Southern Baptists focus on addressing sex abuse
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Leaders of the largest Protestant denomination in the USA have spent the past year trying to figure out how the Southern Baptist network of evangelical churches can do a better job of addressing and preventing sexual abuse.
In the wake of revelations illustrating how widespread the problem is, Southern Baptists will soon have a chance to enact changes that would make it easier to hold churches accountable and keep people in their pews safe.
Sexual abuse in the church is likely to be front and center when thousands of representatives from the more than 50,000 Southern Baptist congregations gather Tuesday and Wednesday in Bir
mingham, Alabama, for their big annual meeting.
That focus is intentional, Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear said.
Victim revelations have made it clear that Southern Baptists need to create systems that protect the vulnerable, he said.
“God gave his life for them,” Greear said. “How dare we not provide protection for them, so when they’re in the house of God, they know that they’re safe and that they’re cared for?”
Up for consideration are two changes to core Southern Baptist Convention governing documents:
❚ The first is an amendment to the SBC’s constitution that would explicitly state that addressing sexual abuse and racism is a part of what it means to be a Southern Baptist church.
❚ The second is a proposed bylaw change that would create a committee to assess misconduct claims, including sexual abuse, against churches.
Critics, including sexual abuse victims and advocates, said Southern Baptists are not moving quickly enough to kick out problem churches and implement safeguards.
The Rev. Ashley Easter, a survivor advocate helping to organize a protest outside this year’s meeting, said Southern Baptists hide behind the SBC’s decentralized structure. Southern Baptists believe in local church control.
“We hoped that we would see big changes. We really don’t see big changes between this year and last year,” said Easter, who is ordained through the Progressive Christian Alliance.
Greear, elected convention president at last year’s annual meeting, said he understands that reaction.
He said he made addressing sexual abuse in the church one of his first priorities as convention president, including launching a sexual abuse advisory study and spending the year listening to victims, advocates and experts. But the convention meets only once a year, he said.
“We want our churches to be as safe as possible as soon as possible,” Greear said. “We want to know that pastors know how to follow up immediately. We also know that when you’re dealing with an organization as large as the SBC that we’ve got a lot of layers that we’re trying to work through.”
As victims came forward last year, Southern Baptists became embroiled in months of controversy over a prominent church leader’s treatment of women and how he handled years-old allegations of sexual misconduct at Southern Baptist seminaries.
Media reports since then have laid out how widespread the sexual abuse crisis is in Southern Baptist churches and the mission field.
In February, a report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News found sexual misconduct allegations against 380 Southern Baptists who held formal church roles. Many were convicted of sex crimes and some are still in prison, but others continued to work in churches, according to the report.
Greear laid out a list of 10 recommendations – the first to come from his sexual abuse advisory study – that included the possible expulsion of churches that do not take sexual abuse prevention seriously.
Soon after, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, which handles day-to-day operations of the denomination when the convention is not in session, supported amending the constitution to make that consequence clear. A revised version of this proposal is likely to be considered in Alabama.
Critics such as Easter said an outside entity is best suited to evaluate sexual abuse in the church, not internal denominational ones.
“What we’re calling for is concrete actions,” Easter said.
Greear said change is coming. Southern Baptists will leave Birmingham well aware of how important sexual abuse prevention and response is in their denomination, he said.
“It’s going to take ongoing reform, and that’s the case at the local church level as well. Congregations have to not only have good policies and procedures in place, but they have to constantly be evaluating, reevaluating, updating those policies and procedures as well,” said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“This has to be at least a 20-year project that’s constantly reevaluated,” Moore said. “I hope that 20 years from now that we can look back and see sexual abuse in churches as something unthinkable and a long-buried horror of the past. We’re a long way from that.”