SBC head suggests expelling churches, creating registry to address sexual abuse
“In an address to the SBC’s executive committee on Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, Greear proposed a range of reforms to help make churches safer. The 10 ‘calls to action’ include repenting, providing free training for ministry leaders, encouraging churches to review and strengthen their policies on abuse and a re-examination of the ordination process.” - Christian Post
Good to see the energy shifting toward solutions and away from generalizations.
Here the link to the “10 calls to action” — https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/10-calls-to-action-for-south…
Related:
- Sex abuse study ‘to own our error,’ Greear says http://www.bpnews.net/52442
- With ‘Gospel above all,’ Greear tackles sex abuse http://www.bpnews.net/52444
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.
It found more than 700 victims of alleged sexual abuse by 380 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers since 1998. Some 220 have been convicted and 100 are still in prison.
If 380 leaders have been guilty and 220 convicted, that is probably as good or better than most denominations, when you consider the vastness of the SBC in that area — that nearly 58% of perpetrators have been convicted. I wonder how this compares, for example, to the Roman Catholic Church percentages, or other denominations, both in number of offenses and percentage of conviction?
It sounds like many SBC churches have taken things seriously and progressed more than many groups toward addressing these awful crimes, just not enough.
I think the response — which really was in progress well before this information hit the presses — is exceptional. SBC churches may have to surrender just a bit of autonomy to remain in the convention. To my way of thinking, any church that would not agree to the suggested standards should not be part of any solid association.
"The Midrash Detective"
I’m glad to see them pointing at resources, considering expelling churches that handle things badly, and requiring background checks for pastoral/other positions. That’s good, and it’s better than what many others are doing.
What I don’t see yet is actions that would deal directly with known pathologies in these cases. We know churches “pass around” errant pastors; what about a database of them, with a requirement that SBC member churches use it? They have “denominational discipline” in other areas; why not this?
Also, we know that a key part of a lot of these cases is the failure to report evidence of criminal acts to police; what about a statement about why it’s the best option for accuser, church, and accused because of the resources (subpoena power, physical evidence, investigation training, massive resources, Constitutional protections) that instantly become available when a report is made? About how an understanding of Matthew 18 needs to be balanced with an understanding of Romans 13?
Hopefully I’m just being impatient here, and they’re going to get to this point, but while I’m glad to see this movement, I’m hoping that we see a lot more soon.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Several of the “10 calls to action” are likely to result in some of what you’ve described, once it’s built.
6. Reexamine the ordination process. Churches should evaluate how to strengthen screening and background efforts in the ordination process.
7. Update the Annual Church Profile to ask about abuse. Questions related to updated abuse policies and occurences of abuse should be considered for inclusion in the Annual Church Profile completed by SBC churches.
…
9. Explore possibilities related to a database solution. The Study Group will continue to evaluate possibilities for a registry of offenders.
Some combination of these may well involve processes that would at least mitigate the “passing around of errant pastors.”
But I remain persuaded that long term solutions are all in the attitudes department. It’s about shaping beliefs of leaders and congregations through a variety of educational and motivational tools.
We did a study on this in SS last Sunday and one of the points someone mentioned is that quite often, what she observes professionally is that institutions have good procedures but someone fails to follow them. This is where attitude comes to the rescue. If you win hearts and minds to the importance of protecting potential victims, protecting the institution’s reputation, and—in the case of churches and ministries—protecting the reputation of Christ and the gospel, good procedures are going to be followed, even where they’ve failed to develop good “rules.” (Though I do recommend making the rules!)
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.
There numerous potential problems with a database.
First, if a pastor or staff member has committed an illegal act of abuse, the police and courts should deal with him, and he will come up in a background check.
The problem is with immoral, but not illegal acts. Do you hire people to investigate? What if you think he’s guilty, but you can’t prove it? What about the he said, she said, situations? What about false accusations? What about those who almost deserved to be on the list, but not quite? What happens when someone sues? What happens when someone is mistakenly put on the database and his life, ministry, family are ruined? Is being put on the list a life sentence, or can they ever get off the list?
Just a few of the possible complications of a database.
David R. Brumbelow
….that it’s likely to end up there, and for that matter I should correct myself a touch and say that people are at least saying that there ought to be a database of people “shown the door for sexual or other misconduct”. Obviously some work to be done in that area to make it hold up legally, but it’s a good start.
