The Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida, a congregation affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, offered its pulpit to Johnny Hunt on January 15 for his return to the ministry following a period of "repentance" and restoration conducted by four of his pastor friends after he was found to have been involved in a sexual abuse incident that was uncovered by Guidepost Solutions during its recent investigation, commissioned by the Convention in Nashville in 2021. Hunt, who was involved in the abuse incident while serving as pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, a year after serving as President of the Southern Baptist Convention was pronounced "restored" by a group made up of four of his best pastor friends in the ministry.
Hunt preached January 15 at Hiland Park, where the pastor, Steven Kyle, was one of four pastors claiming to have conducted Hunt's sessions of repentance and restoration. Hiland Park is also sponsoring the conference in February where Hunt has been named as the keynote speaker. Kyle, and the three other pastors who met with Hunt following his abuse and guided him through a self-styled "restoration" process, which did not involve his former church in Woodstock, nor the victim of his abuse.
Because the Southern Baptist Convention is made up of independent, autonomous churches, as a denomination it does not have any authority over the ordination of, selection of, or discipline of the clergy and staff of the churches. However, the legitimacy of Hunt's "restoration" process was questioned by denominational leaders, including its current President Bart Barber, because no local church authority was involved, and the process appeared to be something derived from the whims of the four pastors involved in it, all of whom were close friends of Hunt. The process has the appearance of being a group of good-ole-boy buddies of Hunt helping him get back on the gravy train of speaking engagements for those pastors within the denomination who make a name and build a reputation for themselves to add to their profit margin in retirement.
The sexual abuse crisis in the SBC has become the "thing" in denominational politics these days. Conservatives, who think women should be seen and not heard anywhere in ministry, are angry over the fact that a couple of decades of widespread sexual abuse, mostly by pastors and church staff, which had been swept under the rug and buried under the "local church autonomy" excuse by denominational leaders, has invaded their ranks and has caused the dismissal from both the denominational salary gravy train, and from positions of power and influence, of some of their own good-ole-boys, like Hunt, or like Dr. Paige Patterson, former president of two of the six denominational seminaries who mishandled abuse cases on both campuses during his tenure.
After an expose investigation into the abuse, reported by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News came out several years ago, the denomination was forced to take more action than just fobbing it off on the local autonomy excuse, and messengers/delegates at the annual meeting in 2021 shoved the rhetoric of an entrenched denominational bureaucracy aside, causing the resignation of the executive director and a dozen members of the executive committee, and mandated an independent investigation. Hunt's name turned up in that investigation.
In the wake of that investigation, the convention body, made up of messengers/delegates from the churches, resolved that abusers were certainly able to ask God for and receive his forgiveness, but should not be allowed by any of those independent, autonomous churches, to return to the ministry. There's some support in the Bible for that, in Luke 9:62, and in I Timothy 3, where qualifications for those who serve as Bishops/Elders/Pastors are outlined. Christian doctrine, derived from the scripture, is clear that God forgives sin following repentance, and that forgiveness is unconditional. But nowhere does the scripture imply that forgiveness brings about revocation of consequences of sinful actions. A minister of the gospel, forgiven by God for the sin of using his position as a means of committing an act of sexual abuse, is no longer qualified for ministry. That's a completely separate issue from abuse.
Mike Keahbone, who is vice-chair of the the Southern Baptist Convention's Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, appointed in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal, said, "It grieves me deeply that Johnny Hunt would not have the spiritual and emotional intelligence to realize the deep trauma he is causing, not only to the victim of his abuse, but also to all survivors who are watching and reliving their pain as they watch him return to the very platform he caused harm from. True repentance is not found in the opinions of four men, but in a broken heart and changed behavior."
Of course, a broken heart and changed behavior means that collecting lucrative conference fees and speaking engagement honorariums would have to be sacrificed, along with the attention provided by the adulation of admirers. Keahbone stated that the Southern Baptist Convention's stance on sexual abuse committed by ministers is disqualification from ministry. But high profile denominational good-ole-boy celebrities like Hunt are determined to do as they please, and ignore both the denomination that gave them their fame in the first place, and the scriptures they claim are inerrant and infallible.
Even as the revelations came out that literally hundreds of abuse cases occurred in the denomination's churches over at least two decades, and that many of them were reported to the executive board officers who swept them under the carpet, failed to report them to law enforcement and excused that disgraceful conduct by appealing to the fact that they are powerless because of the independent, autonomous nature of the churches, Southern Baptist leaders still treat the women who are now known to have brought forth these allegations as perpetrators, not victims, and the pastors, church staff members and church leaders who abused them as victims of some kind of "satanic attack on the churches."
Some of the abusers who have been exposed have gone on to serve other congregations. In several instances, when they tearfully confessed to their current church, after being caught and exposed, the congregation applauded and gave them a standing ovation (Tennessee Pastor Gets Standing Ovation After Admitting Sexual Incident with Teen). Others continue to be book for speaking engagements, and are invited to teach at Evangelical seminaries and Bible colleges (Ousted Seminary President Patterson to Teach Ethics Course at Southern Evangelical Seminary).
In spite of the bad publicity, the humiliation for Southern Baptists who have arrogantly pointed fingers at Catholics for years over their clergy abuse scandal, and the rising cost of litigation, it does not seem that everyone in the denomination recognizes or acknowledges the serious nature of this issue. While the more conservative branch of Southern Baptists, which accounts for much of the abuse and most of the denial of it, helps support extremist right wing politics, and the lies, immorality and corruption at the top of that heap, and buy into Q-Anon conspiracy theories about "grooming," they are turning their backs on some real, genuine, "grooming" that is going on within their own ranks. Some are pointing out that no task force, set up by the denomination, has the authority to do anything to a church that determines not to cooperate with it.
Keep an eye on what's going on here, as high profile, well known Southern Baptist sex abusers find their way back into a pulpit and back on the gravy train somewhere, and manage to downplay the sexual abuse crisis in their denomination. And watch for the far right politicians who also downplay abuse to protect this cluster of sex abusers because they need their political endorsement.
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