A Letter Back to Seth Dunn

Dear Seth,

Today you wrote a letter to Beth Moore allow me a woman to respond. You accused Beth, and I am sure countless others of this, your perceived truth:

You preach and write about yourself all the time as is if you were a character in the Biblical story. You’re not.

Wow, and to think you call yourself a theologian. As Stanley Hauerwas wrote:

“The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer In Christian Ethics

To break that down the church has always been called to participate in the biblical story. (Side note, in academic writing “biblical” is lower case, because it is an adjective, not a proper noun, RELS 101.) Jesus in John 15, calls us to abide in God. That is a particular calling to abide in Jesus’ story, and therefore the biblical story of grace, love, and redemption. For if we look to the lives of the saints we will see a call to think, change, and reform. We see Acts was included after the lives of the saints because they are a key to understanding God does speak, and will speak to us, characters in his never ending biblical story of grace.

Further Seth, you again write in anger:

I would like to chastize (sic) these men for giving you the silent treatment. You should have been roundly and loudly rebuked by each and every one of them. I guess they tolerated you because, like Harvey Weinstein, you could draw money. They just looked past the bad parts.

Jesus always gave a place at the table to women. From Mary, through to Acts in Lydia, Phoebe, and Priscilla. Today Beth has a calling to speak in love of the hope of Christ. You have such resentment that after you implore her to be silent, that she is equivalent to Harvey Weinstein. Where is your strong condemnation of the countless Southern Baptist pastors that have molested, assaulted, children and women but were kept in roles for profit? Your very denomination has full books devoted to sexual abuse scandals, and monetary power struggles over them.

Additionally comparing a woman abused to an abuser is the pit of despicable. Beth Moore has spoken up, and because of that you are riled. You are riled because you have been served notice. Abuse, and inequality will no longer be tolerated in the church. Seth,

You are showing your true colors lately.

Finally Seth for men like you (because I have met them) those who equate a woman’s worth to her looks, or have deacon meetings about her “ass” and say this

Also, to be forthright, you are a good-looking woman. Did it ever cross your mind that the Christian ministers who didn’t talk to you at conferences didn’t want to jeopardize their career by being thought to flirt with you? Maybe they didn’t want to end up in your next personal anecdote. Just maybe they were trying to protect themselves from making the wrong decision around a beautiful, effusive woman

Please get some help. If you are unable to be around a woman without flirting, that is called lust. If you are unable to be around a woman without worrying about being accused of misconduct perhaps the words of Jesus may be of help:

But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

It sounds to me like men of the SBC have the biblical issue, not because they are men, that is inconsequential, but because they are bad biblical teachers. Like Jesus said, you search the scriptures but you have not found the answer, you proof text to preserve a foothold on power, and like Pharisees you lash out when someone speaks out. You just went on a rant against a woman, you deemed her, you admitted to lusting after her, and collecting hate pieces on her. Seth, let go of the hate, for Jesus declares through John, whoever hates a brother or sister, has not love, and if they have no love, they have not God.