Friends,
I’m so grateful that authors entrust Lake Drive Books with what is so often a “life’s work.”
Such is the case with Christa Brown’s Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation. It is her story of surviving and moving forward from abuse by the very persons entrusted with soul care—church leaders. Abuse is traumatizing enough, but when it happens in a church and restrictive context, it adds a pervasive and suffocating layer. And yet Christa kept going, little step by little step, as she found her voice. Not only did she start speaking up for herself and for her life, but she also found transformation, even becoming one of the best-known survivor advocates. I mean, have you followed Christa on Twitter/X?
I strongly encourage you to consider getting a copy of Christa’s book. Just this week one of the co-hosts of The Bodies Behind the Bus podcast remarked how she read the book through in one day (and it’s no small book) because she kept wanting to see what would happen, and she kept marveling at Christa’s voice growing all the way through, despite the past.
That’s my quick take, and now a few things to note about the release today of Baptistland:
If you want a little preview excerpt of Christa’s book, see below. Know that Baptistland is available in paperback, hardcover, ebook AND audiobook!
If you order the book, go claim three free bonus downloads from Christa, including Seven Days of Blessings, Questions for Reflection, and a Potato Leek Recipe.
Be sure to sign up for a live Zoom meet-up I’ll be hosting with Christa and journalist Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women.
Thank you,
David Morris, Publisher
Resistance against Clergy Sexual Abuse Is Never Wasted
By Christa Brown
Many survivors have told me how grateful they are for my work—that my writings validated their own experiences and helped them see more clearly, and that my advocacy showed them they mattered. Some have told me that, even in their silence, they could see me fighting for them. “I’m alive because of you,” said more than one.
For all of that, I am glad. But while I feel grateful that others believe I made some difference, and while I’ve certainly strived to honor the holiness of survivors’ lives and traumatic stories, I have also felt the exhausting futility of my efforts at prodding institutional change. And the personal cost has been unfathomable.
Still, it gave me pause when journalist Sarah Stankorb profiled me in Vice and summarized my history with these words: “Using just her legal expertise, a Blogspot website and a Twitter account, she was fighting an institution . . . with what was then a $1.2 billion operating budget.” That single sentence helped me put things in perspective. I thought about the stupefying odds of it—the holy defiance of it. I have stood as a raised fist in the face of this institution that callously and recklessly decimates so many lives.
When lies, abuses, manipulations, and cover-ups run rampant, then speaking truth becomes a form of resistance. Others see it. Others find their own voices. Others then also speak truth.
When the Religion News Association showed me at number five on their “Top 10 Religion Newsmakers” of 2022 list, I couldn’t fathom it.
Christa Brown, whose advocacy for fellow survivors of sexual abuse helped force a reckoning over the Southern Baptist Convention’s history of mishandling cases of sexually abusive ministers and of mistreating victims.
I’m a quiet person—an introvert—and yet my name was there with people like Pope Francis, Thich Nhat Hanh, Justice Samuel Alito, and “the Iranian women who led protests against their nation’s theocracy.” On the one hand, it seemed tragic. We had gathered such massive global media about sexual predations within the SBC that an ordinary person like me wound up on a list like that, and yet the SBC had still barely responded. On the other hand, I know that truth does not reside in the determination of a recalcitrant institution to change or not change. Truth stands on its own as a moral force in the universe.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s membership numbers have been in freefall. There are many reasons, but I believe one of them has to do with the wider dissemination of truth about sexual abuse and cover-ups. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but the SBC’s downward turn began the year I did my first side-walk press conference outside Southern Baptist headquarters in Nashville. My efforts may have never succeeded in prodding meaningful reform within the SBC, but I hope they have at least contributed to the growing knowledge of the truth about this institution.
Resistance against oppressive forces is energy in the universe that is never wasted. Most days I still believe that. My task has been to bear witness and to speak the truth about the abuses and betrayals of Baptistland.
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Love the encouragement that truth-telling is never wasted. Thank you Christa for your work!
Very excited for Christa and you all! What a brave and deep conversation to be having about trauma.