Not everyone believes there’s a sexual abuse crisis in the SBC

First, Jennifer Lyell had to defend herself against a public misrepresentation of her story of sexual abuse published by Baptist Press; now she’s facing a second public humiliation from critics who believe the Southern Baptist Convention’s sexual abuse investigation is overblown and misleading — and who believe she’s a harlot, not an abuse survivor.

Lyell’s dilemma is just one illustration of a flurry of doubt being stirred up by a vocal group of people who either deny the reality of sexual abuse in the Baptist denomination or who believe the “crisis” is vastly overblown. Lyell has become the poster child for just one of the campaigns to discredit the report of the SBC Sexual Abuse Task Force.

But she is not alone. For several years, others have gone after Christa Brown, Rachael Denhollander and others who have been calling attention to the problem of sexual abuse.

There are loosely organized components to this campaign and there are some lone rangers carrying the torch on their own.

A lone ranger on a mission

One of those lone rangers is a Houston man named Allen Jordan. His beef isn’t with Lyell but with the entire SBC investigation that he believes was wrongly instigated by an investigative report published in the Houston Chronicle in 2019. For the past three years, he has been on a singular mission to demand the Chronicle retract its story of sexual abuse in SBC churches and apologize for it.

Adoption of the Sexual Abuse Task Force report by messengers to this summer’s SBC annual meeting set Jordan off on a new frenzy of emailing reporters and denominational officials, demanding that they accept his own personal investigation as more authoritative than the Chronicle’s.

In the five-week period between May 27 and July 1 — beginning with the release of an independent investigation by Guidepost Solutions — Baptist News Global received 27 emails from Jordan. He addressed those emails to editors at the Chronicle and SBC officials and copied a variety of media outlets. His unrelenting theme is that the Chronicle’s Abuse of Faith series in 2019 was shoddy journalism and vastly overstated the problem of sexual abuse in SBC churches.

Those new emails followed 15 separate emails sent in a similar manner earlier in this calendar year.

Among the lengthy documentation Jordan has disseminated is a thread of correspondence between him and the Chronicle’s editors in which he challenges their reporting and claims many of the accused abusers listed as being Southern Baptists weren’t actually Southern Baptists. He further claims the Chronicle did not do original research but mainly copied information provided by Christa Brown, whom he repeatedly tries to discredit as a provocateur and troublemaker.

How much abuse is too much?

He also states a claim that has been picked up today by other critics of the sexual abuse reform project in the SBC: Even if everything the Chronicle said is true, 700 or so known abuse cases represents a small portion of the SBC, so this should not be labeled a “crisis.”

This claim ignores that SBC officials have acknowledged the 700 number as likely representing “only a fraction of the actual amount of abuse that occurs in SBC churches.” It also ignores that the Chronicle’s data came largely from public records on pastors who pled guilty or were criminally convicted, sources that experts recognize as the tip of the iceberg because most sexual assaults and child molestations are never criminally prosecuted.

Nevertheless, on July 6, 2019, Jordan wrote to Chronicle reporter Robert Downen: “In spite of your inflated numbers, it is a fact that your own numbers will still reflect that 99.99% of SBC churches will NOT have any child sex abuse allegations in 2019 and for the next 20 years. So where again is the sex abuse crisis in the SBC?”

“In spite of your inflated numbers, it is a fact that your own numbers will still reflect that 99.99% of SBC churches will NOT have any child sex abuse allegations in 2019 and for the next 20 years. So where again is the sex abuse crisis in the SBC?”

After much back and forth with Downen and top editors at the Chronicle — which began in a cordial tone and escalated to utter frustration on their part — Houston Chronicle President Mark Medici wrote to Jordan: “Even if it is only 0.01%, the 0.01% is still awful. My original statement, ‘Do you know what also aligns to your 99.99% statistic? Nearly every tragedy we see in our country and around the globe on a daily basis; Rape, Human Trafficking, Corporate Greed, Shootings, Political Bribes — all of these tragedies exist not in the 99.99% but the 0.01%. Using your logic, we should not report or cover on any of these topics because it may offend the masses? You have taken up arms against the Houston Chronicle for an investigations piece that has been validated by hundreds if not thousands of eye witnesses, victims, key accounts and original sources.”

On the surface, Jordan might appear an unlikely campaigner for this cause. He’s a CPA and retired business executive and Baptist layperson. However, the roots of his cause go back more than 30 years to when he was a deacon and lay leader at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas.

