Stewart-Allen Clark, the pastor of the First General Baptist Church in Malden, Missouri, has a problem with women these days. They’re just not hot enough for him and by golly, he has had enough. In fact, he preached about it from his church, according to video captured by the Friendly Atheist.
“Why is it so many times that women after they get married let themselves go?” he asks. “Why is that? Why do they do that?” He appears to be holding a Bible, which is interesting, because this isn’t really a line of questioning the Bible encourages, but be that as it may. He shows an honest-to-goodness picture of the Distracted Boyfriend meme on the projector and instructs the women in the congregation to not give their men a “reason” to be like the “distracted boyfriend.” This is all a real thing that was really said on stage, you can watch the video if you don’t believe it, and it’s not the wildest part.
“Now, I’m not saying every woman can be the epic trophy wife of all time like Melania Trump,” Clark ruefully acknowledges, flashing a picture of her on the screen just in case any of the women needed a reminder of what they could never aspire to be. “Most women can’t be trophy wives but, you know, like her. Maybe a participation trophy? I don’t know.”
“All I can say is, not everybody looks like that, amen?” he says, and this viewer could only hear one, lonely “amen!” in response. “But you don’t need to look like a butch either!” he continues. Good grief. What on earth.
It goes on. Clark admits that he does not do marriage counseling anymore, which is the single bright spot of this clip, before saying that couples with struggling marriages would be helped if the wife would consider “weight control,” approvingly noting that a friend has put a “divorce weight” on his wife (that’s why this is so “important,” he says) and says he told his son that women wear makeup because otherwise they’d be “ugly and they stink.” “You don’t want to be ugly and stink!” he shouts.
The clip ends with a little joke about how scientists have discovered that wedding cake diminishes a woman’s sex drive, which is met with laughter from at least some parts of the congregation.
Since the Friendly Atheist’s post, First General Baptist Church has taken down its Facebook page and its video archives on YouTube and Vimeo.
Clark is not exactly a smalltimer in his congregation. Until recently, he was slated to be the moderator of the General Association of General Baptists meeting in July 2022. On Monday, General Baptist officials announced via Facebook that he’d “resigned” from that position amidst calls for an investigation following this clip’s publication. According to the post, the Council of Associations and a local presbytery were both urged to take “appropriate actions” in response.
The sermon included comments that are not consistent with the positions and values of General Baptists. General Baptists believe that every woman was created in the image of God, and they should be valued for that reason. Furthermore, we believe that all individuals regardless of any other factors are so loved by God that Christ died for them.
That’s a good statement, although the Friendly Atheist found some past clips that suggest this action maybe should have come a few years ago, such as reported Mother’s Day sermon in which Clark said that if beautiful Southern women are “Southern Belles” then beautiful Mexican women should be “Taco Bells.”
