Report shows SBC Executive Committee pattern of resistance to addressing abuse claims

I’ve only skimmed headlines and a few paragraphs at this point, but it’s not looking good. While finger-pointing or even rejoicing may be the first impulse of many, our first impulse ought to be to pray for the SBC. This is going to be a very tough stretch of road for them, and they aren’t entering this crisis from a place of strong internal unity—by all appearances.

If your not involved in an SBC ministry—as I am not—don’t think this won’t affect you. In one way or another it’s probably going to affect everyone who is even a little bit Baptist or evangelical.

I’m praying for SBC this morning: that they’ll be able to find a way to make things right for the future, as well as—to whatever extent possible—the past.

Our church is one of the larger SBC churches. I am expecting some communication to the members in the coming week or so.

SBC is a challenging structure as it is a denomination, lightly layered on top of an independent church philosophy. While a future SBC model that addresses this will be a bit challenging than other denominations, I think it can be clearly built. Reading through the report, it echos a lot of the same issues that we have seen across many areas of Christendom with this topic.

I now serve as the teaching elder at an SBC church. I absolutely despise SBC politics. However, having served at a non-denom church where one of the former pastors was guilty of clergy sexual abuse, I’ve seen the devastation it causes the victim, the victim’s family, the perp’s family, and the church. The fact that clergy sexual abuse was covered up because of SBC politics is maddening.

The leaders of the SBC need to get serious about addressing, repenting of, and preventing clergy sexual abuse or the SBC church where I’m serving now is going to exit the SBC.

My reading of these things is that just about every disaster starts with the assumption “this isn’t that big of a deal”, followed by “we can handle this inside,”, and then finally “we’re satisfied that the offender is repentant.” This looks bad for the SBC right now, but to be blunt, I’m praying that my church isn’t guilty of these kind of things somewhere back, and that we’re really developing the kind of culture that would work to prevent this kind of thing and then deal with it in a Godly way. I don’t know that we’re totally there yet, but we’re making progress.

Not surprisingly, much of the inaction by the SBC EC was due to a desire to shield the SBC from legal liability. Like it or not, that is what general counsel is paid to do: avoid legal liability. Even resources like Christian Law Association advise churches based primarily on issues of legal liability.

So, churches have to make hard decisions to do what is morally / Scripturally right even though that potentially places them in legal jeopardy and financial ruin.

The thing is, is that the SBC had plenty of foreknowledge of where this was going to go via other examples over the last 20 years, Roman Catholic Church, ARBCA, various colleges….

This report is really only about how the EC handled the allegations that were being sent to them by local people. The truly scary part is how the local churches handled this! They often covered up and accused the victims! That is what concerns me.

It really bothers me that hundreds of pastors and youth pastors in the SBC are perverts. But then what bothers me more is that for each of those 4-5 people at a minimum covered up their sin!

Then what TRULY floors me is that WE as the body of Christ lack the ability to spot perverts in our midst. We lack the spiritual discernment to tell when someone is a deceiver and a liar. We prefer to pick people who smile well, and chat well. And come over for Saturday barbeque. We do not test them on whether they really know the Lord or now… it scares me!

[Mark_Smith]

Then what TRULY floors me is that WE as the body of Christ lack the ability to spot perverts in our midst. We lack the spiritual discernment to tell when someone is a deceiver and a liar. We prefer to pick people who smile well, and chat well. And come over for Saturday barbeque. We do not test them on whether they really know the Lord or now… it scares me!

We can’t see the heart, Mark. Judas Iscariot was given responsibility over the purse, a position of trust.

[T Howard]

Mark_Smith wrote:

Then what TRULY floors me is that WE as the body of Christ lack the ability to spot perverts in our midst. We lack the spiritual discernment to tell when someone is a deceiver and a liar. We prefer to pick people who smile well, and chat well. And come over for Saturday barbeque. We do not test them on whether they really know the Lord or now… it scares me!

We can’t see the heart, Mark. Judas Iscariot was given responsibility over the purse, a position of trust.

True, but I’m telling you in my experience too many churches are looking for used car salesman, rather than men who know the Bible, pray, adn love God. They want hunters, and fishers, and guys who hang out at bbq smokers all saturday, rather than a man who memorizes Scriptures, or asks them to memorize. Etc… I could go on and on. Maybe your experience is different.

Mark, I think the biggest issue IMO is that it’s hard to tell who’s hiding things until you really know what to look for, and even then, it’s hard. One enabler, Paige Patterson, was not only conversant in the Scriptures, but also was of course a seminary Presiedent twice over. I have my differences with the theology at BJU, but they (and people at ABWE) were anything but less than capable in handling Scripture, no? Even Larry Nassar seemed to be great—a Sunday School teacher who seemed to have a great rapport with the gymnasts he molested.

