Two outstanding articles—really two of the best I’ve read in the last year—highlight the trouble with hard-line Christian Patriarchy.

The first article, “Let Us Prey,” appeared in Chicago magazine in December 2012. It is about the sex abuse scandals in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Church (IFB), a movement which promotes complete male authority, complete female submission, and severe corporal discipline. When each italicized word is taken to its logical extreme, abuse abounds.

The second article, “Doug Phillips: The Big Scandal You Didn’t Hear About and Why It Matters,” appeared November 8 in the Huffington Post. Author Julie Ingersoll, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida, raises questions about the Quiverfull Movement and Phillips’s far-reaching empire in the aftermath of his resignation from Vision Forum (read his resignation letter here, prefaced by a blogger who has her own story to tell…