How can Baptist dads do nothing?

When I first learned that Southern Baptist president Frank Page had 3 daughters, I was surprised. How could a dad to 3 daughters settle for a rote recitation of the “autonomy” excuse instead of taking action against clergy child molesters?

But of course, plenty of other blind-eyed Baptist leaders are also dads. SBC official Augie Boto is a family man with 3 kids. Steve Gaines has 4 kids. Sam Underwood has 3. Tom Messer has 4. Jim Moore has 2 daughters and several grand-kids. The list could go on and on.

I look at that picture of Jim Moore with his lovely granddaughter, and I ponder how such a man could know about another minister’s abuse of me as a kid and yet stay silent about it for 30 years, while allowing the perpetrator to go right on working with kids. How could this minister/dad who was my piano teacher choose to turn a blind eye, and how could he make the same choice a second time when I tried again as an adult to report the abuse?

How does he look at himself in the mirror? And yet, I’m sure he does. He’s a proud man.

How would a man like that feel if someone had done to one of his daughters what was done to me? Or if it was done to one of his grand-daughters?

If the kid of one of those men had been molested or raped by a Baptist minister, and they didn’t find out about it until it was too late for prosecution, would they be content to recite their usual line: “Nothing can be done…all Baptist churches are autonomous”? Would they still be content if they saw the perpetrator standing in the pulpit of another church?

Do they imagine that this is something that happens only to other people’s kids? Even if that’s what they think, aren’t other people’s kids also worth protecting?

Do any of them have kids who are disabled, disfigured, or just different in some way? Studies show that those sorts of kids are even more likely to be preyed upon by child molesters.

But in reality, no kid is safe. ALL kids have their own unique vulnerabilities.

That vulnerability is the very scent that predators hone in on. And clergy child molesters have a uniquely advantageous position of trust that aids them in their exploitation of kids’ vulnerabilities.

How can men who are dads not feel the need to do everything possible to protect kids against this terrible crime that so savages body, soul and psyche? Why does that instinct not live within them?

I will never understand the blind-eyed, do-nothing attitude of so many Baptist dads. It seems inhuman to me. It even seems unmammalian. An ordinary mother bear would do more. A water buffalo would do more.