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🍉 Dr. Valerie Hobbs Profile picture
🍉 Dr. Valerie Hobbs
@vhobbs5
linguist, religious language specialist, author, #slowacademic, ardent fan of useless splendour. Also here: @drvaleriehobbs.bsky.social
Susan Conway Profile picture Missy Parker Profile picture 2 subscribed
Mar 23 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Hitting kids is a lazy shortcut. It punches down (literally!) duty of care onto the very ones needing that care & patient guidance! The entire community is often complicit, not just parents/carers, since that community is often the ones judging carers when kids are ... being kids So many times, SO MANY TIMES, my husband and I have had Christian friends criticise us in various ways for NOT hitting our kids, for NOT setting & enforcing expectations entirely unreasonable for our kids' stage/rate of development.
Feb 15 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Public Announcement of a Civil Lawsuit Filed against the OPC
Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church has just been named in a civil lawsuit .. ... against certain individuals and churches who have been accused of enabling and covering up a situation in the mid-1980s involving the sexual abuse of a child. An investigation is underway.
Sep 13, 2023 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
The 7-Mountains-Mandate is a significant movement within Christian Dominionism.
A pivotal date is in 1975, when Bill Bright (Campus Crusade), Loren Cunningham (YWAM) & Francis Schaeffer (L'Abri) claimed to have received an identical mandate directly & personally from God. Allen Clifton writes,
Politicians/Religious Leaders that openly speak about receiving messages from God, basing campaigns on injecting religious beliefs into their policy making &:

Mountain 1: believe that this nation was founded on Christian principles (Government).
Aug 3, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Breaking: the state of Illimois has ruled in FAVOUR of Emily Hyland's claim that PCA pastor Dane Ortlund discriminated against her on the basis of her sex.
https://t.co/HhvMhaKINMhrc.illinois.gov/content/dam/so…
"Respondent made a finding of substantial evidence regarding Petitioner’s allegation of retaliatory discharge. The retaliation was in response to Petitioner filing a sex discrimination complaint with Employer. Prior to the meeting in which Petitioner was discharged,
Ortlund ...
Jul 27, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
When it comes to a church's safeguarding policy, there is the formal, public documentation,
& there is the informal, often private, *highly impactful* discussion of safeguarding priorities & practice among church leaders.
These can be extremely contradictory.
Here's an example: Public Documentation re: Safeguarding, the Scottish Free Church Continuing:

"The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) recognises its responsibility before Almighty God to promote the wellbeing of all people"

https://t.co/quvCFJjaeAfreechurchcontinuing.org/wp-content/upl…
1. The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) recognises its responsibility before Almighty God to promote the wellbeing of all people, and particularly those that come into contact with, and participate in, the Church’s various activities. The Church is committed to taking all practicable steps to promote and safeguard the wellbeing of each individual child or vulnerable adult or other, regardless of any distinctions.
Jun 17, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Postmil PCA pastor @pastoraldoleon, at a #PCAGA seminar:
"there is an effeminate Christ that many are holding to that is producing effeminate men ... this is why you see people in the PCA say [that] what people really need to know is the love of Christ"

Image "we have this weird romantic fetish with a suffering Christ and a victimized Christ ... Jesus is the modern day man who can't rule over his wife, [but rather] simply be a partner who listens, loves & encourages."

Jun 13, 2023 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
I have Surfside's statement to their congregation about this elder assaulting Kappie R & then firing Kristen Haan for standing with Kappie. I've seen many such bullshit statements. It's part of my work to analyse them. I'm still so horrified seeing this one. More to come. Surfside: "We must lean in
to some hard things."
Also Surfside: "We are certain that some of you will want to know more ... There are certain
things about these situations that must remain in confidence and we are hopeful that you will
understand."
Jun 12, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
In 2002, 40 schools in the United Kingdom, spearheaded by the Christian Fellowship School in Liverpool launched an appeal to a high court ruling rejecting their right "to smack pupils with parents' consent." Their argument?
Corporal punishment "is part of a religious doctrine protected by the European convention on human rights."
In other words, hitting children is core Christian doctrine.
theguardian.com/education/2002…
Jun 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
"We believe America can be turned around & once again function as a Christian nation as it did in its earlier years. We believe that wherever the pastors of any city in the world join together in unity to make Christ Lord of every sphere of life, &, with Spirit led strategy, ... ... mobilize their people into a unified spiritual army; that city can and will become “a city set upon a hill” and be “a place where righteousness dwells.”

