Checking in with Allie Beth Stuckey and other denizens of The Blaze

Following up on some of the rightwing nonsense around the latest conservative moral panic over "critical race theory," I've listened to some podcasts by Allie Beth Stuckey, a Southern Baptist who is able to attract people who count as rock stars in the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention), like Brother Al Mohler, who has a reputation as the leading Southern Baptist theologian. Although as the SBC continues to lurch rightward in its theology and politics, even Brother Al is starting to be regarded as dangerously moderate by many SBC conservatives. Other guests featured on her podcast recently include more secular figures like Georgia's pro-voter-suppression Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and longtime rightwing Republican ideologue Ken Blackwell.

Political chameleon Joe Rogan is also a recurring guest on Stuckey's program. Both Stuckey and Rogan are part of Glen Beck's politically conservative Blaze group. There a 06/16/2021 video of her with Rubin as a guest in which they exchange current Republican talking points with each other while warning that Joe Biden intends to Communize the US.

Her podcasts are pretty boring. Because a major theme is to provide reassurance and comfort to fundamentalist Christians who are constantly plagued by having to interact with people from what they disparagingly call "the world." But they do recall for me some of the long-standing, typical features of fundamentalist theology and church teaching.

In this episode of Stuckey's, How to Talk to Progressive Christians 05/04/2021, her guest is Alisa Childers.

This episode is sponsored by something called the Freedom Project Academy, which sounds pretty dodgy to me. To be fair, not everyone thinks so. The John Birch Society touts it on their website.

Stuckey's broadcast seems particularly targeted to women. This is consistent with the SBC principle of "complementarianism," a church doctrine/policy/ideology that holds not only that women cannot be SBC ministers - a policy the SBC shares with the "papist" Catholic Church - that they shouldn't even teach men in a religious context. (See: Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana, Beth Moore apologizes for her role in elevating ‘complementarian’ theology that limits women leaders Religion News Service 04/07/2021)

The conversation with Alisa Childers doesn't really offer much new in conceptual terms. That's kind of the whole point of Christian fundamentalism, as the stereotypical but unfortunately realistic example of "God said it, I believe it, and that's all there is to it." Or some variation thereof:

Of course, there is always more to "it."

One thing that strikes me is that Stuckey takes a pleasant, intelligent tone. Don't look for Marjorie Taylor Greene types of provocations from her. And the fundamentalist framework she uses is effectively in staying in that tone, because she normally engages with like-minded believers and continually frames the discussion in the terms of fundamentalist thought. This approach doesn't work so well in a context where critical analysis is called for, or with guests who would respectfully decline to accept the really narrow fundamentalist framing she uses.

But I do have to give her credit for one of the more eye-catching podcast titles I've come across, Was Jesus a Palestinian Communist?

In Stuckey's corner of Christianity, the kind of doctrinal references she provides can sound like serious intellectual engagement when takes on their face. For instance, Stuckey and Childers discuss the Trinity, one of the more inscrutable Christian doctrines, that holds God to be a single deity but three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is a concept that took a long time to emerge in its current form and is very much a later interpretation, not a formula spelled out in that way in the New Testament Scriptures fundamentalists hold to be "inerrant." The Britannica Online article on the life of Jesus by Jaroslav Pelikan, E.P. Sanders et al, has a section called The dogma of Christ in the ancient councils of Jesus that gives an overview of the longstanding theological controversies over the definition of what mainstream Christianity came to call the Trinity.

Stuckey and Childers use the concept of the Trinity is the most narrow sectarian way, to argue that the God worshipped by the Jews (including Jesus of Nazareth, btw) and Muslims is not at all the same God Christians worship because Jews and Muslims don't acknowledge the Trinity. And to argue that other groups who emerged from the Christian tradition and consider themselves Christian, like the Mormons, are not really true Christians at all because they depart in some way from their fundamentalist formula of the Trinity.

In that podcast after 29:00, they discuss the observation that women fundamentalists seem to be more likely than men to be attracted to what the call "progressive" Christianity, "progressive" being like a cuss word in their environment. That would be an interesting topic on which to elaborate, though any thoughtful discussion of it would quickly start trampling on the SBC's "complementarian" understanding of proper gender roles.

