15,000 enablers! Grinning men sitting behind his pulpit, and an audience clapping. Pastor Jack Schaap is spewing his women-hating theology in his fundamentalist Baptist church in Hammond, Indiana. I hope he goes before a woman judge when he comes to trial. He is being investigated for having sex with a 17 year old abused girl from his congregation that he was counseling.
They fired him. But they enabled him first.
He finally crossed the line by getting caught. The fact that he was way across the line in his preaching didn’t faze them. Each week, they put their money in the offering plate and enabled this bully, this women-hating preacher, to stand before them and spew out his hatred.
There is a video clip of what I am talking about. Watch it if you can stand to. As Jocelyn Andersen says “This is the reason we are doing what we do (standing up for women’s equality).” Read what Jocelyn has to say about this fundamentalist complementarian pastor.
In the video Schaap brags that he would never listen to a woman give the gospel. “Adam listened to a woman and look at what happened to him. The whole world was damned.” He goes on to say that no woman ever gave him the gospel, no woman ever helped him in his ministry, and he would never listen to a woman.
Little problem here, pastor Schaap. A woman gave you your church and congregation. You see, another bad pastor who was accused of having sex with his deacon’s wife, had this congregation for 42 years. Schapp married his daughter. When he died, guess who got the church? If you guessed Jack Schapp, you are right. Got the church from a woman!
I guess that doesn’t count.
This is why we do what we do. If you are enabling your pastor and you hear him give a woman-hating diatribe, it’s time you quit. If you are enabling your church by being quiet when it denies women full service before the Lord – whatever that may be – it’s time you quit. If you yourself deny women their full equality before the Lord, it time you quit. If you are giving your money to a church that teaches that women are inferior (equal-but) – its time you quit. Stand up and tell your pastor you are tired of this.
If you are ready to listen to the full gospel of Christ, join us. Join us in speaking out for all women who sit in churches where they are abused by the so-called gospel where men tell them they are not equal.
bWe Baptist Women for Equality's Blog 
It is very interesting that you bring up the issue of quitting. I have just gone through several church related things that have brought me to that very point–I have stood up some for all of this nonsense as it relates to women. It has cost me, but I frankly dont————. And we’ll use the word darn if that makes it better.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again–Women must stand up to these men and quit if necessary because in my experience in the SB–the men sure as heck are not.
Let them have their churches but with no women’s help. Would that not be interesting. I hope that I live long enough to see this very thing happen.
It is past time.
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It has cost all of us. Women, and men who speak out are not popular with their pastors, nor their congregations. We are isolated, gossiped about, and made to feel like we have destroyed the fellowship of the church. When all we want to do is to is see men and women as equal before the Lord and in the church. Thank you for speaking out. I know it is hard. I know it takes courage. I am not sure that I have enough courage.
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Huh. Apparently Jack Schaap didn’t have a mother. If he did, he is in violation of the 5th Commandment, because his words dishonor her completely.
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He never heard the gospel from a woman? Jesus saw to it that the message of His resurrection was given ONLY to women. They were told to go and tell it to the male disciples. Why on earth did Jesus not give the message of His resurrection to the male disciples? It is to give an important message to the Jews, who would not accept a woman’s testimony in court. WE ARE NOW EQUAL! No message of resurrection, no Christianity.
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🙂
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Here is my take on this: in order to get more women to stand up and quit in the long run is to convince them that they are being lied to. Convincing the abusers to repent just by telling them directly is a lost cause. They have closed their ears and hardened their hearts and have used crafty ways to convince their followers to do the same. Women are too afraid to even listen to someone telling them anything other than what they have been told to believe. I was that way for years. We need to come up with some ways to be as cunning and crafty as they are to turn the people’s hearts away from them. If we can’t get in the front door of their hearts look for other openings. Don’t rely only on direct methods.
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It is a big probably of apathy. Women don’t care. They can put up with what their church is doing, and when they hear such stuff as Schaap says they just think that their church or pastor doesn’t believe such a thing. The fact is that most of their churches and pastors do believe it, but are not as crude as Schaap is. We must create a desire.
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Also I have found that people simply do not want to believe that someone has done something bad. There’s just this wall of denial–“Maybe you misunderstood,” or “What did you *do* to him?!” or the like. Anything to avoid admitting that there is actual malice or evil or ill intent or covetousness of another human being.
This may be complicated by something I heard in my comp church: that men were created to be/naturally are protectors of women. Um, then from whom do women need protecting from, most often? Other considerations aside, the logic just breaks down, since I believe that most violence against women is perpetrated by men.
So I think it’s more complicated than apathy, alone. There’s yes, as you alluded to, definitely denial in play. I’ve experienced the denial outside of the church subculture, too. People just don’t want to believe bad things happen. I don’t get it, since we know that they do. And that often, people are responsible.
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That’s an interesting thought. In my experience, in the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America), women aren’t being *told* they are not equal.
They are being told repeatedly that they ARE equal at the same time they are being *taught* that they are not equal. What could be the psychological effects of that sort of thing?
Thank you for sharing your experience. Your words, particularly regarding your fear to believe anything other than what you have been told (taught) to believe, is something I have suspected.
In my own experience, I observed that the church I attended regularly talked about “grace alone” as what saves people, but there was a strong undercurrent that communicated it was crucial to *believe* in the correct (read: accepted in that denomination and church) way. So, yes–fear of believing in anything different, possibly to the point of discouraging questioning and so critical thought outside of a box.
Also, my m-i-l spends hours studying. Hours. Has for a long time. Yet she does not study her way outside of her denomination’s boxes, as they have defined for her a way of thinking about things. She reads their experts (Piper, etc.), and their recommended books.
It’s a very, very touchy situation.
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I think women want to believe that their pastors and other male figures are actually working for their good. But their fear of being wrong, and possibly the fear of losing what they have become accustomed to, keeps them from considering any other possibilities. Underneath of apathy could be fear, low self-esteem, lack of confidence. Apathy may come from stuffing their feelings down and numbing themselves. These things need to be addressed somehow before they will even consider listening to another source. It took depression and an eating disorder to get my attention before I would seek help and come to the realization that the belief system I was in wasn’t working for me. It took several years after that to realize and admit to myself that the men of the church really don’t have my best interests at heart and lack the emotional or spiritual maturity to serve anyone but themselves. All attempts to discuss my convictions with anyone has been met with minimization, dismissal, and having it all turned around on me. My way of dealing with all of this now is to separate emotionally, look for outside sources of spiritual growth for myself, and think up ways to go back in and find an indirect way to win the trust of some of the women and then share my beliefs when I feel they’re ready to hear it. I am looking for openings, vulnerabilities in their hearts and trying to give them what I sense they may need.
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Temperance, My initial reply was to you, though it did not appear directly underneath your post. Thank you again/still. Yes, I think it would be frightening and troubling to consider that I could have lived my life differently: that I did not have to spend it deferring to men. But I did so, anyway. I imagine that would be overwhelming.
I’m trying to understand because to me, who would not choose to be free? But I know it is not that simple. And I do wonder about the younger women, the ones who would not have decades of regret to deal with (potentially).
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