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Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation
It began with just wanting to tell the truth. But truth-telling has a way of snowballing.
When Christa Brown first spoke out about the sexual abuse she endured in her Texas childhood church, she never imagined it would expose the ethical chasm at the core of the Southern Baptist male religious leaders so focused on institutional protection that they sacrifice the safety of children.
A book about speaking out and speaking up, Baptistland weaves together Christa’s revealing story of hope amid Southern patriarchy and religious fundamentalism. You’ll meet the young Christa who endures family dysfunction, the trauma of bodily desecration, and the death blows of a gaslighting church and faith community. Then you’ll meet the Christa who finds her voice and rises above the limited expectations of her given culture, taking tiny step after tiny step that led to a life filled with goodness.
Ultimately, Christa Brown transforms into a vivid tree of life, rooted in love, individuality, and beauty. But it was unrelenting honesty, to herself and others, that guided her to an ordinary paradise. Baptistland speaks to the power of truth-telling—for ourselves, our relationships, and our institutions.
Baptistland is a story of abuse, brokenness, and betrayal, but more than any of these things, it is the story of resilience. —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne
When Christa Brown first spoke out about the sexual abuse she endured in her Texas childhood church, she never imagined it would expose the ethical chasm at the core of the Southern Baptist male religious leaders so focused on institutional protection that they sacrifice the safety of children.
A book about speaking out and speaking up, Baptistland weaves together Christa’s revealing story of hope amid Southern patriarchy and religious fundamentalism. You’ll meet the young Christa who endures family dysfunction, the trauma of bodily desecration, and the death blows of a gaslighting church and faith community. Then you’ll meet the Christa who finds her voice and rises above the limited expectations of her given culture, taking tiny step after tiny step that led to a life filled with goodness.
Ultimately, Christa Brown transforms into a vivid tree of life, rooted in love, individuality, and beauty. But it was unrelenting honesty, to herself and others, that guided her to an ordinary paradise. Baptistland speaks to the power of truth-telling—for ourselves, our relationships, and our institutions.
Baptistland is a story of abuse, brokenness, and betrayal, but more than any of these things, it is the story of resilience. —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne
426 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 7, 2024
24 people are currently reading
382 people want to read
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May 14, 2024
The Inevitable Fallout When Male-Dominated Churches Double-Down
The news that startled religion writers and church leaders just before Mother's Day this year was that, for the first time in our memory, a younger generation of women is leading the exodus away from churches in higher numbers than their male counterparts in Gen Z.
What was especially surprising is that this study was released by the Survey Center on American Life, which is part of the conservative-leaning "think tank" the American Enterprise Institute. Here's a one-paragraph summary from the Survey Center:
Even as rates of religious disaffiliation have risen, conservative churches have been able to hold on to their members, but they are facing more of an uphill battle keeping this current generation of young women in the pews. Sixty-one percent of Gen Z women identify as feminist, far greater than women from previous generations. Younger women are more concerned about the unequal treatment of women in American society and are more suspicious of institutions that uphold traditional social arrangements. In a poll we conducted, nearly two-thirds of (65 percent) young women said they do not believe that churches treat men and women equally.
That's a long introduction to this review of Christa Brown's new memoir, Baptistland—A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal and Transformation. But it's crucial to understand that context: In growing numbers, women are turning away from churches as a toxic cultural center of male control. (And, as a journalist myself specializing for 50 years in covering religious diversity, let me quickly add the qualifier that millions of men, women and children are very happy with their congregations—but we're focusing here at the growing trend of disaffiliation among 1 in 4 Americans.)
One of the best ways to understand that trend the Survey Center is describing, which now is shifting toward young women leading the exodus from church doors is to read Christa Brown's memoir.
Period. And I could end this review right there.
But, wait! If you've read this far, there's more that will interest you about this book.
First, let me explain a little more about why you should meet Christa Brown in these pages. In 2022, Christa was named by the Religion Newswriters Association (a highly respected group of journalists), as one of the Top 10 newsmakers of that year because of her courageous efforts to hold leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention accountable for years of abuse—and for covering up that abuse.
The RNA wrote: "Christa Brown's 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."
That year was a major turning point for the denomination. On the heels of a 2018 report that identified cover ups involving 700 accused ministers and church workers came a 2022 report that further detailed not only the cover up—but the leadership's active efforts to dismiss and attack accusers and their advocates. Not only that, but leaders had a nationwide policy of retaining those accused church leaders without informing congregations of the potential danger.
How could that happen? Wouldn't any sane adult want to protect children? So, that's one major reason to read Christa's story—from her childhood trauma of abuse within the church through her adult efforts to awaken awareness. At one point in her adult efforts, she writes, "Speaking out about Baptist clergy sex abuse began to feel like an endless Whac-a-Mole exercise in some sadistic, surreal circus. ... As soon as one predatory pastor was knocked down, another would pop up. The problem was systemic, but it seemed people in Baptistland simply didn't believe in systemic issues."
And that final line there is really the most important reason to read this memoir. Most of the book is a personal story of how the initial childhood abuse was allowed to unfold, how Christa courageously struggled to make a successful adult life for herself—and how all of these years of wrestling with such issues affected Christa and her family.
It's a compelling story, taking us deep inside one person's and one family's experience within this "land," this overwhelmingly powerful culture. Christa is trying to show us the larger system in which individual cases of abuse are allowed to occur—and how a religious-sounding veneer of protection is wrapped around the abusers.
I am working on an upcoming magazine story about Christa and her new book, so I had a chance to spend an hour interviewing her about this remarkable volume.
One of the first things I said to her was: "Readers are going to discover that this book is about a whole lot more than just your own experiences of abuse within your denomination, aren't they? They're going to see this is a far larger pattern of male domination"—and then I mentioned the Survey Center results to her.
"You're absolutely right," she said. "I'm describing what high-control families and high-control churches do: They want to keep control even when they learn about child sexual abuse and other abuse of women that is unfolding. They just don't want people to see what's happening. They're willing to cover up these very dark narratives—but, in the end, they can't control the ripple effects. Those ripples build and build. And eventually the fallout from it is enormous."
"I'm assuming that's why the title is Baptistland," I said. "This really is an all-enveloping culture. Your book is a story of lives interwoven in that culture whether they're actually at church or they're at home or at school or at work. It's a 'land' they live in."
"It is," she said. "What I'm describing is what happens when a high-control, authoritarian faith group connects with patterns in high-control families. Then, you see these same patterns repeating—the same relationships of oppression and dominance that translate from pastor to the congregation, from husband to wife, from parents to children, from older siblings to younger siblings. The influence of white evangelicalism in culture and politics at large is profound."
So, that's why I'm giving this book 5 stars and so highly recommending it to readers in this review and in the subsequent magazine story I'll be publishing, based on my longer interview with Christa about her life and this remarkably timely book.
The news that startled religion writers and church leaders just before Mother's Day this year was that, for the first time in our memory, a younger generation of women is leading the exodus away from churches in higher numbers than their male counterparts in Gen Z.
What was especially surprising is that this study was released by the Survey Center on American Life, which is part of the conservative-leaning "think tank" the American Enterprise Institute. Here's a one-paragraph summary from the Survey Center:
Even as rates of religious disaffiliation have risen, conservative churches have been able to hold on to their members, but they are facing more of an uphill battle keeping this current generation of young women in the pews. Sixty-one percent of Gen Z women identify as feminist, far greater than women from previous generations. Younger women are more concerned about the unequal treatment of women in American society and are more suspicious of institutions that uphold traditional social arrangements. In a poll we conducted, nearly two-thirds of (65 percent) young women said they do not believe that churches treat men and women equally.
That's a long introduction to this review of Christa Brown's new memoir, Baptistland—A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal and Transformation. But it's crucial to understand that context: In growing numbers, women are turning away from churches as a toxic cultural center of male control. (And, as a journalist myself specializing for 50 years in covering religious diversity, let me quickly add the qualifier that millions of men, women and children are very happy with their congregations—but we're focusing here at the growing trend of disaffiliation among 1 in 4 Americans.)
One of the best ways to understand that trend the Survey Center is describing, which now is shifting toward young women leading the exodus from church doors is to read Christa Brown's memoir.
Period. And I could end this review right there.
But, wait! If you've read this far, there's more that will interest you about this book.
