Newspaper series on sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches

The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Press-News are doing a series called "Abuse of Fatih", about sex crimes by Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) church pastors and employees. The Houston Chronicle's introductory story for the series is here, San Antonio Press-News's here.

The second feature story is Offend, then repeat: Southern Baptist churches hired dozens of leaders previously accused of sex offenses Houston Chronicle 02/12/2019:

The SBC has rejected efforts to establish a registry to track sexual abuse cases and prevent churches from hiring predatory pastors. In some cases, churches knew of a pastor's past and allowed him to work anyway. In others, the SBC's inaction might have allowed offenders to move from community to community, ruining lives as they slipped through background checks and found jobs at unsuspecting churches.

"There's no other group that does pass the buck better," said Dee Ann Miller, a longtime victims' rights activist in Kansas who speaks out against sexual abuse by Baptist ministers and clergy in other faiths.

The practice of hiring pastors with disturbing pasts is part of a broader problem of sex abuse at Southern Baptist churches across the United States, the newspapers' investigation shows.

At least 700 people — nearly all of them children — reported being sexually abused by those who worked or volunteered at Southern Baptist churches since 1998. Records show that about 220 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have been convicted of sex crimes or took plea deals. The charges range from possessing child pornography to raping children.

The third and final major article in the series is Preying on teens: More than 100 Southern Baptist youth pastors convicted or charged in sex crimes 02/13/2019.

I'm including a list of related stories at the end of this post.

The Southern Baptist Convention is decentralized, as Robert Downen describes in his explainer piece linked below.

A bedrock of Baptist governance: SBC-affiliated churches are independent and self-governing. The convention and its entities typically do not interfere or comment on the affairs of individual churches, though several have lost their affiliation with the convention because of their acceptance of homosexuality. In those cases, the convention has been allowed to interfere because the church acted against official stances adopted by the convention's churches and therefore was "not in friendly cooperation."

In practice, the decentralized structure is opportunistic, in that it allows the denomination to assert control in the form of pressure on local churches but gives it the option to disclaim legal responsibility by misconduct or illegal action by local churches. Unlike centralized church organizations like the Catholic Church, the Episcopal Church, or the United Methodists, the central organization is not responsible for assigning pastors to local churches. The individual churches hire the pastors. And most of those individual churches or not large enough to attract the kind of lawsuits or investigative reporting that we see in this new investigative series by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Press-News.

In terms of exposing this kind of sexual abuse, the decentralized structure has a practical advantage for Baptist leaders who want to cover up the problem, in that it was easier for victims to bring legal actions against the denomination for not exercising more responsible supervision of their ministers. The structure of the SBC makes has made that more difficult.

Chris Stroop (@C_Stroop on Twitter) is an "Exvangelical" activist who writes and tweets about authoritarianin practices in conservative Protestant churches, including sex abuse.

Political Research Associates is mainly focused on providing a critical look at conservative Christian political activism in the US. But they also feature articles dealing with authortiarian and abusive practices in fundamentalist religious groups and institutions, e.g., Kathryn Joyce, Losing their Religion: A Roundtable Discussion (n/d: apparently from 2017 or so).

Related stories ancillary to the main series (Houston Chronicle links):

• Robert Downen et al, Abuse of Faith 02/10/2019
• Jordan Ray, Church leaders react to 'alarming and scandalous' Southern Baptist sex abuse investigation 02/10/2019
• Robert Downen and John Tedesco, Investigation into sexual abuse 'shining the light of day upon crime,’ Southern Baptist leader says 02/09/2019
• Search our database of Southern Baptist church pastors, leaders, employees and volunteers who pleaded guilty or were convicted of sex crimes.; accessed 02/11/2019
• Jordan Ray, Nassar victim, Terry Crews, others react to Chronicle investigation into Southern Baptist sex abuse 02/10/2019
• Robert Downen, The Southern Baptist Convention, explained 02/09/2019
• Lise Olsen, Help us investigate Southern Baptist sexual abuse 02/09/2019
• Jay Jordan, Abuse of Faith series concludes by shedding light on Southern Baptist sex crimes 02/13/2019
• Lise Olsen, The way forward: How can Southern Baptist churches and parents help prevent sexual abuse? 02/12/2019

David Roach of the Baptist Press discusses the abuse problem as reported by the series at the SBC website, For sex abuse trauma, churches must be 'trustworthy' 02/12/2019

Also from Baptist Press: Art Toalston, Paper's sexual abuse report leaves SBC's Greear 'broken' 02/10/2019

Albert Mohler, considered at least by some to be the leading Southern Baptist theologian, writes in what reads to me in his typically hedging way at his website, The Reality of Sexual Abuse Hits Home: What Happened? What Do We Do Now? 02/11/2019.