Leaders of the largest Protestant church in the United States have deliberately ignored and concealed reports of sexual abuse by pastors for nearly two decades. That appears from a nearly three-hundred-page research report that came out on Sunday. Victims repeatedly appealed to the church board of the Southern Baptist Convention, but were not heard or, in some cases, even met with hostility.
The investigation report shows that between 2000 and 2021, victims called church authorities, sent letters, sent emails, and searched to get their stories heard. However, a number of prominent church board members fully controlled how the faith community handled the reports. They found it more important to avoid legal liability, the report shows, than to help the victims.
A member of the Church leadership staff kept a list of pastors accused of abuse for more than a decade. The most recent version consisted of more than 700 names, more than half of which were once associated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Despite that list, the report says there is nothing to suggest that the leadership did anything to keep the abused ministers out of positions of power. Definitive numbers of victims or perpetrators are not mentioned.
Culture change
Ed Litton, the president of the Church, wrote Sunday in a statement that “no words” can describe his sadness at the revelations in the report. Litton: “I am deeply saddened for the victims of sexual abuse in our church.” He calls for a culture change and other reforms. It is not clear what he means by that.
The Southern Baptist Convention — 13 million members in the US, 40 million worldwide — has long been tainted with sexual abuse. From time to time, church ministers were accused of abuse in the media, but the leadership firmly rejected comparisons to the Roman Catholic Church. When the charges against the church did not end, the church leadership agreed to an independent investigation last year.
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