The Southern Baptist Convention did not get ‘played’

I’ve spent a heckuva lot of time at the pottery studio this week. Working with clay is one of the things I do to try to keep myself steady when everything else seems too overwhelming. And with the release of CrossPolitic’s gawdawful anti-survivor propaganda film this week, I felt the rage rising and needed time with the clay.

The film is called How the SBC Got Played, and it features former SBC Executive Committee member Rod Martin and Daily Wire columnist Meg Basham, among others.

The gist of the film is encapsulated in this sentence near the end: “The SBC … was vulnerable to the manipulative accusations of women.”

That’s it. In a nutshell. It’s a creative twist on their “Eve ate the apple” schtick.

The film is deeply misogynistic. It’s also a propaganda film of abuse denialism.

And they’re casting the Southern Baptist Convention as the victim.

I kid you not.

It stinks.

As one commenter succinctly noted: “Anyone who is downplaying the SBC abuse in any way is telling on themselves. Making a whole movie to do so … yikes.”

“Yikes” indeed.

The truth

Many hundreds of kids have been raped, sexually assaulted and sexually abused by Southern Baptist pastors. Southern Baptist leaders have known about this for decades, and in 2019, the Abuse of Faith series brought widespread media attention to the problem. Since then, it seems every week has brought still more headlines.

But of course, those are just the ones we know about, thanks in large measure to criminal prosecutions and news reporting. There are countless more SBC clergy sex abuse survivors — people victimized both as children and as vulnerable congregants — and the vast majority of their cases never make it into a news report.

Often, the very reason their cases cannot be prosecuted is because of church coverups in the past that concealed the truth and allowed time limits for prosecution to run out, effectively depriving victims of the possibility of legal justice.

And while those who watch the film might be misled into thinking the SBC’s abuse crisis is solely about the abuse of women and girls, heaps of boys also have been sexually preyed upon by Southern Baptist pastors. That too is well-documented.

Despite all this, the film depicts the Southern Baptist Convention as the victim. It got “played,” they say.

And not a bit of love, care or compassion is directed toward any of the real victims — the kids and congregants who were sexually savaged and institutionally betrayed.

That’s why I’m hanging out in the pottery studio. It takes a special form of arrogance to talk the talk of “biblical justice” in the face of so many clergy sex abuse survivors who never have seen anything even remotely resembling any form of justice, and it’s just too much to stomach.

The disparagement of survivors

The film attempts to discredit survivors, both dead and alive. The fixation on the now-deceased Jen Lyell is unrelenting — and sickening to watch — and they also go after Hannah-Kate Williams, who still has an active lawsuit against the SBC (which may be part of why they’re trying to discredit her).

It’s cruel, but of course, we’ve seen before the kinds of scorched earth tactics Southern Baptist leaders use against survivors who challenge them. Remember how they disparaged Duane Rollins and, for years, inflicted as much additional misery on him as they possibly could, despite knowing that there was “a lot of evidence” that Paul Pressler had sexually abused Rollins.

Like Lyell, Rollins also died an early death, almost certainly due in large measure to the unrelenting trauma this faith group inflicted on him. I sometimes wonder if they’re trying to do something similar with Williams — to smear her, destroy her and, one way or another, inflict so much pain she will give up, fade away or die.

Did I mention I think this film is incredibly cruel? I do.

As someone who, years ago, tried to kill herself after some 30-plus rapes by a Southern Baptist pastor when I was a kid — and who was betrayed by many others who knew and covered it up — I carry within me the bodily knowledge of what such massive trauma can do to a person.

(And no, Meg, I didn’t run or physically fight back. I was a girl of infinite faith who believed what the pastor told me and submitted to “God’s will.”)

If only Southern Baptist leaders and their coterie of abuse denial apologists would care as much about calling out clergy sex abusers and cover-uppers as they do about castigating and discrediting survivors. Maybe then, the SBC could actually be a safer place for kids and congregants.

About those apparent conflicts of interest

The film names me and puts up an image of my 2023 opinion column about Rachael Denhollander’s apparent conflicts of interest in her abuse-related work within the SBC. But none should imagine that I support the message of the film.

That 2023 column generated a firestorm, and it was a firestorm in which I got burned. But in reality, the concerns I raised were Ethics 101 stuff. In the words of Lori Anne Thompson, the survivor who exposed Ravi Zacharias: “Those who seek to partner with survivors for their individual/collective empowerment should not also be the consultant for the individual institution that offended against them. This should be obvious.”

