The report on Southern Baptist abuses is a portrait of brutal misogyny

According to the “Report of the Independent Investigation,” credible accusations of sexual abuse that came to Southern Baptist leaders were routinely ignored to avoid legal liability or were referred back to unprepared local congregations.Survivors’ calls and emails, the report asserts, were “met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility.” When victims organized to draw attention to their suffering, some church officials treated them as instruments of Satan, intent on distracting the church from its real mission of evangelism.The report depicts the abuses in Technicolor detail. Often these justifications of sin in the cause of salvation are not really attempts to protect an institution from harm; they are attempts to protect the elites who run an institution from exposure.Former SBC official Russell Moore calls the revelations in the report “evil and systemic.” Those who deny the possibility that evil can be systemic must read this damning document.Men who intimidate victims, cover up cruelty and blame survivors for their own abuse have shaped the values and ethos of a major Christian institution.