First, let me explain a little more about why you should meet Christa Brown in these pages. In 2022, Christa was named by the Religion Newswriters Association (a highly respected group of journalists), as one of the Top 10 newsmakers of that year because of her courageous efforts to hold leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention accountable for years of abuse—and for covering up that abuse.
The RNA wrote: "Christa Brown's 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."
That year was a major turning point for the denomination. On the heels of a 2018 report that identified cover ups involving 700 accused ministers and church workers came a 2022 report that further detailed not only the cover up—but the leadership's active efforts to dismiss and attack accusers and their advocates. Not only that, but leaders had a nationwide policy of retaining those accused church leaders without informing congregations of the potential danger.
How could that happen? Wouldn't any sane adult want to protect children? So, that's one major reason to read Christa's story—from her childhood trauma of abuse within the church through her adult efforts to awaken awareness. At one point in her adult efforts, she writes, "Speaking out about Baptist clergy sex abuse began to feel like an endless Whac-a-Mole exercise in some sadistic, surreal circus. ... As soon as one predatory pastor was knocked down, another would pop up. The problem was systemic, but it seemed people in Baptistland simply didn't believe in systemic issues."
And that final line there is really the most important reason to read this memoir. Most of the book is a personal story of how the initial childhood abuse was allowed to unfold, how Christa courageously struggled to make a successful adult life for herself—and how all of these years of wrestling with such issues affected Christa and her family.
It's a compelling story, taking us deep inside one person's and one family's experience within this "land," this overwhelmingly powerful culture. Christa is trying to show us the larger system in which individual cases of abuse are allowed to occur—and how a religious-sounding veneer of protection is wrapped around the abusers.
I am working on an upcoming magazine story about Christa and her new book, so I had a chance to spend an hour interviewing her about this remarkable volume.
One of the first things I said to her was: "Readers are going to discover that this book is about a whole lot more than just your own experiences of abuse within your denomination, aren't they? They're going to see this is a far larger pattern of male domination"—and then I mentioned the Survey Center results to her.
"You're absolutely right," she said. "I'm describing what high-control families and high-control churches do: They want to keep control even when they learn about child sexual abuse and other abuse of women that is unfolding. They just don't want people to see what's happening. They're willing to cover up these very dark narratives—but, in the end, they can't control the ripple effects. Those ripples build and build. And eventually the fallout from it is enormous."
"I'm assuming that's why the title is Baptistland," I said. "This really is an all-enveloping culture. Your book is a story of lives interwoven in that culture whether they're actually at church or they're at home or at school or at work. It's a 'land' they live in."
"It is," she said. "What I'm describing is what happens when a high-control, authoritarian faith group connects with patterns in high-control families. Then, you see these same patterns repeating—the same relationships of oppression and dominance that translate from pastor to the congregation, from husband to wife, from parents to children, from older siblings to younger siblings. The influence of white evangelicalism in culture and politics at large is profound."
So, that's why I'm giving this book 5 stars and so highly recommending it to readers in this review and in the subsequent magazine story I'll be publishing, based on my longer interview with Christa about her life and this remarkably timely book.
April 25, 2024
Christa is an amazing person and this is an amazing book. You'll walk away feeling motivated and inspired, but also astonished at what a tough journey she's had to recover from trauma as a kid (from a predator) and as an adult (from callous church officials).
Thank heavens she's so resilient and determined. And thank heavens she conveys so well the difficulties abuse survivors suffer while also conveying the possibilities for reform and change if one persists.
David Clohessy, SNAP
Thank heavens she's so resilient and determined. And thank heavens she conveys so well the difficulties abuse survivors suffer while also conveying the possibilities for reform and change if one persists.
David Clohessy, SNAP
November 13, 2024
Christa Brown is famous, or infamous, for exposing sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. Her name has come up in several things I've read this year, and I wanted a more direct story. She divides her life into "4 deaths." The first 2, covering her dysfunctional family and her sexual abuse at the hands of her youth pastor in the first half of the book, do a great job of demonstrating how an abusive family can make children more vulnerable to predators. It's a story all too familiar and difficult to read but necessary. The second half of the book covers the other 2 deaths - her treatment by the SBC and the Texas Baptist Convention after reporting her abuse and her family's ongoing dysfunction resulting in her being fraudulently excluded from her inheritance. While I think this book is very well written and her story is of utmost importance on multiple fronts, I had a very hard time reading her lack of boundaries with her family. The parallels between the SBC and her family are obvious, but when it comes to her family, I'm not sure whether to be angry at her for not setting boundaries or heartbroken for her naiveté. I wish she could put some of the same advocacy and anger toward her family that she uses in her fight with the SBC. Brown is a brave advocate for women and children. Her story should be told. Yet, if you have family issues - particularly emotional abusive issues with parents and/or siblings - then you may want to think twice before reading this...unless you want examples of how to handle it poorly.
April 16, 2024
This book was an autobiography of Christa Brown's life. She takes us through her upbringing in a dysfunctional family to being repeatedly sexually abused by an SBC pastor named Tommy Gilmore, to getting accepted into Law School and becoming an excellent attorney, to finding her voice and becoming the top advocate for survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of SBC pastors. She started a blog that published the names of the pervert pastors and was a key resource utilized by Robert Downen when he wrote articles published by The Houston Chronicle about the denominational-wide SBC CSA scandal.
Brown doesn't hold back in her criticism of the SBC and their lack of any meaningful change despite leaders in the denomination being well aware of the scandal within their ranks.
Christa Brown is an unbelievably strong individual. Few others could have accomplished what she has. I hold her in high esteem and I recommend her book to everyone.
Brown doesn't hold back in her criticism of the SBC and their lack of any meaningful change despite leaders in the denomination being well aware of the scandal within their ranks.
Christa Brown is an unbelievably strong individual. Few others could have accomplished what she has. I hold her in high esteem and I recommend her book to everyone.
June 14, 2024
Baptistland is the story of Christa Brown’s life, and the adverse circumstances that led to her being a major voice among survivors of clergy sex abuse--in her case, in various Baptist conventions, especially the SBC. Brown is incredibly brave in sharing her story. I felt for her struggles and rejoiced as she spoke the truth, sought therapy, chose better for herself, and built a beautiful life outside her natal family. What happened to her was heinous, what no human should ever have to endure.
More than two-thirds of this book is about Brown’s incredibly toxic family system. I had such a strong visceral reaction against her family’s abuse (perpetuated by her father, mother, and three sisters) that I felt ill while reading this book, though my family is by no means abusive or perfect. I strongly caution anyone who has experienced abuse in family systems to read this book with care, if at all. If I, without any similar trauma to Brown's, had such a strong reaction, I can only imagine the retraumatization that would be experienced by reading this book.
Content warnings: Detailed descriptions of grooming, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse by clergy. Detailed descriptions of physical, psychological, spiritual, verbal, and financial abuse; parental neglect; and sibling abuse. Brown continued to put her daughter in the harmful way of her family members who were known abusers, including while they were actively abusing Brown in front of her daughter.
---
“Sometimes I think this single hymn [“I Surrender All”] may say everything anyone needs to know about the faulty foundation for evangelical notions of consent: give everything or get damned for all eternity. And once you ‘surrender all,’ that singular decision gives tacit consent, not only to God, but to the whole God-ordained chain of command: God, pastor, husband, wife, child. Kids are at the bottom, so kids are expected to surrender to pretty much everyone. Faith demands it.”
“Mom wasn’t a villain and neither was Dad. But together, they’d had enough psychological dynamite to blow us apart.”
“‘Breaking the cycle’ means breaking it again and again, with endless small decisions that seem insignificant at the time but that all add up to something more than their sum. There’s not one heroic decision to do things differently, but instead a daily tedium of striving always to remain mindful.”
“Being stuck between the God-god and the Mom-god was an awful dilemma for a hyper-religious eight-year-old.”
“Maybe on a gut level she [Brown’s friend] intuited that, someday, in order to find a ‘safe place,’ I would have to separate from them all….Maybe on some deep level she understood that I would have to leave them behind in order to keep my own family healthy. I’d like to think so.”
“Perhaps it’s hard for many evangelicals to understand how something they hold so dear could possibly be so hurtful. But for me, everything connected to the faith of my childhood is a tomb of trauma. Prayer, Bible verses, hymns, God-talk, and the faith of my own heart were all perverted into weapons for sexual assault.”
