Religious Threadjacks

[AndyinPA]

[Volkonski]

[Suranis]

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1528 ... SCgqHcxM8Q

I hope people forced them to reform themselves, but based on past experience I'm fairly sure it's already been forgotten about.

There has been revelations like this for years, and they have been allowed to be forgotten about. Ive been seeing the same cycle play out for 30 odd years. If not Catholic no-one cares. And the Organizations are allowed to skate and never have to do anything to reform themselves, so kids keep getting abused. And then they are "reveled," again, to have been covering it up, again, and everyone pretends to wring their hands for 30 seconds and then stop talking about it, again.

And its for a lot of reasons including Protestant arrogance and general anti-Catholic feeling. Protestants don't want to be "just like the Catholics" when in fact they are worse. Media people want to be the campaigning crusaders. Sports people don't want to have people look at systemic abuse covered up by their organizations. Atheists just want to bash a big Christian organization, and they face less resistance if they bash Catholics. Everyone wants to keep "Child abuse" as an insult for Catholics only. Anything else means they would have to face recriminations and have to reform themselves, and no-one wants that. [/bitter cynicism]

This article was written in 2017. I've alluded to it from time to time, but the Media windscreen wipers of anything to do with Protestant abuse just keeps washing it away

https://newrepublic.com/article/142999/ ... se-scandal

The Silence of the Lambs
Are Protestants concealing a Catholic-size sexual abuse scandal?
...
For evangelical Christians like Ken and Sue James, bringing up kids in a close-knit fundamentalist community feels like blessing them with the ultimate “safe space” from the moral laxity of the larger culture. Sexual abuse is something that happens in the secular world, not among the God-fearing. This, after all, is the universe of abstinence pledges and old-fashioned courtship, where parents build their entire lives around shielding their children from worldly temptations.

Yet the potential for sexual abuse is actually exacerbated by the core identity of fundamentalist groups like ABWE. Like Catholics, fundamentalists preach strict obedience to religious authority. Sex is not only prohibited outside of marriage, but rarely discussed. These overlapping dynamics of silence and submission make conservative Christians a ripe target for sexual predators. As one convicted child abuser tells clinical psychologist Anna Salter in her book Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders, “Church people are easy to fool.”

Over the past five years, in fact, it has become increasingly clear—even to some conservative Christians—that fundamentalist churches face a widespread epidemic of sexual abuse and institutional denial that could ultimately involve more victims than the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. In 2012, an investigation at Bob Jones University, known as the “fortress of fundamentalism,” revealed that the school had systematically covered up allegations of sexual assault and counseled victims to forgive their attackers. Sovereign Grace, a network of “neo-Calvinist” churches, has been facing multiple allegations of child molestation and sexual abuse. In 2014, a New Republic investigation found that school officials at Patrick Henry College, a popular destination for Christian homeschoolers, had routinely responded to rape and harassment claims by treating perpetrators with impunity, discouraging women from going to the police, and blaming them for dressing immodestly.

Nobody told the James family that women and girls had been abused at the compound hospital since the 1960s.

Allegations of sexual misconduct have also engulfed four of fundamentalism’s most venerated patriarchs. Doug Phillips, a prominent leader of the Christian homeschooling movement, was forced to step down in 2013 from his nationwide ministry, Vision Forum, after he was sued by a former nanny who claimed he groomed her as a teenager to be his “personal sex object.” The following year, Bill Gothard, founder of the influential Institute in Basic Life Principles, resigned amid more than 30 allegations of sexual harassment and molestation by former staffers, interns, and volunteers. In the first case to cross over into the cultural mainstream, Josh Dugger, the beloved eldest son of reality TV’s favorite fundamentalist family, fell into disgrace in 2015 with the revelation that he had molested five underage girls, including four of his sisters. And this July, the chief of another fundamentalist reality-TV clan, Toby Willis, is scheduled to stand trial on four counts of child rape.

This burgeoning crisis of abuse has received far less attention than the well-documented scandal that rocked the Catholic Church. That’s in part because the evangelical and fundamentalist world, unlike the Catholic hierarchy, is diverse and fractious, composed of thousands of far-flung denominations, ministries, parachurch groups, and missions like ABWE. Among Christian evangelicals, there is no central church authority to investigate, punish, or reform. Groups like ABWE answer only to themselves.