But that episode is also striking in how we can see to whom the discussion is addressed: to men and particularly women who are in fundamentalist church communities who feel that they should only be personally close to people in that sphere, but are confronted with the reality that there are people they care about who do not share the fundamentalist worldview. Childers even starts off by acknowledging that it is not unusual for people to become alienated from the fundamentalist environment because of some real harm or serious disappointment they encountered within it.

Still, the context is not about how good conservative Christians can find a way to appreciate that their parents, siblings, close friends, and even husbands may experience their religious views, or reject religious views altogether, and still maintain those relationships. The framework in which they discuss it is proselytizing, which is a central impulse for fundamentalist Christians. And even imperative, because their view holds that people who are not "saved" (in a right relationship to God) will spend eternity in Hell, a place of eternal torment. For some people, that can become a painful dilemma.

But the Stuckey-Childers conversation doesn't suggest any helpful coping strategies for people in that situation other than trying to convert the others. The discussion is largely about talking points to use in proselytizing pitches to people who have succummed to "progressive" Christianity.

Stuckey's most recent YouTube video of the moment (06/18/2021) about the dangers of demons with a former "faith editor" at The Blaze, Billy Hallowell. Stuckey seems to think the anti-demon guy might be a touch too liberal for her liking.

Russell Moore and irresponsible authoritarianism in the Southern Baptist Convention

Anthea Butler reacts to the release of a long letter of 05/31/2021 by Russell Moore, resignation letter from last year when he left his post as head a year ago as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a post he held from 2013 until this year.

Russell Moore burning down the SBC as he leaves was not on my bingo card this yearhttps://t.co/kUbiRiXC4Q

— ProfB (@AntheaButler) June 5, 2021

Paul O'Donnell and Bob Smietana report on the story for Religion News Service, Leaked Russell Moore letter blasts SBC conservatives, sheds light on his resignation 06/02/2021. Some of the reporting may be a bit confusing about the date of the letter. The one Butler links in her tweet is dated May 31, 2021. But he says there, "Some of the letter below is almost verbatim what I said to my own board officers last February." Russell Moore to ERLC trustees: ‘They want me to live in psychological terror’ RNS 06/02/2021.

The letter is mainly about the denomination's handling of sexual abuse and family violence by pastors and church staff. The SBC has a decentralized structure in which individual churches are independent entities, although the denomination exerts a great deal of policy and doctrinal direction. That decentralized legal structure has made it more difficult to hold the domination itself legally accountable than it is for the Catholic or US Protestant denominations like the United Methodist Church or the Episcopalians, where the denomination more directly controls local churches including assigning their ministers.

As Chrissy Stroop wrote last year, the SBC has been in a longterm radicalization process, which still continues, becoming even more insistent on very conservative views. (Are the Southern Baptists, America's Largest Evangelical Denomination, About to Get Even More Conservative? 03/10/2020):

These days, the range of acceptable political opinion among white Southern Baptists ranges approximately from very right-wing to ultra right-wing. But even as the SBC struggles to come up with an effective response to numerous cases of abuse and coverups that have come to light in recent years, some of the prominent ultra-right-wingers are clamoring to suppress the merely very right-wingers, whom they disdain for being “too liberal” and blame for declining finances in the SBC’s central structures.

The primary target of the ultras’ ire is Russell Moore, head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a body that was formed on the foundations of the older Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (with which the SBC cut all ties in 1991) and the Christian Life Commission. The ERLC’s founding was part of the culmination of the SBC’s so-called “conservative resurgence,” a purge of liberals from SBC leadership and institutions that dominated SBC life in the 1980s and 1990s. The hostile takeover was led by men like Paul Pressler, who stands credibly accused of molesting boys over decades, and Paige Patterson, who was disgraced in 2018 when audio surfaced of him counseling an abused wife to stay with her husband and to try to change him through prayer. [my emphasis in bold]

The fervent embrace of Donald Trump by conservative white evangelicals/fundamentalists is very much a part of this process. The radicalization of the SBC is part of the larger story of the Trumpification of the Republican Party.

