Evangelical Christianity is a rape cult

Thanks to

Ossiana Tepfenhart

, I just learned of another alleged rapist among the ranks of Evangelical Christian leadership.

Multiple men have accused Michael Tait, former frontman for two Contemporary Christian Music supergroups (DC Talk and then the Newsboys) of assaulting them when they were in their teens and early 20s.

Tait released a statement, after learning of the allegations.

“I am ashamed of my life choices and actions and make no excuses for them,” Tait wrote. “I will simply call it what God calls it – sin.”

There’s a reason he’s calling it “sin.” It’s not God.

It’s because so many things are “sin” in Evangelical Christianity.

Divorcing your husband just because you want to be happier? Sin. Overeating? Sin. Curse words? Premarital sex? Wearing “short” skirts? All sin.

What you are accused of, Michael Tait, is sexual assault. Call. It. That.

Evangelicals disagree about a lot. But they all seem to agree that powerful men should never have to fully account for their actions against the vulnerable.

Many cornerstone Evangelical Christian teachings help powerful, unaccountable men brainwash women, children, and disempowered men into becoming silent victims of their horrendous abuse.

Of course they support Trump.

“Sources claimed Tait’s alleged drug use and alleged abusive behavior were the ‘biggest open secret in Christian music.’”

In Evangelical Christianity, they’ll kick you out for being gay, but actively cover for alleged abusers. They’ll excommunicate you for being a feminist, but they have no pity for boys who allegedly woke up with their pants pulled down and a man on top of them.

The Guardian reported that every single victim was “naive about sex and drugs throughout their youth.”

This. Is. Not. A. Coincidence.

Contemporary Christian Music only exists because Evangelical Christian parents have been taught to fear pop music. Britney Spears singing about sex isn’t a threat to your kids, Brenda. The guy singing about Jesus to a kid who doesn’t know anything is.

Early, accurate, comprehensive education on sex, pleasure, and consent is associated with LOWER rates of sexual abuse perpetration and victimization. Sexually permissive societies have less rape and assault than societies that stigmatize, restrict, and control sex.

Sexual freedom IS safety.

“When something like that happens to you, you feel like the worst person, you feel dirty, worthless,” one alleged survivor told the Guardian.

Whomst might it benefit for a victim to not understand that they were victimized? Whomst might it benefit for survivors to feel dirty and worthless, rather than aggrieved? Whomst might want the people who know what they did to feel too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone what happened to them?

Might it be RAPISTS???

Jerry Fucking Falwell mentored young Tait. Because of course he did.

The Guardian reported that in 2014, Tait appeared in a movie where a college professor threatens to fail his students if they don’t sign a form declaring “God is dead.”

As they say in AA, “If you can spot it, you got it.”

This is exactly what Evangelical Christians do. They threaten children. They literally tell small kids: “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, you will spend an eternity in Hell.”

They can’t imagine that college professors:

1. Aren’t all that invested in whether their students leave the Evangelical cult

2. Don’t need to threaten college students to get them to ask questions

Contemporary Christian Music only exists because Evangelical Christian parents have been taught to fear that simply presenting kids with any kind of alternative belief system is enough to get them to walk away from the rape cult. And yet college students won’t think to ask questions unless a professor threatens to fail them? Make it make sense! You can’t! It doesn’t! It never has! That's why they have to threaten people with Hell to get them to stop asking obvious questions!

That movie had four sequels.

Rates of sexual abuse don’t differ much between public schools and secular private schools. They’re twice as high in religious private schools.

Of course Tait is a huge Trump supporter.

I really, honestly don’t blame my parents for raising me in a rape cult. I’m grateful that no one ever raped me. They protected me from more than I’ll ever know, thank… God?

In any rape cult, most of the people involved are victims. That’s as true of Evangelical Christianity as it is of any of them.

My parents did the best they could with what they knew. Their parents weren’t the best. They lived far away from them anyway. Evangelical Christianity promised not just a way, but THE way to parent, to live, and to guarantee eternal life for themselves and us. It offered community, social support, and material support when they really needed it. I get it. I really do.

The thing is, now we know better. We know that sex is not, and never has been, the threat. It’s not the problem here on Earth. It’s not the problem in any heaven I want to be in. Unaccountable power is the problem. Sexual abusers are the problem. A culture whose teachings actively measurably help facilitate abuse is the fucking problem. That’s what makes it a rape cult.

Now we know better than to believe these assholes. So let’s fucking start to do better.