Agreed as well that you’ve got to work on attitudes, and I’ve seen it in action recently as I’ve done a couple of training sessions for children’s workers. People clue in about the “two adult rule” when you point out the other person is the witness you might need to be exonerated, why it’s in everybody’s best interest to have criminal allegations investigated by the police, and so on. There is a real enthusiasm on peoples’ part for doing things well.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[David R. Brumbelow]There numerous potential problems with a database.
First, if a pastor or staff member has committed an illegal act of abuse, the police and courts should deal with him, and he will come up in a background check.
The problem is with immoral, but not illegal acts. Do you hire people to investigate? What if you think he’s guilty, but you can’t prove it? What about the he said, she said, situations? What about false accusations? What about those who almost deserved to be on the list, but not quite? What happens when someone sues? What happens when someone is mistakenly put on the database and his life, ministry, family are ruined? Is being put on the list a life sentence, or can they ever get off the list?
Just a few of the possible complications of a database.
David R. Brumbelow
David, probably good to go through a few of your thoughts here. First of all, as the grieving families of the Sutherland Springs massacre know very well, not every crime makes it onto federal or state crime databases. You had the same issue with the Parkland shooter not being reported by his school, as well as a number of other mass shooters. Plus, you’ve sometimes got difficulties with the name—so if you record a pastor’s conviction, along with age, resume, and the like, you probably have a better, more useful database than does the government.
Regarding non-criminal acts, there’s a bunch to say, starting with while you’ve got the possibility of being sued for someone being listed (rightly or wrongly), you’ve also got the likelihood of being sued because you didn’t warn a future employer about problems with a person. Moreover, the pattern for most people who eventually do criminal abuse is that they’ve been pushing the boundaries in various ways for a while before that. Good examples of this are Donn Ketcham and Darrell Gilyard. As a result, you’re not generally building the case off one piece of evidence or one witness.
Best practice, really, is that if the evidence aren’t clear, you bring in an outsider who won’t be motivated to sweep things under the rug. It is a catch-22 kind of situation, to be sure, but generally it’s one where you can pick your odds. It also helps a lot if you define acceptable and unacceptable behaviors and take action with those, rather than waiting for things to get really bad.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
David raises good points. These are very hard questions to grapple with. In a perfect world, you would report an incident to the police and the SBC, and then let the adjudication process answer many questions about what gets recorded in the database.
Someone makes an allegation? Recorded.
Allegation is found to be baseless? Recorded.
Investigation turns into a prosecution? Record that as well.
Etc.
The problem with that, of course, is that most people prefer to ignore their way out of problems (which eventually blows up in spectacular fashion, as we are currently seeing), or nothing gets done at all because the people who should be watching out are gutless cowards or worse, prefer to gaslight and blame the victim that “led him astray”.
You can’t fix sin nature or gutlessness, but you CAN make this kind of reporting SOP -if- these churches want to remain in the SBC. So I favor a database and would gladly help with it if they asked me to (which I highly doubt they will).
We can’t save everyone and stop every evil deed…but we can put a white hot spotlight on it so that evildoers flee back to the darkness instead of hanging out with “our” children. Sunlight is still a powerful disinfectant, and people don’t want to be transparent and open about this, maybe then they should deal with the resulting consequences.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
After the Houston Chronicle published part 1 of their expose, it was interesting to watch the variety of responses from my friends across church polity lines. My Presbyterian, Anglican, and Lutheran friends were quick to sharply point out that this is what happens with congregationalism (ignoring what’s happened/ing in the RCC, but that’s not my point here). They would go on to encourage their SBC friends to join a denomination. On the other side of the polity spectrum, I saw some IFBer’s assert that this would be less likely to happen in churches independent from a denominational office.
If these recommendations are implemented, I predict that the pro-denomination crowd will get their way and the anti-SBC crowd will finally be speaking correctly when they accuse the SBC of being a denomination.
I’m not saying that’s good or bad either way; I haven’t thought enough about it to know what I think. However, these recommendations will require an ever-growing oversight of local churches that will turn the SBC into a denomination. I don’t see how that couldn’t happen.
I know accusations vs. actual prosecution are two different things.
What troubles me, though, is that any church in modern times would not do a background check and check references when hiring a pastor.
This would not get all the evil doers, but it would get some. Yet some churches hire pastoral staff practically right off the street.
A basic background check does not cost much, and neither do some phone calls.