The ugly reality is that until you find someone alone with a victim, grooming is often hard to detect, because it intentionally looks like just ordinary kindness to the victim. There are some things you can do—watch out for people being alone, pushing the envelope in terms of behavior, set limits on who changes diapers and the like—but at another level, a lot of it comes down to “do you take it seriously when you see problematic behavior or get an accusation of immoral or criminal behavior?”

By and large, when it’s likely illegal, that means “did you report it to authorities and cooperate with them?” Or put more bluntly, do we recognize that the police have a lot of resources to investigate, a well developed nonsense detector, the ability to collect and analyze physical/circumstantial evidence, subpoena power to require people to testify, protections for all parties like mandatory discovery of evidence and the right to cross examination, and more?

(plus; the police get some blame if they—e.g. FBI in Nassar case—drop the ball)

The challenge that I see (growing up in these circles for 50+ years) is:

• Christians mistake illegal acts with church discipline acts. Many churches preach to avoid lawsuits amongst Christians, or calling police to deal with a problem, instead leveraging ill-trained elders/deacons through a church discipline process. This not only allows things that are illegal to go unpunished, but it allows people to be “bounced around”.
• Things that were commonplace in Christian institutions, are not considered proper anymore. Christian school administrators spanking girls in their office
• We have often spent too much time focused on girls modesty over holiness. A girl wearing something improper tempts a man to sin.
• A strong desire for church independence. Unless someone knows someone from a pastors previous outgoing church, he comes into the new church with a clean slate.
• Most churches are ill-equipped to handle these types of situations, or really any serious moral issue within their church, often leading to poor counselling of the individual

The world has changed. What once was deemed proper, is no longer the case anymore, and should have never been the case in the past.

I’m convinced of the need for congregational church government, and would even argue that all churches are ultimately congregationally governed. When people are tired of the church, they show up as empty pews. Game over, right?

That said, when I look at Scripture, and especially the letters of John, his rebuke of Diotrephes comes to mind. Here is a church leader who is rebuked for all time for all churches. Sounds like the kind of database that many would encourage for the SBC in particular, and really for evangelicals and fundamentalists in general, no? Same basic thing with Paul’s rebuke of Hymeneaus and Alexander. Congregational church government should not be a license to go down the street carrying the same bag of sins.

Not surprisingly, much of the inaction by the SBC EC was due to a desire to shield the SBC from legal liability. Like it or not, that is what general counsel is paid to do: avoid legal liability. Even resources like Christian Law Association advise churches based primarily on issues of legal liability.

I understand this but I disagree. The Christian’s duty is to glorify God, which means making sure that evil is thwarted and punished. Stonewalling criminal activity and avoiding legal liability are secondary to those concerns.

Sexual predators should have been put out immediately, not harbored or passed around, and those who enabled the abusers or conducted it are culpable and should not be in ministry.

RNS is having a field day:

Southern Baptists’ abuse report is no call for reform. It’s a repudiation of the past 40 years.

Alleged assault by former SBC president may be most damaging part of explosive report

40 years in the making: A timeline of the Southern Baptists’ sexual abuse crisis

And Rachel Denhollander has weighed in…

C.Today: Rachael Denhollander Calls for a Southern Baptist Reckoning on Abuse

SBC Voices: Rachael Denhollander Statement on SBC SATF/Guidepost Report

[Jay]

Not surprisingly, much of the inaction by the SBC EC was due to a desire to shield the SBC from legal liability. Like it or not, that is what general counsel is paid to do: avoid legal liability. Even resources like Christian Law Association advise churches based primarily on issues of legal liability.

I understand this but I disagree. The Christian’s duty is to glorify God, which means making sure that evil is thwarted and punished. Stonewalling criminal activity and avoiding legal liability are secondary to those concerns.

Sexual predators should have been put out immediately, not harbored or passed around, and those who enabled the abusers or conducted it are culpable and should not be in ministry.

Jay, I understand and agree with you. However, organizations like CLA will advise churches to not publicly say anything about the former member or pastor because that individual can turn around and sue the church for invasion of privacy and defamation, etc. if the church tells other churches about the reason that individual left the church. Same thing with church discipline issues.

Obviously, this does not apply if the pastor / member is criminally convicted. But, in many of the cases, the person never was.

So, a church has to choose between protecting itself from a potential lawsuit and financial ruin and warning other churches about the former pastor / member.