Like most pastors in the Southern Baptist convention I have been following the discussion raised by the Houston Chronicle report on sexual abuse in our denomination with concern and interest. Again, like other pastors in our denomination, I am brokenhearted that the abuses documented in the report occurred, anywhere. That it happened within the tradition and partnership that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) represents, the one that has nourished my own faith, intensifies the (for lack of a better term) sadness that I feel as I consider this situation.

I trust that others like myself within the SBC feel the same kind of sharp pain when considering this report that I do and the sting of that sharpness has generated considerable analysis of how we got to this point and, more importantly to this particular piece, recommendations about where we go from here.

A Denomination in Anguish



Pain, by its nature, brings an odd mixture of clarity and confusion to the person experiencing it. C.S. Lewis famously noted that “pain insists on being attended to”[1] and this insistence is the means by which pain brings clarity. The experience of pain identifies where the problem is (think of a hand snapping back from accidental contact with a hot stove eye) but also often confuses the one in pain about what to do about that same problem (think, now, about a person who finds themselves suddenly ablaze whose instinct is to run rather than doing the stop-drop-and-roll routine and, in taking flight, feeds the flames and makes their plight even worse).

It appears to me that this mixture of clarity and confusion is playing out in our denomination right now. I see a few significant places in the conversation where the pain of the moment has confused our thinking about what to do as we consider the very real problem of abuse in our midst.

Before I proceed any further I think I should note my aims and methods in this piece. My attempt is, in fraternal spirit, to speak to my family members within the SBC. And I hope to speak to the themes in our family’s running conversation about what to do moving forward as a denomination so that the innocent are better protected within our ranks. I sat down to write after listening to Keith Whitfield of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary address the subject of abuse within the SBC on Issues, Etc., an interview which was prompted by this piece Whitfield wrote for First Things. So while I will be reacting in this piece to what Whitfield said and wrote I want to be clear that I do so because I find him generally (and helpfully) representing the current majority consensus at the time of this writing on what initial steps the SBC should take in response to the report of abuse. Should Mr. Whitfield ever happen to see what I write below I hope that he will see what pushback I offer not so much as personal criticism as one member of the family talking through hard things with another member around the dinner table. I don’t use that analogy to imply that the subject of the conversation is casual, only that – as I mentioned above – what I write is offered in fraternal spirit.

First Point of Confusion : We Need a Centrally-Maintained Database of Those Accused and Convicted of Abuse

Whitfield wrote in his piece for First Things a list of systemic issues that fostered abuse within our denomination. His fifth point reads as follows:

Finally, we’ve hidden behind false fronts and convenient excuses. Appeals to the autonomy of Southern Baptist churches have derailed various proposals, like creating a Southern Baptist offenders’ registry. While our polity may render some proposals nearly impossible to carry out, the appeal to autonomy doesn’t justify inaction. Rather, we must use our autonomy to covenant with one another, “to stir one another to love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:31). Our family of churches must find a meaningful and culture-shaping mechanism that leads us to commit to best practices as we strive to prevent abuse in our churches and entities.

Whitfield references this idea of creating a centrally-maintained database in the interview with Issues, Etc. (around the 7:10 mark). He begins with the defeated motion from the 2007 SBC Annual Meeting proposing to the messengers the need to create a database as a “collecting point” for the names of those who have been “fired or been accused or convicted of abuse” that local congregations would use as part of their vetting process as they consider potential leadership hires. Whitfield sees the defeat of this motion (and the subsequent additional attempts to revive it) as a strategic failure (my summary) in our (the SBC’s) history, one which our insistence on local church autonomy unhelpfully got in the way of. The idea of the same kind of centrally-maintained database is back on the table for Southern Baptists according to current SBC President J.D. Greear. I see why this idea appeals to my fellow Southern Baptists – it is actionable, objective, and (thus) represents clear action to point to as meaningful change in the Southern Baptists Convention.

Unfortunately, this is one of those times where the insistence of pain is clouding our thinking on this subject. Here’s why:

1. Central organization has already, repeatedly, failed to protect members of religious groups from sexual abuse and wickedness.

