BishopAccountability.org
	Let Us Prey (on Women) Stop Baptist Predators September 18, 2009 http://stopbaptistpredators.blogspot.com/2009/09/let-us-prey-on-women.html “Where does the Baptist buck stop?” That was the title of a 2002 column by longtime religion writer Terry Mattingly. He was one of the first to articulate why it is so much more difficult to get a handle on clergy sex abuse among Baptists than among some other faith groups. Now, Mattingly has written a column about the new study on clergy abuse of adult congregants, and he voices some special concerns about Baptists. "Abuse happens everywhere, but the abused — in a denominational setting — at least have a hierarchy of some kind to which they can appeal. And then there is the issue of the bottom line: Their lawyers have larger institution to sue that, to one degree or another, is supposed to be monitoring the careers of its clergy. Meanwhile, the nation is filling up with totally independent, nondenominational churches with few if any ties — especially legal ties — to anyone or anything. Is anyone keeping track of the clergy who serve these churches? Is anyone accountable for them? We are dealing with a form of church government and tradition called the “free church” and, truth is, the clergy in these churches are very, very free indeed. I do not want to pick on the Southern Baptist Convention . . . The clergy are ordained by local congregations and, while they are registered for pensions and the like, there is not an official system that governs the movement or monitoring of clergy. . . . The SBC, however, resembles the Roman Catholic Church in contrast with the totally disorganized, non-structured reality that is the post-denominational world." Terry Mattingly, who knows and understands Southern Baptists quite well, sees the reality of things: Southern Baptists merely pretend to be nondenominational but they're actually quite structured. Yet, on the abuse front, Southern Baptists fail to make their clergy "subject to discipline" in the way that most other denominations do. You can read the rest of Terry Mattingly's insightful column here.
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