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| Ken Herman |
“Father, I pray especially that each member
of the Senate here, each member of their family, Father, would come to a lively
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I expect many
evangelicals would hear that and say “what’s the problem?” Herman answers that
question in a subsequent comment.
When people are invited
to offer invocations in the Texas Senate, they typically receive the following
instruction: The invocation “should be of a general nature, nonsectarian and
nonpolitical. Due to the religious diversity of the Senate and of the general
population of Texas, please be mindful of your terminology and respectful of
other faiths.”
“I don’t believe
that an invocation praying for people ‘to come to a lively faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ’ meets that standard,” writes Herman.
Neither do I. And this
strikes me as just one more example of how Baptist preachers often seem to
think they’re exempt from the standards that apply to others.
The Texas Senate
has a standard. Pastor Don Garner ignored it.
We see a similar
pattern with respect to clergy sex abuse. As Frederick Clarkson recently explained, while “many other traditional
religious denominations” have developed denominational policies and procedures
for addressing clergy sex abuse, the Southern Baptist Convention still sits on
the sidelines.
It’s as though
they imagine themselves to be immune to the problem and exempt from the
responsibility to protect against it. It’s an aberrant sort of self-delusional recalcitrance,
which in its blind recklessness leaves countless kids at greater risk of
serious harm.
In other major
faith groups, the standard of care has become the provision of denominational
review panels, which at least allow for the possibility that outsiders to the
pastor’s own church may be able to hear and assess clergy abuse complaints. Since
almost all experts recognize that the vast majority of child molestation
complaints cannot be criminally prosecuted, other faith groups at least allow
for the possibility that, with a credible complaint, a minister could be
removed from his position of trust as a clergyman.
But with Southern
Baptists, there’s no such thing. There’s not even the pretense of such a thing.
Even with multiple complaints of abuse, if a Baptist pastor isn’t literally
sitting in prison, he can probably find a pulpit to stand in. There is no
denominational structure that will even attempt to stop him.
The Southern
Baptist Convention ignores the standard of care that is now recognized in other
faith groups, and it shirks the institutional safeguards that other denominations
have adopted.
The largest
Protestant denomination in the land simply thumbs its nose and leaves kids to
suffer.
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