“At its roots, the theology of Baptistland is a theology of domination. It focuses not on human flourishing but on the controlling of human beings through hierarchies of power and oppression. It proclaims as divinely ordered that some should hold dominion over those deemed lesser, and it invokes religion to rationalize categorizations of who should exercise authority and who should submit.”
“People sometimes ask how I can be so forthcoming about my life. It’s because I grew up in a ‘what happened didn’t happen’ family and in a faith community enmeshed with denial, lies, authoritarianism, and shame. The toxicity of that way of life birthed in me an abiding commitment to love and truth-telling.”
“I know that Mom did the best she could, given her life’s difficulties and limited resources, but I also know that, with unaddressed trauma, sometimes a parent’s ‘best’ isn’t enough to support the well-being of children.”
More than two-thirds of this book is about Brown’s incredibly toxic family system. I had such a strong visceral reaction against her family’s abuse (perpetuated by her father, mother, and three sisters) that I felt ill while reading this book, though my family is by no means abusive or perfect. I strongly caution anyone who has experienced abuse in family systems to read this book with care, if at all. If I, without any similar trauma to Brown's, had such a strong reaction, I can only imagine the retraumatization that would be experienced by reading this book.
Content warnings: Detailed descriptions of grooming, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse by clergy. Detailed descriptions of physical, psychological, spiritual, verbal, and financial abuse; parental neglect; and sibling abuse. Brown continued to put her daughter in the harmful way of her family members who were known abusers, including while they were actively abusing Brown in front of her daughter.
---
“Sometimes I think this single hymn [“I Surrender All”] may say everything anyone needs to know about the faulty foundation for evangelical notions of consent: give everything or get damned for all eternity. And once you ‘surrender all,’ that singular decision gives tacit consent, not only to God, but to the whole God-ordained chain of command: God, pastor, husband, wife, child. Kids are at the bottom, so kids are expected to surrender to pretty much everyone. Faith demands it.”
“Mom wasn’t a villain and neither was Dad. But together, they’d had enough psychological dynamite to blow us apart.”
“‘Breaking the cycle’ means breaking it again and again, with endless small decisions that seem insignificant at the time but that all add up to something more than their sum. There’s not one heroic decision to do things differently, but instead a daily tedium of striving always to remain mindful.”
“Being stuck between the God-god and the Mom-god was an awful dilemma for a hyper-religious eight-year-old.”
“Maybe on a gut level she [Brown’s friend] intuited that, someday, in order to find a ‘safe place,’ I would have to separate from them all….Maybe on some deep level she understood that I would have to leave them behind in order to keep my own family healthy. I’d like to think so.”
“Perhaps it’s hard for many evangelicals to understand how something they hold so dear could possibly be so hurtful. But for me, everything connected to the faith of my childhood is a tomb of trauma. Prayer, Bible verses, hymns, God-talk, and the faith of my own heart were all perverted into weapons for sexual assault.”
“At its roots, the theology of Baptistland is a theology of domination. It focuses not on human flourishing but on the controlling of human beings through hierarchies of power and oppression. It proclaims as divinely ordered that some should hold dominion over those deemed lesser, and it invokes religion to rationalize categorizations of who should exercise authority and who should submit.”
“People sometimes ask how I can be so forthcoming about my life. It’s because I grew up in a ‘what happened didn’t happen’ family and in a faith community enmeshed with denial, lies, authoritarianism, and shame. The toxicity of that way of life birthed in me an abiding commitment to love and truth-telling.”
“I know that Mom did the best she could, given her life’s difficulties and limited resources, but I also know that, with unaddressed trauma, sometimes a parent’s ‘best’ isn’t enough to support the well-being of children.”
October 12, 2024
Hard to experience this memoir but never to be ignored. Christa Brown deserves our salutes for tackling the religious empire.
May 7, 2024
Baptistland by Christa Brown is a brilliant and honest memoir. She meticulously recorded her earliest memories and the history that drove the behaviors of her family members. As readers who grew up in the '60s and '70s are aware, bullying and other abuses in families and broader communities weren't just tolerated; they were expected--as was silence. Anyone who spoke out was labeled whiny or selfish. The family (and neighborhood) culture of children being seen and not heard was also a part of church culture. The most vulnerable members of the congregation, like Christa, were not protected from known predators and had no mechanism through which they could report. Throughout her life, Christa had to find pockets of freedom where she could escape from home and church to establish her own life. As an appellate lawyer, blogger, and writer, she exposed the known pedophiles and molesters from the Southern Baptist denomination. She became an advocate for the children forced into silence. Baptistland is the latest cry of modern-day Cassandra, begging the SBC to listen to the truth and FINALLY take action to protect its congregations.
October 13, 2024
“Truth stands on its own as a moral force in the universe.”
Like Christa Brown, I believe that every survivor is worth fighting for. Reading her book Baptistland is one small practical step of siding with the vulnerable and against powerful organizations that choose hierarchy and money over justice.
This book reflects Brown’s lifelong journey of advocacy for others and personal healing and growth, making it different than many of the other trama memoirs that fill up the current book market.
I read this book for Brown’s needed critique of the SBC, but perhaps what impacted me most was her ability to clearly articulate the harm her parents brought to her while also holding compassion and curiosity for who her parents were. I want that.
Like Christa Brown, I believe that every survivor is worth fighting for. Reading her book Baptistland is one small practical step of siding with the vulnerable and against powerful organizations that choose hierarchy and money over justice.
This book reflects Brown’s lifelong journey of advocacy for others and personal healing and growth, making it different than many of the other trama memoirs that fill up the current book market.
I read this book for Brown’s needed critique of the SBC, but perhaps what impacted me most was her ability to clearly articulate the harm her parents brought to her while also holding compassion and curiosity for who her parents were. I want that.
April 6, 2025
This much-needed book would be great, if it was only to reveal the ugly reality of the SBC. But she sadly used it also as a weapon against the remaining members of her family and most tragically against IESOUS Himself. How beautiful would it have been to see her come to salvation outside the evil triangle of Catholics, Baptists (and Freemasonry).
PROS
+ Much needed report from a survivor of s**ual abuse. It has to be added that the SBC played a central role in racial segregation while opposing interracial marriage, has still a strong prevalence of Freemasons in their rows (membership in a Masonic Order is officially a matter of personal conscience!), has a very strong prevalence of Calvinists, predominately supported the abortion rights movement, and was the breeding ground for one of the biggest frauds in 'Christian' history, Billy Graham (who had a strong tendency towards universalism; key figure in the ecumenical movement; close collaboration with the Vatican and the Pope; unfriendly takeover of Halley's Bible Handbook and deletion of Jesuit references; advised his friend Nixon to end the Vietnam conflict in a blaze of glory; trained female pastors; great admirer of the 33° Mason Norman Vincent Peale; taught theistic evolution; promoted the Alpha Course). She sadly failed to give a more complete picture of the SBC.
+ This book does a great job in describing the s** abuse not only of her, but provides also a general picture, although being relatively vague considering the vast information she collected through her rather secular ministry. She adequately describes how the SBC maliciously and systematically covered up cases for now several decades.
+ She did well to give us a background of her upbringing, but went way too deep in the realm of gossip, when giving us dozens of ultra-detailed accounts of her ugly exchanges with her family members. A few accounts of each problematic aspect would have sufficed.
CONS
- She most certainly never experienced the real IESOUS, which is bitter because she should have seen it at some point clearer than anyone else, that her environment of a fortune-telling grandmother killed by her own husband, of a Billy Graham- and Oral Roberts- addictive father, of a Franciscan mother, and of abusing Baptists is certainly not where the true IESOUS is to be found.
Did she really hope that while she was used as a caulbearer and proforma priest for the confessions of her mother, who wanted her also to continue with fortune-telling, that she would find in that setting the true IESOUS?
If she had found IESOUS, there would certainly not have been additional suffering for decades, but forgiveness towards her family and restoration for herself. And she would have probably shed light on the SBC decades earlier.
Quote: "So when I hear people say "Jesus never fails" and "put your trust in Him," sometimes I just want to scream."
Quote: "Even G-d abandoned me. It wasn't a matter of unbelief, for unbelief would have been a mercy. Rather, it was as though G-d had become something monstrous at least toward me — an uncaring and rejecting G-d who was prone to sadistic whims."
