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HELLO SATAN [1]

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Date: 2024-06-16  

AN ICON IN THE MIDDLE. The center of this story isn’t in this picture. As my headline indicates he never will be.

From several MSN articles Paul Pressler has died. A leading right-wing member of the huge SBC, became a driving force to head that huge organization to the ultra right misogynic stance. His influence was to prevent self rule by churches to ordain and appoint women as pastors. Another ruling, one of many, in the SBC covenant was to insure missionaries elected by the churches had to be forced to swear to the outlined rules of the Covenant

From USA today: Liam AdamsDuane W. Gang

USA TODAY NETWORK

Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge who altered the Southern Baptist Convention when he led a fundamentalist takeover of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Pressler was a symbol for both the Religious Right’s marriage with Republican politics,

Pressler storied himself, in an autobiography, as an altruistic underdog who struggled to save the Nashville-based SBC from the wretches of liberalism. But critics see his legacy as harmful due to the hardline theology he promoted within America’s largest evangelical Christian group.

Then of that came the alliance’s vulnerability to scandal and criticism. The obvious hypocrisy of his life began to be exposed. He had ascended into very influential ranks in national politics and within the Nashville-based SBC for decades flexed his influence in ultra an ultra conservative direction.

After mobilizing Southern Baptists in denominational politics, Pressler did the same with U.S. politics. Pressler was part of a coalition of influential Christian leaders who backed Ronald Reagan for U.S. president in the 1980 election to deny Jimmy Carter a second term, and a founding member of the secretive network of influential conservatives called the Council for National Policy. This went on until an abuse lawsuit colored this final chapter in life.

A six-year-long civil case over Pressler’s alleged abuse of Gerald D. Rollins, through which similar allegations from seven other men emerged, inspired a news series about clergy abuse throughout the SBC and subsequently a third-party investigation into Southern Baptist leaders’ handling of the abuse crisis. Rollins' case ended in 2023. As part of that, the SBC and SBC Executive Committee settled with Rollins, who sought to hold SBC leadership accountable for failing to prevent Pressler’s alleged abuse.

Pressler’s death comes as younger generations of pastors are taking up the mantle of SBC leadership, some of whom are rethinking the legacy of Pressler and his allies. There’s both questioning some of the beliefs that Pressler’s movement championed but also disillusionment with the figures atop that movement. As a larger plan was exposed, to control various SBC committees and boards of affiliated agencies, has stirred questions of certain Biblical inerrancy. Presslers surrogates insisted in a belief that the Bible is without error, was the main issue driving the conservatives’ activism. By extension, however, the group held traditional views on gay marriage, abortion and women in leadership.

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