The back story on Prestonwood

To get to that story, however, requires backing up to understand the context in which it happened. In the late 1970s, Prestonwood began as a mission church meeting in a school and quickly mushroomed into one of the largest churches in the SBC. It was a church growth phenomenon, led by a charismatic young pastor named Billy Weber.

Within a decade, the far-north Dallas church had grown to more than 10,000 members and was home to some big-name congregants such as Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics fame. It was an affluent, thriving, full-service church seen as a model by others.

But in October 1988, crisis hit. Lay leaders in the church discovered that Weber had been having an extra-marital “affair” — which later turned out to be multiple abusive “affairs” — all with women in the church.

D Magazine explained the situation in a 1989 article: “Weber apparently was the aggressor. He picked out women in the church who were very attractive (and almost always blonde) and offered to counsel them or gave them tasks to do in the church. He spent time discovering their personal problems, and then used those against them. And he wrapped their relationship in a cloak of spirituality, convincing each she was special, different, one of the few who could help him serve God.”

When news of Weber’s affairs and forced resignation became public, the church found itself in turmoil. But over time, the church rebounded and has thrived, still growing and still one of the largest churches in America.

That second season of growth has been overseen by Weber’s successor, Jack Graham, who was 38 years old when he became Prestonwood’s second pastor in 1989 — a role he still holds today.

What Graham walked into at Prestonwood was, by any definition, a mess. By insider accounts, it turns out Weber wasn’t the only staff member engaged in inappropriate behavior, and other resignations were demanded.

John Langworthy

Within that context, and after three weeks on the job, Graham was faced with another bit of bad news: Youth minister John Langworthy had been credibly accused of inappropriately touching underage boys in the youth group.

Exactly what Graham knew at that time is a matter of intense dispute. There are at least two camps, divided between those who believe the pastor did the best he could with what he knew at the time and those who believe the pastor quietly passed off a bad-apple staff person to another church in another state where he could continue his pattern of abuse.

In 1989, few churches had the awareness of sexual abuse in the same way it is understood today, and it was not common for churches to launch investigations of staff members. The full scope of Langworthy’s crimes appears to have been revealed after he left Prestonwood — although some argue more could have been known if church leaders had done more research.

And with the size of the congregation and the youth group, it was common for parents to assume that if their child didn’t experience or witness inappropriate behavior, then it must not have happened. Those who saw a bigger fire behind the smoke of the initial accusations sometimes were dismissed as alarmists.

Whatever the case, Langworthy was fired from Prestonwood and did relocate to Mississippi, where he got another church position. Eventually, he confessed to and was convicted of multiple counts of inappropriate sexual contact with minors over a long period of time, spanning before and after his time at Prestonwood. He has since died.

To many advocates for reform on the subject of sexual abuse in the SBC, Prestonwood and Langworthy’s case have become Exhibit A for how churches cover up known abuse and pass on abusive clergy. Yet others see it as an example of a pastor making the best decision he could in the moment, based on the information at hand.

The Prestonwood case continues to draw attention because it involves a high-profile church and a high-profile pastor — Graham is a former SBC president — and it encapsulates all the touchstones of classic child abuse: grooming, buying silence, and the perpetrator being allowed to move on to new victims without consequence.

And to compound the intrigue, Graham declined to be interviewed by Guidepost Solutions during its investigation of sexual abuse in the SBC.

Allen Jordan’s role

Here’s where Allen Jordan enters the picture. At the time all this went down, he was a deacon at Prestonwood and his daughter, Amy Smith, was an intern at the church. She also had been a member of Langworthy’s youth group.

Over time, Amy Smith became one of the staunchest advocates calling Prestonwood to account for what had happened there. She launched a website called Watch Keep to tell this story and other stories of sexual abuse in churches.

Her parents became furious with her for doing this, counseled her to keep quiet and eventually disowned her, she said in an interview with the Dallas Observer in 2015.

His daughter wasn’t the only person Allen Jordan wanted to keep quiet, however. The same Dallas Observer article tells the story of a mother of one of Langworthy’s victims at Prestonwood who tried to make a public case against Prestonwood for its handling of the matter but got warned off by Jordan.