Quote: "[Her husband] I have faith in lots of things. I have faith in you. I have faith in us. I have faith in science. I have faith in the future. I have faith in humankind. I have faith the sun will come up. Christians don't have some monopoly on getting to define what faithDis and isn't. I'm a person of faith too. It's just different. I realized Jim was right. He was indeed a person of faith, and he had lived his faith day in and day out the whole time I'd known him. Meanwhile, I was the one still floundering in the paradox of being a person of faith who wished not to be. How many times had I prayed that G-d would please cease my belief? Too many. At least Jim had a faith that made some sense."
Quote: "After all, G-d had turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt when all she did wrong was to glance backwards at her home."
Quote from 2020 (X): "So... if Mary's consent wasn't possible, given her age & the authority figure of an omnipotent g-d, does this mean that Jesus was a child of rape?"
- She believes in Visitations from the dead:
"I dreamed of Mom and Dad. Their presence was so real that, when I first awoke, I could have sworn they were sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling at me. It felt more like a visitation than a dream, and even now, I half-believe they were really there. [...] How could I tell her that I talked with ghosts? Yet, there they were. Even in death, Mom and Dad had both returned to me. It was an extraordinary gift."
"Mom's presence was palpable, as though her shoulder were brushing mine, and I felt such peace."
- Despite her trauma regarding her mother, she clearly failed to distance herself from Catholicism, but rather seems to be close to it.
"I loved her [her friend] for it, and I also envied her. When I learned that she prayed to Mary, I wished that I, too, could pray to a woman."
"I stopped at the Joan of Arc statue on my way out and lit a candle for Mom."
"... the Southern Baptist Convention was—and still is—the largest non-Catholic faith group in the country. [what a telling viewpoint]"
"... she gave me her cross necklace, and another time, her blue rosary beads. Mom had been raised Catholic."
She also quoted the Catholics Bruce Springsteen, Desmond Tutu (Anglican-Catholic) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and over and over compared the guilt of the RCC as small in comparison with the SBC (although possibly with good intentions).
- She describes herself as a 'fanatic for Halloween'.
- She endorsed the wearing of Amulets and her life centers around the practise of yoga.
"... whether I could hack it in law school. But wearing a locust encased in plastic amber as a good luck amulet, I aced the first exams."
"So, I dropped out of the PhD program and instead began training as a yoga teacher"
- She repeatedly rejected the concept of Eternal Hell and of Original Sin.
"She [her daughter] had grown up wholly unchurched, yet she was filled with empathy and kindness. She was and is goodness incarnate — original sin be damned."
- Constant use of foul language (e.g. 9x ...sh*t, 2x pissed ...)
- She stated that she changed several times her counsellor, but did not reveal if she was a Christian. This is strange for a book of 12 hours - to find literally no information on her counseling.
- She actively supports and celebrates h**uality.
"This was still two decades before Ellen DeGeneres would take the landmark step of coming out as g*y on a television sitcom. "
"If we wind up building a movement that recognizes only "good survivors"—those who are white, cis, heteros**ual, faith-filled in the "right" way, and "nice"—then we will have built it on the same authoritarian theological and ideological foundation that brutalized us."
- She is a serious Feminist and does not accept biblical authority regarding the prohibition of female elders (while the Bible indeed stipulates female deacons).
"I took comfort in recalling that Charlotte Brontë, the author of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre [the first major feminist novel], had also rejected a marriage proposal when she was twenty-two."
"I felt called to be a pastor."
"... they [the SBC] now use biblical proof texts to justify female submissiveness and male headship."
She endorses in this book a very long list of feminists, e.g.:
Barbara Kingsolver (Feminist novelist, essayist, and poet)
Charlotte Brontë (s.a.)
Cynthia Ozick (Feminist writer and novelist)
Ellen DeGeneres (Feminist musician)
Emily Dickinson (Feminist poet)
Flannery O'Connor (Feminist novelist, writer and essayist)
Gloria Jean Watkins (aka Bell Hooks, Feminist author and activist)
Joan of Arc (RCC saint, Feminist)
Judith Herman (Feminist psychiatrist, political activist, intellectual, and writer)
Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Feminist author, historian)
Linda Ronstadt (Feminist musician)
Mary Oliver (Feminist poet)
Sarah Stankor (Feminist writer)
Zora Neale Hurston (Feminist author, anthropologist, filmmaker)
- It seems as if she believes in INCARNATION and several souls.
"With each new language, you acquire a new soul."
"With each of my demises, seeds from the prior life were blown into the next one, where they took root and rebirthed me into a new life, nourished in the dirt and decay of the prior incarnation."
- Although she warns the reader that not all details might be accurate, it is still questionable how she would have such a photographic memory to supposedly remember details from 5 decades ago, including childhood accounts of her sister shoveling spinach on her plate, specific prayers of her father et al.
- Endorsement of MLK (regarded the virgin birth of CHRISTOS as 'mythological story'; repudiated the doctrine of the deity of IESOUS; rejected that CHRISTOS was raised bodily from the dead ...).
- The audiobook, although being brand new, is a patchwork of several recordings and snippets.
PROS
+ Much needed report from a survivor of s**ual abuse. It has to be added that the SBC played a central role in racial segregation while opposing interracial marriage, has still a strong prevalence of Freemasons in their rows (membership in a Masonic Order is officially a matter of personal conscience!), has a very strong prevalence of Calvinists, predominately supported the abortion rights movement, and was the breeding ground for one of the biggest frauds in 'Christian' history, Billy Graham (who had a strong tendency towards universalism; key figure in the ecumenical movement; close collaboration with the Vatican and the Pope; unfriendly takeover of Halley's Bible Handbook and deletion of Jesuit references; advised his friend Nixon to end the Vietnam conflict in a blaze of glory; trained female pastors; great admirer of the 33° Mason Norman Vincent Peale; taught theistic evolution; promoted the Alpha Course). She sadly failed to give a more complete picture of the SBC.
+ This book does a great job in describing the s** abuse not only of her, but provides also a general picture, although being relatively vague considering the vast information she collected through her rather secular ministry. She adequately describes how the SBC maliciously and systematically covered up cases for now several decades.
+ She did well to give us a background of her upbringing, but went way too deep in the realm of gossip, when giving us dozens of ultra-detailed accounts of her ugly exchanges with her family members. A few accounts of each problematic aspect would have sufficed.
CONS
- She most certainly never experienced the real IESOUS, which is bitter because she should have seen it at some point clearer than anyone else, that her environment of a fortune-telling grandmother killed by her own husband, of a Billy Graham- and Oral Roberts- addictive father, of a Franciscan mother, and of abusing Baptists is certainly not where the true IESOUS is to be found.
Did she really hope that while she was used as a caulbearer and proforma priest for the confessions of her mother, who wanted her also to continue with fortune-telling, that she would find in that setting the true IESOUS?
If she had found IESOUS, there would certainly not have been additional suffering for decades, but forgiveness towards her family and restoration for herself. And she would have probably shed light on the SBC decades earlier.
Quote: "So when I hear people say "Jesus never fails" and "put your trust in Him," sometimes I just want to scream."
Quote: "Even G-d abandoned me. It wasn't a matter of unbelief, for unbelief would have been a mercy. Rather, it was as though G-d had become something monstrous at least toward me — an uncaring and rejecting G-d who was prone to sadistic whims."
Quote: "[Her husband] I have faith in lots of things. I have faith in you. I have faith in us. I have faith in science. I have faith in the future. I have faith in humankind. I have faith the sun will come up. Christians don't have some monopoly on getting to define what faithDis and isn't. I'm a person of faith too. It's just different. I realized Jim was right. He was indeed a person of faith, and he had lived his faith day in and day out the whole time I'd known him. Meanwhile, I was the one still floundering in the paradox of being a person of faith who wished not to be. How many times had I prayed that G-d would please cease my belief? Too many. At least Jim had a faith that made some sense."
Quote: "After all, G-d had turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt when all she did wrong was to glance backwards at her home."
Quote from 2020 (X): "So... if Mary's consent wasn't possible, given her age & the authority figure of an omnipotent g-d, does this mean that Jesus was a child of rape?"
- She believes in Visitations from the dead:
"I dreamed of Mom and Dad. Their presence was so real that, when I first awoke, I could have sworn they were sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling at me. It felt more like a visitation than a dream, and even now, I half-believe they were really there. [...] How could I tell her that I talked with ghosts? Yet, there they were. Even in death, Mom and Dad had both returned to me. It was an extraordinary gift."
"Mom's presence was palpable, as though her shoulder were brushing mine, and I felt such peace."
- Despite her trauma regarding her mother, she clearly failed to distance herself from Catholicism, but rather seems to be close to it.
