Restoring the faith
Southern Baptist missionary George Thomas Wade Jr., had been molesting his own daughter for years before officials within the Christian denomination’s mission board learned of the abuse. When they did, his daughter later said in court documents, they told her to forgive him. Having secured Wade’s promise that he’d change, the officials kept the abuse secret.
By the time her mother, also a Southern Baptist missionary, learned of the continuing abuse of her daughter, two other children had become victims. Wade’s daughter, who by age 15 had attempted suicide, later testified that the abuse she suffered at her father’s hands was just one way she had been damaged. The silence of the mission authorities had left its own mark.
“I felt stupid for having told anything to anybody,” she told a court later.
“The concern was for my father. … It didn’t matter what happened to me.”
Her heartbreaking and infuriating story was repeated in dozens of other cases unveiled by reporters at the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News in the fourth and latest installment of a six-part investigation into sex abuse by Southern Baptist ministers and accompanying denial and cover-up by officials within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Three stories published in February and another, published online Friday and in print today, have revealed repeated examples of abuse by faith leaders. At least 10 churches hired or retained abusers even after the allegations, and in some cases convictions, were known.
More than 350 readers wrote to the newspapers following the initial stories, eager to add their own stories to the tale of treachery. Based in part on leads shared by those readers, Friday’s installment revealed how the same patterns of abuse and cover-up worked overseas, too. Reporters identified more than two dozen victims of abuse by a small number of missionaries such as Wade who were protected for years by an unwritten code that put the interests of the preachers above that of the children and others they were abusing.
Together, the stories reveal human tragedies to break the heart and shatter one’s faith. It’s possible they also may do some good.
In response to a national outcry, SBC leaders have promised to take forceful action when the group gathers for its national meeting June 11-12 in Birmingham, Ala. If they don’t, then the Baptists, like the Catholics before them, will emerge with tremendously reduced moral authority. Proposed changes to its bylaws and the constitution are already under consideration.
Leaders shouldn’t settle for anything less than concrete reforms that stop SBC churches from hiding abuse allegations once and for all.
At the meeting, the delegates from among the more than 47,000 member churches will wrestle with two issues perhaps more than any other: authority and forgiveness.
Governance of Southern Baptist churches is different than in most other Christian denominations. There is no higher authority — not even the convention itself — over an individual church that can reverse a hiring decision or order it to follow a policy.
Each church is the final authority. “Southern Baptists have worked out this polity over centuries and it represents our deepest theological understanding,” the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., told the Editorial Board.
There is one power the convention does have, Mohler noted: “It can define for itself what is required for membership in the convention.”
Mohler said it has used this power in recent years to expel churches who adopted favorable stances toward homosexuality, which traditionalists view as biblically proscribed. He said it must use that same power to expel churches that tolerate sexual abuse.
He’s right. Words won’t be enough. Action is the only acceptable response.
On the issue of forgiveness, SBC leaders must cast aside an outmoded belief among older members that knowingly hiring or retaining a pastor accused of abuse is an act of forgiveness. Mohler said that idea is not theologically sound and should no longer be be accepted as an excuse.
“We do hold to the gospel’s promise of full forgiveness of sins,” he added. “But there is no promise of restoration to a place of leadership within the church.
Those two changes — expelling churches that tolerate abuse and eliminating “forgiveness” as an excuse — will take courage and deft maneuvering on the part of the thousands who gather in Birmingham.
At stake are the very foundations of trust in the churches’ core mission.
Students training to become ministers, Mohler said, are taught that one mistake is too many when it comes to sexual abuse. “There are no second chances to gain trust,” he said they’re told.
What’s true for seminarians should be doubly so for the Southern Baptist Convention itself.