In a six-man race for the Southern Baptist Convention presidency, one candidate made headlines over the weekend for his stance on the 42 sexual abuse lawsuits reportedly pending against the denomination.
Critics pounced when David Allen, a seminary preaching professor, called those lawsuits a “distraction” from the gospel imperative.
This set off a chain of social media posts, mainly on X, with Allen’s supporters and critics parsing what he did or didn’t say.
Sexual abuse survivor advocate Tiffany Thigpen shot back on X: “Actually, we ARE distractions because unlike you all, we refused to sit in the pit of despair. We believe in God’s justice and mercy We are reaching back despite our suffering to keep it from happening to others We ARE ministry. We ARE distracting the show. THAT is your problem.”
Clergy sexual abuse survivor David Pittman tweeted: “Thank you for exposing your heart by referring to us as distractions.”
Among Allen’s defenders was Mac Brunson, pastor at Valleydale Church in Pelham, Ala., where Allen preached last Sunday.
Brunson replied to Pittman: “That is disingenuous at best and a distortion of what he said. He stated very clearly that it was an issue that had to be dealt with. Many, many are fed up with this kind of character assassination.”
In another post, Brunson said: “Yes, he used the word ‘distractions’ but not of sex abuse victims. He listed a number of things. Honestly for 5 years going on 6 how to deal with this has been distracting. No sex abuse victim is satisfied — not many others with how it has been handled.”
In context, what Allen said in the Sunday sermon was: “We have gotten involved in trying to figure out how to negotiate problems with sexual abuse, how to address that, how to address that in a financially responsible way. Many people are unaware of this — the Southern Baptist Convention, either individual leaders or agencies or state conventions, right now are involved in 42 lawsuits. It is unbelievable, and that is heavily draining financially our Executive Committee.
“We’ve got to figure out how to get back on track and address this,” he continued. “There are other issues as well that are distracting us from the main thing. The main thing is missions, evangelism and preaching the gospel and church planting. That’s the main thing. All these other things are distractions. They have to be addressed. But we cannot allow our focus to get off on all of these other things and not focus on the main thing.”
Among Southern Baptists historically, evangelism and missions have been bread-and-butter issues. But those staples have not been what the SBC is best known for lately, as the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has been embroiled in allegations of a culture of coverup of clergy sexual abuse while also fighting to restrict women’s roles in church leadership.
Some critics have found irony in the SBC’s push to enshrine a belief that women may not be ordained as pastors or preach while at the same time not taking seriously the numerous stories of women — and some men — who were abused in SBC churches with no repercussions.
This is not Allen’s first brush with controversy. As a pastor in Texas, he served on the trustee board that fired Russell Dilday as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1994 — one of the watershed moments of the “conservative resurgence” in the SBC.
Later as a professor at Southwestern — where he was hired by one of the fired president’s successors — he was sharply criticized for appearing with four other white professors in a photo posing as Black gang members.
After his presidential benefactor, Paige Patterson, was fired by seminary trustees, Allen agitated then-President Adam Greenway by appearing on a preaching conference program with Patterson, who had become persona non grata because of the way he mishandled sexual abuse allegations on two seminary campuses.
Ultimately, Greenway pushed Allen out — which Allen publicly protested. As a preaching coach and popular conference speaker, Allen has a large fan base. Within a year, Greenway had been pushed out of the seminary as well.
Allen landed at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Memphis, where he is dean of the Adrian Rogers Center for Biblical Preaching.
As one of six candidates for SBC president when the convention convenes in Indianapolis in June, Allen faces an uphill battle statistically. It would be highly unusual for a seminary professor to be elected president, as the vast majority of presidents are pastors of high-profile churches. His association with Patterson also could be draining, as younger pastors and church leaders appear ready to move beyond the “conservative resurgence” and be rid of the contentious memory of both Patterson and his co-leader, Paul Pressler, who is an accused sexual abuser of boys and young men.
