Christa Brown: "Little Progress on Sexual Abuse by the Southern Baptist Convention
The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News, following information given to them by victims of sexual assault committed by pastors and ministerial staff members of Southern Baptist Churches, dug up information and published an investigative report in February of 2019 which exposed a scandal involving more than 700 victims of sexual abuse by clergy of Southern Baptist churches. The expose, called Abuse of Faith, came at a time when victims of the abuse in Southern Baptist churches had been extremely frustrated in getting anyone to listen to them or to help them.
Southern Baptists are known for having a touch of self-righteous arrogance when it comes to the image they have of themselves as theological and doctrinal conservatives which, in their mind, confirms them as being closer to God than other denominations who don't belive the Bible the way they do. Among their ranks are plenty of pastors who have been vitriolic and caustic in their criticism of Catholics, and the sex abuse scandal among their clergy. Things like this, in the minds of many Southern Baptist leaders and church members, too, serve as confirmation that they are more correct on Biblical hermeneutics than anyone else, and more blessed by God because of their conservatism.
So this expose, which is just the tip of the iceberg of sexual abuse within the SBC, as we have seen since it was first published, came as a major shock, and it has created a crisis as big as any the denomination has faced in its existence, including the "battle for the Bible" which prompted the Conservative Resurgence takeover beginning in 1979. Finally, thought many of the victims of sexual abuse committed by Southern Baptist clergy of churches where they were faithful members, justice will be done.
But not quite yet.
They've spent money on an investigation, set up an "Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force," which is a typical method used by the Southern Baptist bureaucracy to appear that they are doing more than they really are doing, and rolled out a model for a database which will include the names of sex abusers, theoretically so that churches have a means to find out information that might go unnoticed when an abuser is ready to move on to the next church in the world of independent, autonomous churches that is the SBC. But according to Christa Brown, a victim of abuse at the hands of a Southern Baptist pastor who has been calling for accountability within the convention for as long as anyone has been, it's not even the minimum expected progress since it finally got the attention of the convention in 2019, in two major daily newspapers in Texas.
"This is not meaningful progress," said Brown, describing the database rollout in which not a single abusers name was listed.
Kicking Out Churches With Female Pastors Grabbed the Headlines
"A draconian purge of women pastors sucked all the oxygen out of the convention hall this year and caused abuse reform to recede into the background," said Brown.
The number of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist convention who have a female in a position that uses the title "pastor" is extremely small. In fact, only two churches faced expulsion at this year's convention for violating this nebulous part of the denomination's doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message. The expose in the Chronicle identified around 700 victims of clergy abuse in Southern Baptist churches, and included only those cases where the findings were indisputable.
But, other than a blistering argument over requiring members of the executive committee to waive privilege when it came to the investigation, whining over how much the investigation cost and the use of a law firm that wasn't connected to the denomination, for good reason, which didn't share some of its religious superstition and bigotry, along with undermining the whole thing, including the victims who have come forward, by attacking their credibility and character and planting the false idea that this is some kind of feminist, satanic attack on good men who pastor churches, little attention or interest has been paid by those individuals who make a regular habit out of attending annual meetings. It's almost as if they are saying, "look, here, now at least we're doing something, so go sit down and be quiet," to the victims.
Nor did the fact that the Southern Baptist convention's churches losing 3 million members in a decade, 450,000 in just one year, get much of their attention. They wanted the headlines to focus on their arbitrary and ecclesiastical authoritarian dictation of doctrine to local churches, kicking out its largest and most evangelistic congregation, Saddleback Valley Church in California, because it has ordained women who serve on the staff. They didn't want the focus on the sexual abuse scandal nor on the fact that their membership and attendance is now declining faster than the "liberal" mainline Protestants, whom they claim are losing members because they are liberal.
Attack on Women in the Pastorate and Abuse Victims is the Same Misogyny
The attack on churches who call women to serve in pastoral ministry roles in vocational ministry, and the minimizing and downplaying of the sexual abuse problem within the denomination--and it is a scandal and a problem of significant proportions for the Southern Baptist Convention--comes from the same ideology, a belief that women are inferior to men and should have a subservient role in the church. There is no biblical justification or support for that perspective if a proper, contextual interpretation of the New Testament is used.
