The SBC and Me

My formative encounter with this, the SBC and its corruption and racist proclivities and foray into politics, was in a famously Klan county in North Carolina that was also heavily Scots and Scots-Irish. It was by then a commonplace that southerners were still fighting the Civil War. I came away concluding that, even before that, they were just fighting. Period.

But the Reformation foremost and before the Civil War. Their outlook was bigoted and belligerent. They need antagonism. They had a straw Catholic that thought it could buy its way into heaven with good works. And indulgences. Characteristically they overcorrected, and since they were fatalists and considered wealth a sign of an upright character being wealthy and not engaging in good works suggested a higher state of holiness. This was mostly after desegregation and was intensified by the dissolution of the USSR when they lost a focus for their hate.

Must have hate! So they turned on Democrats which captured hating on black people. It became a religious crusade played out through politics. And, it's unbelievably arbitrarily authoritarian. They retreated into the worst elements of their tradition. The authoritarianism captures the sexual weirdness and abuse because it's about power and privilege. Nobody tells a white man what to do except God, and that's not institutionally regulated but between that person and God. 

Voilà, abuse. Sexual abuse, and mistreatment of every kind. As a matter of principle.