I hope those churches and the denomination (Southern Baptist Convention, SBC) step up and deal with this problem in a more responsible and effective way. Two key procedural factors are (1) the decentralized structure of the SBC in which local churches are responsible for recruiting, screening, and (2) there are basically no official denominational requirements for ordination as a minister for the SBC denomination.
Those problems do have some straighforward structural remedies: provide some kind of centralized screening and approval of pastor hires at local churches, including a central record of disciplinary actions and convictions for legal sex offenses; and, put some reasonable age, educational qualifications, experience, and background screening on the ordination of ministers for the SBC.
Just to be clear on what this means: a tiny rural church can ordain a person as a Southern Baptist minister and other SBC churches are expected to consider it as a valid ordination.
SBC President President J.D. Greear posted a tweet string responding to the reports, starting with this one:
I am broken over what was revealed today. The abuses described in this @HoustonChron article are pure evil. I join with countless others who are currently “weeping with those who weep.” 1/9https://t.co/yYECD45TuD— J.D. Greear (@jdgreear) February 10, 2019
The two opening sentences in that tweet will have a particular ring for members of his denomination and those familiar with it. Being "broken" is a common metaphor for repentance of sin. But "I am broken over what was revealed today" doesn't in itself state any kind of responsibility on the speaker's part. It's more a statement of repenting for what someone else did.
Sympathy for the victims doesn't come until the third sentence, “weeping with those who weep.” The second sentence labels the "abuses described" as "pure evil." I assume he ran all these tweets through the SBC's lawyers, and they probably wouldn't have any objections to that one. But labeling something "pure evil" is not just a moral judgment, it's also a radical distancing of the speaker from the acts. Which, coming from the head of the religious denomination in question, is not the same as recognizing some collective responsibility by his organization for a problem that itself was not radically distanced from it, but rather very much a problem within it.
A statement of institutional responsibility and commitment to real solutions sounds different than this.
The fourth tweet in the string tries to make such a statement, though the lawyers convened meetings over every word before clearing it.
We—leaders in the SBC—should have listened to the warnings of those who tried to call attention to this. I am committed to doing everything possible to ensure we never make these mistakes again. 4/9J.D. Greear (@jdgreear) February 10, 2019
That they "should have listened to the warnings of those who tried to call attention to this" means approximately nothing. It certainly doesn't say, yeah, we knew what was going on and we didn't much care as long as we could avoid bad publicity over it. The lawyers wouldn't have let a statement like that go through!
You can see all nine tweets in the series on Twitter. What you will not find in any of them is (1) a commitment to institute denominational control and screening of ministerial hires or (2) imposing new standards denomination-wide for ordaining ministers. So the "low-hanging fruit" for offering solutions are, well, still hanging there after Greear's tweet string. He does use this classic evasive language, "It is a heinous error to apply [local church] autonomy in a way that enables abuse." That definition of a "heinous" error could be fully addressed by the SBC central office sending a formal letter to local churches saying: all churches should be diligent, blah, blah.
At a post at his website, 700 Is Not the Total Number: How to Get Help 02/11/2019, Greear encourages victims to seek legal and psychological assistance.
And this brings us to some of the problems the SBC's theological-political and cultural positions create for dealing with a problem like sexual abuse by pastors and other church officials. That piece doesn't advise people to seek out only Christian counselors. But it does includes links where people can seek "guidance on finding a trusted Christian counselor near you with experience in your area of need." It represents a couple of books to "provide a taste of the benefits you would receive from working with a Christian counselor."
I find it ethically dubious for health professionals to offer services as Christian services. I don't pretend to know every twist on this issue in the United States, where most Southern Baptists are. Counselors and doctors in the US are licensed at the state level, and standards do vary from state to state. But it's generally unethical for a psychogist or psychiatrist or other officially licensed psychological counselor to use their role as therapist to influence a patient's religious beliefs as such. So I'm not sure whether advertising themselves as Christian therapists might even create licensing problems in some states. Plus, presenting oneself as a "Christian" counselor sounds a lot like they are saying, "I don't want no Jews comin' to me for therapy. Or Muslims. Or Buddhists."
But there is also the problem that conservative evangelical Christianity in general, of which the SBC is very much a part, often tends to regard psychotherapy (and even meditation!) as religiously dubious. In the semi-mystical theological perspective influenced by the Pietists characteristic of the Southern Baptists, faith in Jesus is often understood being the only thing needed to solve psychological disturbances. So there are some religious doctrinal barriers for the SBC in trying to understand the actual needs of sexual abuse victims.
It's also the case that some anti-abortion Christian fundamentalists promote "crisis pregnancy centers" that deliberately provide medical misinformation to women seeking abortion counseling. (See, e.g.: Robert Muller, Crisis Pregnancy Centers Traumatize Women Through Deception Pscychology Today 02/18/2016. "Often located near actual abortion clinics, [such centers] attempt to confuse visitors, induce guilt, and pathologize abortion through misinformation.") The existence of this practice and its wide acceptance among anti-abortionists is another reason for people to be cautious about health services presented as "Christian".