The scale of potential abuse is huge. Evangelical Protestants far outnumber Catholics in the United States, with more than 280,000 churches, religious schools, and affiliated organizations. In 2007, the three leading insurance companies that provide coverage for the majority of Protestant institutions said they received an average of 260 reports per year of child sexual abuse at the hands of church leaders and members. By contrast, the Catholic Church was reporting 228 “credible accusations” per year.

“Protestants have responded much worse than the Catholics to this issue,” says Boz Tchividjian, a former child sex-abuse prosecutor who is the grandson of legendary evangelist Billy Graham. “One of the reasons is that, like it or not, the Catholics have been forced, through three decades of lawsuits, to address this issue. We’ve never been forced to deal with it on a Protestant-wide basis.”

To investigate and expose sexual abuse in evangelical churches, Tchividjian founded GRACE, short for Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment. In 2011, the group was hired to look into what had happened on the Bangladesh compound. While the abuse itself took place long ago, ABWE’s denial and coverup spanned more than two decades—a pattern that eerily replicates the Catholic scandal. The authoritarianism that often prevails in fundamentalist circles, Tchividjian says, is what sets the stage for widespread abuse—and for the systematic mishandling of reported cases. “When you have so much concentrated authority, in so few fallible individuals, problems percolate,” he says. “And when they do, they’re not often addressed. Because the leaders who hold all the authority decide what to do with them.”

Admit it, no-one wanted to respond to Volon's article. That's why I waited a few days to make it obvious. How would you have felt if it was a Catholic story? You would be much more comfortable, at the very least. I'm very aware that people will respond to my quoted texts by accusing me of ignoring the criticisms of the Catholic church in the part f the article that I quoted, which will pretty much prove my point that people just want to keep focusing on Child Abuse as long as its a solely Catholic thing.

And that's not my problem, it's yours.

Anyway the website of Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment is here, with their Wiki and Facebook pages if you want to check out more information.

https://www.netgrace.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRACE_(Organization)

https://www.facebook.com/netgraceorg/

[neeneko]

And its for a lot of reasons including Protestant arrogance and general anti-Catholic feeling. Protestants don't want to be "just like the Catholics" when in fact they are worse. Media people want to be the campaigning crusaders. Sports people don't want to have people look at systemic abuse covered up by their organizations. Atheists just want to bash a big Christian organization, and they face less resistance if they bash Catholics. Everyone wants to keep "Child abuse" as an insult for Catholics only. Anything else means they would have to face recriminations and have to reform themselves, and no-one wants that. [/bitter cynicism]

If you want to talk 'bitter cynicism', catholics, esp in the US, have been more than happy to feed into the 'child abuse is a gay thing' and 'child abuse is a trans thing', with Catholics and Protestants becoming such close allies that Evangelicals support Catholic judges pushing through the federal levels since they are so well aligned to kick down.

So yeah.. my sympathy here is pretty damn minimal. There is some infighting, but to an outsider they are more alike than differnt and both seem to think 'the media' and 'the atheists' unfairly malign them and not their step sibling since both have massive victim complexes despite their massive political and economic power they are always under siege by small weak groups that need to be put in their place.

Given the rise of theocratic takeovers in the US, this is NOT the time to complain about how unfairly your already dominant and increasingly powerful group is being treated by its closest ally. People on the wrong end of the kicking down are not impressed by your claims that your institution is not being given the respect and deference it deservers.

[Resume18]

And its for a lot of reasons including Protestant arrogance and general anti-Catholic feeling. Protestants don't want to be "just like the Catholics" when in fact they are worse. Media people want to be the campaigning crusaders. Sports people don't want to have people look at systemic abuse covered up by their organizations. Atheists just want to bash a big Christian organization, and they face less resistance if they bash Catholics. Everyone wants to keep "Child abuse" as an insult for Catholics only. Anything else means they would have to face recriminations and have to reform themselves, and no-one wants that. [/bitter cynicism]

If you want to talk 'bitter cynicism', catholics, esp in the US, have been more than happy to feed into the 'child abuse is a gay thing' and 'child abuse is a trans thing', with Catholics and Protestants becoming such close allies that Evangelicals support Catholic judges pushing through the federal levels since they are so well aligned to kick down.

So yeah.. my sympathy here is pretty damn minimal. There is some infighting, but to an outsider they are more alike than differnt and both seem to think 'the media' and 'the atheists' unfairly malign them and not their step sibling since both have massive victim complexes despite their massive political and economic power they are always under siege by small weak groups that need to be put in their place.

