NEW YORK (NY)
VICE News
June 14, 2019
God had a busy Tuesday this week.
In Alabama, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, gathered for their annual meeting, with sex abuse squarely atop the agenda. Meanwhile, 900 miles to the north, in Baltimore, US Catholic bishops met to discuss next steps in addressing the same problem, which has become a festering institutional crisis across the globe. But whereas sexual violence in the Catholic Church has been on the national radar for decades, similar crimes in the evangelical community didn’t hit the mainstream until the past year or two, exploding in February with a six-part investigative series by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News that documented 400 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers accused of misconduct. Following the articles’ release, the Southern Baptist Convention put out the “Caring Well” report, an acknowledgement of past lapses that offered some guidance on how to deal with abuse allegations. It was presented at the Tuesday meeting as well, where congregants voted on amendments aimed at curbing sexual abuse and racism.
The Southern Baptists met again Wednesday, praying at length after being inundated with horrific stories of criminal sexual abuse. But among the items some members of the faith hoped they might address was something you wouldn’t expect to find in either Testament: the use of binding arbitration to settle disagreements between churches and their parishioners.
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