussions about abuse in evangelical churches. Probably that needs to go if we want to end abuse.
Vox is also very concerned about the fact that there are all these churches out there that aren’t subject to the oversight of the professional managerial class. We can’t just have people organize mediating institutions outside the panopticon of a supervisory bureaucracy!
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Vox explains to us here it is very difficult to know who to report to if a pastor is misbehaving (well, if the pastor is committing crimes, I would humbly submit that the police could be helpful. If the pastor has non-criminal moral failings, bring it to the Church).
The trans author and activist who wrote the Vox article got very helpful and informative interviews from Russell Moore, Kristin Du Mez, and Andrew Whitehead who are all very interested in providing the SBC with expert sociological fixes to this vexing technical problem.
We might be quicker to heed Vox’s admonitions if they could point out some comparables where their technocratic approach has yielded good results. Surely public schools – vehicles of progressive social planning for 100 years – would show good results?
So let’s check in on that.
The look at public schools is incredibly instructive. This dog is not barking. There is almost no media coverage. While we are breathlessly warned about the scandal that some rural church out there might not handle abuse the way Vox wants and is complementarian but we see almost no worry about the fact that 10% of children in our nation’s public schools report abuse from school employees. Is minimizing abuse really the goal here, or is the goal figuring out how to subjugate churches to PMC oversight?
SBC faithful are right to be leery of neutral sounding technical expertise functioning as a trojan horse that would smuggle substantive progressive value judgments into our polity.
Guidepost’s report should be viewed with great scrutiny given their participation in the moral revolution. If Baptists want to take steps to help prevent abuse, that’s a discussion that needs to happen amongst Baptists, without these purported experts.
This post began life on Twitter. Abbotoy was kind enough to publish it here. Give him a follow!
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