“But the family never reported Langworthy to the police. A phone call they got from a deacon named Allen Jordan convinced them it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“But the family never reported Langworthy to the police,” the Observer reported. “A phone call they got from a deacon named Allen Jordan convinced them it wouldn’t be a good idea. He wasn’t yelling, but he was emphatic the family not say anything, the mother recalls. ‘You better be careful about what you write, that’s all I’ve got to say,’ Jordan said when reached for comment. ‘That’s a warning to you. You better be careful about what you write.’”

In an email to BNG July 11, Jordan disputed the Observer’s report that he made that phone call: “I never called or intimated the youth’s mother as your article states.”

Today, this same man is on a mission to shut down the SBC’s sexual abuse investigation and reforms, claiming once again that they are overblown and best not talked about. The Chronicle’s Abuse of Faith series, he claims, was sparked by internet bloggers who have an axe to grind with the SBC. Those “bloggers” include Christa Brown and Jordan’s own daughter, Amy Smith.

Questioning Jennifer Lyell

Although Jordan has no apparent connections to the far-right activists within the SBC, his message and tactics have been duplicated and amplified by others who are much more savvy about social media. And, once again, Twitter has become the main battleground.

There is a ready-made audience for such claims in the hardcore male-headship community at the far-right fringe of the SBC and conservative evangelicalism. That audience overlaps with groups including the SBC Calvinists entity called Founders Ministries and the SBC-needs-reform group called Conservative Baptist Network.

Leaders and members of these subgroups have questioned the need for and legitimacy of the SBC sexual abuse investigation and have launched various attempts to discredit the report produced by Guidepost — most recently because the secular company put out a single tweet in support of Gay Pride month.

But over the last two weeks, Lyell has faced down a full-force assault against her credibility, started by conservative writer Megan Basham on the Daily Wire website. The Daily Wire describes itself as a “counter-cultural outlet for news, opinion and entertainment” and says, “The Daily Wire does not claim to be without bias. We’re opinionated, we’re noisy, and we’re having a good time.” Basham previously wrote for the conservative newsmagazine World.

Her article, titled “Southern Baptists’ #MeToo Moment,” was published online June 14, the first day of the SBC annual meeting. In it, she repeats Jordan’s claim that whatever number of actual abuse cases may be found in the SBC, they represent such a small percentage as to be anything but a “crisis.”

Then the bulk of the article picks apart Lyell’s story of being held emotionally captive in an abusive relationship with a seminary professor over a period of years — a sexual relationship she says was not consensual. Basham questions Lyell’s description of events, her claims to have reported the abuse to police, and her ability to enlist others to corroborate her story. Then Basham quotes three male friends of Lyell’s abuser who all say they can’t imagine him behaving the way Lyell has described.

Abuse victims as sinners

This story set a new fire on Twitter, where critics of SBC leadership and of the sexual abuse study picked it up and retweeted it and commented on it. That, in turn, led to Bob Smietana of Religion News Service to write a story titled “When Abuse Victims are Adults, They’re Often Treated as ‘Sinners,’ Threats to Churches,” explaining the attack on Lyell.

And within his story, Smietana quoted one of the few people who stood at a microphone during the SBC annual meeting to oppose the sexual abuse report, Mark Coppenger. Coppenger rose to prominence in the SBC as one of the leaders of the so-called “conservative resurgence” in the 1980s and eventually became president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. However, he was fired after trustees reported he had anger management problems.

In his speech at the SBC annual meeting, Coppenger said the SBC’s sexual abuse investigation was inspired by The 1619 Project, the New York Times award-winning series on the origins of slavery in America.

Then Coppenger told RNS: “I do think the Jennifer Lyell thing is really sketchy.”

That threw another log on the Twitter fire already burning. Some of the comments made on Twitter are so salacious they are not fit for publication by BNG.

As an example of others’ comments, though, one Twitter user named Defiant Baptist, A.S., charged: “Yep. The Jennifer Lyell story is one of two adults in a consensual affair. Ridiculous to call it abuse. And there is no evidence that it was ever reported to police.”

Another named Andrei Orel wrote: “Jennifer Lyell probably thinks she won the lottery by somehow getting reclassified from an adulteress to a ‘survivor.’ Now she’s upset there are people trying to take her winnings away.”

“Jennifer Lyell probably thinks she won the lottery by somehow getting reclassified from an adulteress to a ‘survivor.’ Now she’s upset there are people trying to take her winnings away.”

