INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette [Little Rock AR]
June 16, 2024
By Frank E. Lockwood
A year ago in New Orleans, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force unveiled what they called their Ministry Check website prototype and assured members it would eventually list the names of clergy and other church workers who have preyed on children.
A year later, no names have been posted and the task force has disbanded, unable to complete the task after working on it for two years.
Victim advocates, who have been calling for creation of a database since 2007, are disappointed. Survivors are questioning whether the nation’s largest Protestant denomination can ever be trusted again to keep its promises.
“This idea of a database was first on the table back in 2007 and 2008 and (was) rejected. … In these intervening 16 or 17 years, countless more kids and congregants have had their lives decimated, not only by abuse, but also by the ugly, blind-eyed responses from church and denominational leaders,” said Christa Brown, an author, attorney and survivor of abuse by a Baptist clergyman.
Speaking to reporters at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Indianapolis last week, task force Chairman Josh Wester said his group worked hard, compiling and vetting a list of abusers but never received permission from convention officials to post them online.
“We’re nothing short of frustrated — we’re probably beyond frustrated,” he said, “that the database is not live right now. The thing is, there are names that are ready to be published.”
Promised convention funding never materialized and “roadblocks” were repeatedly encountered, Wester, a Greensboro, N.C., pastor, said.
Early this year, “we were told there is no path forward inside the SBC,” he said.
Due to the internal obstacles, the task force in February announced plans for a new nonprofit organization to manage the database and continue abuse reform.
However, the convention’s two mission boards declined to provide funding to get it going.ADVERTISEMENT
Wester says the task force’s efforts were hampered, in part, because the denomination’s Nashville-based executive committee lacked a president until March.
Legal and insurance concerns were also a hindrance.
In 2022, a Southern Baptist organization designated $1 million to provide care to survivors of abuse, but the money appears to have gone unspent, the task force reported earlier this month.
“In the SBC, as we have discovered across the last year, you only have as much authority as you were provided. You only have the means to take the steps that you can pay for, that you can get contracts for, that you can get, essentially, permission to take and so it has been a real struggle for us this year,” Wester said.
The task force did expand its “Ministry Toolkit,” which offers resources for churches seeking to better safeguard children. And it released a new curriculum, “Essentials,” to help congregations “establish or evaluate an abuse prevention and response plan.”
Wester said he was pleased that the delegates, known as messengers, at the annual meeting had affirmed the task force’s objectives: further expansion of the Ministry Toolkit, advancement of the Ministry Check website and establishment of a “permanent home for abuse prevention and response.”
In addition, the messengers called on the Executive Committee “to work earnestly to complete the implementation of these objectives by recommending a structure adequate to support these objectives, by recommending the allocation of funds sufficient for the effective accomplishment of them, and to report back to the messengers to the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting on actions taken in response.”
Wester expressed confidence that Jeff Iorg, the executive committee’s new president and chief executive officer, is committed to abuse reform.
“Dr. Iorg has been able to kind of bring people together and consider pathways forward,” he said, predicting progress would be made with him at the helm.
“We have a lot of confidence in placing this in his hands and in their hands,” Wester said.
Kelley Lammers, a mental health therapist who attends Dell Baptist Church in Mississippi County, was one of the task force’s nine members.
Each of them volunteered their time.
“It’s been frustrating. It’s been eye-opening. I have had tears and then I have been greatly inspired to see survivors here,” she said at the convention on Tuesday.
Those on the task force had no other motive “besides the love of the Lord and the love of our neighbors, our people in our pews, our children,” she said. “That’s what these people stand for. Every one of them.”
The messengers are also committed to abuse reform, she said.
“The average Southern Baptist has a heart for people — and that’s people next door and people overseas,” she said. “Our hearts are big enough to serve both.”
Tiffany Thigpen, an abuse survivor and advocate who received praise and a formal apology from the messengers in 2022, appreciated the commitment of Lammers and the others, saying convention professionals — not unpaid task force members — are to blame for the inaction.
“I’ve spoken with their spouses. I know the kind of time that they’ve given up with their families to do this on a volunteer level,” she said. “It’s sad how many hours have been wasted with entity leaders as to how to get it done.”
The Southern Baptist Convention is the country’s largest Protestant denomination, with nearly 13 million members nationwide, including 372,576 in Arkansas.
Clint Pressley, newly elected convention president, praised members of the task force for their hard work and said work on the issue would continue.
“I think you can be really confident, as you’ve seen in the last couple of years, that the Southern Baptist Convention takes sexual abuse terribly seriously,” the preacher from Charlotte, N.C., said.ADVERTISEMENT
Like Wester, Pressley predicted progress would be made with Iorg serving as executive committee president.
“It’s great to know we have a leader who seems to be very sympathetic to the plight that we’ve seen in the last few years,” he said.
Brown, whose work on behalf of victims was lauded by messengers to the 2022 annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., said children remain vulnerable in Southern Baptist churches because the denomination has dragged its feet so long.
“I think Southern Baptists are about 20 years behind where the Catholics are,” said Brown, who, like Thigpen, received a formal apology from the messengers two years ago.
“I’m not praising the Catholics, but at least they are, to some degree, keeping records of credibly accused (priests and religious workers). Most of the dioceses around the country are releasing names publicly,” she said. “Meanwhile we have zero names listed of any credibly accused Southern Baptist pastors.”ADVERTISEMENT
Thanks to news reports, some abusers have been identified, she said.
“Without the media, we would know almost nothing,” she said.
Wade Burleson, a former president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, first called for creation of a database at the 2007 annual meeting in San Antonio.
Seventeen years later, the denomination still lacks the will to complete the task, he said.
For Southern Baptists, purging churches with female pastors seems to be a higher priority, he said.
“It is mind blowing that they can unify around (Saddleback Church founder) Rick Warren, name him, publicize him, shame the new pastor and his wife, and then kick them out (for their position on women in ministry). But they can’t get their act together to name a perpetrator and hold the perpetrator accountable,” he said.
Complaints about a congregation’s stance on female pastors — or a congregation’s handling of child sexual abuse — can be submitted to the convention’s credentials committee.
In a report released earlier this month, the task force said about 80% of the cases pending before the committee were related to sexual abuse.
One case filed with the committee in January was against Little Rock’s Immanuel Baptist Church for its handling of sexual abuse claims.
At the time, the church’s lead pastor was Steven Smith. After facing criticism and calls for his resignation, he announced in March that he would step down April 7.
The credentials committee has not yet publicly addressed the complaint.