Given the rise of theocratic takeovers in the US, this is NOT the time to complain about how unfairly your already dominant and increasingly powerful group is being treated by its closest ally. People on the wrong end of the kicking down are not impressed by your claims that your institution is not being given the respect and deference it deservers.

Them poor, poor, pitiful put-upon christians that make up 65% of US-ers, and are trying to bring us back into the good ole 50's with restrictions on abortion and birth controls, and sweep child rape under the rug.

ETA: I should have been more precise in the above: not all christians (and not just christians) are trying to do these things, just enough of them to be vocal and have a significant impact. Same goes for those whining about being put-upon.

[Suranis]

Them poor, poor, pitiful put-upon christians that make up 65% of US-ers, and are trying to bring us back into the good ole 50's with restrictions on abortion and birth controls, and sweep child rape under the rug.

ETA: I should have been more precise in the above: not all christians (and not just christians) are trying to do these things, just enough of them to be vocal and have a significant impact. Same goes for those whining about being put-upon.

Thank you for responding to my post about how Christians are bieng let get away with Child abuse by screaming about Christians that are bieng let get away with child abuse.

Blah blah

Thank you for ignoring a post about how Protestants have been let get away with child abuse for decades, becasue you want to yell about how bad Catholics are.

The lady doest protest too much, meethinks.

[neeneko]

The lady doest protest too much, meethinks.

I am not now or was raised protestant nor catholic, and am commenting on both of them as an outsider who can speak to how both are behaving and being treated without personal investment in either. I am also lgbt, so my investment is more related to how they work together and thus perceive both of their bias against others to be far stronger than the bias they have towards each other.

However, within my social circle there are plenty of abuse victims who were raised within protestant churches, so if I was going to have any bias it would be to give catholics more slack than protestants in this regard.

[Suranis]

However, within my social circle there are plenty of abuse victims who were raised within protestant churches, so if I was going to have any bias it would be to give catholics more slack than protestants in this regard.

It would have been nice to hear you comment about the hidden abuse in Protestant churches then. Becasue if people default to wasting their time screaming about Catholics when people bring it up, the Protestant Churches will never be forced to change, will they?

[Resume18]

Them poor, poor, pitiful put-upon christians that make up 65% of US-ers, and are trying to bring us back into the good ole 50's with restrictions on abortion and birth controls, and sweep child rape under the rug.

ETA: I should have been more precise in the above: not all christians (and not just christians) are trying to do these things, just enough of them to be vocal and have a significant impact. Same goes for those whining about being put-upon.

Thank you for responding to my post about how Christians are bieng let get away with Child abuse by screaming about Christians that are bieng let get away with child abuse.

I guess they better scream louder, then. Maybe even stop giving these . . . organizations money and support until they come completely clean and transparent.

As far as abuse, you absolutely, positively do not want to get in a discussion with this former catholic altar-boy and seminary candidate, who has personal knowledge and experience regarding emotional, physical, and sexual crimes perpetrated by priests, nuns, and even lay people in a parish environment.

Also too, the cover-up. Scratch that, the just plain ignoring.

And no, that's not why I am an atheist.

[neeneko]

It would have been nice to hear you comment about the hidden abuse in Protestant churches then. Becasue if people default to wasting their time screaming about Catholics when people bring it up, the Protestant Churches will never be forced to change, will they?

And yet they are being forced to change. MeToo brought up a lot of accusations, and the story of the day is one of the major bodies with the Baptist denomination dealing with it.

Part of your perspective problem is that you are viewing the Protestant denominations are being structured similarly to the Roman Catholics, but they are not. The Roman Catholic Church is one big hierarchical creature that gets reported about like one. Protestants on the other hand have dozens of major but still loosely organized conclaves and literally hundreds of thousands of small autonomous bodies. We tend to see more media coverage of larger organizations.. so yes, Roman Catholics, but also LDS, Jehovah Witness, and other fairly affluent centralized bodies. After that it drops off quickly into a cacophony of local stories that do not make national news much less international. Over the years I've watched stories of non-catholic groups dealing with localized scandals, including non-christian groups (many pagan groups have problems, as does the zen community).

But setting that aside, when I start with 'they are more of the same than differnt, kicking down more than they infight', that is addressing Protestants, but in response to your 'stop bashing catholics, we are the victims here'. No, your institution is not, just like their's is not. The Baptist sphere of influence is notorious for abuse, and as one of the larger ones it is getting pushback.