David Morrill via the ultra-conservative site Protestia commented: “By the logic of #SBC elites like Akin and Mohler, we must assume Eve was an abuse victim of the serpent.” His reference was to Danny Akin and Al Mohler, two seminary presidents who have said they found Lyell’s account authentic.

In reply to Morrill, a Twitter user named Gary Brooks replied: “The SBC SATF would have believed Potiphar’s wife.” SATF is short for Sexual Abuse Task Force.

Meanwhile, Basham, who wrote the inflammatory article on Daily Wire, engaged all critics and commenters on Twitter. To those who accused her of being out of line, she declared herself to be an investigative reporter: “This is a perfect illustration of how mobs influence investigations unjustly. If you ask for concrete evidence or details that can be independently corroborated to confirm truth, they accuse you of being ‘sick.’

That was after a user called SBC Platform challenged her by saying: “Looks like @megbasham wants a detail(ed) blow by blow of the abuse in order to believe it. Pretty sick stuff.”

It was Basham’s tweet above that was retweeted by Tom Ascol with this comment: “Exactly. Such people have no fear of God, no interest in truth, no regard for justice, & no love for people. They simply want to push their agenda & cancel anyone who refuses to kowtow to their self-righteous bloviating. No thinking person with a backbone takes them seriously.”

And Rod Martin, an outspoken former officer of the SBC Executive Committee and co-founder of the Conservative Baptist Network, jumped in to the fray in response to another tweet by Basham in which she said her intent had been to question the terminology and methodology used by Guidepost.

He wrote: “Also, everything is subject to question, and let’s be honest: the LGBTQ activists at Guidepost got things wrong. Just ask them about @RichardsJim.” That was a reference to a single paragraph that was removed from the Guidepost report that quoted the former executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention out of context. Critics of the Guidepost report seized on that correction to discredit the entire report.

Lyell responds

In the Twitter war of words over the past week, Lyell eventually confronted both Ascol and Martin by name: “Hey @RodDMartin and @tomascol — I’m done. Stop what you either started, fueled, or have passively enabled. It is lies and it is evil. If you don’t stop if then you are, too.”

In another tweet, Lyell wrote: “You know what CBN/Founders? Just tell me when & where you want to stone me or have a firing squad. As long as you all just finish me off without saying another word, I’ll show up and let you write the ending since you’re so sure I’m a slut. Pick a place and time. Or shut up.”

Illustrating the divide between SBC institutional leadership and the world inhabited by Ascol and Martin, several SBC leaders with direct knowledge of Lyell’s case came to her defense. Those included Mohler, who is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary where Lyell’s abuse began and who has been involved in additional investigation of her situation, and Adam Greenway, who previously worked at Southern and now is president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Mohler posted a statement on Twitter affirming Lyell’s account. Greenway retweeted and affirmed Mohler’s statement: “I was serving as @Graham_School dean at @SBTS in 2018 when @jenlyell reported her abuse to @albertmohler. I witnessed that conversation as well as his confrontation w/her abuser. I fully affirm Dr. Mohler’s statement below. May these reprehensible attacks against Jen please stop.”

A third seminary president, Danny Akin of Southeastern Seminary, also weighed in: “I am extremely disappointed in the attacks and misrepresentations of what happened to @jenlyell. I know how well this was investigated by @albertmohler & @SBTS. Victims of sexual abuse should not be abused repeatedly on Social Media, especially by followers of Jesus.”

And finally, newly elected SBC President Bart Barber, a Texas pastor, offered a sequence of statements via Twitter, including this: “Jennifer Lyell’s claims have been investigated and corroborated. They have been investigated by people close to the situation who have first-hand knowledge of the people and context involved. Those people, including people I know at SBTS with whom I have spoken directly, have said that they believe Jennifer and that what she has said about the abuse she experienced is true. Her claims have been investigated by @GuidepostGlobal, and whatever you think of their political positions or positions on social issues of the day, they are experts in this subject matter: investigation of sexual abuse claims. This is what they do.”

Basham replied to Barber as well: “Thanks Bart, I want to be clear that I have never claimed Lyell’s accusations against Sills aren’t true. What I have reported is that Guidepost did not properly investigate or include ‘alleged’ when they should have. They did not use ‘corroborate’ properly.”

 

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Southern Baptists approve sexual abuse response and debate doctrinal parameters