Stop Baptist Predators

MLK Day and the failure of moderate Baptists on clergy sex abuse

2012-01-16T08:38:00.003-06:00

From a Birmingham jail cell, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter to the “moderate” religious leaders of his day. He told of how “gravely disappointed” he was in them.

Of course, King had always known better than to expect support from men such as Bull Connor, but for a time, King apparently held some hope that “moderates” would stand with him and other black Americans in their struggle for justice. However, in his letter from the Birmingham jail, King said that he had almost reached the conclusion that the greatest stumbling block was “not the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” wrote King.

As I have struggled to bring to light the injustice in how clergy abuse survivors are treated in Baptistland, I have often pondered the words of King’s letter. I too have grown to the conclusion that the “moderates” may be the most frustrating of all.

Any fool will know that people who denounce clergy molestation survivors as “evil-doers” and "opportunists" aren't likely to be people who will extend much help. Of course, that’s “any fool” except countless other Baptist leaders who remain content to keep men of such hateful words in high leadership. Nevertheless, for us mere mortals, the heartless cruelty of men such as this -- and there are many of them -- is at least transparent. So we don’t get our hopes up.

But it has taken me much longer to understand the reality of what King wrote about in his letter -- the reality that, with only rare exceptions, “moderates” are equally unhelpful. They are “more cautious than courageous,” and they remain “silent behind the anesthetizing security” of their status-quo do-nothingness.

In fact, most “moderate” Baptists maintain the same status-quo as the other Baptists.

In his letter, King complained of those “moderate” leaders who constantly said: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods….”

I have often heard virtually identical words from “moderate” Baptist leaders.

But as with King, I have seen that, though “moderates” may say they agree, they will not take steps toward actually implementing change because to do so would upset their status-quo power structures.

And the “moderates” put forward the exact same excuse as those other Baptists who call us ugly names. It’s the “because we have no bishops” excuse. It’s the “all Baptist churches are autonomous” excuse.

Then they say that I’m too impatient and that, with time, change will come.

Martin Luther King called this a “mythical concept of time.” It’s a concept that imagines the flow of time alone will somehow change things. But of course, it won’t. Advancing the good requires action. But when it comes to clergy sex abuse, action is exactly what “moderates” reject.

Sometimes I really wonder about some of these “moderate” Baptist leaders. Do you think they actually believe the words they speak?

Do they actually believe that “because there are no bishops,” Baptist leaders are powerless to do anything about clergy who are credibly accused of molesting kids? Or do they simply spout the Baptist party-line to avoid rocking the boat, to protect their own careers, or to preserve the false-peace of the status-quo?

Do they really believe that the New Testament prescribes the parameters of “local church autonomy” so precisely that it allows churches to cooperate for funding ministers’ retirements, for international missions, for keeping historical records, and even for investigating churches with gays in their membership . . . but NOT for responsibly assessing reports about clergy who molest kids?

How do intelligent “moderate” people arrive at actually believing such a thing?

If they can come up with such a contrived “autonomy” definition as that, why do they not go ahead and come up with a definition that will serve for the protection of kids and for ministry to the wounded? It’s obvious they’re defining it how they themselves choose, and so why don’t they choose a definition more functional for the welfare of others?

How do intelligent “moderate” people convince themselves that providing critical information to churches -- information about ministers credibly accused of sexual abuse -- will somehow take away the autonomy of churches to decide what to do with that information?

How do they not see the self-serving hypocrisy in such a radicalized view of “local church autonomy”?

And how can they possibly imagine that this abstraction of “autonomy” -- an abstraction that they themselves have defined for their own ends -- could possibly be more important than protecting real kids against clergy who molest and rape them?

I’ll never understand it.

Weighed against the reality of predatory clergy who church-hop through the porous network of Baptistland, the excuse-making of “moderate” Baptist leaders sounds hollow indeed.

In the words of Martin Luther King, moderate Baptist leaders “stand on the sideline” mouthing “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”
_______________________________

This column was previously published on Martin Luther King day in 2011.

Dear Al

2011-12-08T19:46:00.012-06:00

Al Mohler

An open letter to Al Mohler, president
of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Dear Al:

You got a lot of press for all your talk about the Penn State sex abuse scandal. It was good talk. But was it just talk?

When I look at your actual deeds lately, I wind up thinking that talk is all it was. That grieves me, because it will take a lot more than talk to protect kids against clergy predators. Words aren't enough.

You’re right, of course, that churches and Christian organizations should “contact law enforcement” with any information about child sex abuse. But that’s true for everyone, and it’s been true for a long time. So the mere fact that you say it doesn’t make it some bold new initiative of Southern Baptist leadership. To the contrary, so long as there are no institutional consequences for Southern Baptist leaders who don’t contact law enforcement, your talk is toothless, and nothing in Baptist life has changed.

Not only is your talk toothless, but your own deeds send a message that flat-out contradicts your words.

There you are, telling seminary employees that they should contact law enforcement with any information about child sex abuse. But what about seminary trustees, Al?

If you expect seminary employees to contact law enforcement, shouldn’t you expect the same measure of conduct from seminary trustees? Shouldn’t leaders lead by example?

So why aren’t you calling for the resignation of seminary trustee Philip Gunn? As a church elder and an attorney, Gunn has urged that church officials should not cooperate with the police, but should instead keep secret the information they have about child sex abuse allegations against a trusted minister at Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Mississippi.

SNAP spokesperson Amy Smith summed up the scenario quite succinctly: “Mr. Gunn has some explaining to do about why he, as an elder and attorney, participated in an internal church investigation into child sex crimes without going to the police.”

But Al, here’s the thing. You should be the person insisting on accountability for Mr. Gunn. If you remain silent when your own Southern Baptist seminary trustee does exactly what you say shouldn’t be done, then all you’re doing is preaching platitudes and talking easy generalities.

Furthermore, I really gotta wonder why in the world you chose to invite Morrison Heights' senior pastor Greg Belser to speak at seminary chapel in the midst of such an egregious child sex abuse cover-up scandal? Why did you lend the seminary’s institutional credibility to Greg Belser at the very time when Belser was refusing to cooperate with prosecutors in the pursuit of child sex charges against one of Morrison Heights' former ministers?

Morrison Heights did what you’re critiquing in others. It failed to prioritize the protection of kids, and instead looked out for the institution first and foremost. Yet, rather than calling this Southern Baptist church to task for such keep-it-quiet conduct, you effectively held it up as an example.

Talk the talk, but don’t worry about walking the walk. That’s the message your deeds bespeak.

And sadly, this isn’t the first time your deeds have sent a “no big deal” message about a clergy sex abuse cover-up. For example, just last June, you yourself spoke from the pulpit at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. (Thanks to New BBC for this video of you at Bellevue.) As I’m sure you know, Bellevue is a Southern Baptist church whose senior pastor, Steve Gaines, kept quiet for at least six months about an admitted clergy child molester. Yet, I haven’t heard you call this prominent pastor to task for it.

So this is the reality of what I see in your deeds. When Southern Baptist church leaders keep quiet about clergy sex abuse, you speak at their churches and you invite them to speak at your seminary. You are not part of any system by which Southern Baptist clergy colleagues will hold one another accountable. To the contrary, you’re part of a consequence-free system of cronies promoting cronies.

"Any failure to report and to stop the sexual abuse of children must be made inconceivable,” you said. But here’s the thing, Al. If there are no institutional consequences for failure to report, then failure to report will not be made inconceivable within the institution.

Without institutional consequences, we will continue to see the pattern of Southern Baptist leaders – leaders such as Philip Gunn, Jack Graham, Greg Belser, Steve Gaines and many more – who weigh each scenario for themselves and conclude (for whatever rationalized mess of a reason) that their particular scenario is somehow exceptional and that reporting isn’t necessary.

And without institutional consequences, this pattern will continue to allow accused clergy predators to church-hop through the Southern Baptist Convention, just as John Langworthy did from Prestonwood to Morrison Heights.

When I see you publicly addressing that case, and calling your own fellow Southern Baptist colleagues to account, then maybe I’ll begin to believe your words mean something.

But until then, Al, your words are nothing but talk. And that’s a crying shame. Because this isn't about the mere hypocrisy of your words. It's about the safety of kids.
_______________________________

Update from Civil Commotion 12/24/11: "Christa Brown gives that smiling serpent what-for ..."

Update 1/4/2012: Al Mohler tweets his pride on the selection of Southern Seminary trustee Philip Gunn as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives. So not only does Mohler fail to criticize Gunn, but he sings Gunn's praises and speaks of his pride for him. Bob Felton says that, with events such as this, Southern Baptists may eventually "begin to recognize what a cesspool their denomination has become."

