Do you wonder what the Fundamentalist Christians want? In the abstract it is easy enough to answer. They want to dominate us. Just read about the Seven Mountains Movement in their own words.
Yet, far more powerful is a real life story, one that forces us to bear witness to the atrocities they would visit upon us, if they could. And in the story of one 15 year old rape victim we can begin to get a taste for what they have in store for us, waiting to be released with a terrible vengeance on the people of America. They want dominion, over body and soul, dominion and power to punish anyone they can with a hatred that flows from the darkest recesses of their ugly little minds.
Here, read the story of Tina Anderson and tell me I am wrong, that the atrocity she was forced to endure is an anomaly and not part of the future that Dominionist Christians would wish to impose on us with their Biblical Law.
A 15-year-old rape victim was forced to stand terrified before her entire Baptist congregation in New Hampshire to confess her sin of having become pregnant.
What Tina Anderson wasn’t allowed to tell the congregation was that she had become pregnant after she was raped by a church deacon, a man twice her age.
Are you surprised? I am not. Yet still reading the details of this confession she was required by her “faith community” to endure is horrifying and despite the fact I found her story believable, I still find it shocking that this is occurring now in our country, not in some theocratic dystopian future such as described in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid”s Tale, but here and now, in America, and has been for some time.
While being kept in seclusion at her pastor’s Concord home in 1997, Tina Anderson, then 15, was too afraid of the reaction from members of her church to tell the police she had been raped and impregnated by another parishioner, she said in an interview with the Monitor.
Anderson, now 28 and living in Arizona, said Trinity Baptist Church members had told her not to report an earlier case in which she had been molested by a convicted sex offender who was also a member of the congregation, so she expected them to do the same if she told them she had been raped.
“They told me that to be a good Christian, I need to forgive, forget and move on in my life,” she said. “And they told me that a good Christian doesn’t press charges on another good Christian.”
And when she became pregnant, what did her forgiving Church and its Pastor require her to do? Did they ask her to forgive her rapist. Oh no. They were not the forgiving kind once it became apparent she was pregnant. They did not ask this child, who they knew had been previously sexually assaulted by a pedophile in their own ranks who impregnated her, or under what circumstances. They “disciplined” her instead:
She says her New Hampshire pastor, Chuck Phelps, told her she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death.
While questioning the girl before church officials crafted the speech she would deliver, Anderson said Phelps’ wife asked her, “Did you enjoy it?”
That was only the first step in Anderson’s “church discipline,” one of many ritual practices in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church (IFB), which Anderson, now more than a decade later, says preys on the vulnerable.
“I was completely in shock, but too scared to go and tell anyone because I thought I would get blamed for what happened,” Anderson said.
“I truly believed that it was my fault,” she told ABCNews.com through tears.
Her mother sought help from the pastor and they agreed to send her thousands of miles away to Colorado to live with another Baptist family.
There, she reportedly was homeschooled and barred from seeing others her age until she gave her child up for adoption.
But in February 2010, after keeping her secret for 13 years, Anderson — a 28-year-old mother of three more children who lives in Arizona — was contacted by police and agreed to press charges.
There is not much I can add to her horrific story. I know rape victims get short shrift in America. I once was married to a woman who had been raped as a child by her father, and I know of other rape victims, dear to me, who suffered greatly at the hands of their oh so religious relatives for their “sin.” But I have never known a rape victim who was abused in quite this manner.
A fifteen year old girl who was called out before her congregation and forced to confess to a “sin” she did not commit. Publicly humiliated and shamed before family and friends. Torn from her family and shipped thousands of miles away to an unknown Baptist family in Colorado where she was essentially treated as a prisoner who had committed a crime. Forced to give up her child for adoption and never see her baby again.
And don’t think that wouldn’t be an option if a Theocratic state ever assumes power here in America, the “land of the not so free anymore.” They stone women in fundamentalist regions of certain Muslim countries, where those who murder the women believe in the same severe interpretation of God’s law that Pastor Phelps and many like him apparently also believe. Many fundamentalists of them openly admit they would welcome making homosexuality a capital crime requiring the death penalty, as has occurred in Iran.
They would return women to the status of chattels, under the control of men, mere property for a father or husband to do with as he wishes.
That is where they want to take this country and the rest of the world. That is the New Jerusalem they dream about and hope to bring to fruition in their lifetimes. That is why “The Family” on C Street is so insidious and a real and present danger to our democracy.
The churches are out there. Waiting, Biding their time. Longing for a nation governed by “God’s Law” where men are never blamed and women are always evil.
For a link to the preview of the ABC 20/20 report about these churches that abuse their female children go here (sorry the embed code for the video would not work).
This is the world these fundamentalists would make if they are ever given the chance. And as Pastor Phelps, Tina Anderson’s “spiritual guide” noted at the time, it could have been worse: they could have stoned her to death. And for fear of their retaliation against her she kept quiet, suffering who knows what psychological trauma and emotional trauma. Now, at long last her rapist is being brought to trial. But why wasn’t he dealt with years ago? Why did his church protect him and condemn her, a 15 year old child? Because that is the way these “Christians” wanted it.
Ernest Willis, now 51 and a former church member who lives in Gilford, N.H., is accused of raping Anderson twice — once at Anderson’s home where he showed up when her parents were away and a second time in the backseat of a car when he was teaching her to drive.
In a seven-page statement to police obtained by ABCNews.com, Anderson said Willis offered to take her out of state where abortions for minors are legal, then asked if she wanted him to “punch me in the stomach as hard as he could” to trigger a miscarriage.
Willis has been charged with four felonies — two counts of rape and two counts of having sex with a minor. He was released on $100,000 personal recognizance bail and will be arraigned June 16 in Concord District Court. Calls to his house seeking comment were not returned.
“We just received the files and have not had a chance to review them,” said Assistant City Prosecutor Tracy A. Connolly, who would not say if there were more alleged victims.
Police have told the Associated Press that they are looking into obstruction of justice charges against the church for possibly sending the victim away so they could not prosecute.
“Without a victim, it makes it very difficult to have a case,” Lt. Keith Mitchell told the Concord Monitor newspaper. “That basically made the investigation very difficult.”
Police were alerted to the alleged crime after a group page went up on Facebook: “Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) Cult Survivors (And their Supporters).”
Matt Barnhart, a former member of Anderson’s church, left a simple message: “Trinity, New Hampshire, church hid 15-year-old getting pregnant from deacon. You can contact me privately.”
You see, even after 13 years, Tina did not come forward. The rape was only discovered because of an post on Facebook by a witness to what her church did to her. I am glad that Mr. Willis will finally be forced to pay for his crimes. I feel great sympathy and admiration for Tina Anderson for agreeing to cooperate with police and for agreeing to allow her story to be told, including an agreement to reveal her identity. That was a brave and courageous act.
But this is only one small victory, and the Dominion cultists and hard line fundamentalist Christian sects are still waging a secret war against our country, subverting our military and getting believers in their “mission” elected as officials at all levels of our local, state and even the federal government. It is easy to dismiss the danger because we do not see it everyday.
However, when we are confronted by the story of Tina Anderson and all the other women out there who have been abused by these communities of religious fanatics we should recognize the danger they pose is real. What happened to Tina Anderson is just a foretaste of what they have in store for us, if we refuse to recognize the threat they pose, if we refuse to defend this republic of ours against “all enemies foreign or domestic.”