Popular pastor Aaron Ivey is fired for ‘gay’ text messages

In one day, Southern Baptists erase his existence

For insight into Evangelical America, you couldn’t do better than reading George Orwell’s novel “1984”—which the religion seems to think is a how-to guide.

The religion is a world of surveillance and “thought crimes.” I’m reading about Aaron Ivey, a pastor, author and podcaster in a Baptist megachurch in Austin, Texas, a married father of four, who had some “wrong” thoughts.

As I follow the scandal, pages about him keep disappearing. I ‘refresh’—and they’re gone. America’s largest religion strikes again.

In God’s country, people do tend to “disappear.”

As Ivey’s social media and other pages about him have now all vanished, I think that’s the story—erasing someone in a day. But I go in pursuit of the details they’re focusing on, which amount to a church’s press release.

Austin Stone Community Church, a megachurch in Austin, Texas, posted a notice that on February 4th they were alerted to “inappropriate and explicit ongoing text messages with an adult male” in Ivey’s text message history.

They found a few contacts with men over the years, including a ‘teenage boy’ back in 2011.

No one seems to have reported these contacts to the church. Rather, these discoveries seem to have come from Ivey’s phone, as best I can tell.

The church claims to have reported the contacts with the minor to the cops, without saying what crimes were committed. Given the vague description, Ivey’s interaction could just be a pastor talking with a teenager about sexuality. The church may not have liked Ivey’s stance.

I’m reading along:

“Since then, we have uncovered multiple similar instances with different individuals dating back to 2011 that show a very clear pattern of predatory manipulation, sexual exploitation, and abuse of influence.”

Am I sure I know what’s going on here?

I”m not. I would not read Southern Baptist descriptions of gay material at face value. The religion says gay people will die by fireballs thrown by God from the sky. They’re not great with facts.

I do know the story is reported to focus on the text messages with the adult man as the source of violation. Ivey is not being accused of adultery. Whatever crimes even the church itself wants to find are confined to the realm of speech.

Ivey thought the “wrong” thoughts and wrote the “wrong” words…in private.

That seems to be the story. The church accuses him by citing 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and 1 Timothy 5:19–20. They’re saying he’s an arsenokoitai, a Greek word whose meaning is not actually known. That didn’t stop Christians.

They’re saying he’s gay by nature. They’re not saying he acted on it. The Baptists are pressing the limits of their ‘rules’. His actual crime might just be being less Southern Baptist than they were paying him to be.

I‘m left trying to understand the status of a “DL” pastor in a Southern Baptist church.

Obviously, everyone knew this man was “gayish.” Ivey’s position at the church was the “Worship and Creativity Pastor.” He wore baseball caps and had tattoos and a playful presentation. He was a singer. In 2009 he released an album of Christian music, Between the Beauty & Chaos.

He was different, and he was popular. He was the nicer side of ‘God’.

I’m listening to a podcast of a 2019 SBC panel on being a “Strong Father.” Basically, there’s four bloviating blowhards and Ivey. The landing page is now scrubbed of his name.

The religion rejects reality and re-writes reality.

Maybe Aaron Ivey could make a case for the role he played.

He has been, it seems, a quietly gay or bisexual man who keeps up his family and congregation, as he also serves the larger Evangelical world.

If I had to guess if his wife knew, then I guess that she did. Jamie Ivey is herself a popular podcaster and book author. Frankly, I could read them both as queer.

I could read their work together as a queer intervention in the ongoing devastating horror to human life that is known as the Southern Baptist church.

It is, at least, a chapter in Southern Baptist queer history.

And perhaps that was the ‘beautiful and chaotic’ place that they made. 🔶