Thabiti Anyabwile Apologizes to Beth Moore

[Howl]

From over on the Botkinette's thread: 

48 minutes ago, Columbia said:

Jasmine is making waves all over Twitter, hanging out with Beth Moore, and writing for several online magazines.

I was curious about Beth Moore, so googled a bit and came across Thabiti Anyabwile's May 3, 2018 blog post on the Gospel Coalition's website titled An Apology to Beth Moore and My Sisters

Is this as significant as it seems to be?  Will Thabiti lose his Gospel Coalition cred by this change of  heart?  I've recalled seeing his name along with some other Patriarchal/complementarian heavy hitters, but other than that cursory information, don't know a lot about him.  Just click on the title for the full text of what seems to be a heartfelt and sincere apology, but is there something missing, as though he's vowing to be nicer, but is still a committed to his original views on a woman's role in life and ministry? 

  This is the final paragraph: 

Quote

I do now commit to being a more outspoken champion for my sisters and for you personally. Not that you need me to be but because it is right. I hope, with God’s help, to grow in sanctification, especially with regards to any sexism, misogyny, chauvinism, and the like that has used biblical teaching as a cover for its growth.

Curious if this is presaging a sea change for Anyabwile or just seemingly enlightened  version of same old same old. 

[EowynW]

I found it interesting that the first male to apologize was a POC. White males are still mocking her. 

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, EowynW said:

I found it interesting that the first male to apologize was a POC. White males are still mocking her. 

This. Also interesting -- no comments on his post and it's not closed to them, which Beth Moore's original post is.

This paragraph in Moore's statement is quite something:

Quote

 

About a year ago I had an opportunity to meet a theologian I’d long respected. I’d read virtually every book he’d written. I’d looked so forward to getting to share a meal with him and talk theology. The instant I met him, he looked me up and down, smiled approvingly and said, “You are better looking than _________________________________.” He didn’t leave it blank. He filled it in with the name of another woman Bible teacher.

 

 

[delphinium65]

1 hour ago, EowynW said:

I found it interesting that the first male to apologize was a POC. White males are still mocking her. 

I'd guess that non-white males understand at least some of what she says, since they are often on the receiving end of similar disrespect from some (many? most?) white males.  

[older than allosaurs]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Curious if this is presaging a sea change for Anyabwile or just seemingly enlightened  version of same old same old. 

Anyabwile has been pushing the envelope on a number of evangelical issues of late, also talking about racial justice. I think the current political climate has gotten to him. It's interesting to read responses to his posts. Some of his peers are clearly made uneasy, others are looking for ways to shut him down without sounding racist, and others -- I made a foray into the letter section that Doug Wilson does periodically now that he's disabled blog comments -- are thrilled to pile on with the "angry black man," "playing the victim," "not smart enough" or just straight white supremacy tropes.

I have a theory that a number of (especially) white Southern pastors who find it no longer pc to say out loud what they really think about black people are doubling down on women, because that has wider social and "biblical" acceptance. They have to be superior to someone. That's the center of their belief system. Their snarky, nasty, jokey sermons (cf. Paige Patterson, Doug Wilson, et al) need punchlines.

[hoipolloi]

12 minutes ago, older than allosaurs said:

I have a theory that a number of (especially) white Southern pastors who find it no longer pc to say out loud what they really think about black people are doubling down on women, because that has wider social and "biblical" acceptance. They have to be superior to someone. That's the center of their belief system. Their snarky, nasty, jokey sermons (cf. Paige Patterson, Doug Wilson, et al) need punchlines.

Spot on. Would love to think that this belief system & its proponents are in their death throes but it could take a while -- and they won't go away without fighting, which is what we're seeing.

[Howl]

Interesting that Anyabwile posted on the same day as Beth Moore's post. 

[older than allosaurs]

1 hour ago, hoipolloi said:

Would love to think that this belief system & its proponents are in their death throes but it could take a while -- and they won't go away without fighting, which is what we're seeing.

Here's an example:

http://pulpitandpen.org/2018/05/04/dear-ron-a-letter-to-thabiti-anyabwile-about-beth-moore/

[feministxtian]

1 hour ago, older than allosaurs said:

Here's an example:

http://pulpitandpen.org/2018/05/04/dear-ron-a-letter-to-thabiti-anyabwile-about-beth-moore/

Ever have the urge to reach through a computer screen and choke the living shit out of some asshole who needs it? 

[EowynW]

59 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

Ever have the urge to reach through a computer screen and choke the living shit out of some asshole who needs it? 

