Wednesday, October 30, 2013

"Christian" Pastor to Rape Victim: “He should have killed you. At least you’d have died a virgin.”

The sickness of the "godly Christian" crowd just seems to be metastasizing more and more.  And in the process, these self-styled defenders of Christianity are making the faith something so vile that no one truly moral and decent would want to have anything to do with it.  Patheos has a post that sadly, I suspect is genuine.  It is certainly consistent with the mind set of Virginia Christofascists who are supporting the extreme, hate-filled GOP statewide ticket.  Here are excerpts:

I got this letter in:
Hi, John.

I became acquainted with your writing a couple of months ago and love it. I so wish I could travel back in time and hear your voice in my head while I was growing up, instead of the hard-core fundy “you’re going to hell” soundtrack of my early life.
I’ve read with great interest some of the things you’ve written about how the church treats victims of sexual violence. I just had to share a bit of my story around exactly that issue.

When I was 16 years old, I was raped at knife-point by a stranger. Not having a clue how to handle it, I decided to confide first of all in my pastor. While I was literally still bleeding from the attack, he told me (and I quote) “It’s too bad that you didn’t force him to kill you instead. That way you could have at least died a virgin.” That was the sum total of his “advice” to me—not, “Oh, you should go to the police,” or “Oh, I’m so sorry that happened to you,” or anything that might have been even remotely helpful anywhere on this planet.

After that reaction, I decided not to tell anyone else—including my parents or the police—ever. It wasn’t until six years later, after I had attempted suicide and was hospitalized for severe depression, that the truth came out. And then, only because I saw my rapist’s wedding photo and announcement in our local paper and freaked out a bit. (Well, okay, a lot.) It took me a long time, a ton of therapy, and no small measure of the grace of God to get past this exhibit of what a pastor-friend calls the “cult of virginity.”
Are you are a pastor, priest, or ministry leader who holds that women are intrinsically inferior to men—that women should submit to their husbands, that women are less intelligent than men, less emotionally sophisticated than men, not as ambitious, driven, or proud as men? Do you believe that a woman’s highest calling is to be a good mother, that a young woman’s moral status is tied to her virginity, that women’s sexuality causes men to sin?

If you do believe those things, then I’m begging you to right now resign all of your authority in the church. Get out—and don’t talk to anyone on your way to the door, either. You do not speak for God. You wouldn’t know good counsel from bad porridge. At best you are profound and grievous embarrassment to God; at worst the devil himself wonders at the fullness of the damage you do.

I agree with the post's author.  Increasingly, these "godly Christian" folk are nothing less than outright evil.  And it is far, far past time that the media, politicians and others cease giving these people the least shred of deference.  They need to be seen as a modern day pestilence that threatens society.



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