Update 1/18/2012: In a letter to the trustee board, Al Mohler wrote: "This is a tribute to the leadership of Speaker Gunn, and his election brings honor to the people of Mississippi and to the board of trustees of Southern Seminary."
Related posts:
Penn State lesson for Baptists: Outsiders needed for oversight, 11/25/11
Penn State and Prestonwood: Consequences are necessary, 11/10/11
Mississippi rep seeks secrecy for church, 9/8/11
Where’s the discipline? 10/13/2010

Denominational double-talk, 9/29/10

Penn State lesson for Baptists: Outsiders needed for oversight

2011-11-25T12:18:00.006-06:00

Last week, Penn State announced its hiring of former FBI director and federal judge Louis Freeh to investigate the gaps in how the university handled allegations of child sex crimes involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky. To assist him in the task, Freeh has assembled a team of former FBI investigators and federal prosecutors, many of whom have expertise in child predator cases.

This internal investigation is in addition to the criminal investigation that was conducted by a grand jury.

“No one – no one – is above scrutiny,” said Kenneth Frazier, a member of the university’s Board of Trustees who hired Freeh. “That includes university trustees, employees and ‘every member of our board of trustees’,” he added.

Freeh, who has no connections to the university or to the state of Pennsylvania, said that assurances of independence were a condition for his acceptance of the position.

Though Freeh will have “complete reign” in the probe, and will recommend changes based on his findings, it will ultimately be up to the university’s Board of Trustees to implement the recommended changes.

Southern Baptists should heed this lesson from the Penn State scandal. Effective accountability systems require the involvement of outsiders for the sake of objectivity.

This is the essence of what we have been asking the Southern Baptist Convention to provide as a resource to local churches: an independent outside review board that could receive and assess reports about clergy sex abuse and that could provide information to people in the pews.

So far, Southern Baptist leaders have refused, and their refusal is irresponsible.

If this denomination wants to rid its ranks of clergy predators, it must find a way to institutionally listen to the people who are trying to tell about clergy abuse, and particularly to those whose claims cannot be criminally prosecuted, which is most. The denomination must provide a safe place where clergy abuse survivors can make a report with a reasonable expectation of being objectively and compassionately heard. That “safe place” will almost never be the church of the accused minister, but an independent review board could be.

In the same week that Penn State hired outsider Louis Freeh to assure oversight of its own systems, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land talked about Penn State on his radio show. The scandal, said Land, “shows that internal reporting is not enough.” He urged people to report suspected child abuse to the police.

So far, so good. Land is right: Internal reporting is not enough and people should report suspected child abuse to the police.

However, Land stops short. Just as internal reporting is not enough, so too, it is not enough for denominational authorities to simply preach to local churches about reporting to the police. To pretend that this is enough is an abdication of institutional responsibility and an abandonment of moral responsibility.

In the real world, “Southern Baptist churches are rarely the first party to report child sex abuse by clergy to the police.” This reality -– the fact that churches typically don’t report their pastors -- is what often allows the limitations period to run so that criminal prosecution becomes impossible.

This reality must be dealt with, and preaching about it isn’t enough. There must be institutional consequences for church leaders who don’t report child sex abuse and for churches that engage in keep-it-quiet cover-ups.

And no one – no one – should be above scrutiny.

This means that even high-honchos such as former Southern Baptist president Jack Graham should be subjected to scrutiny. With Graham at the helm, leaders of the 27,000 member Prestonwood Baptist Church failed to report child sex abuse allegations against one of its ministers, allowing the man to move on to other churches and placing other kids at risk. That minister now faces child sex charges in Mississippi.

The Southern Baptist Convention should follow the example of Penn State and engage a team of independent outside professionals to conduct an internal investigation of how and why allegations of child sex crimes were kept quiet at one of its most prominent and powerful churches. How did the system allow for such an abysmal failure, and how should the system be restructured to make such failures less likely?

Then, after dealing with Prestonwood, the SBC should keep the team and use it to establish an independent denominational review board with the power to receive, assess, and track clergy abuse allegations, and to investigate other accounts of church cover-ups.

Accountability systems are essential for child safety, and accountability systems require outsiders.
_____________________________

Thanks to the Associated Baptist Press for publishing this column!
And thanks also to the Louisville Courier-Journal for picking up on it!
And also thanks to Real Clear Religion.

Related posts:
Penn State and Prestonwood: Consequences are necessary, 11/10/11
Jack Graham: Deceiver, believer, or in-betweener? 10/1/11
GRACE report vindicates missionary kids, 9/4/10 (another example of the use of independent outsiders for accountability)
More talk from Mr. So-called Ethics, 3/18/08

Easy to say, harder to do

2011-11-23T11:46:00.006-06:00

After my prior column, and after several other commentators called him on the carpet, Jim Denison has admitted he “made a mistake.”

Denison, the “theologian-in-residence” for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, had previously written that “it would have been best” for the Penn State abuse victims “to go directly to those who wronged them.” This was a terribly wrong statement, and I’m glad Denison has acknowledged it.

Personally, I don’t think his explanation for the mistake holds much water. Most other journalists would get royally skewered if they tried to explain away such a bad mistake by saying “I was writing on deadline.” Nevertheless, Denison has at least acknowledged his mistake, and that’s more than many other Baptist leaders do.

In connection with clergy sex abuse, the admission of mistakes is something you don’t see from very many leaders in Baptist life. Have you heard former Southern Baptist president Jack Graham admit to his mistakes in the handling of clergy molestation allegations at Prestonwood? Have you heard Rick Grant admit to his mistakes in the handling of clergy molestation allegations at First Baptist of Benton? Have you heard former Arkansas Baptist Convention president Greg Kirksey apologize for writing a letter in which he urged no prison time for an admitted minister-molester? Have you heard former California Southern Baptist Convention president Wayne Stockstill apologize for keeping quiet about molestation allegations against a church deacon? Have you heard former South Carolina Baptist Convention president Wendell Estep apologize for his miserably poor handling of clergy sex abuse allegations at his church? Have you heard former SBC president and current seminary president Paige Patterson apologize for calling clergy rape victims “evil-doers”? Have you heard SBC Executive Committee president Frank Page apologize for writing that those who speak out about clergy child molestation are “nothing more than opportunistic persons”?

Nope. Baptist leaders don’t have a good track record on apologizing for their mishandling of clergy sex abuse. They just tend to move on and hope it gets swept under the rug . . . which it usually does.

And that brings me back to Jim Denison. Apologies are important. Words are nice. But deeds are what’s needed.

In today’s column, Denison says this: "Anytime a school, church, or other organization learns that a child entrusted to its care has been harmed, it must take immediate, proactive steps."

Again, these are nice words, but I say to Jim Denison: "Go tell it to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. You're their 'theologian-in-residence.' It's your organization. Push them to take proactive steps and put words into deeds."

After all, the BGCT keeps a confidential file of ministers reported by churches for sexual abuse. It’s a rare scenario when a church reports a minister for sexual abuse, and yet even in this rare scenario -- when the church itself reports a minister to denominational leaders -- the BGCT doesn't warn parents in the pews about who those ministers are. The information simply sits in a file at headquarters in Dallas.

And the BGCT doesn't even have any system for receiving abuse reports from the victims themselves, which is something that is much needed.

How can the BGCT react proactively to a report that a child in an affiliated Texas Baptist church was abused when the BGCT doesn’t even have any system for receiving victims’ reports, for assessing such reports, or for responsibly acting on them? Try addressing that one, Jim Denison.

My own perpetrator -- i.e., the minister who molested and raped me as a kid -- had his name sitting there in a closed file at the BGCT even while he continued to work in children's ministry in Florida, and even as I tried desperately to get something done about it.

And what did the BGCT do? It sent out its own long-time attorney to "help" the church of my childhood in dealing with my report of abuse. How did he "help"? By threatening to sue me if I continued to talk about it.

Get busy, Jim Denison. Clean up your own organization. But that will take deeds, not mere words. As David Clohessy of SNAP says: "It's easy to say stuff, harder to do stuff."

Penn State: Baptist theologian puts ignorance on display

2011-11-16T23:22:00.005-06:00

Jim Denison

“It would have been best for the alleged abuse victims at Penn State . . . to go directly to those who wronged them.”

So says Jim Denison, whose job title is “theologian-in-residence” for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

You might imagine that someone with a title as lofty as “theologian-in-residence” would be better educated. You would be wrong.

Denison’s statement reveals a dangerous ignorance about the dynamics of child sex abuse.

It is the sort of ignorance that Baptist clergy abuse survivors have encountered in case after case, as church and denominational leaders have blinded themselves to abuse reports, seeing only the facts that suit them, minimizing the reality of clergy child molestations, and citing Matthew 18 as support for their own keep-it-quiet do-nothingness.

Jim Denison also cites Matthew 18 to support his ignorant view of what abuse victims should do.

The destructive power of this style of ignorance is that it effectively uses Scripture to revictimize those who have already been greatly wounded – wounded by so-called “men of God,” who probably also cited Scripture even as they desecrated their young victims’ bodies and spirits.

Rather than seeking as a faith community to assure accountability for such dreadful wrongs, and rather than seeking to provide compassionate care for those who have been so terribly wounded, the typical “Matthew 18” response is one that puts an additional and near-impossible burden on the victims to “go directly to those who wronged them.”

It’s wrong.

But though it’s wrong, Denison’s style of ignorance is common in Baptistland.