A somewhat more nebulous but very real issue is the extent to which patriarchal "traditional values" dominate in the SBC. The SBC does not allow female ministers. And that's an issue on which the denomination does enforce conformity on local churches. Ordaining or hiring female pastors gets your church kicked out of the denomination. Like other Christian denominations, much of the actual work in the churches is done by women. But they aren't allowed to be ministers.
The SBC also generally subscribes to a "puritanical" conception of sex and gender roles. In practice, this often results in a sense of shame around sex and a tendency to take a "boys will be boys" attitude toward male sexuality but a "don't spread your legs" attitude toward female sexuality. And the denomination considers homosexuality a sin. And don't even ask about transgender issues.
From the standpoint of countering sexual abuse and encouraging victims to report, this can add up to a toxic brew. We're familiar from the movement against sexual harrassment how intimidating it can be even for grown women and men to report sexual abuse by people in authority over them. For minors, it's even more so. Girls' families and friends may shame them more than support them in some cases. When the perpetrator is male and a boy the target, reporting is fraught with additional consequences. And even for well-meaning parents, if they were raised and live in an atmosphere where sex is considered shameful, they may not not have the best personal skills for coping with a child coming to them saying he or she is being abused.
Albert Mohler is the president of SBC's flagship seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, making him one of the most prominent figures in the denomination. He responded on his website to the Chronicle/Press-News series, The Reality of Sexual Abuse Hits Home: What Happened? What Do We Do Now? 02/11/2019. He writes:
In light of this report and the nature of sexual abuse, an independent, third-party investigation is the only credible avenue for any organizations that face the kind of sinful patterns unearthed in this article by the Houston Chronicle. No Christian body, church, or denomination can investigate itself on these terms because such an investigation requires a high level of thoroughness and trustworthiness. Only a third-party investigator can provide that kind of objective analysis.This is a standard approach to stalling action for an organization confronted with the public embarrassment like this. Hire an "independent," consultant, appoint a committee, conduct a study, drag out the process as long as possible and hope the bad publicity has blown over by then. At the end of the post, he notes, "In June of last year, J.D. Greear, the newly elected president of the SBC, appointed a task force dedicated to investigating the issue of sexual abuse in SBC churches. That task force is at work and I pray that they will be filled with God’s wisdom and quickly respond to this crisis." Convenient. They already have a "task force". Is he suggesting that it should just be disbanded and replaced by a "third-party" one? I hope Brother Al's expressed concern is real. But after having followed him sporadically for years, I have great admiration for his talent at mealy-mouthing.
The following paragraph doesn't inspire optimism:
Furthermore, Southern Baptists find themselves in a precarious pinch because of its core ecclesiology — an ecclesiology that upholds the full autonomy of local congregations. A Southern Baptist church, legally defined, is a church in friendly cooperation with and contributing to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention. No denominational hierarchy exists that can force local congregations into conformity. The SBC ecclesial structure directly contrasts with the edifice of the Roman Catholic Church."Ecclesionlogy" is a useful word. It actually means studying the history of Christian churches as institutions. But it sounds all theology-ish if you don't encounter that word often. I'm guessing that a lot of SBC officials will understand this to mean: we can't change our divinely inspired denominational structure to, you know, actually exercise some substantive control over the SBC's sad process for recruiting, hiring, and assigning ministers. The reference to the Catholic Church has a double meaning in this context. The SBC prides itself on not being Catholic. But this can also be read as a wink-wink-nudge-nudge way of saying, hey, look at the abuse problems the Catholic Church had, so changing our organizational structure to be more like theirs won't solve anything, now will it?
There is a valid point buried in there. Centralizing control over ordaining and assigning pastor would not in itself solve the problem. The SBC would also have to exercise that authority in a way that addresses the abuse problem. But without some form of improvemed centralized control, it's hard to see how the denomination can seriously address the problem in a meaningful way.
But large organizations can always find excuses for inaction on problems they don't actually intend to solve.
This following paragraph seems to be a Baptist doubletalk way of saying that the SBC should continue to claim it's all a problem for local churches, but if some cases become embarrassing we can expel a small church or two to show we're not totally ignoring it.
This report from the Houston Chronicle, however, magnifies the need for a mechanism that identifies convicted and documented sexual abusers who may be considered for positions of leadership within the churches. Basic tools already exist, like background checks and sex-offender registries. Woe unto the church, ministry, or employer that fails to act and act now. The report resounds with overwhelming evidence: many churches of the SBC have failed, and its leaders must enact a strategy to reverse the tides of abuse in our churches. This strategy involves difficulties, particularly for Southern Baptists who must balance the ecclesiological convictions of the denomination with the moral imperative of halting sexual abuse in its churches. The struggle, however, must be met. Southern Baptists must pursue this predicament with conviction and alacrity. Our faithfulness to the church, to the gospel, and to God depends on our readiness to respond. [my emphasis]He elaborates the expulsion notion afterward. But it seems pretty clear that he is dead opposed to any change in the ordination practices and wants to make sure that the abuse problem will continue to be treated as, at most, a failure by individual local churches: "Southern Baptist ecclesiology demands that local churches hold their ministers to a higher standard — a standard in accordance with the Scriptural qualifications for pastors and ministers of the church." (my emphasis in bold) (Post has been added for spelling correction)
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