See the child sex abuse scandal in the Australian Anglican church for one example. Notice how central organization has failed to guard against the legitimization of homosexual lifestyles in the United Methodist Church in America (thankfully checked recently in large part by the broader, international community of United Methodists). And consider how sexual abuse and depravity has consumed the Roman Catholic Church, the very definition of centrally-organized religious communities.

Can we really trust that Southern Baptist central-organization will be the exception to this consistent pattern? If so, on what basis beyond naivety or arrogance? Obviously, I don’t believe we can.

2. Our obligation to involve civic authorities – the police, the judicial system – is binding both in investigation and adjudication.

One of the points of real consensus that has emerged from our denomination’s conversation about abuse in our midst is that churches should honor the legal obligation to inform government authorities when we become aware – or suspect – abuse. This is right and good, both in practice and in conformity to Romans 13:1-7.

Having laid down that principle, however, we continue to hear the word accused tossed in when the subject of a centrally-maintained database of ministers involved in abuse arises. And that word makes all the difference in the world when it comes to seeking justice.

First, to those who say we need a database of those convicted of sexual abuse we have good news: Everyone knows already that such a database exists: The U.S. Departmet of Justice’s National Sex Offender Registry. This registry not only exists and is searchable but is a product of the very same legal system that Southern Baptists agree needs to be involved in any abuse situation.

Second, if we are to trust civic authorities to investigate and adjudicate cases of abuse then we are obligated to trust civic authorities to investigate and adjudicate cases of abuse.

What I mean is this: the thinking goes, I believe, that in some cases of reported abuse the civic authorities either aren’t able to find enough evidence to secure a guilty verdict in prosecution or, perhaps, those same authorities may take an abuser into custody and choose to plea-bargain the sentence in such a way that the abuser is never registered on the sex offender registry. Therefore we need a database to supplement the U.S. government’s database, that supplement being aimed at documenting those who have been accused of abuse but perhaps not convicted.

However, the logic cuts against the first principle of involving civic authorities. If we as Southern Baptists are to trust civic authorities when cases of abuse need to be investigated we are also under obligation to trust civic authorities when they render verdicts of guilt or innocence. It is deeply inconsistent to stress the need to honor government authority on the front end (i.e. investigation) of potential abuse cases but then, on the back side, say, “We need to do more than the civic authorities have found prudent.”

In fact, this idea that we need a database that records more information than the government deems necessary is the other side of the same coin that helped create the need for Southern Baptists to take stock of their own houses in regards to the abuse of the vulnerable. The problem is fed, we know, by some churches who receive a report of abuse and decide to handle the matter “in house” rather than involve the authorities.

In that kind of case the church has done too little.

On the other side, once the authorities are involved, it would be a problem to say we will handle the matter of guilt “in house” in terms of going beyond what the authorities establish.

In this case the denomination will have done too much.

3. Remember that God is also concerned with false accusation and rightly sees false accusation as abuse.

Our God is, indeed, the God of justice and He is highly interested in protecting the vulnerable.

This is true for those who are sexually and physically abused as well as for those who are abused through false accusation.

Remember, God’s people are forbidden from bearing false witness and there is a direct and sharp punishment for those who participate in the bearing of false witness:

Exodus 20:16 – You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Deuteronomy 19:18-19 – The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

While no age is free from the scourge of false accusation we live in a time where each new day seems brings another example of false accusation being weaponized, case after case after case. We would be wise to remember that in God’s ethical economy each of the false accusers in the stories behind those links would suffer the same legal sentence that loomed over those accused.

It is good and proper, as I mentioned in point 2, for the judges to inquire diligently and render their decision. That is what justice looks like. It would be profoundly unjust, however, for Southern Baptists to create a system that allows false accusation to be attached to a man’s name, apart from the appropriate investigation and adjudication of guilt, via this proposed central database.

Accusation cannot justly be further weaponized among Southern Baptists, as any database that records accusations beyond what civic authorities adjudicate would necessarily foster, without the God of Justice being provoked in just the same way He is provoked when the vulnerable are physically and sexually abused.

4. The idea of a database raises the necessary question of just what all will be documented in this database.

Surely God hates the abuse of the vulnerable and specifically so when it happens by those who represent His name. We know too this is not all that God hates. And if we agree that abuse disqualifies a man from ministry do we not have to acknowledge that it is not only abuse that disqualifies a man from ministry?

