Southern Baptist Convention In Nashville Next Week - Tension Over Exec Committee Handling Sexual Abuse Issues

[NOTE: This started with a Tweet I read.  As I wrote this post I kept looking for more background.  And things got out of hand.  But for those readers like me who don't pay close attention to the workings of the Southern Baptist Convention, this should be of interest, because it reminds us that like all labels, the Baptists are not all the same and do disagree on things.  I thought was something that would get little attention, but I suspect by tomorrow or Monday it will be more widely covered.]

Twitter calls my attention to events and issues I'd otherwise miss.  There's tension on the Southern Baptist Executive Board over how to handle sexual abuse issues within the church. 

The issue of sexual abuse was addressed at the 2019 Convention with SBC President J.D. Greear proclaiming:

“Victims have told us, words without follow-up actions are worse than no words at all,” Greear said in what is his latest update on the Sexual Abuse Advisory Study he and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission initiated in 2018. Victims “want to see … that we care enough about this issue to do whatever it takes to make our churches safe for survivors and safe from abuse.”

Apparently the follow-up actions have fallen short.   

This Tweet from Philip Behancourt, the former Executive Vice President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, contradicts the current president's statements.  The link offers a summary of the contradictions with links to audio.  

Southern Baptists deserve to know the truth by hearing leaders talk about sexual abuse in their own words.https://t.co/DBVdtvlY3J pic.twitter.com/Myoa1mdoFU

— Phillip Bethancourt (@pbethancourt) June 10, 2021

This is not especially surprising. Other religious organizations have grappled over the dilemma of airing dirty laundry or hiding it in fear of a financial hit. So have universities, especially in sports. Just the other day the son of a prominent coach said his father dismissed his own complaint about sexual abuse from the team doctor.  And even if it's not about sex, the urge to cover things up and protect the name and income of the organizations almost always makes it hard to acknowledge big problems.  

This is coming to light right before the SBC's annual meeting.

  The Tennessean offers this preview of next week's meeting in Nashville::

"...The largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., which is headquartered in Nashville, is grappling with how to handle sexual abuse, critical race theory and the role of women in ministry. 

All, along with the election of a new president, could come up as thousands of Southern Baptists gather in Music City.

Calls for a third-party investigation into the executive committee emerged after the two letters signed by Moore, the former head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, were recently leaked to news organizations and a Baptist blog. 

In them, Moore leveled allegations related to sexual abuse against the executive committee, which acts on behalf of the convention when it is not in session. The letters detail the mistreatment of sexual abuse victims, the mishandling of abuse claims, intimidation and more. Moore's letters also mention racism expressed behind closed doors. . ."

Here's another view from Maina Mwaura and David Phillips published in the Southern Baptist Global yesterday (June 11, 2021)

"Russell Moore, former head of the SBC Ethics and Religion Liberty Commission, wrote in a recently publicized letter that SBC Executive Committee staff and others referred in his presence to victims of sexual abuse as “crazy” and as “worse than the sexual predators themselves.”

Stone issued a 15-minute video response to Moore’s leaked letter and declared, “I find the latest attack from Russell Moore to be absolutely slanderous, and it is as inflammatory as it is inaccurate.

Yet on June 10, Pastor Phillip Bethancourt released audio clips of meetings he attended with Ronnie Floyd, chairman of the SBC Executive Committee, and Stone. Those recordings verify what Moore stated in a second leaked letter that had more recently been written to SBC President J.D. Greear.

Someone is not telling the truth. But the audio makes it clear who was attempting to block effective denominational responses to the convention’s sexual abuse problems. In fact, in one clip, Stone even puts forward the idea that the SBC Executive Committee felt they were the victims. "

The two writers are described this way at the end of the article:

"Maina Mwaura is a freelance writer and communications consultant who lives in the metro Atlanta area. A native of Orlando, Fla., he earned a bachelor of science degree in communications from Liberty University and a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. David Phillips lives in Georgia and previously was a pastor in Delaware. He earned a bachelor of science degree from Athens State College in Athens, Ala, a master of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a doctor of ministry degree from George Fox Seminary and now works with an educational software company." 

I did find this podcast in which Russell Moore (who wrote the original letter) and Bethancourt (who posted the Tweet and the links to audio) talk about college ministry which touchier issues such as online pornography. They talk about issues that have come up through their ethics work - same sex marriage, race, sexual abuse crises and our denomination's failure to address it. Death of a loved one, when college student learns his parents are getting a divorce. This sexual abuse discussion comes after about ten minutes of chit chat that shows the close relationship between these two.

https://signposts-with-russell-moore.simplecast.com/episodes/a-conversation-with-phillip-bethancourt 

Toward the end Bethancourt mentions his father who was an executive at Chevron, which suggests he comes from a financially very comfortable background, which may give him some self-confidence in taking on the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Bethancourt's Tweets also includes a link to this article below which he says helped him when responding to questions from his kids about Pride month.  (Approval of homosexuality doesn't seem to be a topic open for discussion with SBC.  I learned doing a previous post that there were only two reasons for a church to be summarily dropped from the Convention - accepting homosexuality and not paying dues.)  

"Third, we need to remember the priority and uniqueness of Christian love. Christian love is not one of pure reciprocity, where I affirm you if you affirm me. The mushy “you do you” and “live your truth” ethic is the product of expressive individualism, a weaponized form of relativism that rejects all forms of moral duty outside the person’s own felt needs. Christian love, in contrast, is ordered to the truth, rejoices in the truth, and is the very essence of truth itself (1 Corinthians 13:6). When Christians proclaim the truth and beauty of God’s design, we do it out of love for our neighbor and this world, knowing that sexual sin never leads to flourishing, and abandoning God’s design for the family only further compromises society’s foundation. It is for redeeming love of sexual sinners, both you and me, that Christ came to die for us (John 3:16)."

The bolded part of the quote above seems relevant to how the Convention deals with sexual abuse - truth.  But the truth about sex seems difficult for religions that make such a big deal about chastity except in marriage.  

You can look at the Southern Baptists Convention meeting website yourself.  The program is heavy on meetings of groups - Koreans, Hispanics, Native Americans, students, women, pastor's wives, Liberty University alumni, etc.  Don't see anything in the program about sexual abuse. There are no substantive policy papers that I can find.