ROMEOVILLE, Ill. (ABP) – Despite warnings from a denominational official as well as another church, a Southern Baptist congregation near Chicago allowed a convicted child molester to preach for years.
In the end, it took media inquiries for Jeffrey Hannah, 42, to relinquish his leadership positions at, and resign as a member of, First Baptist Church of Romeoville, Ill.
The news about Hannah comes at a time when the Southern Baptist Convention is under heightened scrutiny about its role to protect children from sexual predators in the ministry. Unlike in more hierarchical denominations, Southern Baptist congregations have had few methods for vetting potential ministerial candidates. Many have unwittingly employed convicted sex offenders to work with children and youth.
“Clergy child molesters use their position of spiritual trust as a weapon. No matter how remorseful they may seem, that weapon should never again be placed in their hands,” according to Christa Brown, Baptist outreach director with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and founder of StopBaptistPredators.org. “They cannot be allowed back in the pulpit. It's a faulty forgiveness theology that would require kids to serve as the litmus test for finding out whether a child molester's remorse is genuine.”
Hannah, by all accounts a charming and charismatic man, joined the Romeoville congregation shortly after his release from Graham Correctional Center in Hillsboro, Ill., in January 2001. He began preaching that same year, not long after the church's pastor resigned. He continued to do so for at least three years and also served as a worship leader and adult Sunday school teacher.
He had served his sentence for pleading guilty in September 1996 to four counts of criminal sexual assault involving teenage girls. His plea-bargain agreement involved dropping several other counts.
The incidents happened while Hannah was a youth pastor at Crossroads Church, then located in Libertyville, Ill. He served four years and three months of his nine-year prison sentence and was on parole for an additional two years.
After his release, Hannah married a woman from First Baptist of Romeoville. According to former First Baptist deacon Del Kirkpatrick, Hannah met his wife when she visited him as part of a prison ministry.
Kirkpatrick left the church last year over disagreements involving the remarriage of the congregation's divorced pastor, Charles Hamby. Hamby resigned abruptly along with Hannah.
Kirkpatrick said Hannah had told the church about his arrest and prison time. “I felt like the man had confessed, was trying to make a new life and put it behind him,” he said. “We insisted he have nothing to do with young girls.”
Kirkpatrick later learned that Hannah did not disclose all the details of his past to the congregation. Those details included his sexual involvement with at least two young women, one of whom was underage, while he was at an Evangelical Free Church congregation in California in the mid-1980s. No charges were filed in that case, but the women contacted Illinois prosecutors after Hannah's 1996 arrest.
After hearing “through the grapevine” in 2001 that Hannah was preaching at the Romeoville church Stephen Farish, pastor of Crossroads Church, contacted one of First Baptist's leaders to warn the congregation about Hannah's crimes. He discovered that First Baptist already knew.
Farish said that Hannah remains under the discipline of Crossroads Church, which had excommunicated him after they determined he was not being fully honest. “Jeff should ask us to remove the discipline from him even before he begins to preach at another church,” he said. Farish added that, if Crossroad's board of elders is satisfied that Hannah is fully repentant, they will recommend to the church to remove the discipline and restore fellowship with Hannah.
Others do not believe Hannah should have the opportunity to return to a pulpit or serve in church leadership.
“I believe in restoring a person to fellowship, but not necessarily to leadership,” Dan Eddington, director of Three Rivers Baptist Association in Joliet, Ill., said. First Baptist of Romeoville is a member of the 38-church regional association.
Eddington learned about Hannah's past in October, less than a month after Hannah was elected as the association's assistant moderator. Eddington was tipped off by another Three Rivers congregation, which had been considering hiring Hannah as a worship leader until they found out about his past.
He advised Hannah that he would have to resign from his associational leadership positions. Eddington also urged Hamby, the Romeoville pastor, to seek Hannah's resignation from church leadership position.
In January, Eddington learned that Hannah remained in his First Baptist posts and that some church members did not know the full details of his arrest and conviction. Upset congregants called a special meeting in February to air their concerns, but the majority voted to keep Hannah in leadership.
Eddington did not agree with the church's position, but respected their autonomy. He advised church members to establish criteria by which Hannah would be supervised, but he said he does not believe those guidelines were ever created.
Kirkpatrick said Hannah had ingratiated himself to the congregation. “Jeff was pretty popular and a lot of people liked his preaching,” he said. He was no longer a First Baptist member by the time of the vote.
Brown and others have been heavily critical of the SBC for not establishing systems by which churches can easily avoid hiring sex offenders such as Hannah. But some convention leaders contend they have no authority to intervene because local churches are autonomous in Baptist polity.
In June, messengers to the SBC's annual meeting approved a motion to consider the establishment of a national registry of clergy and staff who have been “credibly accused of, personally confessed to or legally convicted of sexual harassment or abuse.” The denomination's Executive Committee was charged with implementing the motion.
“Forgiveness does not require us to abandon wisdom,” Brown said. “I believe we serve God when we do everything within our power to protect the young against the soul-murdering impact of this horrific crime.”
No one has formally accused Hannah of any improprieties since he joined the Romeoville church. He could not be reached for comment for this story, and messages left at the church were not returned.
Media inquiries about Hannah coupled with Hamby's resignation on Aug. 17 led the church to cancel its morning worship service on Aug. 19.
Eddington said he will be meeting with church leaders to discuss First Baptist's future. The church, organized in 1959, had an average of 48 people in worship and 30 in Sunday school in 2006. That's about half of its attendance for worship and Sunday school in 1999, according to Illinois Baptist State Association records.
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