Russell L. Meek (PhD Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is a speaker, writer, and professor who specializes in the Old Testament and its intersection with the Christian life. You can follow him on Twitter: @russ_meek and visit him online at RussMeek.com.
Posts By This Author
Job: An Unlikely Advent Companion
So as we participate in Advent this month, the Old Testament story of Job may be a helpful text to explore. Job addresses the enigma of suffering head-on, mincing no words but also not really answering the question of why we suffer. Perhaps, though, the simple freedom to question God and mourn our losses is just what we need this Christmas.
There's No Statute of Limitations on Trauma
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
The victim’s mother told police that within ten minutes of talking to her son, she called the church’s pastor, Mike Roy. Roy asked to meet with the victim’s mother the next day. At that meeting, the mother reported that Roy refused to believe her because “Shawn was a good friend of his and had worked at the church for two years.”
The Old Testament Law Valued People Over Property
Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash
Dr. Oz, Dan Patrick, and a smattering of evangelical pastors utilize rhetoric that pits the long-term economic health of the United States against the short-term health of the actual, flesh-and-blood people living in the U.S. right now. Such rhetoric is dangerous to people’s immediate health, but it also puts in sharp relief a simmering debate among evangelicals: What does it mean to love one’s neighbor?
The Burden of Safety Doesn't Lie With the Abused
Witness Paul Feldsher is questioned by lawyer Donna Rotunno during Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in New York. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg/File Photo
If it wasn’t already true on the face of it, Denhollander’s comments and the responses to her reveal that the “burden of safety” does not lie with the victim, and a victim certainly doesn’t share blame for putting themselves “in that situation.”
Inside the Fight to Keep an Abuse Apologist Off the Church Stage
“If you stand up to sexual abuse, you must remain standing,” Susan Codone recently told me. She’d said the same thing on Twitter in response to news that Paige Patterson, former president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was slated to preach at the “Great Commission Weekend” at a church in Immokalee, Fla. Patterson was fired from SWBTS in 2018 after trustees learned that he planned to meet privately with a rape survivor because, “I have to break her down and I may need no official types there.”
Why Social Media Is a Last Resort for Survivors of Clergy Abuse
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The church shouldn’t need a hashtag to shame it into taking sexual violence seriously. Abuse survivors shouldn’t have to look to Twitter and Facebook and blogs to find a place to belong, to be believed, and to give voice to their trauma.
Jules Woodson: Andy Savage 'Has Disqualified Himself from the Pulpit'
Photo by Nycholas Benaia on Unsplash
Andy Savage’s website includes several blog posts about how to be a good parent and husband, but Jules Woodson says that he sexually assaulted her while she was a minor and he was her youth pastor at a Southern Baptist Church (SBC) in Texas.
Racism, Sexism, and A Lust For Power in the Southern Baptist Church
Photo by Lea Fabienne on Unsplash
I have the right degrees from the right institution and I hold the right theological positions. I’m an inerrantist, I hold to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and I am gravely concerned that our history of political maneuvering has cloaked a love for power in the language of right theology.