Thabiti Anyabwile Shows His True Colors!

Below are a few tweets I came across on Thabiti Anyabwile’s Twitter account. I believe the first quote is from Wilberforce, but perhaps there was another man named Wilberfoce; anyway, I have noticed a growing trend among the crowd Anyabwile hangs with to claim they want to stand up for justice and speak out against abuse and they challenge us to do the same. You can see what I am talking about if you go to The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Twitter account and read some of the tweets around the 25th of September.  Maybe there has been some talking points paper distributed amongst the gospelly boys club saying they are taking too much heat for not standing up for victims, so they need to begin emphasizing how much they care.  Whatever the reason, it does seem like a concerted effort.  So read Anyabwile’s quotes and then as you read through my article I think you will agree that his words are hollow.  He doesn’t really want to do more, he just wants to say he wants to do more and then maybe you will think he and his gospelly friends really are doing more and really do care for the victims of sexual abuse.

“Something is wrong my beloved when the Church of Christ just allows this to continue. We are allowing little lambs to be fleeced and slaughtered while those of us who know better are, for the most part, silent. Unless the Body of Christ rises up and starts going after these wolves, we will be just as guilty as they are for allowing God’s children to be destroyed.”
-Nancy A. Almodovar, “A Modern Ninety-Five: Questions Today’s Evangelicals Need to Answer”

“If we are taught to trust totally and are discouraged from criticizing leaders openly, then we lose the ability to think critically. That is why it is unhealthy to stray from Scripture and teach trusting our leaders. If our leaders don’t want us to be critical of their actions when they are doing something wrong, then we shouldn’t follow these leaders. They are supposed to be servants, not dictators. Leaders need to have humility in order to be able to accept honest criticism.”
– Mary Alice Chrnalogar, “Twisted Scriptures: Breaking Free From Churches That Abuse,” page 61

“The amount of effort that goes into silencing victims and their advocates is really overwhelming and quite unbelievable. I know it happens everywhere, but it seems especially powerful in the Christian community.”
-NakedPastor David Hayworth “Silence Doesn’t Make Abuse Go Away.”

Yesterday’s blog article I wrote focused on an article Thabiti Anyabwile authored on Bill Cosby and sexual abuse.   In his article, Anyabwile challenged us to speak out against sexual abuse and ended up claiming he was going to fight to protect women from abuse and invited us to join him.

“I will fight. I will fight. I will fight for the black girls in my home, in my community, and around the world. Let’s fight for them together.”
-Thabiti Anyabwile

I must admit I was a bit skeptical, but I challenged Thabiti to begin standing up for sexual abuse victims by fighting to get C.J. Mahaney removed as a speaker at the Together 4 the Gospel conference.  If he could not accomplish that I suggested he could withdraw from the conference himself.  That would be a bold statement.  To do this Anyabwile would have to break ranks with all his gospelly friends in the Gospel Glitterati Celebrity Conference Speakers club. Undoubtedly this would be at great personal cost to Anyabwile.  But his words seemed so sincere that I thought just maybe he might actually take a stand against C.J. Mahaney.  

Today it looks like a fairly safe bet that Anyabwile’s passionate plea to take action against sexual abusers were hollow words.  Anyabwile knows which side his bread is buttered on, and it ain’t the side of victims of sexual abuse. Why do I say this?  Because yesterday, along with the article I wrote, I also wrote the following comment on Anyabwile’s blog site:

Today I discovered that Anyabwile acted as many other “courageous leaders” in his “good ‘ole boy” fraternity act when faced with an inconvenient truth – he silenced his critic by removing my comment.  The Go$pelly Coalition, Together For the Go$pel and 9Marx of an Authoritarian church love to utilize social media, but they don’t know how to handle criticism, especially when the critical individual is pointing out embarrassing truths.  These brave men do not know how to handle dissent outside the little fiefdoms of their local church.  Church members can be intimidated into silence, but their tried and true tactics don’t work too well in social media. 

Exhibit “A” is the statement of support T4G posted on their Facebook account a few years ago.  They took so much heat for their cowardly, untruthful statement supporting their friend, C.J. Mahaney that they removed the statement from their Facebook account, changed the wording without mentioning that they did this, and then re-posted it on the T4G web page where no comments were allowed.  Such brave men!

You may recall that I encountered a similar experience as a member of John Folmar’s church in Dubai. Folmar didn’t like some articles I posted about the sexual abuse scandal at Sovereign Grace so he had his lieutenant, John Welkner, seize control of an independent Facebook group, remove my articles and then write and tell me they weren’t helpful for the members of UCCD. My response? I wrote back and told them I quit.   This treatment is so uniform with these men that you wonder if they teach these tactics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary!

So today I checked to see if there were any new comments on Anyabwile’s post.  There were not, and, as a matter of fact one comment was missing – mine!

I then wrote another comment questioning why my first comment was removed.  Here is the message I received when I submitted the comment:

As a refresher, please go to this link and watch the two minute video by a local news agency in Washington, D.C.  Then ask yourself how so-called Christian leaders like Thabiti Anyabwile, Mark Dever, Albert Mohler, Kevin DeYoung, John MacArthur, David Platt, Matt Chandler, Ligon Duncan, John Piper and R.C. Sproul can in good conscience share the stage with a monster like C.J. Mahaney.  The answer is they can’t.  They are embarrassed when people like me continue to bring to light the fact that Mahaney covered-up, enabled and coddled sexual abusers in his churches.  These men know they do not have an ethical “leg to stand on” so they resort to attempting to silence people who point out their hypocrisy.

It really is shameful when a whole movement in Evangelicalism has been hijacked by a group of cowardly men.  These men demonstrate time after time that they really do not care for the “least of these.” They care only about maintaining their status in their little club; a club where the message is clearly DO NOT MAKE WAVES!  A club that pays handsome dividends in the way of book contracts and generous honorariums for speaking at their numerous conferences. They all have each other’s backs.  Truth be damned.  I am pretty sure Christ would approve of their actions.

“Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.””
Matthew 20:25-28