So, I’m someone who, early on, pointed out the conflicts issues. And three years later, my concerns were validated by reporting based on discovery documents made public from the Sills v. SBC lawsuit.

(Ironically, the same lawsuit discovery documents that helped to clarify Denhollander’s apparent conflicts also showed Basham was privately advising an accused abuse perpetrator, David Sills, while publicly haranguing his alleged victim, Jen Lyell. Baptist News Global publisher Mark Wingfield has suggested there may be something in Basham and Denhollander’s shared theology that makes them vulnerable to overlooking conflicts.)

Conflicts aren’t criminal, just unwise and problematic. And as sex abuse attorney Boz Tchividjian pointed out, when an advocate carries a conflict, the cost of that conflict is far more often borne by survivors than by powerful institutions. (This, of course, is one of the things that makes conflicts problematic: It’s easier for the powerful to use a conflicted individual as an unwitting pawn.)

And here’s what I can’t help but notice. While the film quoted my 2023 column, it made no mention of my subsequent column in which I riffed on possible reasons why SBC leaders — with their many attorneys, crisis management consultants and public relations professionals — turned a blind eye to Denhollander’s apparent conflicts.

Here’s part of what I wrote:

Allowing Denhollander to occupy dual roles served the institutional interests. She gave a veneer of legitimacy to the SBC’s image-repair efforts and allowed the institution to present a public face of caring about abuse, even while it actually did near-nothing in the way of meaningful reform.

In essence, SBC officials used Denhollander’s credibility to bolster their own institutional reputation, to placate people in the pews and to keep the dollars flowing. Thus, Denhollander was important to them because she functioned as a prop in their charade of abuse reform.

So, they turned a blind eye to the apparent conflicts because Denhollander’s involvement allowed them to make a show of reform without having to bother with the substance of reform.

Thus, the SBC did not get “played.” Instead, top leaders knew and exploited Denhollander’s conflicts. In other words, they used her.

And now, this film is just a different faction of chest-thumping SBCers who don’t like the institutional result that came from that and how it gave power to their adversaries in the drive for control of this tentacular multi-billion-dollar organization.

“The film is just another salvo in the SBC’s internecine war for power.”

In other words, the SBC’s purported “good guys” — those who presented a public face of promoting abuse reforms — used survivors and advocates as props in their phony dog-and-pony show. And the other SBC faction — the purported “bad guys” — now use survivors and advocates in this film to bolster their misogynistic take on how they got “played.”

So, the film is just another salvo in the SBC’s internecine war for power, and most importantly, none of it has anything to do with care for survivors, protection for kids and congregants or accountability for predatory pastors.

None of it.

The good guys/bad guys framing

This is why I’m so weary of the good guys/bad guys framing of the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis. The reality is that very few SBC leaders are really good. If they were, the SBC’s systemic problem would not have persisted for so long.

It’s far too facile to cast characters like Martin and Basham as the “bad guys.” They’re obvious and in-your-face.

But while “bad guys” draw the attention, countless “good guys” posture and pose. They’re complicit and duplicitous.

If we narrow the framing to “bad guys” vs “good guys,” we can get distracted from the reality of the larger systemic problem, in which almost everyone within the SBC plays a role. Hollow public words, impotent task forces, performative platitudes, behind-the-scenes betrayals and abuse denialism. All this is what has become the norm in Southern Baptists’ handling of clergy sex abuse.”

Personally, I kinda prefer the obvious in-your-face hostility of the “bad guys” to the incessant two-faced duplicity of the “good guys.”

After all, remember how Bart Barber was lauded as a “good guy”? In 2023, some even suggested I should endorse Barber in his run for SBC president. I declined, because I wanted no part of the SBC’s internecine wars and because I’d already seen how purported “good guys” often aren’t so good.

Barber proved me right. He was the person who authorized that awful anti-survivor amicus brief for the whole of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was a duplicitous action that, behind-the-scenes, squarely contradicted the “we care” public posturing of SBC officials and instead put the full weight of the country’s largest Protestant faith group on the side against justice for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. And it likely did as much damage or more as this propaganda film with Martin and Basham.

But of course, Barber’s duplicity is just one example among many in the SBC.

Meanwhile, on the plus side, I’ve made some good bowls this week. I’ll head back to the pottery studio real soon.

 

Christa Brown, a retired appellate attorney, is the author of Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation. Follow her on X @ChristaBrown777 and on Bluesky @christabrown.bsky.social.