christabrown.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

"They have endless imagination in only one direction, the one that entails the salvation of their beloved institutions." Such an astute observation from @stephgaileagleson.bsky.social about those who keep trying to help corrupt religious orgs to do the right thing. open.substack.com/pub/christab...

submitted 2 hours ago • 0 comments

Check out this list with over 1300 names. ⬇️ Many of the names are ones I immediately recognize. Why? Because I've been following sexual abuse & coverup stories in the Southern Baptist Convention and white evangelicalism for so very long.

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

“Now that Trump has captured the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the FBI, the military is the last piece he needs to establish the foundations for authoritarian control of the U.S. government.”

submitted 8 hours ago • 0 comments

"Trump is...an entirely transactional actor... Attempts to fit him into a traditional ideological box will always fail because he has never met a box he couldn’t sell for parts to the highest bidder." - @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

submitted 19 hours ago • 0 comments

In Missouri, lawmakers heard testimony on a bill to create a database of pregnant women who are deemed “at risk for seeking an abortion." Shades of Gilead. apnews.com/article/abor...

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"Money flows all around... but there's no oversight... And there's no licensing of pastors... If you get a local church to say you're a minister, you're a minister." - @bmietana.bsky.social Wanna better understand why & how the SBC is so messed up? Have a listen ⬇️ religionnews.com/2025/02/19/l...

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Please Southern Baptists, one way or another, show your disapproval with this lack of courage and leadership among your leaders.

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"They spend millions & millions & millions of dollars educating ministers & no money overseeing them." That's @bmietana.bsky.social in a conversation with Amanda Henderson about the factions & fractures of the SBC. Have a listen. #ThisistheSBC religionnews.com/2025/02/19/l...

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"The incessant gaslighting about the database can now end, but still I keep coming back to the question: When exactly did the Executive Committee decide 'it’s not a focus'? For how long were they just leading us all on?" From my column today ⬇️ #ThisistheSBC christabrown.substack.com/p/southern-b...

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"Trump’s deep vision for religion is to placate anyone who attends the 'Six Flags Over Jesus Church of the Evangelical Righteous Gemstones' while never going to church or reading the Bible." - @briankarem.bsky.social www.salon.com/2025/02/20/t...

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When exactly did the Southern Baptist Convention's proclaimed plan to build a denominational database become a denominational sham? They say it’s “not a focus…at this point,” but was it ever a focus? Or was it always a charade? My column today: christabrown.substack.com/p/southern-b...

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” - Marbury v Madison (1803)

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Abuse database is no longer a priority for Southern Baptist leaders. Was it ever? Or was it always just a show? “Accountability is illusion and institutional reform is a hall of mirrors." #ThisistheSBC religionnews.com/2025/02/18/a...

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

So... after years of trailing out hollow words, impotent task forces & phony dog-n-pony shows of purported reform, the Southern Baptist Convention's top CEO straight up says that a database of clergy sex abusers "is not a focus for us." Priority stays same: protecting the institution. #ThisistheSBC

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At SBC Executive Committee press conference, @bmietana.bsky.social asks about the clergy-abuser database: "Will there be any names on that...or is that really a dead option?" Jeff Iorg (top SBC CEO): "It's not a focus for us at this point." #ThisistheSBC www.facebook.com/watch/live/?...

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Decades of the SBC spending $$ on attorneys like Boto, Guenther & more... to defend the indefensible of denominational do-nothingness & to stonewall survivors & make their lives a living hell. And NOW they want to go all boo-hoo about legal costs? Cry me a river. #ThisistheSBC

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

SBC's top CEO Jeff Iorg blames SBC abuse inquiry-related legal costs on "this culture" & "a litigious world." 🙄 When will they ever learn? Instead of looking outside, SBC should look inside at the reality of its own malfeasance & horror inflicted on kids & congregants for DECADES. #ThisistheSBC

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

The SBC's processes around sexual abuse have been appalling—abusive in themselves.

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"No matter how many times Stalin told his scientists to plant wheat in the snow so that it could evolve to grow in the winter, the wheat (which had no political allegiances) died." @radiofreetom.bsky.social on the importance of government expertise. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

The court's opinion is a roadmap for other judges who confront the Trump administration on its efforts to usurp congressional power of the purse & to wield tax dollars as a cudgel to compel compliance with policy. ⬇️

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

THIS. ⬇️ Exactly this. In their drive to delegitimize the judiciary, they're running the same playbook that they ran in advance of the 2020 election.

