THE SET-UP: I think the story of the first quarter of the 21st Century is the resurgent, event-shaping power of religion in human affairs. Saudi-stoked Muslim martyrs kicked-off this century by crashing into the World Trade Center. The United States responded with a specious “My god is bigger than your god” crusade against not-Saudi Muslim bystanders ... because the POTUS said he got the green-light from God.
Since then, we’ve seen the rise and fall and re-rise of the “Islamic State” … and we’ve seen religiously-justified ethnic cleansing stoked by Buddhists in Myanmar and by Jews in the Occupied Territories. We’ve got radical fundamentalist Hindus burning Christian Churches and menacing (and killing) Muslim cow-herders. Boko Haram continues to terrorize Christians in Nigeria and, it seems, humankind is descending into a “demon-haunted” world of superstition and delusion.
We’ve even seen the rise of Flat-Earthers—harkening back to a seminal moment for “the Church” in 16th Century Europe when it was faced with the stark reality of a demythologized, heliocentric solar system that DID NOT have humans beings at the center of the universe.
Here we are in the 21st Century … the atmosphere is filled with satellites … hell, it’s even called an atmo-SPHERE … and humans have circled back to that easily debunked fable. Millions more have embraced the “Young Earth Creationism” championed by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. You can even find “experts” who explain how dinosaurs fit onto Noah’s Ark. And a quick Google search for “spiritual warfare” is a bracing reminder that contemporary humans actually believe supernatural beings—literal demons—intervene in human affairs.
They also believe God picks winners and losers during tornadoes and that he saves some kids with childhood leukemia, but not others. They believe God gives and takes land. They believe he choses leaders and even chose one ethno-religious subset of humans for special treatment at the inception of human history. Many of them also believe human history is only 6-10,000 years old. For them, there is no evolution. Humans are the static reflection of God’s will and plan.
That’s the message they want to send … evolution is not real. Everything is how God intended it to be from the beginning … including gender roles and sexuality. Millions of Americans believe the Genesis creation myth actually happened. They believe Eve’s reckless behavior is indicative of a woman’s immutable nature. And they believe man is designed to be God’s mini-me on Earth.
Now — twenty-five years into the 21st Century — they have their own President, their own Speaker and a compliant Supreme Court. They are dismantling science and deleting knowledge that doesn’t match their “Biblical worldview.” And they seem intent on turning an ancient fever dream called “The Book of Revelation” into an eschatological roadmap to the apocalypse.
I don’t know about you … but when it comes to self-fulfilling prophecies, I prefer to be left behind. - jp
TITLE: Former CEO of Christian nonprofit pleads guilty to possessing child pornography
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/07/26/jason-yates-former-my-faith-votes-ceo-pleads-guilty/85387519007/
EXCERPTS: The former CEO of My Faith Votes, a nonprofit that encourages "Christians in America to vote in every election," has pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual abuse images, months after his arrest.
Jason Christopher Yates, 56, pleaded guilty to two of eight felony counts of possession of child pornography on Tuesday, July 22, in a district court in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to a plea petition obtained by USA TODAY.
Yates became the CEO of My Faith Votes in 2015 during the nonprofit's inception, according to his Truth & Liberty Coalition bio.
My Faith Votes describes itself as a "non-partisan movement" that motivates Christians in the U.S. to vote in elections, according to the Fort Worth, Texas-based nonprofit's website.
"We desire to see an America where God is honored in the public square and biblical truth is advanced in our culture," My Faith Votes' website states.
The nonprofit was founded in 2015 by Sealy Yates, an attorney who previously served on President Donald Trump's evangelical advisory board, according to Politico. He is also Jason Yates’ uncle, according to Christian news site The Roys Report. Both are also literary agents representing Christian authors.
While My Faith Votes claims to be "non-partisan," the nonprofit has backed several Republican officials and conservative views, including anti-abortion.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was My Faith Votes' honorary national chairman before becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Israel under Trump's administration, according to the nonprofit. Dr. Ben Carson was the founding honorary national chairman for the nonprofit before he became the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Trump's first presidency.
Jason Yates is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29, according to Minnesota court records.
TITLE: D-FW churches have been rocked by a year of abuse scandals. Is it more than a coincidence?
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/faith/2025/07/24/purity-culture/
EXCERPTS: Since June 2024, at least 11 D-FW pastors have resigned or been removed from their posts following allegations of sexual abuse or harassment, sexual misconduct or impropriety or what their church described only as a “sin” or “moral failure” without further elaborating.
As the Dallas area grapples with this slew of abuse allegations in evangelical, Protestant churches, The News talked to lawyers, researchers and therapists to hear whether there are risk factors in those church environments, specifically, that make people less safe from sexual violence.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, all of the churches whose pastor departures made the news since June 2024 are Protestant, and eight of the 10 are nondenominational.
Experts on abuse in Protestant environments pointed to several possible factors leading to Dallas’ year of scandals. Those include a lack of accountability in nondenominational churches; theologies that emphasize wifely duties and female submission; and “purity culture” teachings that tie together sex and shame.
Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Dallas, disagrees with such arguments about purity culture or evangelical teachings. Neither, he said, is a cause of abuse in the church.
“People can take any truth and take it to an extreme and twist it,” he said. But teaching what the Bible really says about the roles for men and women and about saving sex for a one-man and one-woman marriage, he said, doesn’t lead to abuse.
“What leads to abuse is not following what the Bible says,” Jeffress said. “The Bible is very clear about, for example, child abuse. Jesus said if anyone hurts a child, it would be better that he had a millstone tied around his neck and [be] thrown into the sea.”
In an interview, [Sheila] Gregoire said she found exposure to and adherence to several popular evangelical teachings about women and sex were highly correlated with whether someone had painful or nonconsensual sexual experiences.
A Christian author, researcher and speaker known for her books critiquing evangelical teachings about women and sex, Gregoire’s team found that women who believe “all men struggle with lust; it is every man’s battle” are 79% more likely to engage in sex “only because they feel they have to.”
Those teachings are found in several popular evangelical marriage and dating books that sold millions of copies, Gregoire said. In her work, she’s critiqued books including Love and Respect and For Women Only.
“So much of evangelicalism is really wedded to the idea that men need to be in power over women,” Gregoire said.
“I think a lot of times it’s taken as an abuse problem, but it’s so much bigger than that. It’s actually a worldview and a view-of-women problem, and until you fix that, you’re not going to fix abuse,” she said.
Emily Joy Allison is widely credited with launching the #ChurchToo movement with a 2017 X thread. She alleged that when she was 16, a youth leader in his 30s at her evangelical megachurch pursued a romantic relationship with her and told her not to tell anyone.
When her parents found out, they told Allison to apologize to the youth leader, and he left the youth group and moved to other churches, Allison alleged.
“[N]ot a single adult in my life who knew thought to say ‘it’s not your fault’ for MONTHS,” she wrote on X.
“Because sex is so shrouded in secrecy and shame, there’s also a sense in which [abused children] don’t feel comfortable talking to adults about this kind of stuff, because they think ‘Oh, I will get in trouble,’” Allison said. “That’s not an unfounded fear, unfortunately.”
Kelly Wolfe said she was raised in a Church of Christ congregation in the Lewisville area and was a member at The Village Church, an evangelical megachurch in Flower Mound, for eight years.
Wolfe said she was raped in college, but she didn’t tell anyone for seven years.
Kathryn Keller, co-owner of Dallas Therapy Collective, specializes in religious trauma and spiritual abuse. She works with many clients who have experienced abuse in a religious environment.
Keller highlighted that abuse happens everywhere, and said many of her clients have held on to their faith despite difficult experiences in the church.
She described several cultural dynamics that can make an environment — religious or otherwise — more prone to problems with sexual violence and abuse.
Those dynamics were: disembodiment (“disconnection from one’s needs and feelings”), shame (“the belief that I am ‘bad’ and unworthy of connection”), boundaries (“the lack of understanding of what’s yours and what’s somebody else’s, and the lack of ability to claim your space in that”) and codependency (“a pattern of connecting with people through minimizing your needs and wants”).
“If I am going into a church and hearing constantly that I’m a terrible sinner, I was born bad, and I’m not trained to listen to my body and listen to my feelings, obviously, that’s going to really negatively impact my sense of self and my identity,” Keller said. She said people in that kind of environment may not know what their boundaries are or whether they’ve been violated.
TITLE: Mark Driscoll, Chip Gaines and toxic Christian masculinity
https://baptistnews.com/article/mark-driscoll-chip-gaines-and-toxic-christian-masculinity/
EXCERPTS: “You’re the one who farted in your own elevator, so you’ve gotta smell it,” said Mark Driscoll in a video reacting to a 40-second clip of Joanna and Chip Gaines’ new show, Back to the Frontier.
The show aims to challenge families to “leave the 21st century behind to live as 1800s pioneers,” requiring them to turn in all technology, makeup and jewelry in exchange for life on a homestead (old-timey clothing included). And although the show was just released, it already has brought heat onto the Waco celebrity couple for including a family with gay dads.
According to Driscoll’s 5-minute long response, it’s because inclusion is an act of disloyalty to the Gaines’ conservative Christian fanbase. What they should be doing, says Driscoll, is appealing to the desires and comforts of their viewers, who must feel “betrayed” to have to watch a gay couple exist on their TV screens for portions of the new show.
“For the Gaineses to deviate from that is to betray their entire core audience. It’s also remarkably tone deaf. We just had an election, I don’t know if you guys saw that. It seemed like a resounding national referendum to stop this spread of trying to sexualize children and normalize perverse behavior.”
You know, the norm set by the same politicians who accuse gay couples free of criminal records of “sexualizing children” they’ve adopted and parent. Then turn around and cheat on their wives, pay for under-the-table abortions when their mistresses get pregnant, then criminalize regular-class citizens for needing reproductive health care. Certainly, these political norms ought to set the theological standard.
Perhaps most noticeable about the commentary is the fact that Driscoll is mostly concerned about the family’s image as conservative Christians, and how their fanbase is postured to respond to a decision like this. He does not offer biblical or theological reasons why a Christian might not support gay marriage, but rebukes what he understands to be the cultural “sin” of disloyalty to mainstream Christian ideals.
