Jack Graham Calls SBC Abuse Crisis a ‘Reckless Hoax’ Days Before Annual Meeting
“SBC megachurch Pastor… said in a social media post that the SBC has never had a ‘systematic sexual abuse crisis’ and described what prompted a 2021 independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions as a ‘reckless hoax.’” - C.Leaders
"Systematic sexual abuse crisis"
Graham's argument is that the sexual abuse that did occur within SBC churches and institutions was not systematic and therefore not a crisis.
What does “systematic sexual abuse crisis” even mean?
What seems abundantly clear, though, is that too many (who happened to be connected in some way to SBC) got away with too much. Is that “systematic” and “crisis”? The question really misses the point. The relevant questions are Did SBC do all it could? Is it doing all it can?
I don’t claim to know the answers to those questions. It’s clearly not the sort of organization in which that is an easy thing to manage at the local church level because of the commitment to local church autonomy. But if they can basically kick churches out for having women “pastors,” it seems like they could more aggressively kick churches out for having poor abuse prevention policy, poor abuse allegation response, etc. But what do I know? (I’m not being ironic there. I’m just acknowledging that what ‘seems like’ and what is actually doable are often miles apart for reasons that are not obvious. So I’m trying to calibrate my criticism on that.)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
One can quibble, I guess, about whether the patterns of sexual abuse by SBC pastors, leaders, and others are "systematic" or a "crisis", but given the catastrophic and life-altering effects of clergy (and laity) sexual abuse of the vulnerable, would it kill these guys to say "Given the extent of sexual abuse nationwide, reflected to a degree in our churches, I'm glad we took a look to see what's gone wrong, and how we might improve."? What they've done instead is to in effect "flip the bird" at some very real sexual abuse victims who were abused in SBC churches, colleges, and such.
Put in other terms, when you circle the wagons, people will naturally assume you've got something to hide. It was extremely painful, but "Me Too" gave churches wonderful opportunities to show compassion to people who are hurting. We shouldn't blow it because we feel that certain things are unfair to us.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
“Given the extent of sexual abuse nationwide, reflected to a degree in our churches, I’m glad we took a look to see what’s gone wrong, and how we might improve.”?
Agree. A lot of church leaders, especially of older generations probably, might be good at ‘reading the room,’ but they haven’t really understood what ‘the room’ is now. So they are talking inside baseball to the SBC messengers, and staking out a position on an internal battle, but saying it to the entire world. You can’t really be effective that way in 2026. You couldn’t in 2016 or 2006 either, really—but now even less so.
Well, ‘effective’… If your goal is to signal a set of potential supporters or influence a constituency toward taking a particular position on an issue in the association, you can do your messaging that way and it might work. But “the room” being global now, you are paying a price for that. It is usually a mostly hidden price, though sometimes it becomes very public and observable.
Either way, it’s there.
But this is not a genius concept: “Think about it. Is there a better way to say it that doesn’t sound like a slap in the face to people who have been so egregiously hurt, while still appealing to your base?” If not, maybe you need a better base? Is it worth appealing to?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I think there is a realization that the SBC cannot do something substantive about sexual abuse that 1) is acceptable to the majority of its constituents, 2) doesn't expose the SBC or its affiliated churches to massive civil lawsuits, and 3) doesn't violate the autonomy of the local church.
They spent $2 million on the independent report that was pilloried by all sides. They've spent at least $13 million in legal fees with no clear and meaningful resolution in sight. They are still defendants in lawsuits by both the claimed victims of sexual abuse and the alleged perpetrators of sexual abuse.
The claims of "widespread sexual abuse and coverup within the SBC" are largely manufactured outrage.
Given all this, the rank and file are ready to move on.
Unfortunately, perhaps part of the problem is that there is not an easy solution in sight. When I ran the numbers a couple of decades ago, I more or less concluded that in any random sample of adults, about 2-3% of males (probably about a third that likelihood for females) had likely sexually abused a minor--we can quibble over whether it was a prepubescent child ("pedophilia") or pubescent teens ("pederasty"), but with 2-4 million adults in the risk population, about 850,000 of them on Megan's List of convicted offenders, you're talking not about fixing the problem for good, but rather of providing help and compensation to the victims, and working to reduce the risk of additional offenses.
(much like there's been no such resolution for drunk driving, no such resolution for drug use, no such resolution for domestic violence, etc..)
So instead of "can we move on?", the question I'd want to ask is "do we have the systems and attitudes in place to greatly reduce future incidence of this problem, are we looking for further ways to improve, and how are we doing at providing comfort and care to those who have been offended?".
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
As an entity that is about ministry, the problem has two major pieces: (a) actually caring about and helping people, and (b) being perceived as caring about and helping people. It’s easy to dismiss the latter as just PR and marketing or “just leave that to God.” But believers do have responsibilities in that sphere.
1 Pet 2.12, Titus 2:9-10, Matt 5:14-16, Php 2:14-15, to name a few.
So for SBC—and lots of other ministries—there’s the question of What’s within our scope/purpose/focus that we can do to help people in this area? Then there’s the question of How to we conduct ourselves in a way that maximizes our opportunities to be perceived/understood as working to help with these problems?
So dismissive rhetoric is never a good strategy for 50% of the problem. You flunk even if you ace the other half.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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