Crabapple First Baptist Church announced this week that they were going to officially kick Robert Aaron Long, the Georgia spa shooter who murdered eight people, out of their congregation. They explained that despite celebrating his baptism in 2018 (in a now-deleted Facebook post), they could “no longer affirm that he is truly a regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.” In other words, he had betrayed Jesus.

The statement itself seemed fairly comprehensive. The church admitted Long’s family members were part of the congregation. They condemned his actions. They put the blame entirely on him — not the victims or Satan.

But at the same time, they basically took down their entire social media infrastructure. They said this was out of concern for the safety of their members, which is understandable… but why remove every past sermon? Why remove basic statements about the church’s beliefs? Those don’t contain personal information. Those are ideas the church, until this week, wanted to spread!

Here’s one theory: The church, which is at least loosely affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, has promoted a lot of awful ideas in the past, and those views may have shaped the thinking of Long.