One thing that should be obvious by now is that there is a circuit of elite celebrity preachers who tour the country peddling their wares. They recommend each others books and programs. They speak at each others events and councils. They shamelessly plug each others products from the pulpit. Because of their self-promoting, their ideas are held in high regard by young pastors but they don’t hold up when tested against Scripture. In our last post we showed how Paige Patterson and Mark Dever have had one of these bromances that is centered around church discipline and church control and how the church at Sapulpa is likely to fall victim to their scheming.
To shore up their control over the SBC these men help pastors subdue and enslave congregations on the local level through the training they receive by Patterson and 9Marks at the seminaries. They are experts in the field. Crucial to this teaching is the idea of SUBMISSION. For an autocrat, unilateral submission is the only way to get the freedom to do what ever the heck you want. This extreme application of submission applies to everyone EXCEPT the lords at the top and it especially applies to the women and children.
The Council Has Spoken
About 40 years ago there was an intense focus on demanding submission from women in
exchange for “protection”. This mafia style theology had its root in something called The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. This organization was founded by two Calvinists, John Piper and Wayne Grudem, who published a statement that has been a creed for many different denominations. (You may recall one of Grudem’s books was distributed to numerous people at the Church at Sapulpa this summer.)
Let’s just look and see who’s been rubbing elbows at The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. No big surprise, the list contains our usual suspects:
- Al Mohler, Calvinist and Seminary President
- Mark Dever, Calvinist and 9Marks godfather
- C. J. Mahaney, Calvinist and child sex scandal champion. (we wrote about this here.)
- John Piper, creepy charismatic Calvinist
- Oh, and our local instigator, Paige Patterson. seminary president and guest at Sapulpa’s wild man feed.
Practicing What They Preach?
Since this prestigious council has defined for us what it means to be a “Biblical” man or woman we would like to briefly share with you how they have practiced what they preached. We will focus on Paige Patterson since he seems to be wielding the most influence over the church at Sapulpa at this time. He has an important message for Christian women. Please read it below:
I had a woman who was in a church that I served, and she was being subject to some abuse, and I told her, I said, “All right, what I want you to do is, every evening I want you to get down by your bed just as he goes to sleep, get down by the bed, and when you think he’s just about asleep, you just pray and ask God to intervene, not out loud, quietly,” but I said, “You just pray there.” And I said, “Get ready because he may get a little more violent, you know, when he discovers this.” And sure enough, he did. She came to church one morning with both eyes black. And she was angry at me and at God and the world, for that matter.
And she said, “I hope you’re happy.”
And I said, “Yes ma’am, I am.” And I said, “I’m sorry about that, but I’m very happy.”
And what she didn’t know when we sat down in church that morning was that her husband had come in and was standing at the back, first time he ever came. And when I gave the invitation that morning, he was the first one down to the front. And his heart was broken, he said, “My wife’s praying for me, and I can’t believe what I did to her.” And he said, “Do you think God can forgive somebody like me?” And he’s a great husband today. And it all came about because she sought God on a regular basis. And remember, when nobody else can help, God can.
And in the meantime, you have to do what you can at home to be submissive in every way that you can and to elevate him. Obviously, if he’s doing that kind of thing he’s got some very deep spiritual problems in his life and you have to pray that God brings into the intersection of his life those people and those events that need to come into his life to arrest him and bring him to his knees.
(Hear it straight from the horse’s mouth here.)
Rather than go to the police to report the CRIME, this abused woman came to her pastor just as she had been trained. The advice she got from Dr. Patterson was basically “woman, go home and submit“. She did and she got her face punched in by her violent husband. Yeah, he later had remorse and according to Patterson he is a “great husband today”. Sure he is, Paige. Perhaps he was hurting and walked the aisle because his fists were sore?
This incident gives us our first glimpse into how men like Patterson really view women and submission. Sadly, the second look below is even less flattering.