It is a style of ignorance that helps to explain why Baptist leaders who keep quiet about clergy sex abuse don’t reap the same sort of consequence as what Penn State’s Joe Paterno reaped.

For example, the leadership of Dallas’ Prestonwood Baptist megachurch saw fit to allow a credibly accused minister-molester to simply move on to a new church, without reporting him to the police, without taking responsible action for the protection of kids, and without compassionate and competent care for the wounded. That minister was recently indicted on multiple child sex abuse charges in Mississippi. But Prestonwood’s senior pastor, Jack Graham, has faced no consequence similar to what Penn State’s Joe Paterno faced. He should.

As Denison states: “In October, Joe Paterno was the most revered coach in college football. In November, he is unemployed.”

But Jack Graham, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, is the revered senior pastor of one of the most prominent churches in the largest Protestant denomination in the land. Graham remains employed in that position even after conduct quite similar to what got Joe Paterno fired from Penn State.

Prestonwood Baptist Church is located in Texas, and Jim Denison is Texas Baptists’ “theologian-in-residence.” So why doesn’t Jim Denison address this scandal that is on his own turf and within his own faith community?

Why doesn’t Jim Denison publicly tell Baptist pastor Jack Graham what he should have done instead of publicly, and erroneously, telling the Penn State abuse victims what they should have done?

My best guess is that it’s because Denison knows he won’t offend any of the Baptist powers-that-be if he talks about Penn State. In effect, he’s just piling on. But if Denison were to talk about Prestonwood, he would surely step on some powerful Baptist toes. So he keeps quiet.

It’s plenty easy for a “theologian-in-residence” to spoon out Scripture as pabulum and to pontificate on what others should do – including others who were powerless child rape victims. But it’s a heckuva lot harder to speak out against those who hold power.

That’s something Denison might begin to understand if he were to actually listen to child rape victims instead of criticizing them.
_____________________

Update 11/23/11: Jim Denison has admitted he "made a mistake" with the quoted sentence. Nice, but not enough. Denison also says this: "Anytime a school, church, or other organization learns that a child entrusted to its care has been harmed, it must take immediate, proactive steps." Again, nice words, but I say to Jim Denison: "Go tell it to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. You're their 'theologian-in-residence.' It's your organization. Push them to take proactive steps and put words into deeds." After all, the BGCT, keeps a confidential file of ministers reported by churches, and yet even when a church reports a minister, the BGCT doesn't warn parents in the pews about who those ministers are. The information simply sits in a file. And the BGCT doesn't even have any system for receiving abuse reports from the victims themselves. My own perpetrator -- i.e., the minister who molested and raped me as a kid -- had his name sitting there in a closed file at the BGCT even while he continued to work in children's ministry in Florida, and even as I tried desperately to get something done about it. And what did the BGCT do? It sent out its own long-time attorney to "help" the church of my childhood in dealing with my report of abuse. How did he "help"? By threatening to sue me if I continued to talk about it.

Get busy, Jim Denison. Clean up your own organization. That will take deeds, not mere words. As David Clohessy of SNAP says: "It's easy to say stuff, harder to do stuff."

Related posts:
Penn State and Prestonwood: Consequences are necessary, 11/10/11
Jack Graham: Deceiver, believer, or in-betweener? 10/1/11
Irish Catholics and Texas Baptists, 3/23/10

Related column:
Prestonwood saga shows clergy abuse database is overdue, ABP, 8/19/11

Penn State and Prestonwood: Consequences are necessary

2011-11-10T19:34:00.003-06:00

Penn State has now fired football coach Joe Paterno because of his failure to respond appropriately in the face of child sex abuse allegations. Southern Baptist seminary president Al Mohler described this firing as a “necessary action.”

But if that’s what Mohler really believes – that Paterno’s firing was “necessary” – will Mohler also urge the firing of former Southern Baptist president Jack Graham from his leadership position at the Prestonwood Baptist megachurch in Dallas? If Paterno’s firing was “necessary,” shouldn’t Graham’s firing also be “necessary”?

Graham too failed to go to police with information about a person in high trust who was accused of child sex abuse. Instead, Graham allowed the accused staff minister to simply move on and thereby unleashed him into the broader denominational body, placing many more kids at risk.

Graham’s failure is all too common in Baptistland. We have seen this keep-it-quiet pattern in megachurches and mini-churches, in city churches and rural churches. It is a pattern that allows accused clergy child molesters to church hop with ease, and that places kids in the Southern Baptist Convention at greater risk.

Mohler talks about the lessons of the Penn State scandal and rightly points out that making a report to law enforcement should be the first step in confronting a suspicion of child sex abuse. But what happens when the first step fails? What happens when a church leader like Jack Graham fails to go to the police and a couple decades pass before someone speaks up again? By then, it is often too late for criminal prosecution.

Experts say that less than ten percent of child sex abuse allegations are criminally prosecuted. Part of the reason for the low rate of prosecution is precisely because far too many adults keep quiet about information that should be reported. And it is the very nature of the harm that the child-victim is typically silenced. By the time the victim grows up and becomes capable of speaking about it, the limitations period for criminal prosecution has typically passed.

Other major faith groups have denominational processes for assessing clergy abuse allegations that cannot be criminally prosecuted. Such processes at least allow for the possibility that a minister who is credibly accused of sexual abuse will not be able to remain in a position of trust. Moreover, they allow accusations to be heard by people who are outside the accused minister’s circle of trust and influence. But Southern Baptists do not have such processes. This is a huge safety gap.

Many Baptist clergy abuse survivors have tried in adulthood to report their perpetrators to denominational officials in local, state and national offices. Often, they start out with the assumption that, surely, denominational officials will want to take steps for the protection of others. Invariably, their assumption is rent asunder. The reality of what they encounter is a Baptistland in which no one will hear them. There is no system by which any denominational official will do diddly-squat to help a clergy abuse survivor in seeking to protect others or in seeking accountability for minister-molesters.

Mohler is right: reporting to law enforcement is essential. But child sex abuse is a massive and time-weighted problem, and the criminal justice system cannot handle the entirety of the task on its own. There must also be institutional systems for assuring that people in positions of high trust are held accountable. In this respect, Southern Baptists have failed abysmally. Southern Baptists have abdicated responsibility and betrayed the safety of children in refusing to implement the sort of basic accountability systems that are becoming the bare-bones standard of care in other faith groups.

Mohler seems to want to address this. “Every church and Christian institution needs a full set of policies, procedures, and accountability structures,” he says.

But where exactly are the “accountability structures” for Southern Baptists? If there is one thing the Prestonwood saga has shown us, it is that local churches cannot – cannot – responsibly address clergy abuse allegations against their own ministers. They lack the objectivity. Trained outsiders must be brought to the task.

The lessons of Penn State need heeding, and it is not enough for Baptist leaders like Al Mohler to simply talk about those lessons. Words must be put into deeds. Southern Baptists must actually implement effective accountability systems and they must begin to hold their own leaders accountable.

When Southern Baptist leaders such as Al Mohler begin to publicly address the failures of Southern Baptist leaders such as Jack Graham, then perhaps more people will begin to think that Southern Baptists take this problem seriously.

This too is a lesson from Penn State that Southern Baptists should heed. If an organization does not impose consequences for leaders who turn a blind eye, then blind-eyed behavior will occur more frequently and children will remain at greater risk.
_________________________

Related post: "Jack Graham: Deceiver, believer or in-betweener?"

Contract preachers and accountability avoidance

2011-11-06T21:13:00.010-06:00

When Southern Baptist pastor Sammy Nuckolls was arrested on charges of video voyeurism, the news reports initially described him as merely a “Mississippi man” and as a “traveling evangelist.” There was no mention of the fact that he was a Baptist pastor.

Yet, Nuckolls was well-connected in the Southern Baptist Convention. In addition to stints in churches and as a revival preacher, he worked as a pastor for youth camps sponsored by Lifeway, which is a denominational arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. In other words, Nuckolls was not only a Southern Baptist pastor, but he worked for the denomination itself.

So why didn’t the initial news reports make mention of the fact that Nuckolls was a Southern Baptist pastor who worked at Southern Baptist youth camps?

I could speculate on several reasons, including the possibility that Baptist public relations people may have had contacts with local press people. But I think the more probable explanation is simply that the local press people didn’t know.

A national network-affiliated news station in California once called me because they were trying to figure out the affiliation of a “Baptist” pastor who was in the news in connection with a horrific child abuse case. The news station couldn’t find any source in Baptistland – not any denominational official for any Baptist group -- who could provide information about the pastor’s affiliation. So, the news station called me, and I couldn’t help them either. That’s how difficult it can be to figure out what sort of “Baptist” a “Baptist” pastor is and what denominational entity he or his church may be affiliated with. Even with all the research resources of a network news station, it can be a virtually impossible task. And without official confirmation, reporters wind up erring on the safe side by saying things like “Mississippi man” instead of “Southern Baptist pastor.”

