Baptist leaders weigh in on abuse reports
An Enid pastor said he's sad and frustrated about recent news stories chronicling sexual abuse at Southern Baptist Churches and alleged cover-up and inaction by the denomination's leadership. Monday, the Rev. Wade Burleson, senior pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church and a former president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said his frustration stems from the fact that news outlets created a database of sexual predators operating within the nation's largest Protestant denomination when he asked the faith organization's leaders to do it themselves 12 years ago — and they didn't. “It's just sad that newspapers did what we should have been doing. It's sad for the victims. It's sad for the families. It's sad for the churches where this
happened,” Burleson said. “We have leadership saying what we can't do rather than coming out and proactively saying what we can do.”
His remarks came in the aftermath of an explosive set of stories published Sunday in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio News Express. In the first of a multi-part series entitled “Abuse of Faith,” the Texas newspapers reported finding that roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct.
“That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state. They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions,” the newspapers reported.
“About 220 church leaders were convicted. They were pastors. Ministers. Youth pastors. Sunday school and Christian schoolteachers. Deacons. Church program volunteers,” the report said.
The newspapers said the database they set up goes from 1998 to December 2018 and includes Southern Baptist church pastors, leaders, employees and volunteers who pleaded guilty or were convicted of sex crimes. Ten men with connections to Oklahoma Southern Baptist churches or their affiliates, are included in the listing.
Burleson first asked the Southern Baptist Convention to come up with a way to track church staff and volunteers convicted or credibly accused of sexual abuse crimes at the denomination's annual meeting in 2007, but the convention's Executive Committee the following year said it was an impossible task due to the autonomy of the denomination's churches. Monday, Burleson recalled that he also was told that listing credibly accused individuals who had not been convicted of a criminal offense would potentially open up the denomination to legal liability.
In June 2018, Burleson renewed his call for a database of some sort. He specifically asked that the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission handle his request and his request was granted.
Monday, the pastor said he would like to see an independent nonprofit board create a database of convicted sexual predators and the credibly accused who have operated within the denomination.
Burleson said he thinks the Southern Baptist Convention should pay for the creation and operation of the board because it has a moral obligation to do so. He defines credibly accused as someone who has confessed to a crime but the statute of limitations has expired, someone who has had allegations made against them by multiple victims or witnesses or someone who was fired by a church but not prosecuted. The preacher said the denomination's leaders should let the independent board determine the parameters and boundaries of who should be listed in the database.
“The sin of sexual predatory behavior is not new. It's been around for millennia. The frustration I have is not the fact of the sin. The frustration I have is church leaders who know about it and see it— the covering up, the hiding, the excusing away of the crime — and do nothing to get the word out that this has happened,” Burleson said.
“What's that old saying? — We're as sick as the secrets we keep. We don't want to harm our reputation. We don't want to go to the police. We don't want people to have a poor opinion of us, and then the perp leaves Dallas and goes to Mississippi. That's what happens.”
Still, Burleson said he is optimistic that the denomination will address the issue, sooner rather than later. “I think change is coming. It's just sad that they didn't listen 12 years ago,” he said.
Prominent state Baptist leaders comment
Two prominent Oklahoma Southern Baptist leaders also weighed in on the recent newspaper series.
• “Jesus teaches us to be more critical of ourselves than we are of others. In as far as this article helps us to deal more honestly and clearly with sexual abuse in our churches, and more redemptively with survivors, I welcome it,” the Rev. Hance Dilbeck, executive director-treasurer of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, said in a statement. “We need strong voices from within our fellowship and from the outside pushing us to strive to do better.”
• The Rev. Blake Gideon, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Edmond and the Oklahoma convention's president, also responded to the series. “I welcome every form of accountability. Southern Baptists must be held to a high standard. Sexual abuse must not be tolerated among us. It must be exposed at all cost,” Gideon said. “Abuses of this caliber should be dealt with immediately and with severity. We are not called to harbor, cover up or ignore sexual abuse in any form. Instead, we are called to expose it for what it is: evil.”