INDIANA
Chicagoist
If you want to know about the culture that allowed former First Baptist Church of Hammond pastor Jack Schaap to transport a 16-year-old girl across state lines in order to have sexual relations, then head to Chicago magazine’s website immediately. Chicago’s Bryan Smith wrote a detailed investigative piece that reveals a culture of misogyny, sexual and physical abuse and literal interpretations of the Bible at First Baptist that precede Schaap’s crimes by decades, were tolerated by the church’s deacons and may have been carried forward by graduates of the church’s Pastor Schools and graduates of its university, Hyles-Anderson College.
Jeri Massi, who documents sexual abuse of children among Christian fundamentalists, told Smith the sheer volume of allegations connected to First Baptist is “astonishing.”
Examples from First Baptist “take in everything: pedophilia, violence, defamation of the innocent to protect the guilty, heresies against Christian doctrine, defiance against lawful authority. . . .” And all this barely half an hour’s drive from downtown Chicago.
Websites dedicated to tracking the suspected crimes of Christian fundamentalists have documented a dozen cases across the country of preachers whose actions have led to a litany of arrests and civil lawsuits. Few are as high profile as Schaap, who agreed to a plea deal in September and said at his hearing he was not aware of the federal laws against transporting minors across state lines to have sex. But Schaap was merely following in the footsteps of his father-in-law, Jack Hyles, who transformed First Baptist from a sleepy Indiana church into the 14th largest church in the country.
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