The largest of the Baptist faith groups – the Southern Baptist Convention – doesn’t even keep track of the names of all the ministers who work in Southern Baptist churches, much less on all the ministers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Most of the other Baptist denominational groups – and there are dozens of them -- do no better. This makes "find the Baptist pastor" into a sort of shell game.

But this is just one part of the failure-of-clergy-oversight problem for Baptists. Another part of the problem was illustrated by Lifeway’s response to the Nuckolls’ scandal – a response it made belatedly and only after Nuckolls’ Southern Baptist connection became public.

After initially scrubbing its website of references to Nuckolls, Lifeway finally put up this statement to explain Nuckolls’ relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention: Nuckolls was “originally hired as a summer staffer to serve in the role of camp pastor for FUGE camps in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 2007 his role changed to a contract pastor only . . . He served in this capacity through the summer of 2011. In this role, Nuckolls preached at general assemblies and large gatherings.”

Did you catch that? “Contract pastor only.”

It sounds to me like code for “not our problem.”

Making an employee into a “contract” worker is a common tactic that many organizations will sometimes use to minimize the risk of liability. (There are, of course, other possible reasons for shifting employees to contract status, but that’s one of them.)

In fact, like Nuckolls, the Southern Baptist pastor who molested and raped me as a kid became a “contract pastor” at a Florida church after he had been on staff at other prominent Southern Baptist churches. He was able to continue working as a contract pastor in children’s ministry even after he had been listed in the confidential file of clergy sex abusers that is kept at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. (The BGCT receives clergy abuse reports only from churches, not from mere victims, and according to the BGCT’s policy at the time, a minister could be placed in the file based on “substantial evidence of abuse” or a confession.) He was able to continue working as a contract pastor in children’s ministry even after I had reported him to numerous Baptist officials and even after my report was substantiated by another minister who knew about the abuse when I was a kid. He was able to work as a contract pastor in children’s ministry even when officials at Southern Baptist Convention headquarters wrote to me that they had no record of him being “in a ministerial position in any church.” And yet he was – except he had become a contract pastor instead of an employee pastor.

So, in light of that history, I’d like to know exactly why Lifeway switched Sammy Nuckolls to “contract pastor only” status in 2007. What information did Lifeway have about Nuckolls? Were any complaints made about him?

According to police, Nuckolls may have been surreptitiously videotaping women "for years." Based on reports of the initial charge, he was caught videotaping an Arkansas woman in the bathroom of her home while she was preparing to take a shower. He was staying as a guest in the home while he preached a revival at the Gosnell Baptist Church. After the arrest in Gosnell, police confiscated Nuckolls’ computers and discovered similar videotapes dating back for years. Now, police in Olive Branch, Mississippi have also filed charges, and charges are pending in a second Arkansas town. Police say there could be still “more victims and more charges.”
_________________________

Hat tip to the numerous blogs that reported the facts about Nuckolls' relationship to the Southern Baptist Convention, and also to the Associated Baptist Press, which is independent of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Update: "Alleged peeping evangelist charged in third town," ABP, 12/15/11

This isn't the first Baptist pastor who has been caught making secret videotapes. See, e.g., this story from Jacksonville, Florida, in which there had been talk about the pastor's activity for years, but no one did anything until one man finally reported it . . . and he was kicked out of the church.

Related posts:
"Dear Pastor Oliver," 1/19/11 (Lifeway's statement sounds remarkably similar to the "not on staff" statement made by the Georgia pastor in this post.)
"Find the Baptist pastor," 1/22/09 (A North Carolina Southern Baptist church had 17 pastors shown on its "Meet the Pastors" page and not one was shown on the SBC's online registry of ministers.)

"Into submission"

2011-11-03T10:23:00.003-05:00

WARNING: This video depicts physical and emotional violence.

The man in this video is a Texas judge who handles child abuse cases. Texas elects its judges. Need I say more? Let’s hope the people of Aransas County have the good sense not to re-elect this guy.

The judge, William Adams, wields 17 lashes to beat his 16-year-old daughter “into submission.”

In response to the video, Judge Adams says: “In my mind I haven’t done anything wrong . . . . I did lose my temper, but I’ve since apologized."
___________________________

Note: I have no clue whether Judge Adams is a Baptist or not, but as a longtime Texas attorney, I'm stating my opinion that he should not be allowed to hold a gavel. Also, as a person who was raised in a Southern Baptist church in Texas, I know a thing or two about how the "submission" way of thinking devolves into a sickness.

Benton predator up for parole; survivor speaks out

2011-10-31T23:52:00.012-05:00

First Baptist Church of Benton, Arkansas,
a house haunted by the "secret life" that minister David Pierce led for two decades.

Just two years ago, longtime Southern Baptist minister David Pierce was sent to prison after pleading guilty to the sexual abuse of boys at the prominent First Baptist Church of Benton, Arkansas. Now, Pierce is up for parole again. According to one of the Benton survivors, Pierce could wind up being released as early as November 6.

How did Pierce get away with it for so long? The Arkansas Times pondered that question two years ago as it considered the scores of boys whom Pierce had sexually victimized over the course of decades. As related by reporter David Koons, the answer rested in the blind-eyed and minimizing responses of the church’s senior pastor, other church leaders, Baptist officials, and “some of Benton’s most powerful citizens.” They apparently valued the status of the minister more than they valued the safety of kids or care for the wounded.

Not only did the church’s current pastor, Rick Grant, fail to properly prioritize the protection of kids, but the church’s prior pastors also failed. Both Greg Kirksey, a former 2-term president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, and Randel Everett, the former executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, had been pastors at Benton during Pierce’s tenure. But what did they do to reach out and help the scores of boys who had been victimized there? Everett kept a timid quietude (just as he did during the trial of Texas Baptists’ “murdering minister” Matt Baker). Kirksey wrote a letter to the judge urging no prison time for Pierce.

Let me just repeat that. At the First Baptist Church of Benton, scores of church choirboys were sexually victimized over the course of decades, and Southern Baptist pastor and former statewide official Greg Kirksey urged no prison time for the perpetrator.

The Arkansas Times got it right. This is why Baptist clergy predators can get away with such awful kid-violating crimes for so long: too many others in Baptistland act as though such crimes are no big deal.

The Benton and Baptistland elites weren’t able to save minister Pierce from prison completely, but it does look as though Pierce could wind up serving very little time.

One of the “boys of Benton” has learned that Pierce is up for parole again on November 6, and will likely be released. Here is what he has to say about it on his Descent from Darkness blog:

“I received a call from the Saline County Prosecutor yesterday. David's next (and it looks like final) parole hearing will be November 6th. In all likelihood David will be released on parole following this hearing. He [may] be out of jail by the end of the year.

"Since hearing the news, I've talked with a couple other adult victims. We all had very similar reactions. We knew this was coming. We knew when he went to prison that he wouldn't stay there as long as any of us thought he should. I don't think there is any way any of us could've prepared ourselves for it actually happening though.

"You deal with something like this for so long, and you get through so many days where you feel like there is no way you'll be able to continue to function. There are plenty of times where those days seem to drag on and on and on. Then you get to a point where those days start to spread out. You have lots of good days in between. Sometimes this happens for no reason, sometimes you can put your finger on exactly why things are getting better. Then something like this happens. It has put me in a complete tailspin. I don't know how to deal with this, I don't know how to handle it.

"Obviously, there is nothing I can do to change it. All I can do at this point is continue doing everything I can to keep it together. For myself, my wife, and my kids.

"The Prosecutor said that at this point he expects David to stay in the Benton area. I can't imagine him actually staying here. I guess he'll still have the people here who have supported him through this and refuse to believe his guilt, even after his confession (including the one who tried to friend me on Facebook, even after starting a fund to collect money for David). Maybe he can attend the Little Rock support group for sex offenders.

"It's hard for me not to think about the people that will undoubtedly be happy that David is being released from prison. From those who wrote letters asking for leniency, to those who don't believe David is guilty at all. It really makes me want to just crawl in a hole for a couple months until all this passes over. Well, until reality sets in, and I realize that none of this will ever pass over for me or any other victim of David Pierce. Honestly, I had high hopes, given David's "fragile medical condition" (as some of his supporters are so quick to point out), that he would die in prison. I think that's how I dealt with the thought of him being released these last few years. Now, I'm being forced to realize that he will get out. He will get to experience freedom again.”

Updates:
-- "One of Pierce’s alleged victims ... describes a meeting in which First Baptist Pastor Rick Grant allegedly said Pierce could keep his job if he would 'seek to make amends' by apologizing to other victims." Associated Baptist Press, 11/22/11
-- "Parole decision delayed for former music minister convicted of abuse," ABP, 12/2/11
-- "Former Baptist minister paroled for sex crimes," ABP, 1/31/12

Related posts:
Truth and reconciliation needed, 1/22/11
Benton, Arkansas: Minister's parole hearing is closed to press, 1/1/11
Voice of an FBC-Benton survivor, 1/2/11
Remember the boys of Benton, 9/13/09
Denial: It ain't just a river, 9/1/09
Basically brainwashing, 8/28/09
Questions need answers in Benton, 8/28/09
A good man who does nothing, 8/4/09
What's wrong with this picture? 6/17/09

Kentucky ouster contrasts with denominational inaction on clergy sex abuse

2011-10-30T00:42:00.002-05:00

A Kentucky Baptist association “convened a special session” to withdraw fellowship from a church that “allowed a local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays to use its building for meetings.”

