To both of the last two comments I’d like to respond. You are quite correct in saying that what I experienced as a child should not be defined as orthodox Christianity, but it was fundamentalism, and not so far off from more “moderate” iterations of fundamentalism, such as the SBC, AoG, PCA, and other similar “evangelical” groups across the theological spectrum.
You are also quite correct in saying that leadership condoning and/or ignoring abuse like this is completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, my story is not unique to some Quiverfull cults holed up in the mountains of Idaho or Kentucky. This sort of shaming culture, coverup of abuse, and abuse of power is par for the course across wide swaths of evangelicalism, including and especially some of the biggest denominations in the country.
As someone who has given his entire adult like to the world of evangelicalism, thinking it had an openness and a freedom and a hope to offer that “fundamentalist” forms of Christianity did not, I have been sorely disappointed. I have come to recognize that evangelicalism as a whole (with some rare exception) is simply dressed-up fundamentalism, and I actually did not go far enough with this blog post in calling it out. At the time I was a pastor at a Southern Baptist church and was trying to avoid calling it what it was — a fundamentalist distortion of the gospel.
No, I’m not just an abused child of a cult with a distorted view of Christianity. I am a licensed Southern Baptist minister that has worked for and with some of the biggest names in evangelicalism in the last decade. I am currently finishing a master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. I completed a church planting assessment and residency program with Acts29. Today I would go further than I did two years ago and say that the vast majority of evangelicalism today is fundamentalist in orientation, and misunderstands Scripture and the gospel at a basic level.
Finally, none of this is to say that there are not good and godly people existing in both “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” circles, as it seems you are. Proudly self-identified evangelicals remain to this day some of my dearest friends. This is to say that fundamentalism has infiltrated and hijacked almost the entirety of American Christianity, even to some extent Catholic and mainline denominations.
Fundamentalist Christianities, even the “mild” forms of it, are thieves and liars, and we need to call them what they are.