Stroop is also right to emphasize the issue of authoritarianism in this connection:

The SBC’s “conservative resurgence” was essentially an authoritarian coup. Indeed, since the 1980s authoritarianism has arguably become a defining feature of white American evangelicalism. Since authoritarianism is characterized by a paranoid need to identify both internal and external enemies, the vicious trajectory of an empowered authoritarian movement rarely if ever stops after a single round of purges. Meanwhile, the ends justify the means for the zealous adherents to a particular authoritarian ideal, who protect their reputations and that of the organizations they represent above those who inevitably fall victim to abuse in authoritarian environments.

Confederate "Heritage" Month 2021, April 22: The Last Judgment, the Lost Cause, and "Southern [white] historical consciousness"

Oran Smith in his book on the Southern Baptist Convention and movement conservatism in the US, The Rise of Baptist Republicanism (1997), makes an intriguing observation about the mutual relationship between what we now call Christian fundamentalism and Lost Cause ideology in the years after the Civil War in what Smith calls "Southern historical consciousness," by which he means the understanding of history among the white majority.

His analysis involves the End Times theology embraced by many conservative Christians (fundamentalist and Pentecostal) in the United States called "dispensationalism." This is a theory originated and popularized by A British minister named John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), a leader in the Protestant sect, The Plymouth Brethren, who later led a split-off sect called the Exclusive Brethren. He began propagating a theory of the End Times that is known as "premillenial dispensationalism," which involved the Rapture that has become familiar in American popular culture in recent decades. In this view, true Christians will be "raptured" by being suddenly taken into Heaven, while on earth a thousand years of conflict and suffering will follow on Earth until Christ returns and puts an end to worldly history and conducts the Last Judgment.

Darby propagated his idea in the 1830s and 1840s in Europe. His Rapture notion of the End Times became a one of the two major doctrinal elements of what came to be known as Christian fundamentalism in the early 20th century, the other one being the notion of "Biblical literalism." Oran Smith describes how Southern Christians in the US had worked out a vision of the End Times that expected a millennium of progress based on their understanding of Southern slave society:

In the years before the American Civil War, a millennialist myth had already begun to develop, as theologians looked to the scriptures for lessons about the end of the world. With cotton the reigning king, evangelical ministers along with political leaders convinced many Southern elites in an upbeat, positive, “postmillennial” phase that, with its economic and spiritual prosperity, Southern society was so idyllic that this earthly perfection indicated that the thousand-year or “millennial” rein of Christ promised in the scriptures would be ushered in without judgment. Christ would return to earth at the end of a millennial reign of peace already begun.

Obviously the human property of the Southern planter elite weren't experiencing an idyllic life. But this religious propaganda support for the slave system was a triumphalist one, with a kind of Panglossian satisfaction in the society of the South, destined to civilize ever-larger portions of the world with its Christian institution of slavery.

But after the godly slave society was transformed by the Civil War that ended its Peculiar Institution of slavery, a more Darby-like vision of the End Times became popular, one that resonated more with white despair but also contained a more obvious angry and aggressive vision:

Then came the war. In the postwar phase, as the region lay in ruin, the positive postmillennialism gave way to dour premillennialism. A devastated South took Confederate defeat as a sign that Christ would soon rapture His church safely out of a world that was getting progressively hostile to His kingdom so that He might judge the sinful world before His thousand-year rein. In some sense, the [Southern Baptist denomination] remains in ... this latter phase, as deep within Southern Baptist religion and politics lies the notion that the South is separate from the rest of the nation: a little more righteous, a little more virtuous; believers in the absolutes of scripture surrounded by relativists, a Christian nation-state snuffed out by barbarians. [my emphasis in bold]

The Southern Baptists are still the largest Protestant denomination in the US, and is particularly strong in the states of the former Confederacy. It got the "Southern" part of its name in 1845 when it split off from its Northern wing in the lead-up to the Civil War, i.e., they split off because of their own support for slavery. Oran Smith poses the questions for the world of 1997, "Why does the Lost Cause myth remain important? Why is it important for political analysis?"