And you know what? Atheist communities are not immune either. They tend to be pretty bro-centric and have a pretty terrible track record when it comes to sexual abuse and rape, something a lot of the more fem/lgbt members have been upset about for years. But that is, again generally hyperlocal stories so YOU don't generally hear about them.

[Suranis]

*flex*

Dude, I spent 2 years in the Catholic Seminary in Maynooth. Your flex bounces off my non impressed attitude.

So, have you seen how the media is treating this Southern Baptist scandal? I would love to be wrong here.

[neeneko]

Dude, I spent 2 years in the Catholic Seminary in Maynooth. Your flex bounces off my non impressed attitude.

Ahm.. that comment REALLY makes you sound like an apologist. Being part of a power structure that has and is being accused of covering up and ignoring sex abuse problems telling someone who is signaling that they have their own lived experience WITH those problems is a very bad look.

[Resume18]

*flex*

Dude, I spent 2 years in the Catholic Seminary in Maynooth. Your flex bounces off my non impressed attitude.

EDITED:
You don't know how wrong you are and I'm not giving you a chance to find out. No more personal information as this discussion is not worth my time, nor rehashing of painful memories.

[Resume18]

nvm- too much personal information.

[neeneko]

It would have been nice to hear you comment about the hidden abuse in Protestant churches then. Becasue if people default to wasting their time screaming about Catholics when people bring it up, the Protestant Churches will never be forced to change, will they?

Also, as a shorter aside.. you were the one who made this about catholics. here we have a story about Baptists getting a well deserved call out, and you pivoted the issue to be all about and institution that isn't even part of this story. Way to centre yourself in something that isn't about you.

[Suranis]

Also, as a shorter aside.. you were the one who made this about catholics.

OH FOR FUCK SAKE

I talked about how other Religious orginisations have been allowed to get away with this for decades, and compared that to the Catholic Experiance.

And I quoted an Article that talked about how Protestants have been allowed to get away with this and cover it up since the 1960s.

And then the article talked about how Protestants who are attempting to reform Prodestant child care compared their experiance to the Catholic experiance. THEY talked about how Catholics were forced to deal with their abuse scandals over decades of constant media crusades and lawsuits, as opposed to their own Protestant denominations who were allowed to cover things up and keep going.

And then gave links to Orginisations trying to change things in Protestant denominations in order to protect kids.

And YOU think that's ME making it about fucking Catholics???

Yes, the Catholic experiance is valuable when talking about Protestants covering up their child abuse, as a comparison. Thats not making it about Catholics. Thats talking about how the Protestant Churches can reform themselves.

I mean this fucking forum is filled with talking about "White Privalige" and how Whites get away with shit and have shit covered up that Blacks dont. Are people pointing that out making it about Blacks?

Fine. The only sexual Abuse you want to talk about is Catholic Sexual Abuse. Ok. Catholics Buggered Kids. Happy?

So now that we have wasted an entire page NOT talking about the Southern Baptist Abuse scandal as people seem to be only interested in letting it fade away for another decade of abuse becasue they care about kids. (sarcasm)

Pretend to be shocked when this "is revealed" in another 10 years, and be proud of how you helped. satan is working overtime to protect evil today.

[Patagoniagirl]

Also, as a shorter aside.. you were the one who made this about catholics.

OH FOR FUCK SAKE

I talked about how other Religious orginisations have been allowed to get away with this for decades, and compared that to the Catholic Experiance.

And I quoted an Article that talked about how Protestants have been allowed to get away with this and cover it up since the 1960s.

And then the article talked about how Protestants who are attempting to reform Prodestant child care compared their experiance to the Catholic experiance, and THEY SAID Catholics were forced to deal with their abuse scandals over decades of constant media crusades and lawsuits as opposed to Protestants who were allowed to cover things up and keep going.

And then gave links to Orginisations trying to change things in Protestant denominations to protect kids.

And YOU think that's ME making it about fucking Catholics???

Yes, the Catholic experiance is valuable when talking about Protestants covering up their child abuse, as a comparison. Thats not making it about Catholics. Thats talking about ways the Protestant Churches can reform themselves.

I mean this fucking forum is filled with talking about "White Privalige" and how Whites get away with shit and have shit covered up that Blacks dont. Are people pointing that out making it about Blacks?

Fine. The only sexual Abuse you want to talk about is Catholic Sexual Abuse. Ok. Catholics Buggered Kids. Happy?