But Driscoll has another reason to criticize Gaines — one that explains why he and other evangelicals are not being nearly as hostile toward Joanna as they are to Chip. Driscoll believes Chip is failing in his duties as a Christian man by supporting this gay couple.
“The family has a really important decision now, and so does Chip Gaines,” said Driscoll, addressing him directly.
“Chip, you’re a husband and a father. You’re a Christian and you’re a man. And you have a responsibility in the sight of God to lead with courage and authority and clarity. And if you fail to do so, you’re just another guy who failed, and failed miserably and publicly. That doesn’t make you a victim. That makes you a fool.”
For Driscoll, this is a masculinity issue.
“By failing to be complementarian, Driscoll believes, Chip Gaines is failing to be a real man.”
Perhaps underlying his concern for their public Christian image, Driscoll is criticizing the family for not adhering to complementarianism, which emphasizes a heteronormative hierarchy of authority and power in the marriage and family. By failing to be complementarian, Driscoll believes, Chip Gaines is failing to be a real man.
And if you know anything about Mark Driscoll’s career, you know this fascination with hypermasculinity is nothing new. Throughout his career as a pastor, he’s been obsessed with what he calls “pussified” men.
Yes, he coined the term. Although he doesn’t use it much anymore.
“Pussified” men, according to Driscoll, are biological males who act in feminine ways, rendering them women from a social and hierarchical standpoint. Examples include, but are not limited to, allowing their wives to have authority in the home, getting in tune with their feelings and supporting same-sex marriage.
This is a classic example of “muscular Christianity,” which promotes a hypermasculine persona for Christian men. Muscular Christian men ought to be strong, authoritative and unwilling to bend to “weak” things (like women, feelings or homosexuality). Men who deviate from this hypermasculine standard are not considered “good Christian men.”
And in classic gender-role fashion, women are expected to be submissive to their “muscular” husbands, fathers and pastors who lead them in every area of life. For Driscoll, the sexual component of this submission in marriages is especially important, hence why he is so disgusted by the thought of a gay couple existing.
When he was pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, the podcast explains, Driscoll taught violent portrayals of marital sexuality that convinced women to be sexually submissive to manipulation and abuse. This left many of them traumatized in the process of “affirming” their husbands’ so-called “Christian masculinity.”
And Driscoll bragged about this in sermons.
In one instance the podcast examines, Driscoll told his congregation about a woman who sought advice on how to get her husband to church on Sundays. He told her to give her husband oral sex, which she always had refused because she felt uncomfortable doing it.
But Driscoll insisted that she do this sexual act for the sake of getting her husband in a pew.
And this is just one example of many.
In fact, Driscoll often sexualized his own wife in front of the congregation, encouraging women in his congregation to strip for their husbands to keep them from cheating or fawn over the idea of receiving sexual gratification. All while yelling and screaming at the men in his congregation that they must be strong, authoritative and masculine if they want to lead their families in a Christian life.
“Sexual gratification was a necessity for men and a duty for women.”
Honestly, some of his sermons are so aggressively delivered that they’re scary.
And he never taught about consent. Sexual gratification was a necessity for men and a duty for women.
But in plain terms, to avoid men in his church being “pussified,” he taught a sex-obsessed ideology that justified the abuse of women for the sake of ensuring their husbands felt powerful enough to be aggressively authoritative.
I’m not a man, but I think most people who exist outside of complementarian circles would say “masculinity” is multifaceted. Sometimes, being gentle, kind and inclusive are the strongest things a man (or a person, in general) can do.
I wonder if Jesus — the gentle, loving and seemingly nonsexual person who cared little about what mainstream society thought — would be considered “pussified” by Driscoll’s definition. After all, he had no wife to sexually gratify him in support of his masculine leadership role.
Would Jesus care about seeming “pussified” to other religious folks? More or less than he would care about loving thy gay neighbor?
Most of the secure and confident men I know don’t seem too concerned. In fact, if a man needs to remind himself he’s a “real” man by yelling the loudest, being the most intimidating or demanding sexual gratification from his wife, it sounds like he might have some gender-based insecurities to work out.
But I suppose I’m just a woman with no strong husband to lead her. What do I know?
SEE ALSO:
Osceola County youth pastor arrested for possession of child sexual abuse material, detectives say
https://www.wesh.com/article/florida-youth-pastor-arrested-possession-child-sexual-abuse-material/65513129
Former pastor indicted for allegedly sexually abusing 8 child victims in West Virginia
https://www.wboy.com/news/crime/former-pastor-indicted-for-allegedly-sexually-abusing-8-child-victims-in-west-virginia/
Church pastor, former teacher charged with sexual abuse of a minor, Anne Arundel County police say
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/church-pastor-teacher-william-jones-sex-abuse-minor-charge/65511088
Alabama Teacher at Christian Academy Arrested, Accused of Having Sexual Relationship with Minor Student: Police
https://people.com/alabama-teacher-christian-academy-arrested-accused-of-sexual-relationship-with-student-11775687