Baptist state convention sued over rape at church camp

You’ve got the need to do background checks, and then you’ve got privacy concerns—which more or less means the camp needs to independently run background checks, not just trust the church. And then you’ve got the question of how serious the crime was—if it was one of violence or sex, he should never have been allowed. The acceptance of “grooming” behavior—things like inappropriate duration of contact between an adult and an unrelated child—is, if proven, probably the ugliest part of this.

…as much as I appreciate how background checks are an inexpensive way of saying “our church/camp/whatever is on the lookout for bad behaviors”, it’s worth noting that there are some things they cannot do. They cannot figure out whether a man’s misdemeanor conviction is a real risk to kids (vs. say a violent felony), they cannot (as the lawsuit may have asserted) figure out if a person is in an un-Biblical but noncriminal relationship (say living in sin), and they cannot find out people who haven’t been arrested for their sins yet.

In the same way, they are no substitute for being vigilant about how adults interact with kids. If you look up characteristics of “grooming”, top on the list is that the perpetrator seeks to spend time alone with the victim, and next is that the perpetrator seeks to touch the victim in ever more inappropriate ways. If indeed the camp knew of this kind of grooming, but did nothing to stop it, they’ve more or less agreed to hand over the deed.

Churches, other Christian organizations, and secular organizations can do everything anyone can think of to prevent abuse and yet abuse can still happen. Everything can always be improved, and hindsight is always perfect. Insurance companies know that, regardless of the facts, emotion plays a big role in settling these cases. Juries tend to let emotion and pity/compassion be a major factor in decisions, which is why insurance companies do not want these cases going to a jury.

Our society, including Christians, is often hypocritical in sexual abuse cases. Today’s world highlights and flaunts the sexual for just about everything and everywhere, then self-righteously condemns those who are involved in sexual sin. Those who promote the sexual for their own financial profit and lust would never consider their own role and responsibility in the increase of sexual abuse.

How many pastors still openly and bluntly confront the acceptance of over-hyped sexuality in our society by discussing clothing (for both men women), entertainment choices (music, movies, books, magazines), and even some church singles ministries which have become dating clubs with inappropriate sexual contact?

Before we self-righteously make a judgment about what happened in this situation, perhaps we should take a closer look at ourselves.

[WallyMorris] Our society, including Christians, is often hypocritical in sexual abuse cases. Today’s world highlights and flaunts the sexual for just about everything and everywhere, then self-righteously condemns those who are involved in sexual sin. Those who promote the sexual for their own financial profit and lust would never consider their own role and responsibility in the increase of sexual abuse.

So, the adult who rapes and sodomizes a minor is less responsible for his/her sinful actions because the world openly promotes sexuality? Huh?!?

Some church brought this guy to be their representative at the camp!

Amazing how people read certain conclusions into a person’s comments (which I suspected would happen). Read carefully what I said - Never said the person accused in this story is “less responsible”, only that our society is hypocritical concerning sexual issues and never considers its own role/responsibility. That is not diminishing the responsibility of the guilty individual, only highlighting that our society is not innocent in this area.

Wally, I’d agree that our churches do a horrible job teaching modesty and sexual propriety, but it strikes me at the same time that there is a huge difference between accepting consensual immodesty and fornication and endorsing forcible rape. It seems that you’ve wandered into a slippery slope fallacy there, as we really don’t know whether acceptance of immodesty/fornication leads to more, or less, forcible rape. There are actually studies that find a slight negative correlation between using pornography and rape, for example.

I am of course no advocate of pornography, and of course I am an advocate of teaching Biblically on issues of modesty and sexual propriety, but sin B does not necessarily derive from sins A and C.

You are correct, though, that what we have is the accusation—or really a reporter’s description of the accusation—and not the adjudication of those charges. That noted, the charges alone do illustrate something important; if it appears our ministries haven’t done due diligence to prevent this kind of thing, life will not be pleasant when an incident occurs.

Not necessarily a direct correlation - But consider: My point is that the growing, open sexuality in almost every culture creates an atmosphere where those whose thinking and conscience has been twisted by their sin nature will do very evil acts. Of course the individual person is responsible, but those who promote and use sexuality are not innocent and, in fact, are hypocritical because they flaunt sexuality yet react with righteous condemnation at those who yield to sexual sin.

Jim: My comments are not insensitive at all. I specifically stated that the individual abuser is responsible for his actions. Don’t know how to make that any clearer. But I am also stating that we cannot ignore the growing open flaunting of sexuality in our culture that helps to create situations like this. Sorry, sir, but your comments are an over-reaction.

The way I see it, the conversation in this post and thread went more like this…

Jim: Did you hear that a Baptist camp in Oklahoma is now being sued because a girl was raped by a staffer who wasn’t properly background checked?

Bert: Tough one.

Jim: So easy to do a background check!

Jim: Here’s a plug for a background check company! $19.95! Why cut corners!

Wally: Might we consider if we live in a cultural milieu that desensitizes people to the atrocity of forcible rape?

Jim: Insensitive!

[WallyMorris]

Not necessarily a direct correlation - But consider: My point is that the growing, open sexuality in almost every culture creates an atmosphere where those whose thinking and conscience has been twisted by their sin nature will do very evil acts. Of course the individual person is responsible, but those who promote and use sexuality are not innocent and, in fact, are hypocritical because they flaunt sexuality yet react with righteous condemnation at those who yield to sexual sin.

….is the slippery slope fallacy, Wally. As I’ve noted above, willingness to engage in consensual sins does not necessarily translate into willingness to perpetrate non-consensual sins. Otherwise, we would have to make the argument that seeing a girl in a two piece swimsuit would necessarily lead to mass murder. (that would be called reductio ad absurdum)

If we are to call ourselves a people of the Logos (Word), we need to use sound logic. It is also worth noting that, as Jim notes, people can and do get hurt and offended when bad arguments are made—they are almost necessarily being accused, implicitly or explicitly, of something they had no control of. That can easily be slander.