The Inability of Southern Baptists to Resolve Clergy Sexual Abuse Scandal Costs Them Credibility and Damages Their Image

Baptist News Global: SBC Leaders Offer Little Hope for Resolving Sexual Abuse Crisis

The Southern Baptist Convention claims the title as the "Largest Evangelical Denomination in the United States," and sometimes the "Largest Protestant Denomination in the United States," though many of their members and pastors prefer to be known more as conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist than as Protestants.  Founded in Augusta, Georgia in 1845 as a result of the Triennial Baptist Convention's condemnation of slavery, Southern Baptists original mission and purpose was to unite Baptist churches for the purpose of evangelistic, missionary activity, and to protect the ambitions of slaveowners who wanted to be missionaries from the restrictions of the Triennial Baptist Convention. 

While the denomination currently has affiliated churches and members in all 50 states, the vast majority of churches and members can be found in the 11 states of the old Confederacy, along with Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and California.  Though there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy in the denomination, organized around practical cooperation in sending evangelistic missionaries and providing theological education, there is very much a leadership oligarchy made up of prominent pastors, mostly of megachurches, or who have a major presence in the conservative religious media, who call the shots and who are the kingmakers when it comes to denominational leadership.  

There is very much a power structure involved, which benefits those privileged, prominent leaders who have worked their way into the elite, inner circle of denominational leadership.  It is organized, not around helping the missionary enterprise succeed, but in wielding the power it has as the largest Evangelical denomination for maximum political influence and for driving specific agendas favored by its elite leaders.  

Though each of its 45,000 local congregations are independent and autonomous in matters of theological doctrine and church polity, denominational leaders can use the pressure of their prestige and influence to force churches to accept certain doctrinal parameters that they believe are necessary for correct identification as a Southern Baptist church.  And when it is convenient for these same prestigious leaders, they can hide behind local church independence and autonomy to avoid taking the blame for their mistakes which have led to a crisis.  

While it is a very numbers-focused denomination, claiming 12.8 million members, the actual attendance across the denomination each week, people who show up for worship services, averages just over 4 million, and collectively, perhaps as many as 5 million of the total will actually attend a worship service once in a year's time.  So there are 7.8 million "non-resident" members, who are names on a roll of people who once joined an affiliated church, but no longer attend.  And since 2006, the membership and attendance have been in a steepening, deepening decline.  The denomination reached its peak membership in 2006, at 16.2 million members.  Since then it has lost 3.4 million members, and about 1.5 million in attendance, or 20% of the total.  Most of that, 2.8 million, has occurred since 2016.

Revelations of Long-Term Sexual Abuse by Southern Baptist Clergy Hit the News Cycle in 2019  

These losses are indications of broader problems within the denomination that are the results of conflict between the big egos in its leadership oligarchy.  The tanking membership and attendance, which of course has also resulted in financial hardship, is a big stress for leadership in which there's no clear structure to assign the blame or fix the problem.  Many churches are finding that adherence to strict Baptist theology and polity are not helpful in producing evangelistic results that are part of church growth, and are being criticized as "woke," or "liberal" in their progressive outlook.  There has been a sharp divide between prominent leaders who are "never Trumpers" and those who have sold their soul to him.  And jumping right into the mix, prior to their 2019 annual meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, was a clergy sexual abuse scandal that hit the pages of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News.  

The investigation into the abuse being committed by Southern Baptist pastors and church leaders was prompted by continued frustration of the victims of the abuse to get the denominational leadership to even address the problem.  While sexual abuse, mostly of women and girls, had been occurring for decades, and had been reported to denominational officials at the state convention and national convention level, very little had been done to even acknowledge or address the problem.  Victims who reported their abuse to denominational officials were told that the denomination had no authority over local churches, and did not have the ability to address the issue since it was a local church matter.  

The investigation by the Chronicle and Express-News did not cover the full scope of the crisis, only focusing on specific cases which had already been adjudicated, and which pointed to the extent of the problem within the denomination.  The independence and autonomy of local churches, and the failure of the denominational leadership to get involved, led to sexual abusive pastors and vocational ministers being able to move on to a different church when they had been caught or accused.  Some abusers had served three or four different churches as pastor before being caught.  