Simple. Because the myth lives. According to one cultural critic, “Southern Baptists have been the largest identifiable group of victims of [the Lost Cause] myth.” Southern Baptist religion scholar and moderate-faction activist Bill Leonard agrees that the myth is not a dusty fable. He writes that “the way in which Southern Baptist leaders sought to explain the defeat of the South’s righteous cause provides insight into their continuing response to divisive theological and cultural issues. The formula seems to be: When in doubt, spiritualize. That tendency remains a significant element of SBC life” (emphasis [from Smith]).

By "victims" in that quote, Leonard clearly means that white Southern Baptists were the biggest suckers for swallowing the Lost Cause ideology.

Patriarchal attitudes and the Southern Baptist sexual abuse problem

Chris Stroop, a prominent figure in the "Exvangelical" movement, has an article about the low expectations he has for the Southern Baptist Convention dealing with its sexual abuse problem, Why the Southern Baptists Won't Solve Their Abuse Problem Playboy (!) 02/15/2019. He makes an important point about cultural attitudes intertwine with SBC theology and denominational rules:

[T]he SBC (and white evangelicalism writ large) continue to cling to (white) Christian supremacism and patriarchy, which they justify with reference to a doctrine of “biblical inerrancy” that just happens to function primarily to uphold straight white male authority over women, children, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community. ...

[T]he doctrine of so-called “complementarianism,” which, unlike best practices in response to sexual abuse, is required of churches to retain membership in the SBC. Complementarianism teaches that God created men and women with distinct roles, roles that include “male headship” over the family and that entail female submission. The SBC does not allow women leadership roles over men. ... As long as it refuses to examine the culpability of its explicitly patriarchal theology in fostering abuse, the SBC’s systemic abuse problem is going to remain unsolved. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure how far down in SBC organizations the not allowing women to exercise "leadership roles over men" goes. It's the rule for pastors in churches. But it's hard to imagine that in the denominational departments missions office, and the staff of the larger urban churches that there are no men being supervised by women in some job or other.

But the basic point he's mking is an important one. I would argue that allowing and recruiting female pastors would go a long way toward breaking up the "boys club" mentality that currently exists.

That won't in itself solve the problem. But it would create a better organizational environment in which to handle such cases. Other reforms could be implemented more quickly, such as those covered in my two recent posts on the problem here and here.

Stroop cites this article by Keith Whitfield, Sex Abuse Among Southern Baptists 02/03/2019 at the very conservative First Things site. And he explains why he finds Whitfield's appeal to a “Moral Resurgence" essentially unserious.

Whitfield's piece does admit two important elements in the problem. One is:

[Southern Baptists] have lived in denial of the problem. Wittingly or unwittingly, for some the denial served to protect our reputation as a body of churches with a storied theological resurgence. Others lived in denial because they could not envision a way to stop it, and the difficulty of facing the reality was too great. Still others insist there’s not a major problem because the percentage of offenders is a relatively small number of Southern Baptist members. Yet this issue is not primarily about math, but about neglect in how cases were handled. Regardless of the reasons, denial creates a safe haven for abusers and silenced for decades what could have been a loud and unified voice of churches defending the weak and vulnerable. [my emphasis]

In other words, the SBC collectively responded like all large organizations tend to do, by trying to cover up the problem as much as possible and making that a priority over protecting even minors from sexual predators among the clergy. And I think it's inevitable that such attitudes would have expressed itself in issues of sexual harrassment of adults in that same organizational context.

Another he describes this way:

[W]e’ve failed to understand the power dynamics of abuse and have often viewed these instances through the lens of sexual sin. This led to abusers being superficially reprimanded and penalized, while the survivors were simultaneously overlooked and/or treated as complicit. Such a reductionist understanding gave rise to unrighteous sympathy that sought to protect the future of the perpetrator at the expense of justice and protection of the victim. Then, when survivors would not let the injustice go, they were characterized as troublemakers—unwilling to “forgive” their abusers. [my emphasis]

That problem is a part of larger issue of patriarchal/heteronormative attitudes, practices, and religious beliefs that Southern Baptists will have to challenge to some extent to significantly improve their churches' and denomination's handling of sexual abuse problems within their organizations.

The Southern Baptist sexual abuse problem - will the Southern Baptist Convention change its ways?

I provided a number of links in the previous post from the Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Press-News series on sexual abuse by pastors and other leaders in Southern Baptist churches, and related articles.

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. 4/9

J.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)

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.