An easy comparison drawn from our cultural moment: Scripture records that God declares the practice of homosexuality to be an abomination and provokes His judgment (Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27). Should accusations of this nature be attached to a man’s name in any database used to vet candidates? In what way can we consistently argue that it shouldn’t, based on the principles that led to the idea of a database in the first place. Or think too of the damage done, the abuse done, to children of ministers who make a routine of neglecting their families in the name of serving the church. This, surely, false under the heading of abuse which the Lord hates and certainly such conduct disqualifies a man from serving in ministry. Should the accusations of neglect by adult children be attached to a man’s name in such databases?

Remember, please, that a slippery slope argument is only a fallacy if there is a reasonable break in the chain of likely consequences. I suppose that the creation of a database of accusations could be created that is arbitrarily limited to accusations of abuse. But that would happen, well, arbitrarily and not in accordance with God’s insistence on equitable judgment. And, should such a database be created and arbitrarily limited, I suspect there will arise a future occasion that will make the removal of that arbitrary limit look like the most pressing need of that hour’s crisis.

5. Central organization arcs toward creating a weapon which will be used against those who created it for good.

It seems to be a law of our fallen world that any mechanism of control created in good intentions will eventually be put to use for wicked ends.

Can we not see in our own day that the popular conception of what abuse entails is rapidly changing before our eyes? Contemporary legislation (seen in efforts like the one behind California’s AB 2943) outlawing so-called Conversion Therapy actually identifies “sexual orientation change efforts” as abuse, abuse there “defined as ‘any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.’”[2]

The Southern Baptist Convention knows well that denominations – our denomination – can be taken over by movements that reject the authority of God’s Word. Thankfully, too, denominations can be recovered. Nonetheless, do we think it is impossible (unlikely?) that there will come a time when the church is under great pressure to define as abuse the very thing that God says give life (i.e. repentance of sins and the pursuit of righteousness)?

Remember too that J.D. Greear has raised the possibility of cutting off fellowship with churches that persist in mishandling of abuse cases. Leaving aside the running kerfuffle about the wisdom and justice of doing that to a congregation and how to make that decision let us simply note that this is an option currently on the table.

In the (likely?) scenario where traditional Christian views of sexuality and the practices that are consistent with those views come to be seen as abusive do we really want a database identifying leaders as abusers which can be used to exclude those leaders and their churches from denominational life?

I fully grant that this kind of scenario might never come to pass. But can we say it is unlikely? I cannot.

Perhaps if we lived in such a world where the DOJ’s database didn’t exist or under a government that was unwilling to prosecute abusers it may be more reasonable to consider a centrally-maintained database of abusers. However, we do not live in such a world. The world we live in ensures that any such database will quickly present (and perhaps realize) real dangers, real abuses through its mere existence. As such the idea of an SBC-maintained database should be rejected as the bad idea it is.

Point of Confusion 2: We need a centrally-organized group to evaluate who is handling abuse too poorly to be in fellowship with the SBC.

1. The trouble with central organization as it applies to the proposed database is just as dangerous when it comes to SBC leadership disfellowshipping churches.

In the point above I mentioned that that President Greear has raised the question of removing churches from partnership with the SBC who do not address abuse appropriately. First, all the caveats – I do not think Greear intends for himself or the Executive Committee to take this action unilaterally. I also realize that churches have been removed from the SBC prior to Greear’s proposal.

The danger I see here is the amount of care being given to these recommendations and what sources of information are feeding the actions of the SBC leaders involved.

You probably know that the Executive Committee’s response to Greear specific identification of ten churches he believes need further investigation on the matter of handling abuse has met with no small outcry. Most, at least in my reading, of those who are critical of the workgroup’s response have expressed dissatisfaction with how quickly the work group replied. The idea appears to be that the work group did not take adequate time to investigate the churches. And that may be so.

But surely this applies to Greear’s suggestion as well – the tenth church Greear named (Turner Street Baptist Church of Springdale, AR) is not a Southern Baptist church. That the President of the SBC did not even take the time to verify that all the churches he was concerned with fell under the auspices of Southern Baptist Fellowship indicates that he also did not take the time to do, well, due diligence before making his recommendation.

