Control: A Black Woman’s Response To The GC2 Summit

When I first heard that people like Ed Stetzer and Beth Moore were hosting the GC2 Summit, a conference about sexual assault in the church, my first thought was “They’ve got a lot of fucking nerve”. Ed, Beth, and a lot of the conference organizers have a well documented history of upholding the patriarchal, misogynist system that protects abusers and shames victims. On top of that, the conference title originally had the #ChurchToo hashtag in it with no mention of the the hashtag creators, Emily Joy and Hannah Paasch. I was angry but not surprised; this conference is evangelical culture’s way of trying to appropriate and control a narrative that makes them look bad, and there was no way they were going to allow two women, queer women who reject their oppression, make them look like the bad guys.

I was born and raised in the Assemblies of God, an evangelical Pentecostal denomination that has millions of adherents worldwide. Like most evangelical churches, purity culture was a cornerstone of any teaching related to sexuality. When I was 12 years old, my youth group completed the True Love Waits program and we were each given purity rings in a pseudo-wedding ceremony where the girls were told to wear white. From that moment on, I was indoctrinated with shameful, victim blaming rhetoric that disproportionately affects women: sex before marriage is a sin and will ruin your chances of having a godly marriage. Dress modestly in order to not tempt men, and if you do tempt them, it’s your fault. Once you’re married, you owe your…