{"id":90456,"date":"2021-03-23T18:31:47","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T18:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=177660"},"modified":"2021-03-23T18:31:47","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T18:31:47","slug":"yes-blame-christian-fundamentalism-for-the-atlanta-murders-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/23\/yes-blame-christian-fundamentalism-for-the-atlanta-murders-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, Blame Christian Fundamentalism for the Atlanta Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Crabapple First Baptist Church, where the Atlanta shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long was an active member, in Milton, Ga., on March 17, 2021.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Nicole Craine\/The New York Times\/Redux<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Why did<\/u> Robert Aaron Long kill six Asian women, in three Atlanta-area massage parlors, as well as two other people who happened to be on the premises?<\/p>\n

Many have answered: Because they were Asian women. And in the Western imaginary \u2014 in films, jokes, porn, and immigration history \u2014 the racist stereotype is of the Asian woman as sexually voracious yet docile and submissive, exotic and inscrutable yet sympathetic to the white man\u2019s burdens and stresses, which she can smooth away with her strong but delicate hands and mouth. She\u2019s the model-minority yellow peril of sex.<\/p>\n

If you are Long, a stringently devout white Christian evangelical, she is, most saliently, Satan\u2019s model helpmeet, shaped to seduce men into sin. Weakened in body and soul by \u201csex addiction,\u201d in his telling, he was easy prey. He could not resist the succubi \u2014 aka his own desire \u2014 so he was compelled to commit one mortal sin to prevent another: murder to defeat fornication.<\/p>\n

Long\u2019s church, the Crabapple First Baptist Church, in Milton, Georgia, doesn\u2019t buy the addiction defense. \u201cThe women that he solicited for sexual acts are not responsible for his perverse sexual desires nor do they bear any blame in these murders,\u201d reads a statement the church released after Long\u2019s arrest. \u201cThese actions are the result of a sinful heart and depraved mind for which Aaron is completely responsible.\u201d In a Q&A, it adds: \u201cWe repudiate any and all forms of misogyny and racism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, not quite. Crabapple is affiliated with the Founders Ministries, a rightward-pushing caucus of the Southern Baptist Convention, which condemns the idea of white fragility as \u201cracist\u201d and preaches masculine dominion over women. Much quoted is the New Testament book 1 Corinthians: \u201cThe head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.\u201d In other words, Long\u2019s church repudiates all forms of misogyny and racism except the forms repudiated by feminists and movements for racial equality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While outwardly decrying abuse, extreme religiosity may breed it. In a sample of first-year students at a southern U.S. university, researchers found<\/a> \u201csignificant relationships between religiosity and victims of child sexual abuse by both relatives and non-relatives. Persons sexually abused by a relative were much more likely to be affiliated with fundamental Protestant religions.\u201d A 2006 study<\/a> of religiosity among Australian men incarcerated for serious sex offenses discovered that those who maintained religious involvement from childhood to adulthood had more sexual offense convictions, more victims, and younger victims than other groups, including atheists. Among Jewish men in an Israeli prison, \u201creligious Jews \u2026 were more likely to be in for sex crimes,\u201d according to other research.<\/p>\n

Sex, of course, is a moral issue. But the relationship between religion and sexual morality, or between religious morality and sexual deviance, is a confounded one. Evangelical pastors who condemn homosexuality or abortion as abominations against God may point to a physical disease such as AIDS or Covid-19 as God\u2019s retribution<\/a>. So sometimes they hold sexual sin responsible for the sickness: The wages of homosexuality is HIV. And sometimes the sin is the sickness: homosexuality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Western science has \u201cmedicalized\u201d social deviance \u2014 turning \u201cbadness to sickness.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Either way, the conflation is not unique to Christians. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, Western science has \u201cmedicalized\u201d social deviance, redefining drunkenness as alcoholism or sex acts between men as the problematic \u201cabnormality\u201d of homosexuality \u2014 turning \u201cbadness to sickness,\u201d as Peter Conrad and Joseph W. Schneider put it in 1980. Treatment may replace punishment, or treatment can become a form of social control and punishment. When secular moralists exonerate a behavior \u2014 say, remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, commonly called the \u201cbible\u201d of psychiatry \u2014 Christian practitioners often take up the slack. \u201cGay conversion therapy,\u201d a \u201ccure\u201d for queerness, is now plied almost exclusively by religious counselors and psychologists, including HopeQuest, the evangelical treatment facility Long checked into.<\/p>\n

Criminality used to be considered a congenital disease to which certain races and ethnicities were prone. The holdover from that ideology is \u201csex offending,\u201d a psychopathology whose only symptom is having committed a sexual offense. The legal mandates that convicted \u201csex offenders\u201d attend treatment, sometimes for years, even though they\u2019re considered incurable echoes Calvinist Protestantism, which requires a life of moral discipline despite the fact that God has preordained who goes to heaven and who is damned to hell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Sex and pornography \u201caddictions\u201d slip between morality and medicine.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Sex and pornography \u201caddictions\u201d similarly slip between morality and medicine and are similarly circular and vague. In spite of a proliferation of literature on the subject, there\u2019s no recognized diagnosis for sex addiction and no measure of how much porn, sex, or dating app use is excessive. Although every treatment program describes itself as \u201cevidence-based,\u201d unlike opioid addiction there\u2019s no empirical evidence that these syndromes even exist. But if you feel your porn consumption is out of control, you experience the distress that qualifies as a symptom of psychological illness. Sex addiction might be spectral, but a lot of people think they have it.<\/p>\n