"I loved her [her friend] for it, and I also envied her. When I learned that she prayed to Mary, I wished that I, too, could pray to a woman."
"I stopped at the Joan of Arc statue on my way out and lit a candle for Mom."
"... the Southern Baptist Convention was—and still is—the largest non-Catholic faith group in the country. [what a telling viewpoint]"
"... she gave me her cross necklace, and another time, her blue rosary beads. Mom had been raised Catholic."
She also quoted the Catholics Bruce Springsteen, Desmond Tutu (Anglican-Catholic) and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and over and over compared the guilt of the RCC as small in comparison with the SBC (although possibly with good intentions).
- She describes herself as a 'fanatic for Halloween'.
- She endorsed the wearing of Amulets and her life centers around the practise of yoga.
"... whether I could hack it in law school. But wearing a locust encased in plastic amber as a good luck amulet, I aced the first exams."
"So, I dropped out of the PhD program and instead began training as a yoga teacher"
- She repeatedly rejected the concept of Eternal Hell and of Original Sin.
"She [her daughter] had grown up wholly unchurched, yet she was filled with empathy and kindness. She was and is goodness incarnate — original sin be damned."
- Constant use of foul language (e.g. 9x ...sh*t, 2x pissed ...)
- She stated that she changed several times her counsellor, but did not reveal if she was a Christian. This is strange for a book of 12 hours - to find literally no information on her counseling.
- She actively supports and celebrates h**uality.
"This was still two decades before Ellen DeGeneres would take the landmark step of coming out as g*y on a television sitcom. "
"If we wind up building a movement that recognizes only "good survivors"—those who are white, cis, heteros**ual, faith-filled in the "right" way, and "nice"—then we will have built it on the same authoritarian theological and ideological foundation that brutalized us."
- She is a serious Feminist and does not accept biblical authority regarding the prohibition of female elders (while the Bible indeed stipulates female deacons).
"I took comfort in recalling that Charlotte Brontë, the author of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre [the first major feminist novel], had also rejected a marriage proposal when she was twenty-two."
"I felt called to be a pastor."
"... they [the SBC] now use biblical proof texts to justify female submissiveness and male headship."
She endorses in this book a very long list of feminists, e.g.:
Barbara Kingsolver (Feminist novelist, essayist, and poet)
Charlotte Brontë (s.a.)
Cynthia Ozick (Feminist writer and novelist)
Ellen DeGeneres (Feminist musician)
Emily Dickinson (Feminist poet)
Flannery O'Connor (Feminist novelist, writer and essayist)
Gloria Jean Watkins (aka Bell Hooks, Feminist author and activist)
Joan of Arc (RCC saint, Feminist)
Judith Herman (Feminist psychiatrist, political activist, intellectual, and writer)
Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Feminist author, historian)
Linda Ronstadt (Feminist musician)
Mary Oliver (Feminist poet)
Sarah Stankor (Feminist writer)
Zora Neale Hurston (Feminist author, anthropologist, filmmaker)
- It seems as if she believes in INCARNATION and several souls.
"With each new language, you acquire a new soul."
"With each of my demises, seeds from the prior life were blown into the next one, where they took root and rebirthed me into a new life, nourished in the dirt and decay of the prior incarnation."
- Although she warns the reader that not all details might be accurate, it is still questionable how she would have such a photographic memory to supposedly remember details from 5 decades ago, including childhood accounts of her sister shoveling spinach on her plate, specific prayers of her father et al.
- Endorsement of MLK (regarded the virgin birth of CHRISTOS as 'mythological story'; repudiated the doctrine of the deity of IESOUS; rejected that CHRISTOS was raised bodily from the dead ...).
- The audiobook, although being brand new, is a patchwork of several recordings and snippets.
May 23, 2024
I found this book both difficult and easy to read. It was difficult to witness the trauma Christa experienced growing up in a dysfunctional family, being abused by a church pastor as a young teenager, and then discovering that her mother and her music teacher were both aware of the abuse. When Christa brought the abuse to the attention of the church leaders, she experienced further trauma caused by their uncaring, and at times abusive, reaction. Christa has spent many years fighting for victims and survivors of abuse, fighting for churches to adopt safeguarding and caring policies, but sadly nothing much has changed.
Although the focus of the book is on the Southern Baptist Convention, this type of abuse, accompanied by gaslighting and DARVO, occurs in probably every single denomination throughout the world. It is a sad indictment on an institution whose primary mandate is to care well for its members and to bring healing and not further pain.
Christa's courage is remarkable. I salute and thank you, Christa. As a survivor of adult clergy sexual abuse, I have not been as brave, preferring to forget about it all. But who can really forget? It is woven into the fabric of our being.
In spite of the harrowing content, this book was written in a style that made it easy to read. I encourage all people to read this book. It will provide knowledge for those who don't know about or understand clergy sexual abuse, especially abuse of adults, and who so often blame the victim; and it will provide those in leadership positions in churches with much useful information that can be implemented in their own congregations to prevent the abuse of members and care well for those who have been abused.
Although the focus of the book is on the Southern Baptist Convention, this type of abuse, accompanied by gaslighting and DARVO, occurs in probably every single denomination throughout the world. It is a sad indictment on an institution whose primary mandate is to care well for its members and to bring healing and not further pain.
Christa's courage is remarkable. I salute and thank you, Christa. As a survivor of adult clergy sexual abuse, I have not been as brave, preferring to forget about it all. But who can really forget? It is woven into the fabric of our being.
In spite of the harrowing content, this book was written in a style that made it easy to read. I encourage all people to read this book. It will provide knowledge for those who don't know about or understand clergy sexual abuse, especially abuse of adults, and who so often blame the victim; and it will provide those in leadership positions in churches with much useful information that can be implemented in their own congregations to prevent the abuse of members and care well for those who have been abused.
September 28, 2024
"She dives deeper into the world of her dysfunctional childhood and the Christian fundamentalism and patriarchy that was the bedrock of her religious upbringing and early church life. We learn how that toxic culture stole her individuality, her voice, her agency, and in many ways, her life. It was only after Christa made the monumental decision to report the abuse and to expose those who protected her abuser that she finally began down the road of reclaiming what had been stolen from her."
"What I learned was that there was never much point in trying to get help from Mom."
"Dinner time was often difficult for other reasons. Dad sat at the head of the table and everything turned on his moods."
"The very essence of evangelical faith is the relinquishment of personal autonomy with an all-encompassing surrender to a higher authority. True love for Christ meant “dying to self.”
A powerful book written by a powerfully brave woman. Christa Brown has endured unthinkable abuse within her family and within the Evangelical church. It has cost her a tremendous amount, but she has paved the way for other survivors to come forward and share their stories.
Thank-you Christa Brown!!
"What I learned was that there was never much point in trying to get help from Mom."
"Dinner time was often difficult for other reasons. Dad sat at the head of the table and everything turned on his moods."
"The very essence of evangelical faith is the relinquishment of personal autonomy with an all-encompassing surrender to a higher authority. True love for Christ meant “dying to self.”
A powerful book written by a powerfully brave woman. Christa Brown has endured unthinkable abuse within her family and within the Evangelical church. It has cost her a tremendous amount, but she has paved the way for other survivors to come forward and share their stories.
Thank-you Christa Brown!!
June 11, 2024
"A better world is possible- a world in which these horrors will be far less pervasive. I may not see it in my lifetime, but on a good day, I swear I can almost hear that better world breathing."- Christa Brown, Baptistland
This wasn't an easy read. Seeing the pain caused by the apathy, cruelty, and carelessness of the denomination I grew up in broke my heart and infuriated me. The Southern Baptist Convention valued "church autonomy" and protecting their image over helping the victims of their pastors. Fact is, they haven't changed much.
But this book made me pray for the day that abuse victims get justice and made it clear that we cannot be silent about evil and injustice; even if the "good guys" are the ones committing it.
This wasn't an easy read. Seeing the pain caused by the apathy, cruelty, and carelessness of the denomination I grew up in broke my heart and infuriated me. The Southern Baptist Convention valued "church autonomy" and protecting their image over helping the victims of their pastors. Fact is, they haven't changed much.
But this book made me pray for the day that abuse victims get justice and made it clear that we cannot be silent about evil and injustice; even if the "good guys" are the ones committing it.
