It is not only a large denomination. It has also been for decades a major influence on conservative politics.
The SBC is a religious denomination, not a cult, so there is a wide diversity of opinions both theological and political within the membership of the church.
The report itself can be found on Guidepost Solutions website. So far as I saw in a quick review of the report, it doesn't feature a lot of salacious details. But it describes a serious problem with a wide scope.
The Houston Chronicle has a news report on the newly-released study: Robert Downen et al, Bombshell 400-page report finds Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual abuse survivors 05/22/2022.
I want to mention a couple of points here. One is that churches with centralized structures, including the Catholic Church and the United Methodist Church, have tended to have news reports over the years about sexual abuse in their institutions, in part because they do have centralized administrations that can be held to account. The SBC, on the other hand, has a long tradition of independent local churches, so that individual churches affiliated with the denomination are not legally or formally directed by the central denomination. Baptists celebrate this as a democratic element of their denomination. But it also has had practical consequences for dealing with sex abuse cases, as the Houston Chronicle notes:
SBC leaders insisted they were constrained by their own structure: Unlike the Catholic Church, there’s no Pope or bishops in the SBC, nor are there uniform requirements or processes for ordinations or hiring processes. Each Southern Baptist church makes its own decisions. So when the SBC received a tip about a possible predator, leaders made no effort to contact authorities or learn if the accused perpetrator was still in ministry, Guidepost found.One aspect of the report is the advice the SBC's attorneys gave in response to abuse reports. I would be curious to hear what legal ethicists have to say about this. Because the US legal system requires attorneys to be zealous advocates for their clients. Which in situations like this means giving the national SBC advice on how to minimize their legal liability. That doesn't mean that their clients have to follow their advice.
And I don't say this to minimize in any way bad acts by responsible SBC officials. But it is also a larger problem that attorneys are required to provide their clients information on their legal risks. It takes a stronger set of ethical standards than a lot of senior leaders in public, private, and nonprofit organizations actually practice to take an action that would be ethically right in dealing with abuse complaints that their attorneys tell them might increase their legal exposure.
This creates a situation which gives organizations an incentive to make their priority to discredit the victim and exonerate the perpetrator. This isn't right. But I also don't know of any easy solution to that larger problem.
I'll also mention that the Guidepost report gives credit to Wade Burleson of Istoria Ministries for making very public efforts to convince the SBC to take the sexual abuse problems more seriously.
I've been very critical of Wade Burleson for years because he's, well, a flaming rightwinger. He's running for Congress in Oklahoma's 3rd District this year, so you can check out on his website whether my characterization of his positions is appropriate. He's challenging an incumbent Republican Congressman whose district was redrawn this year. Burleson is claiming that his opponent isn't conservative enough. (Of course!)
Or you can check out this three-part blog post of his from just last year: The Tragic Murder of Missionary John Birch (Pt. I) 1/23/2021. Or this podcast from this year that Russia invaded Ukraine because God wanted him to: Vladimir Putin and God’s Providence Istoria Ministries 03/28/2022.
But I have to give him credit for what appears to have been a serious effort on his part to side with the victims of abuse within the SBC.
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