I am unsurprised after watching, at 10 or 11 years old, as an SBC was torn apart by the deacons and lay ministers, and turned against the pastor, all for accepting a Black family into the congregation. The congregation didn't have a problem that I saw. It was the leadership.

It was also the leadership – the actual minister/chaplain who told my mother to go back to her cheating husband and be a wife he wouldn't cheat on.

Think about the raging misogyny heaped on women congregants by the SBC individual church community leaders. Those community leaders rose through the ranks to become the convention leaders. It's like a bit of mold or mildew that starts in a damp corner, mostly out of sight out of mind. If you leave it, it grows and spreads. Eventually, you end up with it taking over until you can scarcely see anything else.