How the Old Boys' Club Ousted Karen Swallow Prior
The literature scholar had prominent positions at Liberty University, Southeastern Seminary, and the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, then realized she couldn't reform from within.
I thought for a long time I could help the church (or at least my slice of it) change. I could take a community and denomination rife with racism, cronyism, misogyny and abuse and change it.
How foolish I was.
Scholar, author, and speaker
wrote this doleful reflection last fall, several months after she had announced her departure from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). The details surrounding her departure were scant, but in our conversation about the evangelical bro code, she says gender dynamics there and in the broader SBC played a factor: “These institutions were led by men who were groomed by older men who were then in turn grooming younger men underneath them — a literal old boys’ network (and in some cases a younger boys’ network).”
Prior’s story illuminates that having theological and scholarly bona fides in conservative Christian institutions won’t protect women from ending up as collateral for missional expediency. That a pro-life l…
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