"The Midrash Detective"
John, good point about “becoming a denomination”, but if I remember correctly, hasn’t the SBC exercised a degree of “message discipline” in many areas already? That is, if your church denies the Trinity, starts sprinkling infants, and a range of other non-Baptist behaviors, you can expect the state or national association to suggest your church go elsewhere for fellowship, no?
So I’d suggest that what we have here is a matter of degrees, not a black and white distinction between associations and denominations. It’s a lot like the distinction between a franchise model and company owned stores.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I’m a member at an SBC church, but I know very little about how the SBC actually works.
That being said, certainly the SBC can dissociate from / discipline churches that knowingly hire predators, the same way they’d dissociate from churches that deviate from orthodoxy.
I’m skeptical of the centralized database; the costs may outweigh the benefits. Even if you had 100% participation from SBC churches, the boundaries between SBC and independent Baptist / Bible churches are fully permeable. If you can’t significantly increase your “gotcha” rate over ordinary background checks and reference checks, what’s the point?
I work for a real estate title company. The American Land Title Association has published a series of best practices, and a title company can become certified as compliant with the best practices. For churches, a minimum best practice would be a background check. Best practices should also include calling previous churches and employers and educational institutions and documenting your findings. Having a child protection policy is also a minimum. Church insurance companies also provide assistance with reviewing your policies and facilities. Our insurance company basically just made us install windows in every classroom door. (It’s an old building.)
So what I’m thinking about is more of a compliance-badge approach than a top-down-enforced approach; “enforcement” can be done through recognized groups auditing the church’s practices; and insurance companies might have an interest in making this happen, too.
Michael Osborne
Philadelphia, PA
As a manager, I’ve been told by HR that I can no longer provide job references for previous employees. Instead, all I can do is state the person worked for me between this date and that date. This is because people have successfully sued their previous employers for defamation and invasion of privacy when their previous employer provided a negative employment reference to the person’s potential new employer.
Given this, the only thing this “database” may be able to realistically do without opening the SBC and the former church to significant liability is record if the pastor has been convicted of any crimes. Recording unproven allegations would definitely open the SBC and the previous church to significant liability.
It’s worth noting that doing best practices like background checks, reference checks, and the like really doesn’t work by “catching” people. Think about it; what man with a felony sexual assault conviction is going to expose himself to prosecution by applying for a youth pastor job involving a background check? What it really does is more basic; it lets people know that the organization has their act together, and that acts as a deterrent for all likely perpetrators, whether they are known to the justice system or not.
A good comparison; having a clean, well-kept property with an alarm system, a dog, or lots of neighbors walking by is going to attract a lot less attention from burglars than an unkempt property without an alarm or a dog. It’s all about “we know what to look for, so think twice before you tangle with us.”
Regarding the difficulties of the warning list, it’s worth noting that any number of organizations have similar efforts that have addressed the issues of being sued, being used, and such. For example, in sports organizations, it’s called “SafeSport.” There are procedures for evaluating the evidence, appeals processes, and more to reduce the odds of a lawsuit. Moreover, the structure is public, and those trying to protect kids are generally glad to let us “copy” what they’ve done. What’s covered; actual crimes, of course, but also repeated violations of child safety guidelines.
And here’s the balance of cost. Let’s assume that 10% of the time, we wrongly add someone to our “do not call” list. On the flip side, if we don’t create that list, that means that 90% of people shown the door for non-criminal reasons are free to go on to the next church. Keep in mind that those 90% are generally involved in repeated moral transgressions, and thus for every ten people wrongly added, you would have literally hundreds of victims if you don’t create the list.
Keep in mind as well that “rejected for pastoral pay or unpaid service in AWANA” is not going to earn as much sympathy in a court as “you looked aside as a child molester groomed ten little girls/boys for sexual acts.” The balance of risk is not exactly subtle here—we are talking orders of magnitude less risk of having the list than of not having it. I would guess, therefore, that if the SBC (or GARBC or whoever) created one, that those outside would be begging to take a look as they do pastoral hires.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Bert Perry]Keep in mind as well that “rejected for pastoral pay or unpaid service in AWANA” is not going to earn as much sympathy in a court as “you looked aside as a child molester groomed ten little girls/boys for sexual acts.”
Bert, I understand your point. However, the first time a church loses a lawsuit for invasion of privacy and/or defamation because it “flagged” a former pastor, deacon, or congregant based only on accusations, that will be the end of the database. No church will want to risk bankruptcy and/or forfeiture of property.
Discussion