Reporters and analysts have used words like “apocalypse” and “bombshell” to describe the long-awaited findings released last Sunday. Across 288 pages, the report disclosed the failures of the Southern Baptist Convention’s response, or lack of response, to complaints of sexual abuse in our ranks. Why did the SBC commission the report, what does the report say, and what should our response be?
Why Did the SBC Commission the Report?
When the Houston Chronicle published a three-part series in 2019 on sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches, our congregation held a panel discussion to hear from one of our members who had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse in her SBC church in Connecticut. We also heard from our children’s minister about our church’s prevention policies. KXAN covered our efforts.
Soon after the Chronicle’s exposé, concerns about sexual abuse cover-ups by the Executive Committee (EC) began to circulate within the denomination.
You have to understand something about how our convention is structured. The SBC is not a hierarchical structure such as you find in Roman Catholicism. Each Baptist church is autonomous, and we make our own decisions on staffing and budgeting and so on. Churches voluntarily band together at local, state, and national levels to engage in missions and ministry. Annually, “messengers” (delegates) come together for a two-day business meeting. In between those annual meetings, the day-to-day operation of the massive SBC is handled by an Executive Committee. The EC is made up of elected volunteers, supported by about 30 paid staff members in Nashville.
When I attended the 2021 Nashville Convention, we approved a task force to supervise an independent investigation into how sexual abuse allegations were handled by this Executive Committee. The inquiry, conducted by Guidepost Solutions, investigated the actions and decisions of EC staff and members over a period of 20-plus years.
Sexual abuse victims had brought complaints to the EC about abusive ministers who continued to serve on staff at churches that were part of the SBC. Had the EC dismissed, stonewalled, and even berated the sexual abuse victims who tried to raise these alarms? We wanted Guidepost Solutions to inform us if the stories were true.
What Does the Report Say?
The report details how a handful of EC officers served as gateways for information meant for the entire 86-member committee. When the rest of the EC was informed of complaints of sexual abusers still serving in churches affiliated with the SBC, a law firm repeatedly instructed EC staff members not to help or even respond to abuse victims.
As Brent Leatherwood of our convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said: “This is what you get when you view individuals crying out for help as ‘potential plaintiffs,’ rather than as neighbors who deserve our care and support.”
What Should Our Response Be?
I recommend you read the report, or at least the 15-page summary at the front of the 288-page document. You can find it here.
If you can attend the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in June, contact our church office about serving as a “messenger” from our church. The Sexual Abuse Task Force will have recommendations for us to act on, and it’s also important to vote in a president who has supported this process. The meeting is held in different cities each year, and this June it’s in Anaheim, California. You can find out more about it here.
I’ve read online comments from some church leaders who say it’s time to leave the SBC. They’ve decided this news is just the last of too many gut-punches. To them, being publicly identified with the SBC has more liabilities than assets for their church’s public witness. But keep in mind that it was the SBC that demanded this investigation be done. Advocate Rachael Denhollander, who advised the SBC task force that coordinated the investigation, tweeted that “the level of transparency is … unparalleled.” Kate Shellnut reported for Christianity Today that the effort is “the largest investigation in SBC history; it’s already changed the makeup of the EC and stands to determine the trajectory of the 177-year-old denomination.”
I don’t see that as a liability for our church’s public witness. Instead, I see that as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination setting an example for how to address failure in humility and repentance.
There may come a time to withdraw from the convention. Leadership may fail to act on any of the recommendations made by the Guidepost Solutions report. Reactive leaders may be voted in who represent the forces that resisted this investigation in the first place. We can decide at that time whether to remain. For now, I agree with Griffin Gulledge, writing for the Gospel Coalition:
Many of you are likely ready to walk away at this point. But who are you walking away from? We now know that our leaders, our money, and our institutions hurt people. Can we say with a clear conscience, “I’m done”? At this moment when justice cries out, dare we walk away? This is the hour to speak up, to refuse to yield, to fight for the justice and mercy God requires of us. To walk away from the SBC now is to walk away from victims. To walk away now is to walk away from our responsibility.
Debbie Vasquez was 14 when her pastor at a Southern Baptist church started sexually abusing her. When she became pregnant with her abuser’s child, Ms. Vasquez was forced to go in front of her church to ask for forgiveness, but she was told she could not mention who the father of the child was because it would harm the church. He eventually left for another Southern Baptist church. Like most abuse victims who reached out to the EC over the years, Ms. Vasquez wanted the leadership in our convention to find a solution to keep abusers from hopping from one church to another where they could find other victims. In her email to the EC, she said:
“Please open up your heart and mind and talk with some of the people who are trying to get things changed. Please put aside differences and compromise –come up with a solution together... please do not ignore and pretend this problem does not exist. Please help stop other people like myself from being hurt in the way I was hurt.”
Let’s finally respond to these cries.