By Gregg Boll
Southern Baptists Take Strong Actions to Stop Sexual Abuse in Our Churches
Most of you are aware that the Southern Baptist Convention has been addressing the problem of sexual abuse and assault in recent years. After an investigative report by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express revealed that over a 20-year period, there were 700 cases of sexual abuse documented in Southern Baptist Churches, Southern Baptists had a zeal to aggressively address this sin in our churches. The report discovered that 380 Southern Baptist pastors, staff and volunteers had been accused of sexual assault resulting in 220 convictions. Based on that report, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention hired an outside firm, Guidepost Solutions, to further study the problem and to report back to the Executive Committee with their findings as well as recommendations for best practices for preventing future sexual abuse. The Executive Committee did an internal study and produced their own list of names of pastors and denominational leaders who had been convicted of sexual impropriety. This list had some high profile Southern Baptist leaders who subsequently were terminated from their positions or resigned promptly. For further reading on this report: (https://www.npr.org/2022/05/27/1101734793/southern-baptist-sexual-abuse-list-released)
What was discovered from the Guidepost study was that churches sometimes fired a person for sexual impropriety without filing any legal charges or notifying the appropriate legal authorities. The church was often caught in a “he said, she said” situation and rather than file charges and allow the appropriate authorities to discern if abuse had happened, they simply fired the person. What we have also learned about sexual deviants is that they are often repeat offenders, and their behavior is rarely a one-time event. Unwittingly, and perhaps in the spirit of being gracious to the offender’s ministry career, many churches simply passed on the offender to repeat their sexual abuse in other churches. Based on this knowledge, the messengers at the SBC annual meeting overwhelmingly passed a motion to establish a Convention-wide database to record abuse cases and offender’s names so that pastor/staff search committees could determine if candidates for their open position had any past sexual misconduct. They also voted to invoke disciplinary action against churches who knowingly pass on a pastor or staff person when there has been credible sexual allegations against them.
Obviously, the whole effort and desire of Southern Baptists is to protect women, girls, and boys in our churches. At each annual Southern Baptist Convention, the messengers from the churches spoke loudly and clearly that they wanted full disclosure and a plan moving forward to stop all sexual abuse and assault within our Convention churches. We believe that one victim of abuse is one too many, and if there is anywhere a child or woman ought to be safe, it is in our churches.
Here is a link to a recent document drafted by the Missouri Baptist Convention that details actions to take if you think sexual abuse has happened in your church.
Please read it and keep a copy handy in your church’s policy files: http://blueriver-kansascity.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/on-Mandatory-Reporting-of-Allegations-of-Sexual-Abuse.pdf
