This Is the Southern Baptist Apocalypse

https://www.christianitytoday.com/c...HYsFb62HeMESlSxuP2ZyYz_9C2LMOoL-y0tjpeOVSQbEw

They were right. I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.

Someone asked me a few weeks ago what I expected from the third-party investigation into the handling of sexual abuse by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. I said I didn’t expect to be surprised at all. How could I be? I lived through years with that entity. I was the one who called for such an investigation in the first place.

Here is the actual report. https://www.sataskforce.net/updates/guidepost-solutions-report-of-the-independent-investigation

I have no words to describe this horror

 

I was reading about this yesterday. What's been happening is beyond astonishing.

 

This is one of the major reasons I left. Many independent churches left the SBC years ago because of this and other problems. It really needs to be torn down and rebuilt...or just abolished entirely. It's not clear to me that Baptist churches really benefit from having a larger Convention. It tends to be a money-sink for many of them without providing an offsetting benefit.

Presbyterians have been struggling for years with supra-presbytery structures as well. It's really hard to get consensus in such structures. This is why I have come to prefer the episcopal form of church government. It's not perfect either, but having a single strong hand on the tiller can be a help sometimes.

 

The more disorganized a denomination is, the more prevalent this stuff is. The Churches of Christ (Stone-Campbell movement) and the non-denom closet Bapti-costals are even more prone to this stuff.

It paints us all with a bad brush and a dirty color. I've been addressed as 'Father Fag' and asked if I got a license to molest children when I was ordained.

 

That's awful! But remember the Lord's words in John 15:19:

It grieves me that this abuse comes from inside the church as often from outside these days.

It's also this sort of thing that is making it nearly impossible for male pastors to minster to their female congregants without taking extreme, and in many cases intrusive, precautions (like having a female deacon present at all times or making recordings of all private sessions). And vindictive former members can return years or even decades later to destroy the life and ministry of a wayward pastor*, so the danger never really passes. We as a culture have moved from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt, at least when one is a male.

I also note that this kind of abuse is rife in the public school system. However bad it was in the RC church, it is 10x worse in public schools, I guarantee you. That particular dam is in the process of breaking right now.

*Even if a pastor repents of his sin and is forgiven by the church, there is no forgiveness in the modern woke culture. Damnation is ubiquitous and eternal in that faith. In Christianity there is repentance and forgiveness of sin; the woke modern culture knows nothing of these things.

 

Characterising victims as vindictive and couching legitimate reports as "destroying the [lives] and [ministries]" of the abusers is shocking enough for a long-time lurker to be led to this brief reply. If the cascade of sexual abuse cover-ups in multiple denominations have shown us anything, it is that one side has been protected all this while and it has not been the victims.

I would urge you to read the report with an open mind, if only to see how similar your language is to the Southern Baptist EC members who dismissed and covered up countless pleas for help from victims of pastoral sexual abuse for decades.

 

What exactly is thought to be 'intrusive' about having a female priest or pastor present? They are bound by exactly the same confessional rules of silence as males are.

Surely nor should the danger ever pass, the 'wayward' behaviour would have probably continued otherwise unchecked. If the pastor's behaviour was 'wayward' surely the former member victim's return to accuse the 'wayward perpetrator' could not be 'vindictive', but would rather be in pursuance of justice and prevention of further possible 'waywardness' of the 'wayward' upon others like the victim of the 'waywardness'.
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I have personally been witness to false accusations against two youth pastors and one senior pastor. The senior pastor's ministry and marriage were ruined over what was later proved to be a malicious lie, and the youth pastors, though vindicated, chose to leave the ministry rather than continue to risk their lives and reputations. I don't doubt that much abuse goes on, as it does in every human organization, but the idea that these kinds of false accusations don't happen is just not true. I have seen it happen with my own eyes.

Yes, sexual and spiritual abuse does occur in the church. Yes, it must be punished swiftly and fairly. But the reverse is also true: false accusations and "canceling" due to perceived slights or vendettas should likewise be punished. If you are in favor of actual justice rather than revenge, this is the course we should all follow. Go where the truth leads with an open heart and trust in Christ as our ultimate judge.

 

Safeguarding has become a big issue in the Anglican Church and rightly so. It is important that all accusations are dealt with in a proper manner by the responsible authority. Perjury (bearing false witness), is also a serious crime and a form of abuse, which make it all the more important that all cases are dealt with by those who are trained for the task and understand correct procedure.
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Certainly a laudable sentiment. However, the problem arises when these false accusations are incorrectly presented, as they so frequently are, as being as common as valid accusations of sexual abuse. They are not.

"[More] than 700 victims of alleged sexual abuse by 380 Southern Baptist officials and volunteers since 1998. A total of 220 people were found guilty, with 100 of them still serving time behind bars. The great majority of the victims were minors at the time of the abuse."

https://www.christianitydaily.com/a...how-sbc-mishandled-crisis-of-sexual-abuse.htm

It's important to bear in mind the scope of the abuse, and that these victims were all dismissed and intimidated by persons who regarded their accusations as false and opportunistic.

With regards to the earlier point on the "life and ministry of a wayward pastor" being destroyed by "vindictive former members", it's interesting to note that this perspective bears much in common with how victim reports were treated by the SBC. An exerpt from Moore's piece -

"And yet the very good Southern Baptist impulse for missions, for cooperation, is often weaponized in the same way that “grace” or “forgiveness” has been in countless contexts to blame survivors for their own abuse. The report itself documents how arguments were used that “professional victims” and those who stand by them would be a tool of the Devil to “distract” from mission.

Those who called for reform were told doing so might cause some churches to withhold Cooperative Program funding and thus pull missionaries from the field. Those who called out the extent of the problem—most notably Christa Brown and the army of indefatigable survivors who joined that work—were called crazy and malcontents who just wanted to burn everything down. It’s bad enough that these survivors not only endured psychological warfare and legal harassment. But they were also isolated with implications that if they kept focusing on sexual abuse people wouldn’t hear the gospel and would go to hell."

 

There's a lot wrong with the SBC apart from the sexual abuse scandal(s). In fact, the mishandling of the abuse allegations is part of the deeper problems that beset that organization. When I left the SBC*, it was due to the (manifest and obvious) liberal drift of the organization away from Biblical teaching. This took the form of an embrace of the "social justice Gospel", and a hightened focus on social activism rather than evangelism and missional outreach. The "Black Lives Matter" movement proved a catalyst in many ways for a chemical reaction that had been going on for some time.

There were also the problems at the top. From "sermongate" to allegations of financial mismanagement (or outright fraud) to nepotism, it was clear that the SBC leadership was adrift. For many of us, the SBC had turned into a racket rather than a Christian organization it was meant to be.

The SBC is a story of institutional capture by activists and grifters. We should all treat it as the cautionary tale it is.

*I was going to say "a few years ago", but it's actually been longer than that. COVID-time has messed up my internal calendar.