“Parents, families and friends.” A Southern Baptist church was allowing these people to meet on church premises. Oh my. This was such a grievous offense that the church got booted out of the regional denominational organization, the Daviess-McLean Baptist Association.

So, not only are gay people themselves “otherized” in Southern Baptist life, but now we see that even the “parents, families and friends” of gay people are “otherized.”

The vote for ouster was 242 to 24. It wasn’t even a close call.

Stories such as this may illustrate at least part of the reason for why this denomination is in decline. Many individuals would feel a measure of dismay at such cold-hearted treatment of people whose only purported offense is in being “parents, families and friends.” But groups will sometimes behave in ways that are far more immoral and discompassionate than what ordinary individuals would. Therein lies one of the major problems of the Southern Baptist Convention. In the name of religion, it has effectively institutionalized an incivility that ostracizes and marginalizes too many.

Not long back, in the face of headlines about teen suicides after anti-gay bullying, Southern Baptist seminary president Al Mohler addressed the role of churches and spoke of how such teens “need to know that they are loved and cherished for who they are.” It sounded nice, but I think most teens are savvy enough to see right through such easy talk. Actions speak louder than words, and those teens are looking at that 242-24 vote for ouster of a church that allowed “parents, families and friends” to even sit in the church’s chairs.

How should such teens imagine that they are “loved and cherished for who they are” when even their “parents, families and friends” give offense by their mere presence?

Sadly, in Southern Baptist life, there was nothing very unusual about what this Kentucky Baptist association did. At the national level, the Southern Baptist Convention ousted a church in 2009 for nothing more than its “perceived toleration of gay members,” and various statewide conventions have made similar ousters.

Yet strangely, though Southern Baptists seem to have no problem with denominational ouster for churches that don’t tow the line on gays (or even on “parents, families and friends”), Southern Baptists claim denominational powerlessness in the face of churches that harbor clergy predators. Then, “local church autonomy” becomes the doctrinal rallying cry that rationalizes denominational inaction.

But stories like this one in Kentucky reveal just how incoherent that Baptist doctrine has become.

If local churches are not autonomous enough that they can choose to allow a meeting space for “parents, families and friends,” then why are local churches so radically autonomous that they can choose to allow an admitted or credibly-accused clergy predator in the pulpit?

If a regional denominational body can have a “credentials committee” to assess the soundness of a church’s theology and can convene a “special session” because of the urgency to oust a church that allowed “parents, families and friends” to meet, then why can’t a regional Baptist body have a “credentials committee” to assess the safety and trustworthiness of pastors reported for sexual abuse? And why can’t a denominational organization convene with the same level of urgency because of the need to protect the safety of kids and congregants?

Consider the parallel of another regional Baptist association. The first church shown on the membership roster for the Denton Baptist Association, Bolivar Baptist, is a church with a pastor who admitted to conduct constituting sexual abuse of a teen girl and who was eventually court-ordered to pay child support for her baby. Another church in the Denton Baptist Association, Southmont, is a church that gathered a $50,000 “love offering” for a pastor who resigned in the face of a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse of a 14-year-old, and after he admitted that “proper boundaries were not kept.” And still another church in the Denton Baptist Association is the prominent megachurch, Prestonwood, whose executive pastor recently acknowledged that the church had known about allegations of sexual abuse against one of its ministers, and yet the church simply allowed the minister to move on to another church. That minister is now under indictment for multiple alleged child sex crimes in Mississippi.

None of these churches have been ousted by the Denton Baptist Association, or by any other denominational body. No matter how unconscionable and reckless a church’s conduct may be with respect to clergy predators, the denomination doesn’t interfere.

But let a church exercise hospitality toward the “parents, families and friends” of gay people, and that’s a different story. Ouster!

Breast cancer brings thoughts on hell-wishing

2011-10-18T19:42:00.007-05:00

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this year, it hits home. The American Cancer Society estimates that the year 2011 will bring 230,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer among women in the United States. I’m one of those cases.

For me, what was even worse than learning I had cancer was learning that I needed a mastectomy. Even now, though I’m six months down-the-road and feeling stronger, the pain of that day is still raw.

Despite years of hypervigilance, mammograms, and ultrasounds, I wound up with both invasive ductal and invasive lobular tumors at the same time. So this beast of a disease still took my breast.

On the very day when I learned about the second tumor, which limited my surgical options, I received this missive from a self-identified Southern Baptist:

"When life goes sour for you, YOU WILL KNOW WHY!"

It arrived with the usual slew of “you’re going to hell” and “God will have judgment on you” sorts of messages. Baptists were filling my inbox with rage because I had blogged about a Washington youth pastor who, according to a news report, “confessed on tape to raping a 12-year-old girl.” Despite the reported confession, the pastor’s supporters were certain of his innocence and determined to make sure I knew. Suffice it to say that the guy recently pled guilty.

In case after case, ever since I began speaking out about Baptist clergy sex abuse and cover-ups, I have reaped heaps of Baptist wrath. So, apart from the lousy timing of it, there was nothing unusual about this particular missive. Besides, I figure everyone’s life goes “sour” at some point, and so, given how many of these ugly messages I get, the coincidence of the timing certainly wasn’t startling.

Nevertheless, it gave me pause to receive such vitriol on a day when I was in such pain. Not for one second did I believe my breast cancer was indicative of God’s wrath, but I pondered the nature of human wrath and the question of why good people use religion to justify their own rage.

What is it about religious belief that often seems to fuel such harshness? What is it about religious belief that can foster such fear-based responses? And what is it about religious belief that blinds people to the crimes of their ministers?

If I could answer these questions, I feel like I would solve some great mystery. But of course, I can’t. Heck, I can’t even figure out why so many of these vitriol-senders seem to have a stuck caps-key.

I also pondered what it must feel like to hate someone so much that you would wish them to hell and would invoke God on your side -- as if any human actually held such power. I have tried to put myself in their shoes, but ultimately I realized I couldn’t. Even if I wanted to return hate for hate, and to say “go to hell” right back, it wouldn’t hold the same meaning.

Many of the Baptists who send me such missives have made clear that they believe in a very literal hell. In fact, they often seem to revel in that belief, delighting in the details of the agony that they claim I will eternally endure because I have spoken out about anointed men of God and about church cover-ups. “Not even Aloe Vera Gel will help you,” said one message.

I laughed at that one, but mostly, such hell-wishing messages infuse me with sadness. When did the faith of my youth become so permeated with meanness?

I cannot possibly understand the feeling behind these messages because, for me, hell holds a more metaphorical meaning. I don’t believe that humans will physically experience the pain of their flesh forever burning. So, even if I wanted to, I am simply incapable of wishing for anyone else the same sort of hell as what so many Baptists have wished for me. You can’t wish for what you don’t believe in.

But what I can wish for – and pray for – is that faith may ultimately work to foster human compassion and care rather than human hate.

I’m now a breast cancer survivor, and I’m also a survivor of Baptist clergy sex abuse. Life seems more precious than ever, and if there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s this: There is no time for hate. Not for any of us.
____________________________

Please make sure you and your loved ones get mammograms, and if you have a family history of breast cancer or dense breast tissue, talk to your doctor about additional screening methods.
For more info:
Susan G. Komen Foundation
The Scar Project ("Breast cancer is not a pink ribbon.")

Thanks to the Associated Baptist Press for publishing this column! And thanks to the Knoxville Daily Sun for the reprint!

"The mindset of Hell moves first to protect its power and status."
-- Jeri Massi

Two years later

2011-10-13T21:56:00.001-05:00

The article’s first sentence tells the essence of the problem: "Pastor Matthew Ellis' first urge was to trust his youth minister."

For pastors and congregants alike, that's the first instinct for most people when a minister is accused of sexual abuse. Good people tend to think the best of others, and particularly of others who are in positions of high trust.

Many other faith groups now have clergy accountability systems and review processes that at least carry the possibility of compensating for this normal human instinct. But Southern Baptists do not. So most of the time, in Baptistland, the first instinct is what prevails.

Brian Brijbag

That’s what nearly happened in this Tampa Bay case. Two years ago, a father uncovered some suspicious correspondence between his teen daughter and youth minister Brian Brijbag at the First Baptist Church of Brooksville in Florida. The father went to the church’s senior pastor, Matthew Ellis, who questioned the girl and apparently didn’t believe her. And, based on the article, it seems no one bothered to go to the police.

I can only imagine the sort of hostile questioning that girl may have been subjected to, given that pastor Ellis apparently viewed it as allegations of “adultery” rather than as allegations of abuse.

In any event, Brijbag was allowed to continue as a youth minister at First Baptist of Brooksville, and it doesn’t appear that other parents were even warned.