So whose expression of acting in inappropriately hasty fashion is more significant – Greear’s or the Executive Committee’s work group? Answering that question is not my intention here. What I do want to note is that it appears reasonable to think a bit of knee-jerk is happening within all the parties involved. And that kind of haste is not conducive to just and informed action.

This brings me back to my criticism of central control in religious matters. To repeat something said earlier, the Bishops the United Methodist Church were not sufficient as a centrally organized control to prevent the spread of sexual wickedness in their camp. The metropolitans and bishops of the Anglican Church in Australia were similarly ineffective as a centrally organized control in preventing sexual abuse in their camp. And, of course, the Pope and his cardinals have shown a deep incompetence in addressing (let alone preventing) both the presence of sexual wickedness and sexual abuse within the RCC.

I mean no disrespect to J.D. Greear, Augie Boto, or any of the other people involved in formal SBC leadership. I simply believe that no man or collection of men is sufficient to protect the local church in a way that the members and elders of that congregation can – and, more importantly, are authorized by the Lord to do.

What Can and Should Be Done?

I don’t want to only critique. I see at least two more effective and appropriate paths that can be taken to address the SBC’s abuse pattern.

1. If there really is a need for an organized group to investigate SBC churches we have a mechanism for that in our polity. Any delegate to an annual meeting can make a motion to create such a group from the floor of the annual meeting. The messengers are then able to consider, debate, and ultimately act on that motion. The messengers, upon approval, can then also stock the newly-created group with approved appointments and, importantly, remove any members who do not serve well or even dissolve the group if its work is unhelpful or unneeded. If some kind of oversight body is needed then allow the representatives of local churches propose, create, fill, and hold accountable that body.

2. I am of the opinion that a deeply unhealthy obsession with church growth as the celebrated model of church and ministerial success has led to a dangerous embracing of pragmatism in our convention. This pressure to deliver numbers has led to an uncareful approach to membership, transfer of membership, vetting of leadership candidates, and – I suspect – a pressure on church leaders to be quiet about controversies which functions as a covering for predators.

For the SBC to really address the problem of abuse in our Convention we have to ask hard questions not so much about autonomy but about the principle of getting more of what you celebrate and subsidize. We have long celebrated and subsidized on the basis of church growth in a way that outstrips any celebration and subsidizing of more authentic markers of ministerial success and church health.

What SBC leaders can helpful lead on is a repentance of our casual approach to Biblical ecclesiology in the name of ever greater numbers and a recommitment to the sufficiency of Scripture as the guide not only to what we believe but also how we practice.

A subset of this need is the minimization of Baptist distinctives – like church autonomy – within the life of our Convention’s churches. Our churches, broadly speaking, do not instruct their people in the Biblical mandates for Baptists distinctives and, as a result, we (again, speaking broadly) do not understand Scripture’s obligation to handle membership and discipline seriously. We are also seeing in this very debate a broad lack of understanding that local church autonomy is actually the check on abusive practices rather than a flaw in our system that predators exploit. To be clear, I do not deny that poorly practiced autonomy in unhealthy churches has shown itself profitable to predators. I understand, however, that the problem is with a particular local church failing to practice autonomy well and not with local church autonomy itself.

The kind of self-conscious, specific, wide-spread course correction I am proposing requires more labor, more repentance, and more systemic culture-change than some inappropriately assembled database and a central group of leaders deciding who is in and who is out of the SBC on the basis of moment by moment cultural pressures. As a result I have deep fears, sadly, that our convention will fail to embrace these needed changes rather than opting for the kind of quick-fixes that will ultimately only paper over our problems as a network of cooperating churches.

This remains, however, one major reason to hope that I am wrong: this would actually bring health to the SBC and, along with that health, a great protection for the vulnerable among us and a greater display of the glory of Christ. Please join me in praying that our denomination will reject the bad ideas our pain has produced and embrace more Biblically and ecclesiologically appropriate remedies.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

[1] The Problem of Pain

[2] Matt Sharp, “California AB 2943: An Attack on the Heart of the Gospel”

https://adflegal.org/detailspages/blog-details/allianceedge/2018/07/26/california-ab-2943-an-attack-on-the-heart-of-the-gospel

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