Southern Baptists face up to sexual abuse

An epidemic of violence and broken lives. Leaders fail or refuse to respond. And the most vulnerable bear the cost of inaction. While this story line describes the wave of mass shootings we’ve witnessed recently, it also summarizes another tragedy, described in an investigative report released, coincidentally, just days before the Uvalde massacre. In this case, the violence was perpetrated by ministers, the victims were members of their flock, and the leaders were senior officials in the nation’s second-largest Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Released on May 22, the report details the findings of an independent investigation into how the SBC dealt with sexual abuse within its ranks over the past two decades. Though the report focuses on a single religious group, there are lessons here for all of us, Baptist and non-Baptist, religious and non-religious. It’s a damning report. Investigators found that from 2000 to 2021, those reporting sexual abuse by clergy or staff encountered “resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” from high-level SBC leaders who “by their words and actions, appeared more concerned with protecting abusers than with protecting victims.”

Though the report indicates widespread systemic failure to deal with the sexual abuse crisis, much its focus isthe SBC’s 86-member executive committee, which handles the denomination’s day-to-day functioning. Investigators found that a few senior exectutive committee leaders and attorneys closely guarded information about reported abuse, and seemed more concerned with avoiding legal liability than with correcting the problem or helping survivors. They told survivors that the executive committee had no authority to take action against abusers or their congregations due to the SBC doctrine of congregational autonomy, by which local churches govern themselves. At times, senior leaders showed outright hostility toward survivors and advocates, accusing them of wanting to “burn things to the ground.” As late as 2019, SBC attorney August “Augie” Boto called growing concerns about sexual abuse “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.” Furthermore, even as SBC leaders dismissed calls by survivors and advocates for the creation of a database of accused sexual abusers, executive committee attorneys Boto and James Guenther—both of whom have since retired or resigned—maintained a secret list of more than 700 accused abusers. According to the Guidepost report, they didn’t share this information with the wider SBC nor did they take action to determine whether these alleged abusers were still in ministerial positions. (