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There is simply no legal architecture that would allow Musk, the richest man in the world, to remake the entire federal government without running afoul of criminal conflict of interest laws.

submitted 5 days ago • 111 comments

The conclave of cruelty commences -- i.e., the SBC Executive Committee meeting. Their long recalcitrance on abuse reform is wholly indefensible but, for public perception, they'll puff themselves up with posturing about "progress." #ThisistheSBC baptistnews.com/article/plea...

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

When #ChurchToo survivors are used as pawns & props to further a phony institutional narrative of "progress" on abuse reform, it's cruel, trust-busting, and reality-bypassing.

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

"As I stood before committee members recounting a pastor’s rapes of me as a child and pleaded for action to protect others, one member chortled & another physically rotated himself in his chair so as to turn his back to me." This is the SBC Executive Committee. #ThisistheSBC

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee meets tomorrow. Nearly 3 years after their egregious conduct was documented, including repeatedly terrible treatment of me, still no amends, no consequences. "Meh, sorry." It's not enough. #ThisistheSBC christabrown.substack.com/p/is-sorry-r...

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

What these nihilistic vandals are doing to dismantle science & medicine—generations of expertise & public service & life improving benefits—is cultural revolution level national self harm. No foreign foe could inflict such brutal damage & senseless suffering on US so fast & effectively & unresisted.

submitted 7 days ago • 510 comments

A Trump-Musk memo telling US government employees to hide what’s happening from the public is a sign that: 1) Public legitimacy is a constraint for them, they know it, and will at times alter their behavior accordingly 2) Reporters should focus on it, revealing more of what they’re trying to hide

submitted 7 days ago • 38 comments

Trump's flurry of action is oddly familiar to me -- recalling my time as a reporter in China. Americans sometimes see his firehose of activity as disparate steps, a kaleidescope of craziness. But there is a coherent and alarming pattern: www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/o...

submitted 7 days ago • 6 comments

"Women" is a "forbidden word." "Men" is not. "Women" will get a paper flagged for review to determine if it's related to "a forbidden topic under the anti-DEI order." So too will "female, trauma, systemic, socioeconomic, multicultural" & dozens of other words. gizmodo.com/the-list-of-...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

"Imagine a world where a president could use the threat of criminal charges or the promise to dismiss them as a way of coercing a public official to advance his policy agenda." Wanna understand why 7 prosecutors resigned? Read this by @barbmcquade.bsky.social. ⬇️ www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

This is where we're at, folks. Per Reuters, the attorneys contemplated resigning en masse, but a veteran prosecutor finally agreed to file the motion to dismiss so as to spare the others from potentially being fired. "This is a coercion." www.reuters.com/world/us/fed...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Southern Baptist pastor had 1,200 videos & 450 images depicting the sexual abuse of children. Also had a book detailing HOW to sexually abuse children. All on his church computer. #ThisistheSBC www.wcnc.com/article/news...

submitted 8 days ago • 16 comments

"If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me." - Hagan Scotten, Ass't US Attorney

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"The Associated Press refused to knuckle under. The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance to tyranny, and a model for free speech, that much of American media needs right now." Thank you, @apnews.com. www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-gulf...

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"If queer lives, and especially queer joy, are visible, queerness threatens all the lies we’ve been told to prop up patriarchy." - @feministgadfly.bsky.social On the liberating potential of queer joy ... for ALL of us. baptistnews.com/article/the-...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Today is a great day to remember that attorneys' ethics are not governed by the President of the United States. Following an unethical order, even if it comes from the President, is not an option for any attorney. Attorney discipline is a subject of the judicial branch, courts, bar associations.

submitted 9 days ago • 10 comments

Folks, this is what an attorney of integrity looks like. May we see more of her kind in the months to come -- attorneys who will stand by their fundamental duty to uphold the rule of law. And no... she's not a "woke" liberal. She clerked for Justice Scalia & is a member of the Federalist Society.

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Ordered to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams, prosecutor Danielle Sassoon resigns, saying dismissal would be “inconsistent with my ability & duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor & to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.” Brava! www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/n...

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Not that anyone cares but a bunch of senior doj officials resigning over a corrupt instruction to drop a case was what triggered the Nixon impeachment, and in the Trump era it's just the 2pm scandal of a random Thursday and every day now has ~3 such scandals that would have ended any prior admin

submitted 9 days ago • 147 comments

"Oh, they have their talking points. Their rococo rationalizations... The moral free fall of Senate Republicans has been quite a show." - @frankabruni.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/o...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

“If you are abused by a vicar, you will still be expected to report it to a bishop. Safeguarding staff will still be located in church offices, employed by the very same bishop.” "Shocking arrogance." Conflicts of interest & deference issues persist. #ChurchToo apnews.com/article/chur...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments