Thread by @Ford_Ebling

CW /// Sexual Assault
There's something I want to clarify about this person, in regards to the abuse I went through. He was not a pastor. He was not a volunteer in the youth group. We were both 14 to 16 when he abused me.
#churchtoo #sbctoo #EmptyThePews

https://twitter.com/Ford_Ebling/status/1355727930693967873

Abuse is encouraged in the #SBC, in many different ways. Here's a good thread from @ErikMKort about it. But the way I'm most familiar with is interpersonal male violence, which is both encouraged and indeed taught in the SBC.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

https://twitter.com/ErikMKort/status/1362200209728528386?s=20

The violence in my @livinghopebg youth group was emotional, physical, and sexual. We would be berated in front of the entire group if any of the leadership found out we had done something they considered sinful.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

I remember one of the leaders grabbing one boy in the middle of the youth space and screaming at the top of his lungs because the boy had been smoking on church grounds. I don't remember ever seeing him in church again.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

We were not allowed to be silent in small group. We were terrified into talking about our deepest thoughts, into talking about every embarrassing detail so that we'd feel the full weight of shame from everyone in the room.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

They taught us to use these same tactics when proselytizing and pursuing girls. Keep pushing. Don't give up. Trust that God is showing you the right way and don't take no for an answer.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Boys would constantly punch or kick each other in the testicles. It was a game. I was both hit and I hit others, because I was egged on. Cause I thought this was what I had to do to fit into a place that had given me sanctuary from my crumbling life.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

"Mock" fights would happen, mostly at summer camp, involving choke holds and dog piles. They hurt. They were terrifying. But there was no blood, so leadership never did anything. This was male bonding.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

The boys (and we were boys, not men) did not allow each other to have physical boundaries. If we tried to cover ourselves in communal showers, towels would be stripped away. Boys would invade shower stalls while others were bathing.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Leadership ignored this. I know. I tried to tell. Nothing happened. If they tried to talk to any of the boys about it then clearly it didn't help, because it never stopped.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

The most visceral part of the doc version of @JeffSharlet's "The Family" was the dramatized scene were they held Actor Jeff's face in mud and piled on top of him as he screamed. It was a familiar scene to me. I wept.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Cause this is what they do. They teach men to commit violence against each other, tell them that this will make them part of something bigger than themselves, teach them how to induct other men through the same violence. To turn that violence outward.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

This violence bleeds into society outside of church, through Christian hegemony and the run of the mill expectations of men. There's over 67,000 people in Bowling Green, KY. I stopped counting churches after 50.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

If the children didn't go to church every Sunday, their parents certainly did, and they brought those lessons home with them. The boys I knew were casually violent, cruel, and misogynistic. This is inseparable from the Christian culture in this town.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

There was an actual fight club (inspired by the ironically anti-toxic masculinity movie) in my high school, where people would get together and watch two boys beat each other bloody. I know this because they videoed the fights and watched them at school.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

This is the culture I was raised in, that so many boys are raised in, even in environments considered good for them. I saw all of the things I listed above in the Boy Scouts, another bastion of Christianity and the abuse of boys.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Having spent so long walking in lock-step with these ideals of manhood, I can tell you it's an utterly destructive, pointless way to live, full of pain and constantly shifting goal posts. You'll never be happy because that's not the point.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

You're supposed to hurt people, to cross that line and feel guilty so that you always have to go back to church and beg forgiveness, to beg at the altar to God instead of the people you hurt. To feel you need God to fit that impossible ideal of a Man.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

The ideal that just leads you to causing more pain, and destroying everything around you.

Christianity, in most, if not all of its forms, creates more abusers than it ever redeems.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Even if you leave, you have to completely dismantle your identity to shed that indoctrination. Therapy only works when you go in fully aware of your toxic behavior, cause men don't want to believe they're bad, and will use therapy lingo to justify their behavior.
#churchtoo

And the majority of men don't go into therapy aware of those behaviors. They never learned how to identify them as toxic. They're taught to believe that they are right and good. They can't handle that their identities are based on lies and harm.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

There's no easy path to dismantling toxic masculinity. You'll lose a lot. And that's as it should be. Really, truly working to be better does not mean that you just get everything you want, that you can avoid consequence.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

But it's what we should do, what we should accept, cause it's not the cheap entitlement given to every straight white Christian man. It's just doing the hard, moral thing without expectation of Heaven or earthly reward.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews

Because we owe it to each other to be better. If that means the #SBC and Christianity as we know it ceases to exist, then they should. Because the violence they breed needs to cease, and being better sometimes means losing something in the process.
#churchtoo #EmptyThePews