So now that we have wasted an entire page NOT talking about the Southern Baptist Abuse scandal as people seem to be only interested in letting it fade away for another decade of abuse becasue they care about kids. (sarcasm)

Pretend to be shocked when this "is revealed" in another 10 years, and be proud of how you helped. satan is working overtime to protect evil today.

a/k/a ridiculously attacking members who not only have different views but painful personal experiences and making friends by screeching about (and I mean every damned time the catholic church is mentioned) how unfairly maligned it is.

[Suranis]

a/k/a ridiculously attacking members who not only have different views but painful personal experiences and making friends by screeching about (and I mean every damned time the catholic church is mentioned) how unfairly maligned it is.

Lady, I wasnt the one that turned this into a screechy discussion of how the the Catholic church is bad, and if you think so you have serious blinkers on.

Anyone PLEASE want to post media coverate of the Southern baptiost scandal, Becasue apperently if I do it it will be making it about Catholics.

Oh fuck it, might as well. This was posted 3 hours ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/phili ... ar-AAXIxj7

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn was closely involved in one of the harrowing stories featured in an explosive investigation into the mishandling of sexual abuse within Southern Baptist Convention churches.

The 300-page report, made public by the nation's largest Protestant denomination this week, reveals that top Southern Baptist leaders across the nation systemically mishandled sexual abuse claims, often working to cover them up and suppress victims and their families. The report was compiled by a third-party firm, which scrutinized more than 20 years of sexual abuse accusations in Southern Baptist churches across the nation.

A Mississippi case involving a decades-long coverup and high-ranking Baptist officials defending an abuser was highlighted in the report. Though Gunn is not named in the report, his involvement as an attorney in the case was scrutinized broadly by the state and national press and even Southern Baptist-focused and other religious news outlets.

John Langworthy, a former music minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, resigned from the church in 2011 after admitting that he sexually abused young boys when he worked at two Mississippi Baptist churches in the 1980s and then in a Texas Baptist church.

Gunn, who has served in leadership roles at Morrison Heights, was the church's attorney as Langworthy's case played out in the courts and in the public sphere. The speaker was unable to be reached for comment regarding this article.

Langworthy was first accused of abusing a teenage boy at a Texas Baptist megachurch in 1989. But that church's pastor Jack Graham, who once served a stint as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, allowed Langworthy to be dismissed quietly and did not report the abuse to police at the time, the report said.

Langworthy immediately moved back to Mississippi, where he landed a job in 1990 as music minister at Morrison Heights and later as a choir teacher at Clinton High School. Langworthy held those jobs until 2011, when details of his abuse were first made public.

Amy Smith, an advocate for child abuse survivors who had worked in 1989 at the Texas church where Langworthy was first accused, worked for months starting in 2010 to get Morrison Heights church leaders - and really anyone else - to hear her story about the Texas accusations of Langworthy. Smith told a blogger the story about Langworthy’s Texas abuse allegation and the ensuing coverup at the Texas church, and the blog published that information in June 2011.

With the accusations made public via the blog, Langworthy confessed to the Morrison Heights congregation in August 2011 that he abused children during his time in Texas and while he was in Mississippi before that. Smith then shared video of Langworthy’s confession with journalists in Texas and Mississippi, and the story was broadcast. Several victims of Langworthy’s saw those news reports and alerted authorities. In September 2011, he was indicted in Hinds County on charges of sexually abusing five boys ages 6-13 in Jackson and Clinton between 1980 and 1984.

Hinds County Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride told the Clarion Ledger at the time that an investigation showed Langworthy was "involved heavily with the youth choirs from 1980 to 1984 at First Baptist Church of Jackson and Daniel Memorial Baptist Church in Jackson."

When Langworthy confessed to the abuse in 2011, Gunn was set to become one of Mississippi's most powerful political leaders as speaker of the House. But that same year, Gunn had become ensnared in the church scandal.

Gunn was publicly accused of trying to cover up Langworthy's abuse before his confession and indictment. Amy Smith, the Texas church staffer who first disclosed details of Langworthy's earlier abuse to the blogger, told Mississippi reporters in 2011 that she heard from Gunn three months before Langworthy publicly admitted to the abuse and four months before he was indicted.

Gunn emailed Smith in May 2011 "to discuss a resolution," he wrote. Smith declined to speak with Gunn and perceived his email as an effort to sweep the allegations under the rug.