A Manifesto for the Christian Church, The Coalition on Revival,
Inc., July 4, 1986
Jun 9, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I'm so interested in how Keller affirms the complementarian view yet does this almost exclusively using implicature.
"I am not open to somebody saying there isn't anything he's forbidding or that was not a transcultural statement ... ... In light of the way [Paul] ties it to the creation & the fall, it's very difficult to see how anybody could get over that and I've heard people try to do it and I just think they're pretty unconvincing."
Jun 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Why might you be interested in reading my next book, No Love in War (out next week)?
Because you have experience or interest in:
- high control communities
- Christian schools/home-schooling
- the spread of religious extremism
- white male supremacy
- violence against women - Christian Dominionism (Christian Reconstructionism, Latter Rain, NAR, 7 Mountains Mandate)
- Christian higher education
- Patriarchal Presbyterianism in the USA (including the RPCUS, OPC, PCA)
- Neo-Confederacy
- the Anti-Abortion Movement (esp GA Right to Life)
- Cults
May 11, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One of the sponsors of this conference was ofc Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation, nexus of Christian Reconstructionism.
Here's a quote from my childhood pastor Joe Morecraft, a "personal friend of the Chalcedon Foundation & its founder ... for many, many years": "If ministers do not on Sunday pray imprecatory Psalms against those in political power who are particularly aggressive in their anti-Christian assault on the church, the family, God's moral order for human life, they're being unfaithful to their divine calling."
May 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Often, the people calling for nuance in discussions of the intersection of white male supremacy, Christian nationalism, dominionism, the Christian Right and evangelicalism, are themselves invested in distancing from one or more of these points on intersection. I don't use these terms completely interchangeably. Yet my decades of experience and research indicate significant overlap in the meanings and esp behaviours associated with these terms. Some areas of overlap are charismatic authoritarian leader-bullies and patterns of violence .
May 9, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
In 2020, G.R.A.C.E. assessed the Presbyterian Church in America's @CovenantCollege for institutional gender equality. Results from their report and some related focus groups are now being reported in the college's student newpaper.

bagpipeonline.com/news/2023/3/3/… @CovenantCollege Almost 30 yrs ago my parents required I attend Covenant College. They deemed it a safe step beyond my childhood Christian Reconstructionist church-school.
It certainly was a safe place for Christian Domininists of various flavours to congregate, even to work as staff.
Apr 14, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I regularly hear from women w/stories of church membership as a tool of coercive control.
Some express concern that the wording I've suggested for removing one's name from membership is too legal-sounding.
This points to another crucial, gendered layer to NAPARC coercive control. In NAPARC, women are often punished for appearing authoritative, assertive, knowledgeable.
So women understandably anticipate that asserting their right to "freedom of association" w/out bowing & scraping ("please sir can you remove my membership") means this:
Mar 23, 2023 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
In case you missed it, here's a promo for my next book w/@MayflyBooks,
No Love in War: A Story of Christian Nationalism.
It takes readers through 3 circles of Christian Dominionism, reading the wars religious supremacists wage against the world against their wars at home. 2/x
 From the introduction:
"For the uninitiated into Christian Reconstructionism and other arms of the Christian Dominionist movement in the United States and beyond, @julieingersoll accurately summarises the central goal of this cluster of political ideologies as ...
Mar 6, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Re: PCA Teaching Elder Dan Herron
A fact worth recalling:

That in Herron's initial cease & desist letter (June, 2021) he attempted to prevent - via threats of a civil lawsuit - members of the PCA from lodging a complaint in the church courts

Image from SJC preliminary verdict https://t.co/dz2wLlo2xp
Image This conflation of ecclesiastical & civil courts was later exacerbated by this:
Dan Herron's defense for the PCA-ecclesiastical case, Brent Huber, works for the same law firm representing Herron in the civil case against two of his alleged victims.
Jan 13, 2023 • 34 tweets • 12 min read
(Btw, one first oddity of Kara's deposition transcript is the absence of @aimeebyrdPYW 's name in the section where people in the room identified them for the record. I can tell you, Aimee was there.) So, on to the transcript!
An early red flag was Dan's lawyer focusing on Kara's education.
This would lay groundwork for his use of an outdated sexist trope that applies a higher burden for an 'intelligent' assault victim to meet than a ‘stupid’ one.
See:countytimes.co.uk/news/national/… Image
Dec 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
IDHR "takes retaliation seriously because even if there is no discrimination, retaliation “creates a culture of silence.”'
The NDA that Hyland's PCA session tried to get her to sign, before they would even speak to her, is further *damning evidence* of their culture of silence. More evidence of their culture of silence:
The termination agreement that Dane Ortlund + another elder presented to Hyland at the meeting where she was fired (19 March 2021) already included "confidentiality/non-disparagement clauses".
This is where the NDA *first appears."
Dec 14, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Let's talk a minute about the labels "gossip", "discord/divisive", "busybody" & "meddler."

Generally, the messages here are:
"Stop interfering in something not your concern"
aka "It's none of your business," &
"You're creating trouble where none existed." First, it's important to say that ofc meddlers and troublemakers certainly exist.
An obvious example are those who disseminate propaganda/fake news which mimics credible reports and is false.
Dec 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Gentle & Lowly author & PCA pastor Dane Ortlund has defended Driscoll in the past. It now appears we know some of the why.