UNITED STATES
Baptist News
By Bob Allen
A speaker sidelined two years ago by a sexual abuse scandal at his former church is back at center stage for an upcoming conference featuring prominent leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention.
C.J. Mahaney, senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville, Ky., joins Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler and International Mission Board President David Platt as scheduled speakers at the biennial Together for the Gospel conference scheduled April 12-14 in Louisville, Ky.
Mahaney, who in 2006 along with Mohler and two others founded the confab popular among young Calvinists, sat out the last conference in 2014, saying he didn’t want publicity over a high-profile lawsuit alleging a cover-up of child abuse at his former church to subject the other founders to unfair criticism. Criticism nevertheless followed, after a photo taken at the gathering showed Mahaney seated alongside conference headliners on the front row.
Mahaney was one of numerous leaders of Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting network he helped start in the 1980s, named in a class-action lawsuit for allegedly failing to report alleged sexual and physical abuse of children. The lawsuit was dismissed due to statute of limitations, but in 2014 a volunteer at Mahaney’s former church was convicted on criminal charges similar to acts alleged in the civil suit.
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