On the side of grace

Pastor Wayne Stockstill says he “erred on the side of grace” when he kept quiet about a deacon’s molestation of children in his church.

“Grace.” It burns me that Stockstill would even use the word. What an extraordinary perversion of something divine.

Whatever happened to the notion that grace was the gift of God?

When did so many Baptist pastors start thinking it was their own gift to bestow on child molesters?

Stockstill is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Hesperia, California, a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. He bestowed this “grace” on a church deacon who abused two girls over a four-year period.

Some anthropologist should probably do a study on this. But among the tribe known as Southern Baptists, this amazing “grace” appears to be nothing less than the “grace” of quiet complicity with child sex abuse. Leaders of the tribe bestow this “grace” on other leaders.

Stockstill’s invocation of this bizarre “grace” ritual is just one example among many in this tribe.

The same sort of “grace” was extended by Pastor Steve Gaines at Bellevue Baptist, when he stayed quiet about minister Paul Williams’ abuse of a kid.

The same sort of “grace” was extended by music minister Jim Moore at First Baptist Farmers Branch, when he kept quiet about minister Tommy Gilmore’s abuse of me as a kid.

The same sort of “grace” is extended daily by the Baptist General Convention of Texas as it continues to keep a secret file with the names of ministers reported by churches for child molestation.

The same sort of “grace” was extended by minister James Crittenden when he tried to hush-up the news about pastor Larry Reynolds’ abuse of a kid.

The same sort of “grace” was extended by pastor Mike Roy when he allowed minister Shawn Davies to continue working with kids even while knowing that Davies was under investigation for child molestation.

The same sort of “grace” was extended by Glenn Akins, executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, when he fired a Baptist journalist for reporting on pastor Leslie Mason’s sexual abuse of a kid.

The list could go on and on.

If Southern Baptist leaders saw some other tribe protecting those who molest children, they would righteously wag their fingers and rail against it. But when it happens in their own tribe, they invoke “grace.”

And the people in the pews say “Amen.” They themselves extend this amazingly perverse style of “grace” when they quietly tolerate their leaders’ mute complicity in clergy child molestation.

Eleven years later, and only after deacon Roy Long was finally arrested, Pastor Stockstill reportedly admitted that he “made an egregious mistake.” But so what? Does the tribe impose any consequence for such a “mistake”?

Apparently not. Pastor Stockstill is still the pastor at First Baptist Church of Hesperia. The people in the pews choose to keep him as their leader despite his lack of leadership in confronting a church official’s child molestation.

The same is true of Gaines, Moore, Crittenden and a host of other Southern Baptist ministers who stayed quiet about clergy sex abuse. There are no consequences. The churches simply keep these ministers who are complicit with clergy child molestation… as though it were no big deal.

An anthropologist might point out that this amazing “grace” functions in a way that allows tribal leaders to perpetuate their own power and to preserve their own place at the top of the pecking order within the tribe.

And indeed it does… which brings me back to my original question.

When did divine grace get so debased as to be nothing more than a tool for preservation of the powerful?
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Update: I just learned that pastor Wayne Stockstill was a 2-term president of the California Southern Baptist Convention in 2003-04. So, he's a high-honcho Southern Baptist leader. Yet he couldn't figure out that he should call the police about a report of child molestation??? Tells you something about the leaders of this denomination, doesn't it?

Stockstill is also an adjunct professor at California Baptist University where he teaches the next generation of Baptists.