Thread by @sheilagregoire

My thoughts on the Southern Baptist Convention votes:

The gatekeepers are losing control. And that's a very, very good thing that we're seeing across evangelicalism.

A thread:

Leading up to the convention, I was discouraged. From what I was seeing on Twitter, @albertmohler was the frontrunner, & was considered "almost moderate", despite the fact that he tweeted approvingly about a slaveholder's view on women's subordination on Mother's Day.

I saw SBC bigwigs beat up abuse survivors on a daily basis. It looked hopeless.

I wasn't expecting an overwhelming vote investigate the enabling & covering for sexual abuse.

I wasn't expecting the most moderate candidate to win (though how moderate remains to be seen).

Ever since The Great Sex Rescue has been published, I've been trying to help people to see one big idea: Even if authors and pastors have huge platforms, if what they say is harmful, they already have--or they will soon--lose control of the conversation. The world has moved on.

We are no longer willing to say, as Emerson Eggerichs did in Love & Respect, that men have a need for sex while women don't. We're not willing to say, as Every Man's Battle did, that wives are the methadone for their husbands' sex addictions.

We're not willing to say that men's need for sex matters more than women's need for physical or emotional safety. And yet, as I've been saying this, the evangelical establishment has remained silent.

It's easy to assume that that means we aren't making any headway.

But then...

You see the sales figures for The Great Sex Rescue, and for Jesus and John Wayne, and for The Making of Biblical Womanhood, and for Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and for A Church Called Tov, and for Redeeming Power, and for What is a Girl Worth.

Those in the pews are bypassing the traditional gatekeepers. We don't need megachurch pastors to endorse books. We don't need Focus on the Family to promote books. We can reach people in the pews ourselves.

Why? Because people in the pews don't trust the gatekeepers either.

The gatekeepers may still have their traditional platforms--their blogs; their radio shows; their pulpits. But they don't command automatic respect anymore. People have been burned. They know the church has been unhealthy. They want Jesus-centered churches and relationships.

I know The Great Sex Rescue is changing people's marriages, even though the typical ministries won't touch it with a 10-foot pole. What I didn't fully understand until this week is that this phenomenon is true throughout Christendom.

The gatekeepers have lost. The people have won. That doesn't mean the work is done; I still don't trust the SBC very much to truly address sexual abuse well. But it's at least much closer than I ever thought we would be.

The patriarchal voices can shout loudly about feminism and leftward drift and CRT and inerrancy and Sola Scriptura.

I'll keep looking at Jesus, and I'm part of an increasingly large crowd. One day, perhaps the gatekeepers will realize they're on the wrong side of the gate.

—Tagging people mentioned in this thread:

@kkdumez @bethallisonbarr @DianeLangberg @R_Denhollander @laurambarringer @scotmcknight

And my book:
tolovehonorandvacuum.com/great-sex-resc…
#greatsexrescue