May 8, 2024
Reading this book, I learned a lot about the SBC and its clergy sex abuse problem. But, in a lot of ways, this isn’t a book about that. This is a book about what it looks like to reclaim yourself from the ravages of polluted theologies and the harmful ideologies and doctrines that go along with them.
Baptistland is authentically raw, boldly told, and not just for Southern Baptists.
In Baptistland, the author tells her story from a comprehensive set of angles, and she does so with neither a pitchfork nor a pair of rose-colored glasses. (phew, right?)
I enthusiastically recommend this book. Read it. You won’t be sorry.
Baptistland is authentically raw, boldly told, and not just for Southern Baptists.
In Baptistland, the author tells her story from a comprehensive set of angles, and she does so with neither a pitchfork nor a pair of rose-colored glasses. (phew, right?)
I enthusiastically recommend this book. Read it. You won’t be sorry.
September 4, 2024
5.0 - book
Recommendation from my mom.
Wow! This was a heavy one! Her young life was filled with hard and horrible circumstances and lacking support, belief, or kindness. TW for about every form abuse imaginable. For author and stemming from generations past as well.
I’m amazed and encouraged by her tenacity and bravery as an adult after everything her family and the church put her through. What a testament to the ability to overcome. Inspiring!
Recommendation from my mom.
Wow! This was a heavy one! Her young life was filled with hard and horrible circumstances and lacking support, belief, or kindness. TW for about every form abuse imaginable. For author and stemming from generations past as well.
I’m amazed and encouraged by her tenacity and bravery as an adult after everything her family and the church put her through. What a testament to the ability to overcome. Inspiring!
October 11, 2024
This is an amazing book. It tells such an important story that is all too common. I can’t believe to see anything but support for this book as it is HER story. Some people complain that it only bashes her family or religion but that is HER experience. If that’s all you get from this book, you have missed the point. Thank you for sharing your story Christa and thank you for being a support system for those who have similar experiences.
December 25, 2024
A Sublime Memoir
I bought this thinking it was going to be more about her fight with the SBC. That was certainly a part of it, but it was not all nor even the most interesting part of it. This is a deeply moving, personal memoir about a person who has escaped Baptistland and become the best version of herself.
When the roll is called up yonder she’ll be there…and the heads of the SBC may not.
I bought this thinking it was going to be more about her fight with the SBC. That was certainly a part of it, but it was not all nor even the most interesting part of it. This is a deeply moving, personal memoir about a person who has escaped Baptistland and become the best version of herself.
When the roll is called up yonder she’ll be there…and the heads of the SBC may not.
December 28, 2024
5⭐️! “At its roots, the theology of Baptistland is a theology of domination. It focuses not on human flourishing but on the controlling of human beings through hierarchies of power and oppression. It proclaims as divinely ordered that some should hold dominion over those deemed lesser, and it invokes religion to rationalize categorizations of who should exercise authority and who should submit.”
A deeply hope filled memoir exposing horrific abuse and holding the SBC’s feet to the fire.
A deeply hope filled memoir exposing horrific abuse and holding the SBC’s feet to the fire.
January 8, 2025
This was an incredibly hard and sad book to read. The abuse the author suffered at the hands of a pastor was horrific, but I think it was harder for me to read about how she was treated by her family. The work she is doing to expose abusers in the church is so important. I wish the SBC would listen.
July 2, 2024
It's hard to read about some of the abuse Christa has been through, but this is an undeniable masterpiece. For every victim of clergy sexual abuse, this book is a balm for the soul.
January 27, 2025
An absolute must-read for women in faith communities.
March 24, 2025
That was... that was powerful. Well written, heartwrenching telling of Christa's life and not only what contributed to the hurts she suffered, but how they affected the rest of her life.
July 21, 2024
A transformative memoir to encourage abuse survivors and challenge ministry leaders.
Christa Brown has been a witness to history in the growth of abuse survivor communities—both sexual and spiritual abuse. She has also been a pioneer in creating that history of advocacy through her unflinching reactions and trauma-informed actions. We have much to glean from the costly lessons she learned. Whether you are an abuse survivor yourself and/or a concerned ministry leader, Baptistland is a worthwhile read to follow Christa’s redemptive pathways forward.
As soon as I heard that Christa had written a second book and that it was about Baptist culture and institutions, I knew I’d want to read it. I’d been in and around the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) since the late 1970s. I’d been involved with 10 SBC church plants and worked at an SBC seminary for over a decade. I’d followed Christa online since the mid-2000s, when I began research writing about dynamics of toxic institutional systems. So, I knew the big picture of her story plus how unresponsive Baptist circles have been to survivors, and had seen plenty of their apathy and antipathy myself over the years. But I had much more to learn about her and from her.
Baptistland was every bit as insightful as I’d expected. The transformative power of a well-written memoir comes from the author externalizing what we normally keep internal, thus shedding light on what we usually keep secreted away in the dark. This includes our fleeting intuitions, crippling doubts, competing insights, agonizing ambivalences. An author who can lead us through their own thought processes from confusion to clarity gives us a role model we can emulate into evolvement and empathy.
Christa Brown does just that for us in Baptistland. She opens her life experiences with a rare level of vulnerability that lets us perceive the raw materials for understanding patterns in multiple sources of abuse, and in practical aspects of recovery and advocacy. She has endured the destruction of abuse within four systems: family, church, denominational, and societal. I found the accounts of her interactions within each realm infuriating—but the details do eventually serve a positive purpose. We need them to conclude for ourselves, as Christa has, that underlying methods of manipulation and control overlap in these four systems. They even amplify the realms of each other, with authoritarian Baptist cultures acting as a central point of intersection.
Because this is a narrative and not a theological treatise, the pattern points emerge from concrete experiences—not from an abstract bullet-point list. Christa shares insights gradually. She leads us along her slow advances in thinking processes as they unfold over years—from bullied child, to naïve 16-year-old sexually victimized by an adult male minister, to a discerning and ardent advocate of abuse survivors. She eventually turned activist in confronting Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders and messengers, both directly in person and through online media.
From my own experiences and observations, I knew Christa possesses both the standing and strength to issue a severe critique of how Baptistland cultures harm individuals, families, and institutions. Baptistland demonstrates how the SBC continues to quench truth, love, and compassion—their leaders having traded those Christlike qualities for power, comfort, and self-protection. Christa notes a spectrum of ways that specific SBC entity leaders and lawyers sought to silence her and to insulate their institutions from deserved consequences for many injustices inflicted, including by some of their most venerated public figures.
While this may sound like a negative book, it truly has a highly constructive side. Christa’s own journey of growth offers realistic hope for individuals. She shows us how transformation of conscience and compassion can come through reflection and empathy. And aren’t those lifetime goals that those who say they follow Jesus should pursue?
However, those kinds of change are not likely possible for Baptistland institutions; their hierarchical cultures of control have been so out of control and unaccountable for so long that it seems impossible to redeem and reverse them. But read Baptistland and compare your experiences with hers, see what you think. And consider what better futures you can imagine if all of us—ministry leaders included—would take sexual violence and spiritual abuse seriously, and care for survivors compassionately.
Christa Brown has been a witness to history in the growth of abuse survivor communities—both sexual and spiritual abuse. She has also been a pioneer in creating that history of advocacy through her unflinching reactions and trauma-informed actions. We have much to glean from the costly lessons she learned. Whether you are an abuse survivor yourself and/or a concerned ministry leader, Baptistland is a worthwhile read to follow Christa’s redemptive pathways forward.
As soon as I heard that Christa had written a second book and that it was about Baptist culture and institutions, I knew I’d want to read it. I’d been in and around the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) since the late 1970s. I’d been involved with 10 SBC church plants and worked at an SBC seminary for over a decade. I’d followed Christa online since the mid-2000s, when I began research writing about dynamics of toxic institutional systems. So, I knew the big picture of her story plus how unresponsive Baptist circles have been to survivors, and had seen plenty of their apathy and antipathy myself over the years. But I had much more to learn about her and from her.
Baptistland was every bit as insightful as I’d expected. The transformative power of a well-written memoir comes from the author externalizing what we normally keep internal, thus shedding light on what we usually keep secreted away in the dark. This includes our fleeting intuitions, crippling doubts, competing insights, agonizing ambivalences. An author who can lead us through their own thought processes from confusion to clarity gives us a role model we can emulate into evolvement and empathy.