Seth's letter to Beth Moore was also shitty. 

[feministxtian]

I've come to the conclusion that all these "men" who rant and rant about "uppity women" are truly insecure in their manhood. They feel threatened by any woman or POC who is smarter, more popular, wealthier, etc. than they are. I saw a bit of that when I was working in the shipbuilding field. I had a couple of run-ins with this supervisor who was a woman-hating arrogant evangelical asshat and he'd get CRAZY when I pointed out what was wrong. He was a full-blooded asshole who once told me that he would not listen to a female because we had no business in a "man's world". I asked him if he'd like to repeat that to his manager...he got up and crawled into his office and I marched myself to the manager's office myself. The shouting match was epic. 

[PennySycamore]

My daughter shared something on her FB that Jen Hatmaker had originally posted.  It was calling out all these racist, sexist, patriarchal, LGBTQIA  hating, anti-immigrant white evangelical men.  I finally found what she had written on her FB and I hope it's OK to share it here:  (The FB is public.)

Quote

I read of a priest asked about what is godly and what is not - How do we discern between good and bad? What about when Christians disagree on that answer? - and he said, "I look for where there is life." When people are flourishing and valued and honored and restored, there is Jesus.

If I might expand with some other thoughts on that profound sentence:

Conversely, when those "flourishing" are primary in one category - mostly white, mostly men, only straight people, able-bodied, only those with money, mainly those with power - we must pay attention, because that is at the expense of someone else. That is not life but death.

If human flourishing in any context - a church, a denomination, a business structure, a social strata, the justice system - is homogenous, then that is not life; that is privilege and someone else is paying for it by dying. 

If a white male pastor gets to retain his pulpit and power at the expense of a female congregant who comes to church with two black eyes at his counsel, that is death masquerading as life. Women's bodies are not tools of sanctification for men, and we are not simply a cog in the wheel of their redemption from evil. 

If black men are routinely, systemically, and categorically pulled over, arrested, indicted, and sentenced longer than their white counterparts for the same crime, that "justice system" is death masquerading as life. People of color are no more criminal than white people in any category, they are simply suspected, charged, and punished more. 

I simply don't know what will compel the church to heed the suffering of the LGBTQ community at the hands of its straight-centered doctrine. If their suicide rate, self-harm, mental health, ostracization, broken families, and broken hearts don't move us to reconsider "life" in this community, I suppose nothing will. 

Plenty of things die to contribute to life for a homogenous, privileged few: voice, safety, inclusion, representation, leadership, equality, fair wages, potential, authority, truth, possibility. If the Flourishing Few all look the same, then notice who is paying the tab. Someone is.

Where is life? Where is human flourishing? It may shock us to discover it in the margins, on the edges, not in the voices of the same old power brokers but in their victims, their targets, their underlings, their tokened props.

If it is not Good News for women, for POC, for the LGBTQ community, for the disabled, for the immigrant, for the poor, THEN IT IS NOT GOOD NEWS. The fruit will tell you: where is life? Look hard - and not just at the top - because there is Jesus.

That is where you go. That is who you stand with. That is where you learn. That is where you and your neighbor will both flourish, because that is real thriving and THAT is worth giving your whole life.

 

She also has the apology to Beth Moore linked on her FB.

[Howl]

6 hours ago, older than allosaurs said:

Here's an example: http://pulpitandpen.org/2018/05/04/dear-ron-a-letter-to-thabiti-anyabwile-about-beth-moore/

and 

5 hours ago, feministxtian said:

Ever have the urge to reach through a computer screen and choke the living shit out of some asshole who needs it?

I'm in Atlanta this weekend, and picked up a copy of the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning.  There is an article about lynchings in Georgia and about the lynching of Mary Turner on May 19, 1918 in particular;  the details are too horrific to post here.  There is a second article titled Lynching was about maintaining white power.  The NAACP struggled to get anti-lynching legislation passed in the early 1900s, to no avail.  In the 1920s and 1930s, when word reached headquarters, the NAACP would hang a black banner from their office window in NYC with these words: A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.  Lynchings in Georgia caused that banner to be displayed 73 times. Lynchings weren't just hangings; the mechanism of death could be shooting, dragging, hanging, burning or some combination of these.  Sometimes there was torture before the victim was murdered.  "African-Americans could be lynched for everything to anything that a white person could construe as an affront to white supremacy." 

After reading the  articles noted above and thinking back to the ugliness manifested in Seth Dunn's toxic screed -- make absolutely no mistake: The blog post by Seth Dunn is telling Anyabwile to get the hell back in his place.  If you read Seth Dunn's brief bio, you'll see that he graduated from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  I know zip about this school, but it's not an insignificant detail that it's in the South. 