The investigation broke just before the 2019 annual meeting of the denomination, to be held in Birmingham, Alabama.  Those who gathered at the convention as representatives of the churches, known as "messengers", were horrified at the news that this was going on in their own denomination, and in a rare demonstration of the use of the power they possess, overwhelmingly voted to commission an investigation into the scope of sexual abuse in the SBC outside of the supervision or oversight of its executive committee, to avoid the prestigious power brokers from having the ability to control the investigation or manipulate the findings.  

What they got was a major shock. 

The size and scope of abuse was far greater than what was reported in the investigation.  As it turned out, those who were involved went right up to the very highest levels of the denomination itself, including members of the executive committee, pastors and church leaders who were in the inner circle of prominent, powerful elite leaders, both of the mission boards, and several of the seminaries, and it was revealed that reports of sexual abuse being made to denominational leadership had been covered up, hidden from view for decades, using "local church autonomy" as an excuse.  

Almost immediately, the apologists and protectors of the system of prominent, elite leadership in the denomination began gearing up to defend their incompetence, and cover up their gross negligence, as well as downplay the insincerity, and indeed, the complete and total lack of genuine Christian spirituality that accompanied their response to an investigation deliberately kept out of the hands of executive committee control to prevent just such a cover-up from happening. 

The Inability to Resolve This Scandal is a Monumental Denominational Crisis With Disastrous Implications

The investigation, demanded by majority vote of the messengers to the convention, was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, an independent agency with no ties to the SBC's executive committee or to the denominational leadership.  The defenders of the SBC status quo found all kinds of reasons not to consider the factual information they provided, which uncovered inconceivable incompetence, procrastination and deliberate misinformation, completely incongruent with the standards of and expectations of leadership in a conservative Christian denomination.  

There were attempts to discredit the Guidepost investigating firm, because of its neutral stance when it comes to defending persons of LGBTQ orientation.  Guidepost does not discriminate, something Southern Baptist leaders tried to use against them to derail progress.  There was all kinds of hollering, weeping and wailing over legal issues, including waiver of privilege required by the members of the executive committee.  It seemed that the biggest question was not, "What in the world are we doing to provide meaningful ministry to the thousands of victims in our churches?" but "How are we going to protect ourselves from lawsuits?"  Such thinking is the mentality that is part of the reason the SBC can't resolve this.  

They don't want to resolve it.  They want to hide it, bury it and make it go away.  And that's because several of the inner circle elites happen to have been caught up in the scandal.  People who have manipulated the power levers of the SBC for years, and found ways to tap into the income stream were found to have been involved in some of the sexual abuse within the denomination.  And their apologists and supporters are doing all that they can to get on the influential committees and stop any meaningful resolution to the problem.  

But that's what tends to happen when the cost of potential litigation is weighed against the needs of the victims of sexual abuse within the churches.  Not only have victims been treated abominably by their abusers, they have been raked over the coals and treated abominably by the denomination itself.  The fact that this is all taking place within the structure of a conservative, Evangelical Christian denomination at the heart of fundamentalist piety is just inconceivable.  The leadership of this denomination, in the manner in which it is handling this crisis, is so far outside of conduct expected and demanded by the scripture that it calls into question the sincerity of their faith.  

As is typical of the ham fisted manner in which this denomination often does business, the President of the SBC, Bart Barber, signed an amicus curiae brief on a Kentucky case seen as hurting a sexual abuse survivor rather than holding the perpetrator accountable. He did this the day before announcing who he was appointing to the task force in the SBC aimed at supporting and helping victims. He did apologize for not being observant enough to ask questions first.

"August 9, 2022 was not a day I spent trying to hurt survivors," he said.  "That's what makes it hurt so much and that's what makes me so disappointed in myself:  I did, in fact, wind up hurting survivors by what I did." 

Apology notwithstanding, this was yet another example of the difficulty Southern Baptists are having in determining whether they are, as a denomination, committed to Christian ministry and missions, or whether they are committed to the power and influence they have built into their denominational structure, and in their pursuit of worldly power and influence through their alliance with far right wing extremism.  The Bible which they claim to believe as authoritative scripture, the "sole authority for faith and practice," and which they claim is inerrant in its original manuscripts and infallible in its content has been set aside, and as a result, they keep coming down on the wrong side of a scandal of their own doing.