Christa Brown does just that for us in Baptistland. She opens her life experiences with a rare level of vulnerability that lets us perceive the raw materials for understanding patterns in multiple sources of abuse, and in practical aspects of recovery and advocacy. She has endured the destruction of abuse within four systems: family, church, denominational, and societal. I found the accounts of her interactions within each realm infuriating—but the details do eventually serve a positive purpose. We need them to conclude for ourselves, as Christa has, that underlying methods of manipulation and control overlap in these four systems. They even amplify the realms of each other, with authoritarian Baptist cultures acting as a central point of intersection.
Because this is a narrative and not a theological treatise, the pattern points emerge from concrete experiences—not from an abstract bullet-point list. Christa shares insights gradually. She leads us along her slow advances in thinking processes as they unfold over years—from bullied child, to naïve 16-year-old sexually victimized by an adult male minister, to a discerning and ardent advocate of abuse survivors. She eventually turned activist in confronting Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders and messengers, both directly in person and through online media.
From my own experiences and observations, I knew Christa possesses both the standing and strength to issue a severe critique of how Baptistland cultures harm individuals, families, and institutions. Baptistland demonstrates how the SBC continues to quench truth, love, and compassion—their leaders having traded those Christlike qualities for power, comfort, and self-protection. Christa notes a spectrum of ways that specific SBC entity leaders and lawyers sought to silence her and to insulate their institutions from deserved consequences for many injustices inflicted, including by some of their most venerated public figures.
While this may sound like a negative book, it truly has a highly constructive side. Christa’s own journey of growth offers realistic hope for individuals. She shows us how transformation of conscience and compassion can come through reflection and empathy. And aren’t those lifetime goals that those who say they follow Jesus should pursue?
However, those kinds of change are not likely possible for Baptistland institutions; their hierarchical cultures of control have been so out of control and unaccountable for so long that it seems impossible to redeem and reverse them. But read Baptistland and compare your experiences with hers, see what you think. And consider what better futures you can imagine if all of us—ministry leaders included—would take sexual violence and spiritual abuse seriously, and care for survivors compassionately.
August 28, 2024
The second book by sexual abuse survivor Christa Brown covers more ground than her first book, This Little Light, which dealt solely with the sexual abuse she endured as a teenager from her youth pastor and her attempts over the years to convince the Texas Baptist convention and Southern Baptist Convention to address the pervasive problem of pulpit hopping of pastors who are sexual abusers.
This is not an easy or fun book to read. Brown's family was severely dysfunctional and she seemed to be unable to draw healthy boundaries as an adult which led to continued verbal abuse from them. However, she states in the book that that same perseverance led to some blessings centered on her own children's relationships with her parents, an occurrence that is difficult to comprehend based on the level of dysfunction described in her own relationship with them and her siblings. God does perform miracles where we least expect it.
In addition to the family dysfunction, Brown's mainly unsuccessful attempts to convince the SBC to address the problem of sexual abuse within its ranks and prevent the continuation of that abuse is maddening to read about as she outlines in detail in both of her books the attempts she made over decades with both the Texas Baptist Convention and the SBC Executive Committee to recognize the abuse and take action to hold abusers accountable and prevent further abuse. The fact that she is an attorney well familiar with the law seemed no help in her efforts as her speaking up led to her being accused herself of being the problem, an occurrence that happens all too frequently for sexual abuse victims.
The book was published in 2023 and is the most up to date account that I am aware of addressing the events of the last several years as the SBC's sexual abuse scandal was made public and the annual meeting dealt with proposals to address the problem. As of yet, nothing of note has taken place to change things in spite of a vote of the messengers two years ago to form a committee. As often happens with committees, nothing substantial has resulted. It is disappointing and disillusioning.
Raised in a Southern Baptist Church and currently belonging to one I find myself extremely frustrated and resentful of the situation and left struggling with future personal action. I know that there are other churches where sexual abuse has been exposed but to have it drag on and on after being publicized leaves me, frankly, angry. It cripples the church's efforts to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a world desperately in need of salvation. Satan is having a heyday over this subject and Brown's book puts it on full and ugly display.
Highly recommended for all Southern Baptist to read and pray about.
This is not an easy or fun book to read. Brown's family was severely dysfunctional and she seemed to be unable to draw healthy boundaries as an adult which led to continued verbal abuse from them. However, she states in the book that that same perseverance led to some blessings centered on her own children's relationships with her parents, an occurrence that is difficult to comprehend based on the level of dysfunction described in her own relationship with them and her siblings. God does perform miracles where we least expect it.
In addition to the family dysfunction, Brown's mainly unsuccessful attempts to convince the SBC to address the problem of sexual abuse within its ranks and prevent the continuation of that abuse is maddening to read about as she outlines in detail in both of her books the attempts she made over decades with both the Texas Baptist Convention and the SBC Executive Committee to recognize the abuse and take action to hold abusers accountable and prevent further abuse. The fact that she is an attorney well familiar with the law seemed no help in her efforts as her speaking up led to her being accused herself of being the problem, an occurrence that happens all too frequently for sexual abuse victims.
The book was published in 2023 and is the most up to date account that I am aware of addressing the events of the last several years as the SBC's sexual abuse scandal was made public and the annual meeting dealt with proposals to address the problem. As of yet, nothing of note has taken place to change things in spite of a vote of the messengers two years ago to form a committee. As often happens with committees, nothing substantial has resulted. It is disappointing and disillusioning.
Raised in a Southern Baptist Church and currently belonging to one I find myself extremely frustrated and resentful of the situation and left struggling with future personal action. I know that there are other churches where sexual abuse has been exposed but to have it drag on and on after being publicized leaves me, frankly, angry. It cripples the church's efforts to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a world desperately in need of salvation. Satan is having a heyday over this subject and Brown's book puts it on full and ugly display.
Highly recommended for all Southern Baptist to read and pray about.
May 16, 2024
I opened the very first sermon I ever gave in seminary, on Psalm 3 with the above lyrics of Paul Simon’s “The Boxer”. I was the only woman in the class; at least two of the men walked out rather than listen to me speak. There were nine of us who had to speak on the same passage. I went last; so if mine was better than any of theirs, they would not feel badly. After all, as a female, I wasn’t allowed to call it “preaching” – and I certainly wasn’t supposed to be able to speak in such a way that might demonstrate gifting and skill in an a role I was not allowed to have. I lost count of how many times I was told my skill itself was “sin”.
Christa’s memoir (I feel like I have to call her “Christa” now, because Baptistland was such an intimate read for me), has called to mind so many memories of my own faith journey. Her story felt like my story, at nearly every single chapter. She has stripped her soul naked in front of us, showing so much perserverance and grace.
So many of us women who have grown up in Baptist or Baptist-like circles know far too well the constant dying we are demanded to give; we are called “bitter” if we do not live lives ever sacrificed on the altar of men’s indifference, apathy, and abuse. Our well-being has been discarded so frequently that we have embraced self-sacrifice, and what I think of as an “inverse-prosperity gospel” as the ultimate spiritual journey for women – meaning that women’s lives of faith are measured by the amount of suffering we “joyfully endure” for the sake of men – their reputation, their livelihood, their prosperity, their satisfaction, their lies, their institutions. We are supposed to do this quietly, with a smile on our face, and celebrating every man’s success gained by even our abuse.
How have so many failed to see that we yearn so often to walk away? To lay down the Hope we hold for more and pick up the bitterness we are so often accused of having. Yet, the fighter still remans as we cannot walk away from our inner most selves. We have to continue to raise our voices to call for Light and Life to shine and show the Truth. Once again, in Baptistland, Christa leads the way; showing that while she is no longer a lone voice in the wilderness (more of us are adding our voices to the chorus daily), her cry is yet one for God’s people to be delivered. Her story; the story I aspire to, is one of resurrection, of hope, of kindness and compassion in the face of adversity. Of a faithful lovingkindness that fights for mercy, justice, and truth among those gathering as the children of God.
Christa’s memoir (I feel like I have to call her “Christa” now, because Baptistland was such an intimate read for me), has called to mind so many memories of my own faith journey. Her story felt like my story, at nearly every single chapter. She has stripped her soul naked in front of us, showing so much perserverance and grace.
