After Baptist News Global broke the news that former seminary professor David Sills and his wife, Mary, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Southern Baptist Convention and 11 other defendants, three high-profile Southern Baptists took to Twitter to highlight one specific section of the 31-page legal document.
BNG has obtained documentation showing this section of the legal filing misrepresents the context of a quotation attributed to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell — a fact available to the three tweeters because they apparently had access to the original email from which it was drawn.
Jennifer Lyell
Lyell is a former vice president at Lifeway Christian Resources, the SBC publishing house. She has alleged Sills abused her over a multi-year period. The SBC’s public relations service, Baptist Press, misrepresented her statements about the situation, which eventually led to a public apology and a financial settlement from the SBC Executive Committee, which runs Baptist Press.
Her case has become one of the most high-profile illustrations of the larger reckoning over mishandled knowledge of sexual abuse within the SBC. However, not everyone has believed a sexual abuse crisis exists in the SBC. Some — especially a group of Calvinist pastors — questioned Lyell’s account and accused her of trying to make a consensual affair look like abuse.
Tom Ascol, Tom Buck and Megan Basham tweeted about the Sills lawsuit and accused not only Lyell, but also Religion News Service reporter Bob Smietana — who has covered the SBC’s sexual abuse situation for years — of misconduct.
Ascol, Buck and Basham had collaborated with the source of the original quotation that Sills took out of context in his recent lawsuit.
According to documents obtained by BNG, however, Ascol, Buck and Basham had collaborated with the source of the original quotation that Sills took out of context in his recent lawsuit.
What the filing says
On page 18 of the Sills lawsuit, Sills and his attorneys present their accusation as fact. The suit states:
On June 18, 2022, Defendant Lyell wrote to Religion News Services (RNS) and Reporter Bob Smietana, the following:
“My thinking was I could just verbally work through your article and clarify/add the information you didn’t have or was inaccurate as well as answer the broader questions you asked when the information you had didn’t reconcile for you. I’m also fine to answer any questions you or the other gentleman has to ensure you have clarity and believe me. I have never been unwilling to be questioned when making allegations that aren’t only moral, but are also criminal… ”
The implication of Ms. Lyell’s statement was that Dr. Sills had acted criminally. That was untrue. A reasonable inference is also that Defendant Lyell intended to advance her false narrative by taking a hand in the actual writing of an article by RNS and Smietana, each of whom had previously served as a resource to Defendant Lyell for the purpose of publishing her malicious allegations against the Sills Plaintiffs.
What the tweeters said
After BNG reported on the Sills lawsuit, Ascol tweeted: “Wow. How did Bob Smietana avoid being named in this lawsuit? If the claims in this suit are true, then it would seem that he is as culpable as any of the other defendants.”
To which Basham replied: “Note, Religion News Service reported that Sills ‘admitted’ to abuse, though Sills told me through an intermediary that RNS also did not reach out to him before that story was published and he never admitted anything like this.”
Basham also tweeted a link to the BNG story with this comment: “I’ve read David/Mary Sills’ filing against SBC, Guidepost, & number of SBC leaders. Refresher: Sills was man most prominently named as abuser in report. Filing claims Guidepost never interviewed or even contacted him before publicly naming him a predator.” (Guidepost Solutions is the firm hired by the SBC Executive Committee to investigate charges of sexual abuse within the convention. It presented its report just prior to the SBC’s annual meeting last summer.)
Then Buck retweeted Basham to highlight her commentary about Sills and the SBC investigation.
Not their first engagement
Ascol, Buck and Basham are not newcomers to critiquing Lyell and Smietana. Ascol is a Florida pastor who leads Founders Ministries, a group of Southern Baptist Calvinists. He unsuccessfully ran for the SBC presidency in June. Buck is an East Texas pastor who shares Ascol’s beliefs and is aggressive on Twitter in spreading his commentaries and accusations. Basham is a conservative writer for the Daily Wire website, which describes itself as a “counter-cultural outlet for news, opinion and entertainment.”
Tom Ascol
Tom Buck
Megan Basham
In June, Basham launched a full-force assault against Lyell’s credibility with an article titled “Southern Baptists’ #MeToo Moment” published on the first day of the SBC annual meeting. Basham says 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 assertion she was held emotionally captive in an abusive relationship with Sills over a period of years — a sexual relationship Lyell insists 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 alleged abuser who all say they can’t imagine him behaving the way Lyell has described.
This issue caught fire on Twitter, where critics of SBC leadership and of the sexual abuse study picked it up, prompting retweets and commentary. That, in turn, led Smietana to write a story titled “When Abuse Victims are Adults, They’re Often Treated as ‘Sinners,’ Threats to Churches,” explaining the attack on Lyell.
Basham frequently tweeted and replied to tweets about the issue, at one point portraying herself as an investigative reporter who was just asking the questions no one else would ask. She challenged those who questioned her motives.
Ascol retweeted her, insisting: “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.”
Midwest Christian Outreach
Exactly one year before Basham published “Southern Baptists’ #MeToo Moment,” Midwest Christian Outreach, a small online apologetics site run by Don Veinot, highlighted Lyell’s case. Veinot and his senior researcher, Ron Henzel, had conducted a video interview with Lyell and wrote about it on their blog under the headline “Does Abuse Absolve Adultery? A Response to Rachael Denhollander and Others.”
That post cited the biblical story of David and Bathsheba to ask what constitutes a consensual sexual relationship versus rape. It interwove Lyell’s story with this discussion.
“Based on the information we now have I retract any suggestion that Jennifer Lyell’s physical relationship with David Sills was consensual.”