Darrell Gilyard – SBC Rising Star
In 1989 a young African American man named Darrell Gilyard was the featured preacher at The Southern Baptist Convention’s Preacher’s Conference. This important honor was made possible because of the insistence of Paige Patterson. At the time Gilyard had been nurtured and mentored by Patterson who was President of Criswell College in Dallas, TX. Patterson was vehemently promoting Gilyard as a “rising star” in the SBC. Two years prior to this however, Gilyard had been terminated from his position at Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas Texas by Sr. Pastor Rev. E. K. Baily.
According to Sr. Pastor Baily, no less than 25 women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct involving Darrell Gilyard. Gilyard was fired publicly at a 1500 member meeting of Concord Missionary Baptist in Dallas while members of Paige Patterson’s Criswell College were in attendance. Speaking later, Rev. Baily said he received a letter from Paige Patterson in which he chastised him and said “he [Patterson] would have come out to my church and solved the problem for me if I had told him first.” The “problem” for Patterson was not that 25 women had been sexually abused, but that one of his good ol’ boys had been brought before the church and fired. Though Rev. Baily surmised this would be the end of Darrell Gilyard’s career, Patterson had other plans.
According to a 2007 article by Ethics Daily, “Patterson continued to mentor him, helping him to land preaching gigs at Baptist state conventions and evangelistic rallies across the country.”
Patterson had arranged for special scholarships for Mr. Gilyard to attend his Criswell College. However, while at Patterson’s college new allegations began to surface. In 1989, a student says she made an appointment with Paige Patterson to discuss the sexual escapades of his disciple. “Darrell Gilyard was there with his wife and an attorney,” the woman said. “He confronted me and said I wore suggestive clothing. I don’t even own suggestive clothing.”
She told The Dallas Morning News that “Paige Patterson asked me to refrain from speaking to anybody about this. (No talk rule!) He said unless I came back with two witnesses or proof that something had happened, not to come back.”
The Dallas Morning News went on to report:
Another woman who was drawn to Mr. Gilyard’s preaching left the Concord church after Mr. Gilyard was fired. “We couldn’t believe that he had done anything.” she said. She and her husband corresponded with Mr. Gilyard during the next year while he was assistant pastor of Hilltop Baptist Church in Norman, Okla., in the fall of 1987. She said she was thrilled when he came back to Dallas.
One evening, she said, he called her late at night and told her he had been having sexual fantasies about her. “I thought he had some problem that he just needed to talk about, so I said I’d pray for him.” She said the pastor asked her to meet him later in a hotel or at the church. “I agreed to meet him at the church,” she said. “There was nobody there, it was at night. We were talking by the pulpit, and we started kissing. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me down onto the – floor, right there in the church. I was in a state of shock. This was a man I trusted. I didn’t know what to do. Then he was on top of me.” She said she was able to free herself and leave. But the calls continued, she said. “I told him what we did was wrong. I even called Paige Patterson to tell him what had happened.” She said Dr. Patterson would not take her calls. “He told his secretary to tell me that unless I had some kind of proof, not to call back.’
In response to the trouble, Patterson had Don Simpkins, a pastoral counselor begin meeting with Gilyard to “polish his rough edges”. After a few sessions, counselor Simpkins became convinced Gilyard was a predator and attempted to contact Dr. Patterson to share his disturbing findings. Gilyard canceled further counseling sessions and Patterson never returned Simpkins’ calls. Mr. Simpkins would later tell The Dallas Morning News:
“I believe it’s time now to do the right thing.” Mr. Simpkins said he believes allegations against Mr. Gilyard that surfaced last year were “covered up.“
By 1991, Mr. Gilyard would have to leave four churches amidst a swirl of charges of sexual misconduct including adultery, battery and rape. Gilyard’s history was well known to Patterson but this did not seem to out weigh his political value in Patterson’s eyes. The women victims were deemed jealous or even racists by Dr. Patterson. Patterson teaches ministers that they are in a special protected class. Everyone else is in a lower class with women being at the bottom.
