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Remembering Antônia Teixeira book cover
Remembering Antônia Teixeira
A Story of Missions, Violence, and Institutional Hypocrisy
2023
First Published
4.83
Average Rating
277
Number of Pages

Uncover the truth about the scandal that shook the Texas Baptist community, buried for over a century. In 1894 Steen Morris raped Antônia Teixeira. Both had been guests in the house of Baylor University president Rufus Burleson. The assault took place in Burleson’s backyard and was the first of a series of assaults that eventually left the young Baylor student pregnant. Rather than hold the guilty party accountable, Rufus Burleson and other prominent members of the Baptist community in Waco launched a campaign of intimidation, victim-blaming, and cover-up to preserve the virtuous image of their institution. In Remembering Antônia Teixeira, Mikeal C. Parsons and João B. Chaves painstakingly peel back the layers of concealment that have accumulated over a century of enforced silence about the case. Beginning with Antonia’s father Antônio Teixeira, a priest who had renounced Catholicism and become a pillar of the Baptist community in Brazil, Parsons and Chaves uproot romanticized and hagiographical accounts of the Southern Baptist Convention’s foreign missions. They then follow Antônia’s journey north, her assault, and the subsequent scandal that shook Texas—until it was intentionally erased. Iconoclastic and meticulous, Remembering Antônia Teixeira calls attention to how religious institutions have used selective memory to maintain power. In doing so, this book takes a first step toward dismantling those structures of oppression.

Avg Rating
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Authors

Mikeal C. Parsons
Mikeal C. Parsons
Author · 4 books
Mikeal C. Parsons (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Kidd L. and Buna Hitchcock Macon Chair in Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is the author of Acts in Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament and serves as editor of Perspectives in Religious Studies.
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