By Aug. 3, 2021 —about six weeks after the SBC annual meeting at which a Sexual Abuse Task Force was authorized — Midwest Christian Outreach issued an update to its post with this note from Henzel: “Shortly after this article was published, Jennifer Lyell graciously reached out to us and provided crucial details of her case both to me and to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc. President Don Veinot. We were horrified by what she shared with us. It conclusively demonstrated the non-consensual nature of what happened to her. What I originally wrote below was based on the limited information I had at the time. Based on the information we now have I retract any suggestion that Jennifer Lyell’s physical relationship with David Sills was consensual. I deeply regret that anyone could have been led to conclude that it was consensual based on what I wrote.”
BNG has confirmed Midwest Christian Outreach was working with Ascol, Buck and Basham in the background into 2022. The group maintained a shared online file of their correspondence.
Those documents include emails between the various parties. One details Lyell’s complaint that the video of her interview with Midwest Christian Outreach — that was supposed to be kept confidential — had been shared with others, including Basham. Veinot responded by filing a request for a copyright infringement complaint with YouTube to stop further sharing and said he “began contacting those I discovered who had created links to it and requested they delete them.”
Who those others were is not clear. However, Ascol, Basham and Buck were copied on the email, and in another email, Lyell indicates Basham had accessed the video without Lyell’s knowledge or permission.
In a separate email, Lyell recounts to Henzel her understanding that Ascol put Midwest Christian Outreach on the trail of her story in the first place.
In a separate email, Lyell recounts to Henzel her understanding that Ascol put Midwest Christian Outreach on the trail of her story in the first place.
Why Midwest Christian Outreach was interested in such a deep dive into Lyell’s story is not clear. The group has no apparent connections to the SBC, and its interview with Lyell seems outside its stated purpose.
As Veinot explains on the website: “Our mission is to give clear answers, and a solid defense of the orthodox biblical faith, to all types of unbelievers — atheists, agnostics, as well as members of cults and new religious groups such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the International Churches of Christ, and so on. In addition to being missionaries to these groups it is also our purpose to train and equip those who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, his death, burial and physical resurrection, for their salvation to do the same.”
At one point last summer, Henzel sent two emails to Ascol, asking him to communicate with elders at Lyell’s church about Henzel’s and Veinot’s concerns regarding Lyell’s “wellness.”
Lyell and SBC under attack
All this played out as the SBC addressed the independent report of Guidepost Solutions about a long-term pattern of ignoring or mishandling known cases of sexual abuse in SBC churches and agencies.
Also at the same time Buck inserted himself into the behind-the-scenes interrogation of Lyell, he maintained a public campaign to identify an alleged leaker of a column written by his wife discussing difficulties in their marriage and in her earlier life.
The string of email correspondence viewed by BNG implies Buck contacted Lyell to ask questions about her claims. Buck, like Ascol, holds no official role in SBC life and has no direct connection to her claims of abuse from Sills.
What Ascol, Buck and Sills share in common is adherence to an extreme version of Reformed theology, known as hyper-Calvinism, that has been on the resurgence in the SBC over the past 30 years. Ascol’s group, Founders Ministries, once was a fringe movement in the SBC but today has a large following, especially among younger seminarians and pastors who were influenced by the Passion conferences in the 1990s.
These ultra-conservatives believe the SBC is sliding into liberalism and needs to be rescued by them. Ascol ran for SBC president on the slogan “Change the direction.”
What’s wrong with the Sills lawsuit
Whatever else is accurate or inaccurate in the lawsuit filed by David and Mary Sills against the SBC, Lyell and 10 others, the quotation attributed to a Lyell email to Smietana of RNS actually comes from a different Lyell email — sent to Veinot and Henzel June 18, 2021.
In that email, Lyell makes the exact statement the lawsuit attributes to communication with Smietana.
The full context of the email is this: “Thank you again for replying and taking the time to find a scenario with which you are willing to talk with me. My thinking was I could just verbally work through your article and clarify/add the information you didn’t have or was inaccurate as well as answer the broader questions you asked when the information you had didn’t reconcile for you. I’m also fine to answer any questions you or the other gentleman has to ensure you have clarity and believe me. I have never been unwilling to be questioned when making allegations that aren’t only moral, but are also criminal and I’m extremely thankful that all parties who received and investigated my allegations did press me for details necessary to understand what I was alleging given my age and the fact it was not a single occurrence as well as that I did not report anything to them for a very long time.”
Lyell was not writing to a professional journalist with a national news organization; she was writing to two bloggers who run a small nonprofit that investigates cults and preaches against the Enneagram.
RNS published a story about the Sills lawsuit Nov. 28 and noted at the end of the story the complaint against Smietana and RNS.
“Attorneys misidentified an email from Lyell, which was sent to a pair of ministers, not to RNS. Mississippi lawyer Don Barrett, one of the attorneys representing David Sills and his wife, Mary Sills, said that part of the complaint was in error,” the story said.
Neither Smietana nor his editor offered comment to BNG when asked about the situation.
Lyell sent a statement to both BNG and RNS: “I do not need to be under oath to tell the truth — and there are no lies that will shake my certainty about what is true. This is why the most egregious, cruel lies do not leave me without hope when those asserting them are reckless enough to do so in a form that not only allows my witness but provides a clear means by which it will be formally provided.”
Related articles:
Not everyone believes there’s a sexual abuse crisis in the SBC
No, we will not take down an article you don’t like | Opinion by Mark Wingfields
Guidepost report documents pattern of ignoring, denying and deflecting on sexual abuse claims in SBC
SBC Executive Committee publicly apologizes to sexual abuse survivor
SBC report shows how five words turn abuse victim from ‘survivor’ to ‘whore’ | Opinion by Marv Knox