"Seems to me like he was asking to offer me something to go away to be quiet and that was not acceptable to me, that’s not protecting children and I simply said no," Smith told WJTV at the time.

After Smith refused to speak with him, Gunn reportedly contacted another advocate who was also publicly discussing Langworthy's past crimes. Sherry LeFils, a former Texas probation officer who worked with thousands of sex offenders, said at the time that she had three phone conversations with Gunn regarding Langworthy’s case. She told WJTV that one phone call, in particular, struck her as odd.

“My take was what we can do to make this right, to make this go away,” LeFils told WJTV.

Gunn also faced broad public scrutiny for advising Morrison Heights church leaders to not talk with the Hinds County District Attorney’s investigators about what Langworthy told them about his alleged child sex abuse. To back up that counsel, Gunn cited a "priest-penitent privilege" law - which legal scholars later said was not relevant to the case.

“What I’m telling you is that the elders are bound by privilege. Under the law, there’s a legal privilege that attaches. Are there no exceptions to that? No, there are no exceptions to that,” Gunn said in a WJTV interview in 2011.

Smith, who prosecutors later credited with the work that ultimately inspired Langworthy’s victims to come forward, blistered Gunn publicly for that position.

"It is very troubling that Philip Gunn as the legal representative for Morrison Heights Baptist Church is trying to keep information from Hinds County prosecutors about a recently arrested and indicted child molester on whose behalf Gunn attempted to ‘discuss a resolution' with me last May," Smith said in November 2011.

Gunn and other church leaders maintained they found no evidence that Langworthy abused children in his 21 years as music minister at Morrison Heights. But what church leaders knew was never divulged publicly because a trial never occurred.

Even after his public admission to the Morrison Heights congregation, Langworthy cut a guilty plea deal that kept him out of prison. He served five years of probation, could have no contact with the survivors of his abuse, and had to remain registered as a sex offender. The state's sex offender registry says Langworthy died in 2019.

Graham, the pastor of the Texas megachurch where Langworthy's abuse accusation was allegedly ignored, refused to speak with investigators who were compiling the report released this week.

Meanwhile, Southern Baptists are reeling as they reckon with the report and its broad negative attention.

Russell Moore, a Mississippi native and prominent Southern Baptist Convention leader who left the denomination in 2021 for, among other reasons, its lax response to the sexual abuse scandal, penned a column for Christianity Today this week about the damning report.

I can't imagine the rage being experienced right now by those who have survived church sexual abuse. I only know firsthand the rage of one who never expected to say anything but ‘we' when referring to the Southern Baptist Convention, and can never do so again. I only know firsthand the rage of one who loves the people who first told me about Jesus, but cannot believe that this is what they expected me to do, what they expected me to be. I only know firsthand the rage of one who wonders while reading what happened on the seventh floor of that Southern Baptist building, how many children were raped, how many people were assaulted, how many screams were silenced, while we boasted that no one could reach the world for Jesus like we could.

That's more than a crisis. It's even more than just a crime. It's blasphemy. And anyone who cares about heaven ought to be mad as hell.

Russell Moore in Christianity Today on May 22, 2022

[Suranis]

https://news.yahoo.com/widespread-sex-a ... 08789.html

How widespread is the sex abuse scandal in the Southern Baptist Convention?
Joel Mathis, Contributing Writer
Wed, May 25, 2022, 10:55 AM·6 min read

Members of the Southern Baptist Convention are reeling after the denomination this week released a long-awaited report detailing a clergy sex abuse crisis within the denomination. The shock waves "are coursing through every level of Southern Baptist society," Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias report in the New York Times. Among the disclosures are "claims that top church leaders suppressed and mishandled abuse claims, resisted reforms and belittled victims and their families."

The report "has thrust the nation's largest Protestant denomination into turmoil at a particularly fraught moment," torn over theological fights — about the role of women in the church and political battles sparked by Donald Trump's presidency — that reverberate beyond the church itself. Why is the 14 million-member Southern Baptist Convention in such turmoil?
Why did Southern Baptists commission this report?

"The sex abuse scandal was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting hundreds of cases in Southern Baptist churches, including several in which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry," Holly Meyer writes for The Associated Press. In the wake of those allegations, the denomination commissioned Guidepost Solutions to do a third-party investigation in June 2021 examining charges that Southern Baptist leaders "mishandled abuse cases, resisted reforms and intimidated victims and advocates."
What does the report actually say?

