HARRIS COUNTY (TX)
Baptist News
December 12, 2017
By Bob Allen
A Texas lawyer who once sued the pope in connection with the Roman Catholic pedophile priest scandal is now taking aim at what he sees as another system of complicity in sexual abuse — this one in the Southern Baptist Convention.
A pending lawsuit in Harris County, Texas, names Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson, key figures in a reorientation of the 15 million-member denomination’s priorities in the last century, and other parties. It seeks more than $1 million in damages for a man claiming physical and spiritual harm resulting from a period of Baptist history often called the “Conservative Resurgence.”
“In this case, I am attacking the whole system,” Houston attorney Daniel Shea said in an interview with Baptist News Global.
Shea, who has a master’s degree in church history, said he is approaching the Southern Baptist system of shifting responsibility for alleged sexual abuse by claiming the autonomy of local churches and denominational bodies as a sort of “Vatican-light.”
In 2008, Shea, a former Catholic deacon, settled a lawsuit with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston and Houston, accusing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who later became Pope Benedict XVI — of conspiring to obstruct justice.
Now he represents a client alleging similar mistreatment during the late 20th century movement in the SBC credited with delivering America’s largest Protestant group from the political center to the Religious Right under the banner of biblical “inerrancy.”
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