The expose in the Chronicle and Express-News forced the SBC's cumbersom, favor-driven bureaucracy to deal with the abuse scandal and its victims in spite of wanting to sweep it all under the rug and continue to hide behind local church autonomy. And so it has, reluctantly, with loud caterwauling and complaining, residual casualties of the fight that ensued including about 18 executive committee members who resigned rather than submitting to the will of the convention messengers to waive privilege, Ronnie Floyd, a long-time sycophantic, wannabee who waited and bided his time until he worked his way into position to be picked as CEO of the executive committee, only to resign two years later over the waiver of privilege issue, with which he did not want to comply, and Russell Moore, director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which took up the sexual abuse cause as a convention resolution had instructed.
I would not guess that any of the current victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Southern Baptist clergy will ever be treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. SBC leadership, for the most part, will continue to resist the will of the convention messengers, drag their feet on completing ministry benefits for victims, and attempt to use the power of the convention apparatus to get their way or help their body. Those members, and perhaps even entire congregations, who do not see eye to eye on women's roles in local church ministry with the absolute position that the SBC has taken will join the stream of members obviously leaving for varous other reasons.
The Influence of Extreme Right Wing Politics is Corrupting the Southern Baptist Convention
These happenings are all symptoms of a long term influence of right wing politics on the Southern Baptist Convention. The fight against churches who consider women as equal members and partners in ministry has been going on for a very long time is caused not only by the influence of fundamentalist Baptists using an errant method of incorrectly interpreting a few passages of scripture that reflect a local, cultural perspective of women in a literal sense, leaving out multiple, corroborating passages which support the equality of women in the church, but by the influence of a political misogyny, bias against women in leadership, that comes from more extreme, far right American politics. So the Southern Baptist Convention has arrived at a point where it kicks churches out of its fellowship for considering women as qualified for ministry, and it pushes back and criticizes victims in high visibility sexual abuse cases, and drags its feet in providing a solution to the problem of abuse in the denomination.
In 2019, in Birmingham, the influence of some of the African American pastors of SBC churches turned back an attempt at passing a far-right wing resolution, brought into the convention by political influences from outside the denomination, which would have condemned the use of Critical Race Theory altogether. The version that some messengers attempted to pass, contained false statements and misinformation offensive to its ethnic members. If it had passed in its original form, it would have been a Christian denomination publishing a lie. Fortunately, even though the modified version was still prejudicial, and representative of the kind of racism which characterizes right wing politics in the United States this century, the convention managed to avoid a total disaster. Though resolutions cannot be undone once a convention annual meeting has closed, there have still been attempts to put something on the record showing SBC support for a radical view of CRT that is racist in its origins and anti-Biblical in its practice.
Convention-watchers are also waiting to see what the Executive Committee does with regard to replacing its CEO, Dr. Ronnie Floyd, who resigned after just two years of service, because of the crisis surrounding waiving privilege in the sexual abuse investigation. Floyd quit rather than follow the overwhelmingly approved directive of the messengers in the annual meeting. His position was temporarily filled by Dr. Willie McLaurin, a Tennessee pastor and former staff member of the Tennessee Baptist Convention who came to the Executive Committee of the SBC as Vice President for Great Commission Relations and Mobilization.
McLaurin is African American, and has done an excellent job, according to multiple observers and individuals in the SBC bureaucracy. However, the search committee bypassed him and set up one of their own members for the job, which the Executive Committee turned away overwhelmingly. McLaurin would be the first person of color to serve in an executive capacity in any of the SBC's entities in the entire history of the denomination. Up to this point, every executive leader has been a white male. Only once, in 2012, at an annual meeting in New Orleans, was an African American elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
So the bigger picture here is that the influence of far-right wing Republican politics, which has been wrapped up in the Southern Baptist Convention since well before Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition ever came on the scene, has corrupted its Biblical values and Christian worldview. It struggles agains the influence of the aberrant, uninformed literalism of fundamentalists and the conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism of far right Republicanism. Its roots in the old Confederate States of America still pull against the principles and ideals of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude, V. 4
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