Southern Baptist sex-abuse response study moves ahead
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Rev. Marshall Blalock feels the weight of his new responsibility.
The South Carolina pastor serves as vice chair of a recently formed Southern Baptist Convention task force charged with overseeing an investigation into how a top denominational committee handled sex abuse allegations, a review that comes years into the SBC’s public reckoning with the scandal.
Blalock thinks the work of the task force, set into motion in June by a vote of Southern Baptists at a national gathering, could be a foundational part of how the SBC addresses the issue in the future.
“If the task force does what the convention’s asked us to do, if the Executive Committee responds favorably, I think we’re making huge first steps toward really setting the future toward preventing and appropriately responding to and caring for sexual abuse survivors,” Blalock said.
The sex-abuse scandal was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting hundreds of cases in Southern Baptist churches, including several in which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry.
Appointed by new SBC President Ed Litton, the seven-member task force of pastoral, legal, counseling and advocacy professionals is charged with overseeing an outside firm’s probe of allegations that the Executive Committee mishandled abuse cases, resisted reforms and intimidated victims and advocates.
More than two months in, the task force has completed two key tasks: picking Guidepost Solutions to be the third-party firm conducting the probe, and asking the Executive Committee to waive attorney-client privilege for the purposes of the investigation at its upcoming business meeting.
The Executive Committee has welcomed the selection of Guidepost, noting it is the same investigative firm it had planned to use before the task force was formed.
Jules Woodson, a church sexual abuse survivor based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, remains wary but is hopeful that meaningful change may be ahead for the SBC. She was encouraged after meeting with the task force, she said, and is willing to engage with Guidepost even though she is still skeptical of the firm.
“It is so hard as a survivor to put faith, hope and trust in people and processes and a system that has continuously failed us,” Woodson said. “For the first time in forever, we are finally seeing steps being taken in the right direction.”
She said she cried tears of joy when the trustees of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the SBC’s public policy arm, recently indicated the group is willing to lead an assessment of sexual abuse within the denomination, and set a plan in motion to figure out how to do it.
“The evil of abuse must continue to be confronted,” Brent Leatherwood, the commission’s acting president, said in a statement. “As we’ve stated before, our churches must be safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”