Dr. Patterson said that according to Scriptures, action cannot be taken against a minister accused of adultery unless there are two or more witnesses. He also asked for any other proof, such as photographs, videotapes or laboratory tests. (TDMN, 1991)
Apparently 25+ women’s testimony is of little value to this member of The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. These women were grilled, called racists, and insulted. After being sexually assaulted and raped they had to endure the shaming of this leading SBC figure for their supposed “suggestive” clothing. (Recall Patterson recently telling the Church at Sapulpa how he called out the names of sinning women at his church before the Lord’s Supper?) Patterson was at the center of this cover up and stood by his man. Gilyard went on to be that rising star in the SBC leading various churches to exponential growth. Had Patterson stepped in and taken the scores of sexual allegations from these women seriously, Gilyard’s career would have been stopped dead in its tracks. Sadly, had he been stopped dead, the last victims could have been spared.
Predator Preacher
Gilyard’s luck would finally run out just as his political value to the fuhrer of the SBC was ebbing away. Finally, a young teen who was being counseled by Gilyard would come forward with rape allegations but this time these allegations would not be mopped up by Patterson. The proper authorities would conduct an investigation and arrange for a real trial. In 2009 Gilyard was found guilty of sending lewd text messages to a child and guilty of molesting another child. In the end, it would take a secular justice system to stop the abuse. Nobody but Darrell Gilyard and Paige Patterson will ever know the true body count of this sick pedophile.
(Since this post has gone long, we will not get into other examples such as Patterson’s firing of South Western Seminary’s Hebrew Language professor, Sheri Klouda, because of her gender. Or his hypocritical appointment of his wife as professor of theology at the same seminary!)
In our post on Patterson’s fellow council member C. J. Mahaney entitled “Friend and Fugative” we exposed a relentless long running child sex ring that operated in the elder controlled Calvinist Sovereign Grace Church. Also we took a look at how Matt Chandler’s Calvinist elder controlled Village Church disciplined a woman for seeking a marriage annulment from her husband who was molesting children. For these lords, those in “submission” quickly become prey. Their views on unconditional submission are tightly bound to their dream of pastor controlled/elder controlled churches and they spin it as a prosperous utopia. However, on the inside of these churches the fruit of their theology is rotting and full of worms.
The students of Patterson and 9Marks are trained to teach their flocks to submit and “die to self”. These familiar ideas based on Biblical teachings sound churchy but to these deranged disciples they mean something different than what you may think. For them it is about DOMINATION and we have seen just how they protect those “weaker” people who have been dominated. At best they view people as resources used to build a selfish empire. At worse they are literally abused and raped. Real Biblical manhood and womanhood involves defending the weak and fatherless, even if this means defending them from predators in the pulpit. (Psalms 82:3) None of this abuse would be possible if we held to the truths of our Baptist heritage and handled all business in the light.
2016
As we move on into a new year expect to see new people put in place to carry out the final stages of the 9Marks takeover. These poor lost drones are trained in nothing but the art of loyal submission. They will carry out their mission of undermining the Baptist way because to question the plan is heresy to them. Also, expect to see cultic words like “The Pastor’s VISION” thrown around more frequently. Many will blindly support the agenda simply because they want to support their friends or their pastors without considering the implications. Sadly, few will take the time to study and understand what lies ahead for the church with the overthrow of congregationalism. From our studies we know that “a Baptist church’s debate remained free from any hierarchical coercion– the kind that had presumably corrupted the Roman Catholic Church, had lingered in the episcopacy of the Anglican Church, and had left residual traces in the Presbyterian denomination. Baptists believed that whenever a few elite people determined and dictated doctrine for others, tyranny was the result. For Baptists, independent churches filled with believers who could discuss and defend their faith were the best expressions of true Christianity.”