For the second time in a week, members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee have defied the will of the SBC in annual session — previously considered the final authority in governance — by refusing to waive attorney-client privilege…
Social work leader Diana Garland’s legacy steers her children toward justice and mercy
Note: This story includes content about sexual abuse. Siblings Sarah and John Garland share an intangible inheritance from their late mother that transcends kinship. Sarah, a journalist, and John, a pastor, say their mother, Diana Garland, a Baptist social work…
Southern Baptists, power and the continuum of sexual violence
Note to readers: This article includes content related to sexual abuse and violence against women. The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention has found yet another way to retraumatize survivors of clergy abuse and accentuate the convention’s long history…
If pickles had souls, would the SBC Executive Committee still ignore the will of SBC messengers?
On Tuesday, Sept. 21, the single greatest threat to the future of the Southern Baptist Convention since the controversy of the Conservative Resurgence was revealed. It was not revealed to be a liberal drift, inerrancy versus non-inerrancy, women preachers, the…
SBC faces a test of its governance with tug-of-war over sexual abuse investigation
The Southern Baptist Convention currently faces one of the greatest tests ever of its internal governance while also fending off serious accusations of mishandling sexual abuse claims. This dual problem consumed the Sept. 20-21 meeting of the SBC Executive Committee…
SBC task forces hires the same investigative firm the Executive Committee wanted but on different terms
The independent firm originally hired by the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee to investigate itself has been chosen for that task again — this time by the special task force created by SBC annual meeting messengers in a rebuke to…
Judge delays trial date for Jane Roe’s case against Patterson and Southwestern Seminary
Two-and-a-half years after Jane Roe filed suit in federal court against Paige Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the trial date has been delayed yet again. On Sept. 2, Sean Jordan, U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Texas,…
New lawsuit accuses SBC Executive Committee, Southern Seminary, Lifeway and others of ‘conspiracy’ to cover up sexual abuse claims
A sweeping lawsuit filed by a victim of alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her Baptist pastor father alleges a conspiracy among several Southern Baptist Convention entities and individuals to defame her and squelch her pleas for relief. The…
When will the church say of abuse, ‘It doesn’t have to be this way’?
“It does not have to be this way.” I am anxiously awaiting my faith community as a whole to say this for women. To say that being abused and harassed as a pastor or layperson can be addressed and not…