And, logically, those most likely to self-diagnose their behavior as sick are those who feel that pornography viewing and nonmarital sex are sicknesses of the spirit. \u201cReligiosity and moral disapproval of pornography use were robust predictors of perceived addiction to Internet pornography while being unrelated to actual levels of use among pornography,\u201d psychologist Joshua B. Grubbs and colleagues found in two studies<\/a>; their article is titled \u201cTransgression as Addiction.\u201d The level of pornography use among white evangelicals is comparatively low, but their misery about it is far greater than the misery of other users, according to University of Oklahoma sociologist Samuel Perry, who collaborated<\/a> on a survey of porn in the lives of Christians of different denominations.<\/p>\n

Proven or not, there is no end of treatment available to the self-diagnosed sex addict both inside and outside the evangelical world. Since therapist, author, and psycho-entrepreneur Patrick J. Carnes popularized the notion in the early 1980s, it\u2019s been embraced by a recovery industry perpetually augmenting the list of things and activities you can be addicted to, and thus treated for. Today, Carnes\u2019s International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals offers training programs, recommendations, webinars, publications, and certifications. IITAP\u2019s Certified Sex Addiction Therapist course costs $5,910; it\u2019s a bit less for \u201cearly birds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if a provider does not advertise as \u201cChrist-centered,\u201d virtually all recovery treatment contains a tinge of religiosity. That\u2019s because the field is dominated by the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step model, the first steps of which involve turning your \u201cwill and life over to the care of God.\u201d It was many years after AA\u2019s founding in 1938 that some disgruntled atheist added, \u201cas we understand God.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"A<\/p>\n

A person lights candles during a peace vigil to honor victims of attacks on Asians on March 19, 2021 in Union Square Park in New York City.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Stephanie Keith\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We\u2019ll probably never<\/u> know how many hours Long spent on Pornhub or how often he paid for sex. But he believed he had a sex monkey on his back that he couldn\u2019t shake. After his parents, also active members of Crabapple church, kicked him out of their home for watching porn, he moved into the \u201c12-step-based\u201d Maverick Recovery in Roswell, one of hundreds of \u201csober houses\u201d operating more or less unregulated in Georgia. There he drove his roommates crazy with biblical exegesis and self-flagellation. Back from a trip to a spa, \u201c[Long] would say, \u2018I\u2019ve done it again\u2019 and it just ate away at him. He felt absolutely merciless remorse,\u201d a roommate told<\/a> the New York Times. Long was gripped by a \u201creligious mania,\u201d the roommate said.<\/p>\n

When he could not remain abstinent, he checked himself into HopeQuest, \u201ca family of ministries,\u201d and \u201cthe Christian rehab center where people use God to help writer new chapters called Hope and Freedom.\u201d HopeQuest, on 18 acres in Woodstock, Georgia, offers a three-month residential program, transitional housing and outpatient counseling, support groups, training, and consulting. The residency costs $15,000, according to one reviewer, who also describes the grungy accommodations and bad food. On the same review site, the center responds that everyone gets financial support. Along with insurance and subsidies solicited by its fundraiser, HopeQuest has a generous donor on high: \u201cGod gave us\u201d the houses, the woods, the program \u2014 everything \u2014 as CEO Troy Haas tells it in a video.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At HopeQuest, pornography is a pathogen, sin is illness, and worship is essential medicine.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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At HopeQuest, pornography is a pathogen (40 to 50 percent of the clients are in for porn addiction), sin is illness, and worship is essential medicine. \u201cI\u2019d had sexual sin throughout my life, having been exposed to pornography at the age of 6,\u201d says a former client and staff member in a video on the website. He could be saying, \u201cI\u2019d had hepatitis all my life, having been exposed to the virus at the age of 6.\u201d The line between faith and science has disappeared.<\/p>\n

For masseuses trying to make a living without losing their lives, the grace bestowed by the Crabapple First Baptist Church is little protection. There\u2019s scant hope of returning to obscurity either, and not just because a mad shooter brought the world to peep through their curtains. They were already targeted for unemployment \u2014 er, \u201crescue\u201d \u2014 by Street Grace, a \u201cfaith-based\u201d anti-trafficking organization. In 2020, the group identified 165 \u201cillicit massage businesses\u201d in Georgia, most of them clustered around Atlanta, and deployed surveillance cameras and online reviews to estimate demand and income. Along with maps and graphs, Street Grace\u2019s report on the \u201cindustry\u201d includes five pages of recommended licensing, operational codes, and enforcement, as well as samples of some of the more draconian state regulations of massage businesses. The organization describes its goal as \u201cthe eradication of the commercial sexual exploitation of children,\u201d but there\u2019s no evidence that any of these establishments exploits minors. The youngest spa worker among Long\u2019s victims was 44, the oldest 74.<\/p>\n

As for Long, although his church has expelled him, he\u2019ll find plenty of spiritual guidance behind bars. In \u201cGod in Captivity: The Rise of Faith-Based Prison Ministries in the Age of Mass Incarceration,\u201d author Tanya Erzen estimates that \u201cnondenominational Protestant Christians make up more than 85 percent of the volunteers who enter the prison\u201d in many states, particularly in the South, as political opposition and funding cuts decimate secular rehabilitative and educational programs for the incarcerated. Locked up in a violent, racist institution, with nothing but homophobic, misogynist, and radically sectarian religion for succor, Long will not be cured of his sickness unto death \u2014 the death, that is, of Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crabapple First Baptist Church, where the Atlanta shooting suspect Robert Aaron Long was an active member, in Milton, Ga., on March 17, 2021. Photo: Nicole Craine\/The New York\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90456"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90457,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90456\/revisions\/90457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}