Remembering Antonia Teixeira

Uncover the truth about the scandal that shook the Texas Baptist community, buried for over a century.

In 1894 Steen Morris raped Antonia 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 Antonia Teixeira, Mikeal C. Parsons and Joao 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 Antonio 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 SBC’s foreign missions. They then follow Antonia’s journey north, her assault, and the subsequent scandal that shook Texas-until it was intentionally erased.

Iconoclastic and meticulous, Remembering Antonia 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.