Now, two years later, minister Brijbag, who is a married father of three, has been accused by a second girl. Once again, pastor Ellis’ first instinct was to simply trust Brijbag. “I still believed he was innocent of any wrongdoing,” said Ellis. In fact, pastor Ellis was so confident of minister Brijbag’s innocence that, when Brijbag submitted his resignation, pastor Ellis urged him to rescind it.

Brijbag has been arrested on two counts of sexual activity with a minor, and pastor Ellis seems to finally – belatedly -- be having some doubts. But it took multiple allegations, an arrest, and two more years of kids being left at risk in that church.

That’s something that parents at First Baptist of Brooksville should be upset about. Their kids were left at risk while their pastor, Matthew Ellis, simply trusted an accused youth minister.

Will the congregants hold pastor Ellis accountable for this failure and for leaving their kids at risk? I doubt it.

And consider this . . . if minister Brijbag had quietly moved on to a new church after the first accusation -- as Baptist ministers often do -- then kids in other churches could have also been placed at risk.

First Baptist of Brooksville is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, but will the denomination impose any consequence on pastor Ellis for his irresponsible handling of abuse allegations? Nope. This is a faith-group that imagines itself to be beyond the need for the common sorts of accountability systems that many other human organizations have.

It was only Brijbag’s own conduct that finally raised suspicion for pastor Ellis. After the latest accusations, pastor Ellis wanted minister Brijbag to meet with the accuser and her father, but this time, Brijbag refused pastor Ellis’ suggestion, saying that he didn't want to have his integrity attacked.

Ironically, this is where clergy molestation victims share common ground with accused ministers. Many clergy abuse survivors say that the experience of having been disbelieved and attacked by their faith community is even more painful than the memory of having been sexually molested by a minister. It is the community that often causes even more harm than the molesting minister.

This is why Baptists, as a faith community, need a denominational panel of trained professionals to assist churches with clergy abuse reports, to assure that allegations are referred to secular authorities according to the law, to assess allegations that cannot be criminally prosecuted (which is most), and to assure that all persons who make reports of clergy abuse will at least have their reports received in a responsible and compassionate manner.
____________________________

10/14/11: This post made the news. Read "Advocate says Baptists ill-equipped to address sexual abuse by clergy" in the Associated Baptist Press.

Jack Graham: Deceiver, believer or in-betweener?

2011-10-01T19:07:00.005-05:00

“There’s deceivers and believers and old in-betweeners.”

– Willie Nelson

Jack Graham

In 2008, when a minister at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas was charged with solicitation of a minor, senior pastor Jack Graham, who is also a former Southern Baptist president, bragged that, in his forty years of ministry, he “never had one moral problem with a staff member, until now.”

With the facts that have come forth in recent days, many would say that Graham’s statement wasn’t true. Graham had a very big “moral problem” with a prior Prestonwood staff member. It was a “moral problem” and more. It was a clergyman’s crimes kept quiet.

In 1989, Prestonwood church officials learned of allegations that a staff minister, John Langworthy, “acted inappropriatedly with a teenage student.” A former Prestonwood staff intern, who was there at the time, has said that Langworthy “confessed to molesting boys in the church.”

With Jack Graham at the helm, Prestonwood church officials responded by quietly dismissing Langworthy. They got Langworthy off their own turf, and in doing so, they effectively unleashed him into the larger denominational body and placed many more kids at risk.

This “cover-up” didn’t come to light until two decades later.

Any fool can see that Jack Graham failed miserably back in 1989. He failed the people of his congregation. He failed the kids who tried to tell about what Langworthy had done. And he failed the kids in Langworthy’s future churches.

But that was 1989, and Graham’s failures are all too obvious. What I want to know is this: What happened in 2008?

What was Jack Graham thinking in 2008 when he claimed he had “never had one moral problem with a staff member”?

In the words of Willie Nelson, was Graham a “deceiver”? Was he flat-out lying about never having had “one moral problem”? Perhaps he simply saw no need to tell the truth in 2008 because two-decades of cover-up had already passed. The safety of kids be damned . . . keep up the smokescreen. Is that what Graham was thinking?

Or was Graham a “believer”? Did he really believe that what Langworthy did to kids didn’t constitute a “moral problem”? Perhaps Graham believes that child sex abuse isn’t a “moral problem” unless the perpetrator gets criminally convicted. Is that what Graham was thinking?

Or was it the third possibility? Maybe Graham was a plain old lukewarm “in-betweener.” Maybe he was a human being who simply said what was easiest. Maybe Graham wasn’t actively trying to deceive, and maybe belief was irrelevant to him. Maybe he was simply a human being who took the in-between easy road of keeping quiet about his own collusion, of lapsing into denial in the face of a dreadful past, and of protecting his own self-image, his own turf, his own career, and his own prestige.

It’s hard to actually know what Graham was thinking because Graham has refused to comment.

But whatever category you may place him in – whether as a deceiver, believer, or in-betweener – Jack Graham has provided a good illustration of why the Southern Baptist Convention needs better clergy accountability systems, including an accessible denominational database of convicted, admitted, and credibly-accused clergy.

We have seen the Graham pattern too often: When clergy sex abuse hits on their own turf, pastors typically fail to make kid-protection the top priority. Since Southern Baptists refuse the implementation of any denominational system to compensate for this pattern, the result is a denomination in which known, reported, and even self-admitted clergy child molesters can church-hop with ease.

John Langworthy left Prestonwood and went to Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Mississippi. Like Graham, Mississippi church officials also made grievous mistakes in dealing with abuse accusations.

Langworthy has now publicly admitted that he had “sexual indiscretions with younger males” while working at a Texas church. Last week, he was indicted on charges that, even prior to his stint in Texas, he sexually abused five boys from two other Baptist churches in Mississippi. The boys were between 10 and 13 years old.
_______________________

Related posts:
Admitted minister-molester: "I was not asked to resign," 9/9/2011
Mississippi rep seeks secrecy for church, 9/8/2011

Admitted minister-molester: "I was not asked to resign"

2011-09-09T15:57:00.006-05:00

“I was not asked to resign by the pastor or the elders.”

That’s what Southern Baptist music minister John Langworthy says in this August 2011 video, which shows him confessing to his Mississippi congregation that he had “sexual indiscretions with younger males.”

According to prosecutors, those “younger males” were between 8 and 12 years old.

Church officials claim that they previously conducted a confidential internal investigation of the accusations against Langworthy. Yet, despite Langworthy’s admission, despite multiple accusations in Mississippi, and despite accusations at Langworthy’s prior Dallas church, Langworthy “was not asked to resign by the pastor or the elders.”

Things get worse. Click the link at the top of the screen for the "full video" and keep watching . . . .

After Langworthy’s statement, the church’s senior pastor, Greg Belser, steps to the pulpit and explains. “We love God’s grace,” he says. Belser informs congregants that church officials made “a biblical response.”

Scary, eh?

Pastor Belser’s self-serving “biblical” justification serves to illustrate why Baptist churches are often a perfect paradise for preacher-predators. When recklessness is religiously rationalized, it becomes even more dangerous and even more inured to the suffering it inflicts.
_______________________________________________

Related post: Mississippi rep seeks secrecy for church

For more examples of how Southern Baptists can twist "God's grace" into a rationalization for unaccountability, see "On the Side of Grace" and "Greasy Grace."

Thanks to New BBC for the video.

Mississippi rep seeks secrecy for church

2011-09-08T20:32:00.010-05:00

The former music minister of Dallas’ Prestonwood Baptist Church has been charged with child sex crimes in Mississippi.

Back in 1989, Prestonwood officials knew about abuse allegations against minister John Langworthy, but they simply got Langworthy off their own turf, kept quiet, and allowed him to move on.

Now . . . finally . . . over 20 years later . . . and with no-telling how many more kids this minister may have molested . . . Langworthy has been arrested. No thanks to Prestonwood.

I hope parents in Southern Baptist churches will ponder this. Prestonwood is one of the largest churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, and it has a former Southern Baptist president at the helm. This is how little some of the top-dogs in this denomination cared about your kids.

Even after the known abuse allegations at Prestonwood, Langworthy could have gone to any other church in the Southern Baptist Convention. There is no system that would have stopped him. Southern Baptists don’t even keep denominational records on ministers who have been credibly accused of child molestation. They just let accused ministers church-hop their way to new prey.

If a Baptist minister isn’t sitting in prison, he can probably find a Baptist pulpit to stand in. That’s how reckless their system is. Southern Baptists lack even the pretense of any denominational oversight for their clergy.

Morrison Heights Baptist Church

So, despite the molestation allegations at Prestonwood, minister John Langworthy had no trouble in finding a new church. He wound up at another prominent Southern Baptist church, Morrison Heights in Clinton, Mississippi.

Mississippi police have now arrested Langworthy, and as most people would want, the police are trying to conduct a thorough investigation.

Unfortunately, the church isn’t cooperating.

In front of his Morrison Heights congregation, Langworthy made a public confession about what he so euphemistically called “sexual indiscretions” with younger males. The church claims it conducted an internal investigation. Understandably, prosecutors want to know more about what Langworthy may have said to church officials.

