For Such A Time As This blog

When It Is In Your Power

June 11, 2019

By April C. Armstrong

Last May, I publicly revealed what it was like as a female student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 2004-2007 when Paige Patterson was president. Anonymous stories had appeared before mine, but as far as I know, mine was the first to come out with a name attached. Telling a deeply personal truth in a very public way is not easy to do, but every alternative seemed worse. Continued silence was unthinkable. I could not tell it anonymously for a variety of reasons. I had always had a good reputation among most people at Southwestern, so I wasn’t afraid of what people I knew would say about me in response. It ultimately extended far beyond my circle, however.

After reading what I had to say, Beth Moore tweeted at me that I was “brave” and had acted “not out of bitterness but out of love for Jesus & the church.” She was partly right. I don’t consider myself bitter; a great deal of emotional labor over the past dozen years has ensured that you can’t apply that adjective to me, though I believe we should avoid both praise and criticism for any survivor’s emotional responses. And if courage is doing something you find frightening, then I suppose what I did was a form of bravery, though I had less fear doing it than not doing it. And yes, I did this out of love. But I didn’t do this out of love for the church, per se.

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