Name Jeri Massi | Role Writer | |
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Books Derwood Inc, Crown and Jewel, The two collars, A dangerous game, Llamas on the loose | ||
Schizophrenic Christianity by Jeri Massi
Jeri M. Massi (born 1960 in Levittown, Pennsylvania) is a contract technical writer and an Evangelical Christian author whose novel Valkyries: Some Through the Fire (2003) was nominated for a Christy Award.
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Since 2001, Massi has attacked the response of Fundamentalist churches in cases of child molestation committed by members of the clergy in which the leadership (and sometimes the entire congregation) enforced silence on the victims. Massi argues that rigid adherence to the teachings of Jack Hyles and the King-James-Only Movement are typical characteristics of such churches.
After compiling a list of abusive clergy who have never been subject to church censure or discipline, Massi alleged that the church government system of Baptist Fundamentalism permits its clergy to abuse children by granting them positional immunity. She has asserted that fundamentalists have refused to expel abusive pastors, including those convicted of sex offenses. In 2005, Massi produced a five-part audio documentary, The Lambs of Culpeper, and released it onto the Internet for free download. The documentary addresses alleged abuses against children at Calvary Baptist Church of Culpeper, Virginia, a church then pastored by Charles Shifflett. In 2007, Massi founded the Conference of the Lambs, a two-day conference designed to assist adults who had been molested as children in Fundamentalist churches. In 2008 Massi self-published Schizophrenic Christianity, which denounced corruption within Christian Fundamentalism that had resulted in harm, especially to children. In 2009, Massi conducted interviews of former residents of Hephzibah House in Warsaw, Indiana, a Christian Fundamentalist Children's home for girls. She then produced The Lambs of Hephzibah House, an audio documentary that alleges severe abuse of residents at Hephzibah House. In 2011, Gary Tuchman, a CNN journalist reporting for Anderson Cooper 360, interviewed many of the same former residents and produced an episode about Hephzibah House on CNN's "Ungodly Discipline" series.