[feministxtian]

43 minutes ago, Howl said:

I know zip about this school, but it's not an insignificant detail that it's in the South. 

There were cross burnings in the town I lived in in Indiana. I lived in this miniscule village outside a small town. It was 100% white. A black family tried to rent one of the shacks (and they were shacks) by the fire station. I think they made it a week before they got run out. This would have been between 1990 and 1997. 

It's not much better here in Nevada. 

[nausicaa]

3 minutes ago, feministxtian said:

There were cross burnings in the town I lived in in Indiana. I lived in this miniscule village outside a small town. It was 100% white. A black family tried to rent one of the shacks (and they were shacks) by the fire station. I think they made it a week before they got run out. This would have been between 1990 and 1997. 

Indiana always pops up with these strange connections to the KKK. It consistently had the highest KKK membership of any state during the KKK's second incarnation. And the rape case of Madge Oberholtzer by the very powerful Grand Dragon of the Indiana klan was basically the beginning of the KKK's downfall. 

I was reading this lighthearted little memoir a few years ago about a birdwatcher turned park ranger. Anyway, he mentioned at some point that his first job was in southern Indiana in the early 90s and how it was so much more southern than he thought it would be. Then he accidentally ran afoul of the local KKK boss, and the guy had so much power they almost ran him out of town. 

In short, what the hell is up with Indiana?

[feministxtian]

23 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

I was reading this lighthearted little memoir a few years ago about a birdwatcher turned park ranger. Anyway, he mentioned at some point that his first job was in southern Indiana in the early 90s and how it was so much more southern than he thought it would be. Then he accidentally ran afoul of the local KKK boss, and the guy had so much power they almost ran him out of town. 

In short, what the hell is up with Indiana?

Southern Indiana, specifically Southwestern Indiana has nothing on Alabama when it comes to racism. If you're familiar with that area, I lived 18 miles east of Evansville IN. I left the minute I could and ran back to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, where I'm from...not quite as racist. The county I lived in, and specifically the county seat was quite full of KKK members then. I left in 1997, haven't been back except to drag my X to court. The last time would have been 2006 or so. I don't remember. 

[hoipolloi]

For an eye-opener and a gut-punch on race "relations" in the US well into the 20th century, read Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen.

For those who don't know, a 'sundown town' was a US city or village that banned or chased out African-Americans although in some cases, other ethnic groups, like Chinese-Americans, were the target of these bigots. The result was that either no African-Americans lived in the city or ones who had moved away once that became the "law." The upper Midwest states -- all of which had many Union regiments fighting in the Civil War -- also had a shitload of Sundown Towns.

Loewen also maintains a website with extensive data on just how pervasive this racist practice was.

[stylites]

9 hours ago, feministxtian said:

Ever have the urge to reach through a computer screen and choke the living shit out of some asshole who needs it? 

Yeah, though there is a kind of “pox on all your houses” aspect to this also

[FundieFarmer]

On 5/6/2018 at 2:16 AM, stylites said:

Yeah, though there is a kind of “pox on all your houses” aspect to this also

Seth Dunn seems like a smarmy bastard who's too happy with himself. Dude, just because you're a CPA and you've got a masters of whatever in theology doesn't mean you're hot shit. Wait until you've got a little knowledge about life behind your ears before you start spewing off your opinion everywhere. 

Egotistical young divinity scholars like him are a pox on good men of the cloth. 

[ViolaSebastian]

On 5/5/2018 at 11:48 PM, nausicaa said:

Indiana always pops up with these strange connections to the KKK. It consistently had the highest KKK membership of any state during the KKK's second incarnation. And the rape case of Madge Oberholtzer by the very powerful Grand Dragon of the Indiana klan was basically the beginning of the KKK's downfall. 

I was reading this lighthearted little memoir a few years ago about a birdwatcher turned park ranger. Anyway, he mentioned at some point that his first job was in southern Indiana in the early 90s and how it was so much more southern than he thought it would be. Then he accidentally ran afoul of the local KKK boss, and the guy had so much power they almost ran him out of town. 

In short, what the hell is up with Indiana?

I'd add, in addition to the racism aspect that @feministxtian mentioned, there was also a STRONG anti-Catholic sentiment amongst Protestant Indianans. Large-scale German Catholic immigration and southern European/Eastern European immigration after WWI into the area pissed off a lot of shitty nativism-inclined people there.