“Writings on religion, rape, rot, and more.”
That’s the tagline on Christa Brown’s website. Well, that says a lot.
Christa Brown has been described as the “public face” of Baptist clergy sexual abuse survivors, particularly Southern Baptist. She’s the author of This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang, and has appeared on ABC 20/20’s “Preacher Predators”, Vice, and other national media. Other than her amazing grandchildren, Brown devotes time to bring clergy accountability to Baptist-land and to support abuse survivors.
Her forthcoming memoir coming spring 2024 addresses patterns of patriarchy, family dysfunction, and how truth telling leads to a life filled with love, peace, and beauty.
Christa not only has her own story of personal survival, but she’s also helped countless others, and now mostly devotes time to drawing attention to the slow, feckless, and ultimately harmful ways that Southern Baptists handle sexual abuse. But that’s not all that’s coming in her new memoir. Not at all.
While Christa and I were getting to know each other prior to signing with Lake Drive Books, she said she wants her new book to show the things that made her vulnerable, how family can perpetuate abuse, and what’s been happening lately in the Southern Baptist Convention.
But what really caught my attention was when she said that she’s lived her life, slowly but surely, in a way that moves beyond the limited expectations placed upon women in the land of the Baptists. That culture tries to keep you within the fence wherein some really bad things can also happen. But there are times when we have that nagging feeling that things are not as they seem. If we can be honest with ourselves and others, then we can experience the transformative power of truth telling.
That makes for a fascinating read.
I’m so glad Christa is writing this book. She’s led the way for other abuse survivors, and they are only going to find more hope and encouragement as she continues to do so.
Welcome Christa!
David Morris, Publisher
Photo credit: Michael Ciaglo, Houston Chronicle