Pastors guilty of sexual abuse never should be restored to ministry, Baylor University professor and author Beth Allison Barr wrote for a news service in the United Kingdom Dec. 9. The opinion piece published by Premier Christianity addresses the case…
An important conversation about ordaining and unordaining
Our motto here at BNG is to inspire you, dear readers, with change-making conversations. We’ve hit a nerve with one of those conversations this week, which tells me it is extremely important that we talk about this. The “this” is…
Once ordained, always ordained?
Long ago, Carlyle Marney, an irascible Baptist preacher of blessed memory, praised Ralph Waldo Emerson for leaving the ministry because his conscience prevented him from serving the Lord’s Supper. Marney noted if he ever left the ministry, it would be…
SBC president blasts idea of Johnny Hunt’s ‘restoration’ to ministry
In a highly unusual move, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention has denounced the “restoration” of a former SBC president to ministry six months after public allegations of sexual abuse. “The idea that a council of pastors, assembled…
Panel of four male pastors clears Johnny Hunt to return to ministry
Six months after publicly admitting sexual misconduct, Southern Baptist pastor and denominational leader Johnny Hunt has been cleared to return to ministry by a group of four male pastors who have been counseling him. Of the 70-year-old Hunt, one of…
Why was the Sills lawsuit filed in Alabama?
Amid the nationwide interest generated by the recent lawsuit brought by David and Mary Sills against the Southern Baptist Convention and 11 other defendants, some observers have raised a particular question: Why was this suit filed in Alabama, when none…
Sills lawsuit misrepresents a piece of evidence, and that error got highlighted by Ascol and Basham
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…
Sills files suit against SBC and 11 other defendants, claiming his relationship with Lyell was consensual and he became a ‘scapegoat’ in the SBC’s sexual abuse crisis
A former Southern Baptist seminary professor and his wife have filed suit against the Southern Baptist Convention and 11 other defendants claiming defamation of character and conspiracy in the well-publicized sexual abuse case of Jennifer Lyell. The lawsuit challenges what…
The abusers in the pews
My abuser wasn’t a pastor. Still, he was a “good Christian man” by all appearances. He went to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night. No one would have suspected a thing, and I wasn’t talking. Lately, we’ve…