Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism
Thursday, May 22, 2025
5 p.m. Pacific/6 p.m. Mountain/7 p.m. Central/8 p.m. Eastern
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Join LGBTQ-RAN board member Jim Mitulski and Suzanna Krivulskaya for a conversation on Krivulskaya’s newly-published Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism (Oxford University Press: 2025). Disgraced is a sweeping religious and cultural history of ministerial sex scandals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Krivulskaya investigates the cultural consequences of scandal, what demands the public made of religion in response to revelations of pastoral misdeeds, and how Protestantism itself changed in the process. The book covers both the most sensational and well-known scandals as well as never before examined cases of ministerial impropriety. Through this research and analysis, Krivulskaya reveals the historical background for current reactions to charismatic religious authority and to sexual abuse.
Suzanna Krivulskaya, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of History at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches courses in gender, religion, and digital history. She specializes in modern U.S. history and studies the relationship between sexuality and religion. Krivulskaya was the 2019-2020 honoree for LGBTQ-RAN’s award for papers.
Rev. Dr. Jim Mitulski is a pastor, activist, community organizer, and fundraiser. He has pastored churches in the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Churches. He served as the denominational Director of Development and Clergy Vocations for the MCC Churches and taught courses at the Pacific School of Religion and currently at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He is currently pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont (California).