PRESSLER’S PROGENY by Esther Nelson

David French, an Opinion Columnist for the New York Times, wrote an enlightening piece (05/14/2026) titled, “I Don’t Think You Can Even Call This Hypocrisy.”  You can read the article here.  

In his essay, French refers to a piece by Robert Downen, an investigative journalist, who wrote about Paul Pressler (d. 2024), an architect of the “so-called resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention,” the largest Protestant denomination in the USA.  The MAGA movement, filled with loud and often uninformed, conservative Christians, is Pressler’s progeny.

From the early 1990s until 2006, the Southern Baptist Convention (as well as unaffiliated and independent Bible churches) experienced phenomenal growth.  Many fundamentalist evangelicals viewed this growth as God’s blessing on the faithful.  However, as journalist Downen dug around, he found “there was an overwhelming amount of evidence that Pressler was a morally corrupt and abusive man.”  Not only was he a Confederate apologist, he purportedly sexually abused young men and boys and never lost his influence.  Many Baptists believed that “…exposing Pressler’s misdeeds would ‘distort’ his public Christian credibility.”

French reports that many of the faithful maintained that “…conservative resurgence was good, even if its leaders were abusive and bad.” (The end justifies the means.)  The problem?  “Institutions take on the character of their leaders….Political evangelicalism is a system…deeply influenced by depraved men, and it has…the features that depraved men will demand of an institution they control.”

French continues:  “…the depraved man will alter the very definition of virtue.  He’ll place a higher premium on his thoughts than his actions, so that the goal is theological or ideological purity rather than…the fruit of the spirit…kindness, peace, patience, gentleness and self-control….  [T]he absolute worst thing you can be is a heretic, with heresy defined according to the leader’s inflexible interpretation of Scripture.”

This aligns with my experience within “fundamentalism.” Believing correct doctrine was paramount. One church I attended insisted that the communion table not be flush up against the wall. That would make the table an altar.  Roman Catholics have altars where Jesus is crucified Sunday after Sunday.  Jesus died only once and then rose from the dead. Using an altar to celebrate communion is heresy! 

French writes: “How many people see themselves as good because their theology or ideology is pure? How many of these people then feel righteous even as they inflict extreme cruelty on their theological or ideological foes?  To them, cruelty in the name of truth isn’t cruelty at all; it’s a form of tough love.”

Do you have a disobedient child? No problem. Love them so much that you shun them, disown them, deprive them of their needs, whatever it takes to let everybody know how righteous you are by following a deity, infused with Pressler-like, depraved characteristics. 

French’s title to his essay, “I Don’t Think You Can Even Call This Hypocrisy,” gets to the core of things.  They (Pressler’s progeny) follow and enforce what they call “godly” principles derived from pure doctrine.  (No altars in MY church!) In their eyes, they are not being hypocritical since correct doctrine, as defined by theological leaders, is far more important than human beings and their experience.

“Fundamentalism,” a movement in the 1920s, emerged as a reaction to Germany’s “higher criticism,” something immediately shunned by conservative seminaries in the USA. What? Approach the written Word using critical thinking? Absolutely not!  God’s Word is revealed and not subject to the interpretations of “man.” Do we not understand that all reading is an interpretive act? The real question is: Who gets to read/interpret?

I am convinced that hierarchy and domination—the very things at the core of patriarchy—are at the center of the matter. The noisy Christians in the MAGA movement so evident in our public life today easily put themselves on top.  When you believe in your heart of hearts that God has chosen you and has not chosen others, it’s easy to deprive others of the same resources you enjoy.

I think one needs to have been immersed (as I was for years) in a community that believes that “cruelty in the name of truth isn’t cruelty at all,” but really is love.  If one hasn’t lived the “truth” of French’s assertion, I think it’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to understand how easily the fouled values of MAGA Christians become the fabric that creates, clothes, sustains, and spreads throughout the USA today.

Church leaders, using a deity inculcated with patriarchal values, dominate.  The lives of sentient beings (including humans) fall victim to institutions that have taken “on the character of their leaders.” Especially so if your church leaders have little-to-no accountability.  “…depraved men…hate inquiry and accountability.” If/when accountability does arrive, “it’s treated like martyrdom…they act as if they’re the victims of a hostile, unbelieving world.” 

I’ve recently crossed a threshold.  I will no longer listen to “good, Christian people” explain why we can’t insure that all of our citizens have access to decent food, education, and medical care. “They’re just lazy, doncha know.”  Neither will I hear them out when they insist that we need mega-billions to “defend” our country and then call our colonial-like aggression patriotism.  “The bad guys want to destroy our Christian nation and take over.  Spoiler alert:  The bad guys have already taken over.  Neither will I pay them heed when they say we cannot send life-saving drugs to countries whose population is being decimated with HIV-AIDS.  “It’s their own fault. They are reaping what they sowed.”  Neither will I sit still if one of the “older women” in the congregation I no longer attend tells me to put myself under my husband’s authority because God requires such. “Our Creator God designed your husband with the necessary gifts to lead you.” Poppycock!

“But, but, some of these are good, decent people.” Are they? Scratch the surface a bit. Dig a little deeper. I have. Most times, I find neither love, nor mercy—only superficiality. Like an ostrich putting their head in the sand, “I’m not political,” they say, as they go about their daily lives protected by their gender, race, and class. Or, perhaps, they will audaciously say MAGA’s policies such as immigration are good.  People suffer unnecessarily as a result of “good” policies!  They are unmoved because they (influenced oftentimes by their MAGA-leaning churches) are sure their ideology/theology is derived from correct doctrine.

I grew up with the “Christian values” Pressler spewed.  I am distraught that I even entertained them as some kind of truth once upon a time. 

Today, I am not interested in a society where some people are more equal than others. George Orwell wrote about this in his 1945 novel, ANIMAL FARM.  Fundamentalist, evangelical churches have manipulated language, writing rules that justify inequality in their quest to maintain absolute control over the “faithful” along with the rest of us as they proselytize their pure doctrine, written by depraved men.

As a direct result, we now have a vile president who “loves Christians.” Of course he does.  They play into his wicked agenda and call it good.