UNITED STATES
Slacktivist
March 14, 2014 By Fred Clark
Tamara Rice, who blogs at Hope. Fully. Known, grew up in another part of the fundamentalist bubble — as a missionary kid in the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism.
ABWE, like so many other fundamentalist institutions steeped in authoritarian patriarchy and purity culture, is dealing with a sex-abuse scandal. Or, rather, it seems to be doing everything it can not to deal with its sex-abuse scandal. It’s another iteration of the same pattern we’ve seen at other fundie institutions, including Pensacola Christian College and Bob Jones University. So Rice has been following these stories closely.
ABWE initially hired the abuse-investigation group GRACE (or “G.R.A.C.E.,” which stands for Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) to help them clean house. Then, earlier this year, they fired GRACE, apparently because the group was actually intent on cleaning house.
Bob Jones University did the same thing with GRACE — hiring them to investigate alleged abuse, then firing them when they seemed to have confirmed the allegations. After that blew up in their face a few weeks later, BJU changed its mind, again, and re-hired GRACE to finish its investigation.
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