On Sunday afternoon, the Southern Baptist Convention released the results of an investigation into sexual abuse claims among pastors and staff of its member churches.
With 14.8 million members in 47,000 affiliated churches, the SBC is the largest protestant denomination in the country. Only the Catholic church has more U.S. members. A search on the Southern Baptist Convention’s website reveals no fewer than 18 member churches in Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties.
The report from a third-party investigative firm was explosive and deeply disturbing, implicating not only individual pastors and staff but also SBC leadership, which the report said covered up instances of abuse, failed to notify its affiliated churches who often unknowingly hired admitted abusers despite the presence of a database of offenders the SBC kept on file. Victims were ignored, disgraced, vilified and mocked for coming forward.
The report exposed all of the elements found in the Catholic Church scandal. The SBC leadership’s primary goal, based on the 20-year-period that was the scope of the investigation, was to protect the church from financial liability at the expense of the victims.
The investigation spanned the time period of 2001-2021 noting 703 claims against SBC-affiliated pastors or staff.
The firm has suggested 17 recommendations in its report, including establishing an offender information system, creating a survivor compensation fund and issuing a written apology to survivors, creating a “Resource Toolbox” to train church leaders and volunteers in abuse prevention and response and prohibiting confidentiality agreements, which have been used to silence survivors.
All of this should be perceived as a good faith effort to change the culture of SBC leadership. It should be noted that the SBC membership demanded the outside investigation into the abuses, which turned out to be a wise move, considering SBC leadership’s role in keeping these offenses a “dirty little secret.”
Dirty, yes. Little, no.
In one case noted in the report, a pastor was reported for 44 separate acts of sexual assault as he bounced from one congregation to another across Texas and Oklahoma before finally being charged and convicted on separate charges. Since his release from prison, he has returned to the ministry, although not at a SBC-affiliated church.
Another case told the heart-breaking ordeal of a victim, a 14-year-old girl who had been groomed and raped by a pastor, resulting in pregnancy. She was forced to stand up in church and apologize for her “immorality” but was not allowed to name the father of her child.
As brutally frank as the report is, there are still some things that should be made more clear as the SBC prepares for its annual membership convention in June.
First, there is no reason to believe that these abuses and their cover-ups somehow just began 20 years ago. It’s far more likely that this 20-year-period was merely the tip of the iceberg. The full gravity of the abuses is incalculable over the SBC’s 177-year history.
Second, what has happened needs to be clearly understood for what it is and what it isn’t.
SBC pastors all across the country will be addressing this report with their congregations. Some, like Andy Brown, senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Starkville, have already issued statements. Brown wrote that he was “disgusted and heart-broken” after reading the report.
“Let me remind you that First Baptist Starkville is not at fault for what has been revealed,” he wrote. “That being said, we are Christians in the Southern Baptist family and share the responsibility to live Ephesians 5.”
The passage addresses “sexual immorality, impurity and covetousness.”
It’s certain that Brown did not use the passage to minimize the acts outlined in the report.
Yet it is important to confront the real nature of these offenses. These were not cases of a pastor having a fling with a church secretary. These were cases where children were groomed by adults in positions of authority and sexually assaulted. These, then, aren’t cases of “sexual immorality” or “impurity.” They are crimes and need to be confronted as such.
But will the SBC do that?
Hospitals and schools are required to report to the police when they have reason to suspect that a patient or student has been the victim of sexual assault.
The SBC could adopt that policy, too.
For too long, the report shows, SBC leadership has cared more about protecting its reputation than protecting victims.
If the SBC is serious about changing that, it will be reflected in the terms it uses to describe these offenses and the actions it takes when it learns of them.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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