But with the help of its attorney, the church is saying “no dice.” It is refusing to divulge the information.

So . . . let me be doubly-clear about this. According to reported news accounts on this, the person who is trying to keep this information secret is not the arrested minister. It’s the church itself and the church officials.

Rather than doing everything possible to cooperate with prosecutors and work for the protection of kids, Morrison Heights church officials are apparently trying to protect themselves.

It stinks.

Even if an argument for secrecy exists within the realm of legal possibility, that wouldn’t necessarily make it the morally right possibility. You might think a church would know the difference, wouldn’t you? The law and morality are different domains. Just because you can get away with something under the law doesn’t mean that what you’re doing is right.

Philip Gunn,
Mississippi House of Representatives

The church’s attorney is a guy named Philip Gunn, who is also one of the church elders at Morrison Heights. This means that Gunn is wearing two hats, as attorney for the church and as one of the church officials from whom the prosecutors are seeking information.

Gunn is also an elected representative for the State of Mississippi. (That’s Gunn’s photo from his state rep webpage.)

Let’s hope voters will remember this! If kids are to be made safer, then kid-safety must be the top priority. It is long past the time when Southern Baptist officials . . . and their attorneys . . . should understand this.
_____________________

Updates:
Philip Gunn's role in child sex case, WJTV, 11/22/11 ("It's ironic that... Gunn supports a law requiring the supporting of child abuse." In the face of the Penn State scandal, I guess Gunn's talk sounds good for his political career, but he doesn't walk the talk. In the face of allegations at his own church, he has told church leaders that they shouldn't talk to prosecutors about what an accused minister-molester told them.)
Expert disputes Gunn's defense in sex abuse case, WJTV, 11/25/11 ("The law's primary concern is not to protect ministers . . . but to protect children.")
Email shows Gunn's role in sex abuse case, WJTV, 11/29/11 ("Gunn would not allow prosecutors to question church leaders about what they know about John Langworthy's case" . . .and he "tried to take steps to keep abuse allegations against Langworthy silent."

Goodbye for now

2011-05-06T00:40:00.001-05:00

I have cherished the community on this blog. Thank you for being here. You are people with whom I have shared many memories, troubling thoughts, and heartfelt hopes. You are people who have inspired me.

I know the future will hold new challenges and new adventures. I hope to still share some of them with you. But for now, I’m going to take a break.

Thank you for walking with me on this part of my journey. I wish all of you Godspeed in your own journeys.

I hope that, in sharing my own pain, I may have helped someone else. I hope that my story may have served as an example -- an example for survivors of moving forward without shame, and an example for church and denominational leaders of why clergy sex abuse must be addressed in a systemic manner.

I celebrate my survival, because make no mistake about it, there are many others whom clergy sex abuse kills. It kills physically via suicide. And for many who still breathe, it kills them psychologically and spiritually. And for those who survive the abuse itself, the process of trying to report it may yet kill them off, because the complicity of the many can hurt even more than the brutishness of the one.

I am a survivor of something that tried to kill me. I am grateful.

But now, I will walk privately for a while, and I will count my blessings every step of the way, listening, with peace, to the wind in the trees and the birds that surround me.

For those of you who say that this work we have done in Baptistland has been without results and of no value, I say to you flat-out that you are wrong. The value rests on the truth of the work itself.

And for those of you who have struggled with me in this work, I leave you with these additional thoughts. When Martin Luther King, Jr., contemplated the discouragement and bewilderment of seemingly endless efforts toward change, he said this:

The thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying ‘It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying.’ You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it’s good that you have a desire to bring it into reality . . . Thank God this morning that we do have hearts to put something meaningful in.

For many of us, we have dreamed of a Baptistland where there would be effective clergy accountability systems and where clergy abuse survivors would be received with compassion and care. This dream may not be fulfilled in my lifetime . . . or in yours . . . but it is good that we have hearts that desire to bring this dream into reality.

Our hearts are broken by the abyss of sexual abuse and cover-ups that we have seen in Baptistland. Our hearts are rent asunder by the enormous anguish suffered by Baptist abuse survivors who continue to endure so much hatefulness and do-nothingness, and all in the name of religion. Yet, with the pain of a broken heart, I say, “Thank God we have hearts that break.”

I will continue to wonder about Southern Baptist leaders. Where are their hearts?

Good-bye for now. Happy trails!

Complicity in Baptistland

2011-04-30T19:18:00.006-05:00

Twenty-one years ago, the prominent Southern Baptist pastor of a Texas megachurch allowed a music minister to quietly move on despite multiple reports of sexual abuse that were made by several boys in the church.

That music minister – I’ll call him Lee Worthington – is now employed as a minister at a Southern Baptist church in Mississippi. The senior pastor – I’ll call him Mack Jackson – must surely know that his blind-eyed do-nothingness placed a lot more boys at risk.

The church – I’ll call it Stone Forest Baptist Church – didn’t report the allegations to authorities, and the boys’ parents didn’t press charges. The church leadership never notified the congregants or told other parents so they could talk to their children. It was all swept under the rug.

In the past year, a person who used to be a Stone Forest staff member has been trying desperately to get something done about this. “Being so young at the time,” he told me, “I did not realize the gravity… of the cover-up that took place before my very eyes. I certainly do now.”

He was particularly perturbed a while back when news of a different clergy sex case hit the headlines and senior pastor Mack Jackson bragged that, in several decades’ time, he had never had a single moral problem with any staff person in his church. The hypocrisy of it was too much.

Yet, I find myself wondering whether Mack Jackson may have actually believed what he said. Maybe he believes that it doesn’t constitute a moral problem unless a minister has been criminally convicted. Of course, that’s like saying that, so long as a minister doesn’t get caught, he can do what he wants with impunity. Since less than 10 percent of child molestation cases can be criminally prosecuted, that’s a very dangerous belief, particularly because ministers hold positions of high trust. Of course, the other possibility is that senior pastor Mack Jackson simply lied to himself and to others.

According to the former staff person, minister Worthington admitted to church staff that he had molested the boys. He begged to stay on through the summer, but was told to leave town immediately, or he would be reported. So he left town, and got a job at a Southern Baptist church in Mississippi.

This former Stone Forest staff person has talked with at least one governmental official in Mississippi and with a Baptist official in Texas. He has recently communicated with another Stone Forest minister – I’ll call him Jeff Nelson – who was there at the time and who is still there. Nelson indicated that he too knew about the molestation allegations against Worthington. In fact, by email, Nelson made clear that, 21 years ago, church officials had talked with the church’s attorney about the matter, and that in recent months, after this former staff person contacted them, church officials talked with the attorney yet again.

I figure the attorney probably told church officials that they should let sleeping dogs lie. He would likely explain that, even in the rare event that those boys from 21 years ago decided to file a lawsuit, a court would probably conclude that their claims were beyond the statute of limitations. On the other hand, if Stone Forest officials were to now speak out about the abuse reports against their prior minister and about their own failure to properly assess the reports before allowing him to move on, then minister Worthington might decide to sue the church for damaging his career. And, as the attorney may have pointed out, minister Worthington’s claim would be within the statute of limitations. So, the attorney might have advised that the greater risk of liability would be if church officials were to now speak up about the prior abuse allegations against Worthington.

But of course, the attorney is giving legal advice, not moral advice. The two domains are not one and the same. The attorney is focused on protecting the corporate institution of the church against the risk of financial loss. He is not focused on protecting the boys in Mississippi against the risk of grievous sexual, psychological and spiritual harm.

Because Stone Forest officials still weren’t doing anything, this former staff person contacted at least four reporters that I know of. Good reporters. But the story has never seen the light of day. Why? Because newspapers are often extremely reluctant to publish such information without confirmation from some sort of official proceeding or official record. Without that, it puts the newspaper at risk.

With clergy abuse reports in most other major faith groups, there is at least the possibility of an official denominational process or denominational record. But that possibility doesn’t exist for Southern Baptists, and this makes it more difficult to get news about clergy abuse allegations into the light of day.

Though I changed the names, this story is true. In big churches and small, it is a common scenario, and it exemplifies the problem that Southern Baptists must address.

There is no office to which those who were sexually abused by Baptist clergy, and whose claims are too old for prosecution, can safely make a report. Not only are the victims themselves shut out from any possibility of a denominational reporting process, but so too are the countless others in Baptist churches who have information about predatory ministers who have church-hopped to new pulpits.

No one should believe that Southern Baptists will be able to prevent the clergy-predators they don't yet know about so long as they have no system for doing anything about the clergy-predators they're specifically told about.

Southern Baptist leaders stand on the sidelines as church kids are placed in the trust of ministers who have been reported for child molestation. They betray the sanctity of those young lives. By failing to implement the sorts of safeguards that other major faith groups have, Southern Baptists are sacrificing the safety of kids on the altar of local church autonomy. This is the use of religion for the rationalization of evil.

When the world is watching, Mack Jackson is the prominent pastor who brags that he has never had a single moral problem with any staff member. But when the world is not watching, and when he can get away with it, Mack Jackson is the prominent pastor who quietly lets a minister reported for child molestation move on to another church.