A lot. (You can read it here.) "The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention's administrative arm to report alleged child molesters and other accused abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members," Sarah Pulliam Bailey says in the Washington Post. Survivors' tried communicating their stories, "'only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility' by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse." That stonewalling effort went all the way to the top of the denomination: "The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC's administrative arm."

One notable detail: The report "revealed that high-ranking staff maintained a list with hundreds of names of ministers accused of sexual misconduct for 10 years, but did nothing with that list," Liam Adams reports in the Nashville Tennessean. "At one point, the list had 703 names." But even as SBC leaders built their secret database of such incidents, they resisted calls from sex abuse survivors to … create a database to help prevent the abuse from continuing and spreading. Why? Leaders told the survivors such a "database violated the convention's governance structure."

LInk to the actual report here

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... =1&title=1

[Suranis]

Article with a timeline of the Scandal and the writing of the report

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/how-d ... ar-AAXFhof

Kinda happy that I was wrong, and this seems to be getting some serious coverage for the moment.

[Patagoniagirl]

Thanks, Sur. Projection seems your M.O. The Baptist scandal is all over the news as your links (and there are many, many news stories on it) show. It isn't being ignored as you have bloviated about often in comparing the catholic church to other religions.

[Suranis]

Well maybe if people had posted some of this "massive coverage" here rather than start screaming about irrelevant shit.

Actually, hang on. Are you trying to deflect the conversation away from the SB Scandal and back to how horrible C's and I are??

I said it. I said I could post stuff myself and some people would STILL only want to bitch about irrelevant shit rather than talk about the bloody scandal. Fuck me...

[Suranis]

When I was doing a search on the SB scandal one of the suggestions included 2018. So I got curious and just now followed it.

This seems to be the incident that resulted the commissioning of this report. This article was published June 12, 2018.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/11/us/s ... index.html

Southern Baptists confront 'painful crisis'

By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor

Updated 2026 GMT (0426 HKT) June 12, 2018

Pastor apologizes for 'sexual incident'
Dallas (CNN)First it was the pastor in Memphis, whose megachurch applauded when he confessed to having a sexual encounter with a teenager 20 years ago. He was later placed on leave.

Then the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee resigned, citing "a morally inappropriate relationship in the recent past."

And last month, Paige Patterson, 75, a revered figure in many Southern Baptist circles, was removed as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary amid accusations he had mishandled two separate cases where students came to him saying they had been raped.

Before those allegations came to light, Patterson had already been the subject of controversy. Audio and video recordings emerged online of Patterson making lewd remarks about a teenage girl, and counseling a woman in an abusive relationship not to divorce her husband, even when she showed up at church with two black eyes.

Patterson has denied any wrongdoing in an open letter, saying his comments and actions have been misconstrued. Patterson's lawyer told CNN he was not available for comment.

As thousands of delegates -- called messengers -- arrive in Dallas on Tuesday for the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, the mood is somber; some say the reputation and perhaps even future of the 15.2-million-member denomination may be at stake.

Many Southern Baptists said the series of scandals besetting the convention have been particularly upsetting for a religious movement that prides itself on theological clarity and moral rectitude.

"This is just a foretaste of the wrath of God poured out," wrote R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Theological Seminary in Louisville and a leading intellectual in the denomination, in a widely shared column.

"This moment requires the very best of us. The Southern Baptist Convention is on trial and our public credibility is at stake."



'A painful crisis'
In the wake of the scandals, some Southern Baptists have submitted resolutions for this week's meeting that praise the accomplishments of women and condemn ministers who have "sinned against the Lord and against women by their ungodly language and behavior."

But some Southern Baptist women say their denomination, the country's largest Protestant group, needs to do more than pass praiseworthy resolutions.

"Resolutions are helpful," said Kathy Litton, 61, a messenger from Alabama who leads a ministry for pastors' wives, "but what we need even more is a willingness by people in power, particularly men in our denomination, to acknowledge that we need to rethink some of the paradigms we've been living with."



In a letter to his "Southern Baptist family," Patterson struck a defiant stance.

"Recently, I have been accused, publicly and privately, of a number of things -- none of which I acknowledge as having done in the way portrayed," he wrote, "and others that I am confident I absolutely did not do."

It's hard to overstate Patterson's importance to many Southern Baptists. Russell Moore, who heads the denomination's public policy arm, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said some compare him to Martin Luther, the reformer who took a stand against the excesses of the Catholic Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation.

