Notes on a Washington Post article on evangelical sex scandals

A friend of mine posted a Washington Post article on Facebook, concerning the possibility of a new round of sex scandals involving evangelical leaders. My friend, who is liberal and religious, put the scandal down to the religious right's desire to control the lives of women. I do agree that they do that, but sexual misbehavior among clergy is, of course, not limited to conservatives. (The fact that conservatives claim to be the guardians of morality and of the family makes their transgressions more galling, though.)

The article ran in the Post's Acts of Faith religious section on March 30, and was written by Sarah Pulliam Bailey. I would link directly to it, but the reader might run into a pay wall. There are a few things in it that I have problems with.

First, and most important, is a quote from Peter Wehner, described as "a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center."

[Trump's supporters] seem enthralled to his approach to life. They seem completely untroubled by the ... women who accused Trump of harassment or assault. For some large number of white evangelical men, there seems to be an attitude toward women that's disturbing and not biblical.

What I have a problem with in that last sentence is not biblical. Women are treated miserably throughout the Bible. After all, we are talking about a morality that is thousands of years old, and often seems barely removed from sheer animal behavior. In the Old Testament, God instructs his people, when they battle their enemies, to kill all the men, and to capture any marriageable women and girls as part of the spoils of war. And in the New Testament, the social status of women has improved little. Saint Paul makes that abundantly clear.

And women are not the only vulnerable population. Anyone who lacks power is fair game. Bailey notes:

In another case late last year, Paul Pressler, who helped lead a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was accused of sexually abusing a young man for several decades, starting when the alleged victim was 14.

Mention of the abuse of children inevitably brings to mind the Roman Catholic priesthood. Bailey's article highlights a distinction between the Catholic church and evangelical denominations, in that the Catholic church has a hierarchy that one would think would punish their clergy for abusing children. Heath Carter, a professor of history at Valparaiso University notes that:

In the evangelical world, the independence of evangelical leaders and ... lack of authority structure mean [abuses] can go on for a while and then explode when they come to light.

But, really, Bailey has already pointed out earlier in her article that the Catholic hierarchy was no protector of children.

In any case, even though I'm an atheist, I can't say that this is a strictly religious problem. It is, as my friend said, a power abuse problem. And that abuse happens to women in the working world, as well as to children in schools. It even happens among scientists and religious skeptics.

But we really need to stop looking to religion as a source of morality, and we really shouldn't throw around such descriptions of attitudes as "not biblical," when these attitudes are sometimes totally in line with the Bible. Morality is something that needs to be constantly reevaluated as our knowledge increases, and constantly going back to the Bible keeps us from addressing moral problems in any meaningful way.