Southern Baptists Refused to Act on Abuse, Despite Secret Lists of Pastors| Christianity Today
By: News Reporting
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A rmed with a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors, Southern Baptist leaders chose to protect the denomination from lawsuits rather than protect the people in their churches from further abuse.
Survivors, advocates, and some Southern Baptists themselves spent more than 15 years calling for ways to keep sexual predators from moving quietly from one flock to another. The men who controlled the Executive Committee (EC)—which runs day-to-day operations of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—knew the scope of the problem. But, working closely with their lawyers, they maligned the people who wanted to do something about abuse and repeatedly rejected pleas for help and reform.
“Behind the curtain, the lawyers were advising to say nothing and do nothing, even when the callers were identifying predators still in SBC pulpits,” according to a massive third-party investigative report released Sunday.
The investigation centers responsibility on members of the EC staff and their attorneys and says the hundreds of elected EC trustees were largely kept in the dark. EC general counsel Augie Boto and longtime attorney Jim Guenther advised the past three EC presidents—Ronnie Floyd, Frank Page, and Morris Chapman—that taking action on abuse would pose a risk to SBC liability and polity, leading the presidents to challenge proposed abuse reforms.
As renewed calls for action emerged with the #ChurchToo and #SBCToo movements, Boto referred to advocacy for abuse survivors as “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”
Survivors, in turn, described the soul-crushing effects of not only their abuse, but the stonewalling, insulting responses from leaders at the EC for 15-plus years.
Christa Brown, a longtime advocate who experienced sexual abuse by her pastor at 16, said her “countless encounters with Baptist leaders” who shunned and disbelieved her “left a legacy of hate” and communicated “you are a creature void of any value—you don’t matter.” As a result, she said, instead of her faith providing solace, her faith has become “neurologically networked with a nightmare.” She referred to it as “soul murder.”
Another victim, Debbie Vasquez, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an SBC pastor starting at the age of 14. When one assault led to her pregnancy, she was forced to apologize in front of the church but forbidden to mention the father. The pastor went on to serve at another Southern Baptist church, and when Vasquez reached out to the EC, her entreaties were ignored and evaded for years until a Houston Chronicle investigation three years ago.
Over the past 20 years, meanwhile, a string of SBC presidents failed to appropriately respond to abuse in their own churches and seminaries. In several instances, leaders sided with individuals and churches that had been credibly accused of abuse or cover-up. One former president—pastor Johnny Hunt—sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife in 2010, investigators found.
At the annual meeting in Anaheim, California, next month, one year after they voted to launch the investigation, thousands of Southern Baptists will decide if they are ready to make the dramatic and costly changes the report recommends for the sake of survivors and church safety.
“Amid my grief, anger, and disappointment over the grave sin and failures this report lays bare, I earnestly believe that Southern Baptists must resolve to change our culture and implement desperately needed reforms,” said SBC president Ed Litton in a statement to CT. “The time is now. We have so much to lament, but genuine grief requires a godly response.”
Guidepost Solutions, the third-party investigative firm, wants the 13.7-million-member denomination to create an online database of abusers, offer compensation for survivors, sharply limit non-disclosure agreements, and establish a new entity dedicated to responding to abuse. The directives in the 288-page report will sound familiar to survivors and advocates, who have been calling for those measures all along.
“How many kids and congregants could have been spared horrific harm if only the Executive Committee had taken action back in 2006 when I first wrote to them, urging specific concrete steps? And how many survivors could have been spared the re-traumatizing hell of trying to report clergy sex abuse into a system that consistently turns its back?” >asked Brown in a 2021 letter. “The SBC Executive Committee’s longstanding resistance to abuse reforms has now yielded a whole new crop of clergy sex abuse victims and of survivors re-traumatized in their efforts to report.”
As they anticipated the release of the report, current interim EC president Willie McLaurin and EC chairman Rolland Slade quoted Ecclesiastes: “God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil” (12:14, CSB).
The current leaders urged Southern Baptists to be receptive to the bad news.
“This is a time and season to search out our shortcomings, a time to embrace the findings of the report,” they wrote last week , “a time to rebuild the trust of Southern Baptists and a time to heal by meeting the challenges required with the necessary changes expected.”
(The article continues in greater detail at the seed itself.)
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Lawyer's,,, The first rule of "Fight Club"... Don't talk about fight club.
Spoke evil about the people who wanted to do something good! The Southern Baptists ought to have decided to 'sweep around their own front door, before sweeping around somebody else'! These payouts are going to be huge.
Seems they are following the lead of the RCC.
This man is pure evil. I hope this scandal breaks wide open and bankrupts this church
child molester is the first thing crossing my mind whenever any self righteous jerk starts in with the bible blabber.
(GASP!)
The Department of Justice is involved now. You would think the Church as an organization would not want it to allow abuse to get this far that 'the world,' 'outsiders,' would need to come i to look for crimes committed by the people of faith in God.
Report of the Independent Investigation
The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s Response to Sexual Abuse Allegations and an Audit of the Procedures and Actions of the Credentials Committee
May 15, 2022
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have
been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention (“SBC”) Executive Committee (“EC”) to
report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church
staff. They made phone calls, mailed letters, sent emails, appeared at SBC and EC
meetings, held rallies, and contacted the press...only to be met, time and time again, with
resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC.
Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with
outside counsel, largely controlled the EC’s response to these reports of abuse. They
closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which were not shared
with EC Trustees, and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the
exclusion of other considerations. In service of this goal, survivors and others who
reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC
could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy – even if it meant that
convicted moleste rs continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church
or congregation.
Those who tout Christian nationalism are 'reserved'? Well, don't go into 'silent running' mode now! Speak up for something positive!