"He was a revered figure in the Southern Baptist Convention for 40 years," Moore said. "His place in Baptist history is one of the reasons for the agony people on all sides are feeling right now."

After the audio and video recordings of Patterson surfaced online, more than 3,300 conservative women signed an open letter calling for Patterson's removal as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. "The world is watching us all, brothers," the women wrote. "They wonder how we could possibly be part of a denomination that counts Dr. Patterson as a leader."

Then Patterson was accused of counseling a woman to forgive her alleged rapist and not report him to the police. The Washington Post first reported the story.

In a statement issued on June 1, Kevin Ueckert, the chairman of the seminary's board of trustees, said Patterson had misled a board member about how he had handled a rape accusation while he was president of another seminary in 2003. The rape accusation was never reported to local police, Ueckert said.

In another incident, in 2015, another student said she had been raped. That rape was reported to the police, Ueckert said, but Patterson wrote an email to the head of campus security asking for a private meeting with the female student "to break her down."

"The attitude expressed by Dr. Patterson in that email is antithetical to the core values of our faith and to SWBTS," Ueckert said in a statement, using the acronym for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Shelby Sharpe, Patterson's lawyer, said Patterson's actions and remarks have been misreported. First, the 2003 rape case was handled by another seminary administrator, not Patterson, according to Sharpe.

Sharpe also said Patterson's "break her down" comments in 2015 related to a dispute between the student and one of her professors.
"It had to do with her being forthright with her family about another matter not related to the rape," Sharpe said.

Sharpe and Patterson also say that an anecdote Patterson relayed in 2000, of which an audio recording was recently published online, has been taken out of context. Neither Patterson nor Sharpe deny that it is Patterson's voice in the recording.

In it, Patterson can be heard telling a story about counseling a woman who said her husband was abusing her. Patterson said he encouraged the woman to pray, warning her that her husband might take offense and "may get a little more violent."

"And sure enough, he did," Patterson said. "She came to church one morning with both eyes black. And she was angry at me and at God and the world, for that matter. And she said, 'I hope you're happy.' And I said, 'Yes ma'am, I am.' And I said, 'I'm sorry about that, but I'm very happy.'"

Patterson told the woman he was happy because her husband had arrived at church earlier that day and decided to become a Christian. The couple stayed together and flourished, according to Patterson.

"You have to do what you can at home to be submissive in every way that you can and to elevate him," Patterson said in the recording.
In a statement after the recording was revealed, Patterson said he has counseled and helped women leaving an abusive husband "on more than one occasion."

"For sharing this illustration, especially in the climate of this culture, I was probably unwise," he said.

"However, my suggestion was never that women should stay in the midst of abuse, hoping their husbands would eventually come to Christ. Rather, I was making the application that God often uses difficult things that happen to us to produce ultimate good. And I will preach that truth until I die."

[neeneko]

Lady, I wasnt the one that turned this into a screechy discussion of how the the Catholic church is bad, and if you think so you have serious blinkers on.

But that is exactly what you did. It took you a whole 3 sentences to make it about catholics. Volkonski posted a story, you went straight to talking about it in terms of anti-catholic bias. People didn't even have a chance to start talking about the Baptist story before you made it all about you. Some of us have been aware of and tracking stories about problems in Baptist congregations long before you ran into this piece... creepy Baptist ministers hitting on young partitioners are a long 'ha ha only serious' that predated the Roman Catholic clergy scandal, and this probably would have been the topic if you had stayed on it.

You, and you alone, injected the Catholicism element to a topic that was not about it and preemptively went on the offensive before anyone else said a word.

[Suranis]

Lies

Neeneeko. Stop lying.

"People didn't even have a chance to start talking about the Baptist story before you made it all about you. "

I didn't post on this topic for 3 days after Volkons post. That's ample "chance to respond." There were no responses. Anyone can check the dates on Volkons post and mine for themselves to confirm it. You are lying.

You know I had responses to the rest of your lies typed out, but fuck this. For someone who has "been talking about the baptists for years" you obviously don't give a damn about them. You have only mentioned them once in passing in your constant attempts to make this exchange about me. Lying your ass off to troll me says more about you than me. Grow up.

And, I have to mention, attacking a forum member is against the rules, and you have done a lot of it. Knock it off. And saying you are lying and posting proof is not an attack, its a statement of fact.