The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee will meet next Monday in Nashville. Here are four things it could do to address clergy sex abuse. All are within its own power and could be done without bumping up against church autonomy….
SBC annual meeting reveals little progress on sexual abuse, not even ‘bare minimum’
When a pace of change is so glacial as to resemble inertia, it means people don’t really care about change. This is what we are seeing in the Southern Baptist Convention with its reform efforts for addressing clergy sex abuse….
What we know and don’t know about the SBC’s sexual abuse hotline
“I gave her the name of my perp, I sent the scanned felony paperwork, the link to his being on the Texas sex offender list, and still, I do not see his name on the SBC list.” That’s what…
SBC’s sexual abuse hotline raises ethical issue
Editor’s note: On Monday, Jan. 9, the SBC task force published a response to this opinion column. Callers to the Southern Baptist Convention’s sexual abuse hotline are often routed to a person who also serves the SBC’s abuse reform implementation…
Skepticism holds seeds of hope: The SBC and clergy sex abuse
People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just…
What Southern Baptists must do now to address clergy sex abuse
Editor’s note: After this article was published, the SBC Sexual Abuse Task Force pulled its June 1 set of recommendations from the website. Those recommendations eventually were replaced by an updated document June 8 that now exists in the same…
What the SBC should learn from the Ravi Zacharias tragedy
According to an investigative report released earlier this month, deceased celebrity evangelist Ravi Zacharias abused multiple women with “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse and rape.” The evidence is overwhelming. The details are stark and nauseating. Many have described the report…
SBC’s new reporting process again fails clergy sex abuse survivors. What’s needed is an independent review panel
The SBC Credentials Committee has recklessly ignored the long history of churches inflicting dreadful, additional harm on those who report abusive clergy. Its new reporting process is not even a safe process, much less an effective one.
Clergy sex abuse: the damage done when faith is weaponized
When Bible verses, prayer, hymns, faith, God-talk and church rituals are perverted into weapons for sexual assault and then hammered into shields for church cover-ups, they become neurologically networked with trauma, and this renders them polluted and often toxic for the survivors.