So many of us women who have grown up in Baptist or Baptist-like circles know far too well the constant dying we are demanded to give; we are called “bitter” if we do not live lives ever sacrificed on the altar of men’s indifference, apathy, and abuse. Our well-being has been discarded so frequently that we have embraced self-sacrifice, and what I think of as an “inverse-prosperity gospel” as the ultimate spiritual journey for women – meaning that women’s lives of faith are measured by the amount of suffering we “joyfully endure” for the sake of men – their reputation, their livelihood, their prosperity, their satisfaction, their lies, their institutions. We are supposed to do this quietly, with a smile on our face, and celebrating every man’s success gained by even our abuse.
How have so many failed to see that we yearn so often to walk away? To lay down the Hope we hold for more and pick up the bitterness we are so often accused of having. Yet, the fighter still remans as we cannot walk away from our inner most selves. We have to continue to raise our voices to call for Light and Life to shine and show the Truth. Once again, in Baptistland, Christa leads the way; showing that while she is no longer a lone voice in the wilderness (more of us are adding our voices to the chorus daily), her cry is yet one for God’s people to be delivered. Her story; the story I aspire to, is one of resurrection, of hope, of kindness and compassion in the face of adversity. Of a faithful lovingkindness that fights for mercy, justice, and truth among those gathering as the children of God.
May 26, 2024
Baptistland is a stunning memoir by Christa Brown. Her clear and intentional writing is so effective I felt like she was speaking directly to me. Christa is a retired appellate lawyer, yoga instructor, sexual abuse survivor, and committed advocate for those abused.
The memoir reveals the intricacies of her personal life and her work to hold the Southern Baptist Convention accountable for her abuse and the abuse of hundreds of others that the SBC has attempted to keep hidden. She takes the reader into her home and allows them an inside look at her troubling childhood. The reader feels they are with Christa as she describes the happy and harrowing moments of growing up in a complicated family environment.
When she described the abuse she endured for months by her youth pastor, I felt as though she was telling me the story in a quiet conversation over a cup of coffee long since gone cold. I wanted to hold her hand, dry her eyes, and intervene somehow. At this point in the book, it may be challenging to continue. I urge you to stay with it; an honoring thing to do is to read her complete story and face the difficult truths about sexual abuse within the Christian church—particularly within Baptist denominations.
When Christa’s book shifts to adulthood, we are invited to peek into her life’s joys— her overseas adventures, moments of tenderness with her dad, finding love, her daughter, her job, and her advocacy work for herself and other sexual abuse survivors. My heart swelled during these moments, and I cheered her on. There were also moments of sorrow— the continued brokenness in her family, the betrayal of the SBC, the deep pain of the abuse she endured, the stalking and bullying by Christians devoted to the SBC, and the irrevocable break between her and her sisters. My heart crumbled during these moments. Yet, many of us who have experienced suffering have lived in the ebb and flow of joys and sorrow, like waves continuously lapping on the shore. This is what makes her story relatable. One does not have to be a sexual abuse survivor to understand and empathize with the hills and valleys of her life.
Baptistland asks us to care about what is happening in our churches and ministries concerning sexual abuse. It asks us to use our collective voices and demand justice for those abused within the church. It compels us to cry “COME CLEAN!” to those trying to cover up abuses. It asks us to demand reform and change within our denominations.
The memoir reveals the intricacies of her personal life and her work to hold the Southern Baptist Convention accountable for her abuse and the abuse of hundreds of others that the SBC has attempted to keep hidden. She takes the reader into her home and allows them an inside look at her troubling childhood. The reader feels they are with Christa as she describes the happy and harrowing moments of growing up in a complicated family environment.
When she described the abuse she endured for months by her youth pastor, I felt as though she was telling me the story in a quiet conversation over a cup of coffee long since gone cold. I wanted to hold her hand, dry her eyes, and intervene somehow. At this point in the book, it may be challenging to continue. I urge you to stay with it; an honoring thing to do is to read her complete story and face the difficult truths about sexual abuse within the Christian church—particularly within Baptist denominations.
When Christa’s book shifts to adulthood, we are invited to peek into her life’s joys— her overseas adventures, moments of tenderness with her dad, finding love, her daughter, her job, and her advocacy work for herself and other sexual abuse survivors. My heart swelled during these moments, and I cheered her on. There were also moments of sorrow— the continued brokenness in her family, the betrayal of the SBC, the deep pain of the abuse she endured, the stalking and bullying by Christians devoted to the SBC, and the irrevocable break between her and her sisters. My heart crumbled during these moments. Yet, many of us who have experienced suffering have lived in the ebb and flow of joys and sorrow, like waves continuously lapping on the shore. This is what makes her story relatable. One does not have to be a sexual abuse survivor to understand and empathize with the hills and valleys of her life.
Baptistland asks us to care about what is happening in our churches and ministries concerning sexual abuse. It asks us to use our collective voices and demand justice for those abused within the church. It compels us to cry “COME CLEAN!” to those trying to cover up abuses. It asks us to demand reform and change within our denominations.
November 13, 2024
Wow. This was a mind blowing book. It was difficult to witness but so necessary. It was really about two almost separate topics but they were interwoven. One was her very toxic and dysfunctional family and the other was her abuse at the hands of a leader in her childhood Baptist church. Christa is a very bright and articulate writer and yet there were times that I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled - but her coping strategies with her mom in particular are those of a codependent child. So please know there is victory for her in the end and she redeems her life and that of her husband and child although at times you want to give up and think she won’t. It is a great book for those of us who used to tithe to the Baptist church every Sunday and yet felt it was a patriarchal and “ gross” place. ( I was married to a Baptist man who insisted we go to a Baptist church). Knowing of the widespread abuse within the church and that the Southern Baptist Convention knew of the abuse and covered it up makes me wish I had put my foot down much sooner than 5 years into our marriage.
August 14, 2024
Powerful is an understatement. Thank you Christa for sharing your childhood (and adult) trauma with the world. Grateful for your ongoing work to demand justice for survivors like yourself, accountability for predators (who abuse mostly children and women disguised as weaponized religion) as well as those who continue to protect the horrific abusers/systems in the clergy and church. You are breaking the cycle and it’s powerful. Your voice and your work is so appreciated.
***If you were moved by her work/story please also consider supporting Julie Roy’s and the Roy’s Report (podcast). She is a Christian investigative journalist exposing the coverups, predators and corrupt systems within the church. I found Christa and her story through Julie.
***If you were moved by her work/story please also consider supporting Julie Roy’s and the Roy’s Report (podcast). She is a Christian investigative journalist exposing the coverups, predators and corrupt systems within the church. I found Christa and her story through Julie.
November 20, 2024
Okay book, misleading title
As an abuse survivor myself, I was looking forward to a backstory, but even more so about her life now and how she fought the SBC. Most of the book is hundreds of pages of her childhood/adult life in her abusive family. While I empathized with her, I also felt like each new incident she told about her awful family in adulthood was followed up by how stunned she was at her family’s treatment. It was as if she never quite learned over the years to let her family go and move on, but stayed in the system. That does relate to the abuse she experienced in church, although her church story and a wrap up at the end in a couple chapters is all we really get about the Baptist part of the story.
As an abuse survivor myself, I was looking forward to a backstory, but even more so about her life now and how she fought the SBC. Most of the book is hundreds of pages of her childhood/adult life in her abusive family. While I empathized with her, I also felt like each new incident she told about her awful family in adulthood was followed up by how stunned she was at her family’s treatment. It was as if she never quite learned over the years to let her family go and move on, but stayed in the system. That does relate to the abuse she experienced in church, although her church story and a wrap up at the end in a couple chapters is all we really get about the Baptist part of the story.
June 6, 2024
So compelling!
I wept through Christa Brown’s first book, This Little Light of Mine. I was thrilled that she wrote a 2nd book. The abuse she suffered at the hands of a pastor & then Baptist leadership was horrific. I’m amazed that she continues to speak out to warn others, to try to protect young girls in this denomination. It’s such an unselfish & loving act on her part.
Baptistland does not disappoint. Christa’s upbringing is brutal. Her honest telling of her story will bring hope to so many of us who grew up in similar homes. Christa is inspiring in her determination to survive & thrive. Her devotion to raising a healthy daughter is beautiful. She is a true cycle breaker.
May 8, 2024
Baptistland brings a peace that transcends trauma. It invites us into Christa’s personal journey from victim to advocate, guiding us through the pain and joys along the way. Despite betrayal, abuse and re-traumatization, Christa brings love, resilience, and hope to the reader. I am grateful for her audacious truth-telling, helping us feel less alone in our journeys as survivors and advocates trying to change the unchangeable and move the immoveable: dysfunctional families and predator-friendly institutions.
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