One thing complementarian ministries share with Epstein Files

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on March 20, 2026.

One of the most disturbing revelations of the Epstein Files is how similar the power dynamics of the men at Epstein’s Little Saint James Island were to the men in mainstream complementarian ministries.

Of course, most pastors aren’t actively assaulting children. So conservative evangelicals often dismiss any talk about systemic issues as sinful empathy-driven overreactions of “the progressive gaze” to the isolated abuses of a few. But when we analyze the way men, women and children relate to one another in the Epstein Files and in complementarian ministries, there are rhymes of power that simply cannot be ignored.

In Episode 108 of “Highest Power: Church + State,” I interviewed GRACE Executive Director Laura Thien and Director of Institutional Response Robert Peters about similarities they’re noticing between the response to sexual abuse in the church and in the Epstein Files.

“We are elevating men to power who are not worthy of that power,” Peters said.

“We are elevating men to power who are not worthy of that power.”

Thein added, “I do think we’re seeing this in both the Epstein case and in the broader sense of what happens in church abuse cases, which is willful ignorance, if you will, at best case scenario, and on the other end, an absolute refusal to acknowledge the issues at hand.”

One of the issues is the way complementarian churches and parachurch ministries think about pastoral authority and power to begin with. The problem doesn’t begin the moment an abuse case occurs or gets covered up. The problem has been festering and growing there the whole time, specifically in relation to who gets a seat at the table.

Different forms of patriarchy

According to philosopher Kate Manne, the old patriarchy is “treating women as a kind of property.” It’s a purity culture that hoards and hides women and girls as virgin property to be owned.

But as she’s discussed the culture revealed in the Epstein Files, she’s identified a new form of patriarchy that involves “men banding together to share, trade and sell property in groups where they’re not competing for particular women.” It’s a capitalistic commodification culture that feels like “a source of both camaraderie and male bonding over this shared and traded property rather than jealously hoarding the resource of a particular woman.”

Anand Giridharadas, publisher of The Ink, noticed the same thing in his examination of the Epstein Files.

“It was highly instructive about how this larger network of power operated,” he told Terry Moran in an interview. “I think there’s a hybrid here of women as crypto and women as servile daughters-in-law. Women are a commodity to be traded but women also don’t belong anywhere when anything real and important is happening.”

He told Moran that reading the latest installments of the Epstein Files felt like reading a culture.

(Shutterstock)

Excluded from the table

Giridharadas has spent many hours exploring this culture in the latest releases of the Epstein Files. “There are connections in terms of the indifference of this Epstein class, the dehumanization it engages in, who it sees and people and who it doesn’t,” he told Moran.

When he started examining the pictures, what stood out to him wasn’t so much who was present in the photos, as who was absent from them.

“Thousands and thousands of photos,” he recalled. “And it’s obviously women and girls everywhere because of the sex crimes investigation.”

Then after pausing, he added, “Except during mealtime.”

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.