How I wish that Mack Jackson would open his heart to the cries of the wounded and consider the horrific harm that he has unleashed toward more young boys. I wish he could see the ocean of pain that submerges those who have been sexually abused by purported men of God.

But of course, this grandiose Mack of a pastor is no-doubt firm in his settled belief in his own self-righteousness. He could walk past a pile of bodies – and he would likely not even glance.

The complicity of men such as this has spread deep and wide in Baptistland. I believe it is a big part of the reason for why Southern Baptist leaders refuse to create a denominational office for receiving clergy abuse reports and informing congregations. They refuse for fear that their own complicity and cover-ups will be exposed.
___________________________

Update 8/8/11:
Disturbing revelations about Prestonwood's former minister, WFAA-TV
Abuse confession raises questions of cover-up by Baptist mega-church, Associated Baptist Press
Clinton music minister confesses to sexual indiscretions, Clarion Ledger
Former minister, teacher makes startling admission, WAPT News
Wolves in the Music Ministry, part 1, New BBC Open Forum
Wolves in the Music Ministry, part 2, New BBC Open Forum

Related posts:
Three-legged stool, 11/17/08
Among Baptists, who will give a hoot? 5/21/10
Basically no one, 6/12/10

"True Crime" will spotlight the Matt Baker case

2011-04-26T21:55:00.005-05:00

Watch "True Crime with Aphrodite Jones" on the Investigation Discovery channel on Thursday, April 28, at 9:00 p.m. Central Time. Click on the channel finder in the top right corner of this page to plug in your zip code and find your local listing. UPDATE: This program will replay on May 1 at 1:00 p.m. Central Time.

This is the case involving Southern Baptist pastor Matt Baker who, despite multiple reports of sexual abuse and assault, was able to move with ease through churches, schools and organizations affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. For over 16 years, what Matt Baker learned in Baptistland was that a Baptist pastor could get away with almost anything and face no consequence. Ultimately, he even tried to get away with murder. And he nearly did.

At the start of the murder trial, prosecutors said that they had evidence of at least 13 young women, including four minors, against whom Baptist pastor Matt Baker had made inappropriate “advances” and assaults.

From Texas Monthly's prior report, we know that at least three of those sexual abuse and assault reports were made directly to Baptist officials, including two at a single church – the historic First Baptist Church of Waco, Texas. Yet no one stopped Matt Baker. No one removed him from ministry. No one held him accountable.

How could a man with so many abuse and assault allegations remain as a Baptist minister? This is a question that Baptist officials need to address.

In most other organizations, an institutional failure of this magnitude would give rise to a lot of questions. Leaders would try to understand how things went so wrong. They would try to assess the damage. They would try to figure out what to do to assure that it wouldn’t happen again. They would try to find out how many were wounded.

But that doesn’t happen in Baptistland. Instead, Baptist officials simply hunker down, recite their blind-eyed mantra of “local church autonomy,” and pretend that it’s not their problem. It’s a very dangerous head-in-the-sand sort of approach.

I gave an on-camera interview for this "True Crime" program, and I am grateful to Investigation Discovery for spotlighting this tragic case. It raises questions that still need answers.
_________________________

My prior postings on the Matt Baker case:

Why didn’t Baptists bust him? 2/23/08
Baptists at their best? 12/30/08
Risk: Another lesson from the Matt Baker story, 12/31/08
Baptist leaders must consider possible consequences, 6/12/09
Baptist leaders silent at start of murder trial, 1/12/10
Excerpts from the Matt Baker murder trial, 1/20/10
Guilty! Jury says pastor murdered wife, 1/20/10
It shouldn't take a murder, 1/21/10 (This one lists the many places where Baker worked.)
Complicity of Baptist leaders, 1/24/10
Baptists threw kids a rattlesnake, 1/26/10
Baptist Bill and the Courage of Lora, 2/8/10
Lora's response to Baptist Bill, 2/17/10
Basically no one, 6/12/10

Future study on Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors... maybe

2011-04-24T23:12:00.001-05:00

Friends,

As some of you already know, my life has changed a lot over the past year. I’m now pursuing a Ph.D. in religious studies in the joint program at the Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver. I hope that, with a broader understanding, I may become a more effective voice for encouraging compassionate outreach to those wounded by clergy sex abuse and for prodding the implementation of effective clergy accountability systems.

[Incidentally, the Iliff School of Theology is not in any way connected to Baptists. It is loosely affiliated with the Methodists, but just so you’ll know, I’m not Methodist either. I don’t categorize myself as much of anything when it comes to institutional religion.]

In the future, I hope that I may be able to conduct a research study on Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors, and on the survivors’ thoughts and feelings about various things related to the abuse and its aftermath. I hope many of you will participate. (And by “clergy,” I’m referring to pastors, ministers, deacons, Sunday School teachers, missionaries, and church officials.)

It may be a year or more before I can even begin such a study, but the blog and website have been getting a lot of hits lately, and so I would like to use this spike in visibility to go ahead and start gathering email addresses from people who might be interested in participating.

If you think you might like to participate in such a study, please send an email with “Future Study” in the subject line to study@stopbaptistpredators.org

Please do not include any additional information with your email.

This will not in any way make you part of any study. It will simply put your email address on a list that I may use down-the-road to send out information about a possible future study. If and when that time arrives, you have absolutely zero obligation to participate in any way unless you choose to do so at that time. And, of course, I’ll have a lot more to say about the specifics of the study at that time.

Please feel free to link to this post on your own blogs, websites and Facebook pages. I am hoping to reach as many Baptist clergy abuse survivors as possible.

Many thanks for your help.

Pontius Pilate holds lesson on clergy sex abuse

2011-04-18T00:14:00.004-05:00

As Holy Week unfolds, I find myself thinking about Pontius Pilate, the powerful Roman leader who thought he could wash his hands of an innocent’s blood by shoving responsibility onto others.

“I find no fault in him.” That’s what Pilate said about the vulnerable person who offered testimony before him. But then Pilate started worrying about his own power and his own career, and he didn’t act on what he knew to be true.

Pilate had the power to release Jesus. But instead he washed his hands, and then he handed Jesus over for crucifixion.

Perhaps Pilate didn’t dictate that Jesus should be crucified, but he allowed it. He made a choice. Pilate could choose to risk his career and let Jesus go free; or he could choose to protect his power at the cost of Jesus’ life.

We know what Pilate decided. He protected his own power and he turned Jesus over to the religious leaders of the day. “Crucify him yourself,” he said.

So Pilate evaded responsibility and passed the guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion on to others. He made a big show of it. He had a wash basin brought out, and he stood before the crowd washing his hands.

Nowadays, that’s what we remember him for –- the show. Pilate made a display of not liking what the crowd wanted, but then he washed his hands, turned his back, and allowed it to happen.

Southern Baptist leaders make a big show as well. They talk about “precious children,” but ultimately, they choose do-nothingness in the face of clergy sex abuse reports. In effect, they bring out a big wash basin.

Southern Baptist leaders hold the power, but they shove responsibility onto others.

It’s as though they all have Pontius Pilate syndrome.

Rather than use their power for the protection of innocent kids -- a power they have surely shown when other issues troubled them -- Baptist leaders choose to do nothing. They wash their hands of clergy sex abuse and leave the problem up to the crowd.

They turn the safety of innocents over to the 44,000 local churches to deal with on their own. . . as if each of those 44,000 churches could even begin to have the resources to effectively fight the scourge of church-hopping clergy-predators. Yet, despite the churches’ shared faith identity, and despite the churches’ cooperative efforts on many matters, Southern Baptist leaders twist “local church autonomy” into a shibboleth of a shrug when it comes to reports of clergy sex abuse. They refuse to implement anything akin to the sorts of safeguards that other major faith groups have.

By washing their hands and shirking responsibility, Southern Baptist leaders allow clergy-predators to easily roam among their churches. They choose to protect their power structures rather than to protect innocent kids.

How can they make such a choice? Because they refuse to hear the cries of the wounded. They listen instead to lawyers and public relations people whose advice on how to handle clergy sex abuse has transformed the Southern Baptist Convention into a corporation focused on protecting its assets rather than protecting its flock.

I wonder if Pilate also had lawyers and PR people whispering in his ear.

Southern Baptist leaders may wash their hands of this, but they cannot cleanse their hearts.

These are men who hold the power to make kids in Baptist churches a great deal safer. But they choose passivity instead. They refuse any denominational system for assessing clergy abuse reports. They refuse any denominational system for warning people in the pews. And they even refuse a denominational system for record-keeping on credibly-accused clergy.

They simply wash their hands of all of it.

Among other faith groups, we have seen leaders who failed miserably in the exercise of their designated responsibilities. When the lines of responsibility are clear, the blame is easier to assign.

But is it any better to have leaders who utterly refuse responsibility?

Did “washing his hands” purge Pilate of guilt for allowing the crucifixion of Jesus?

By refusing to even keep records on credibly-accused clergy, Southern Baptist leaders allow the clergy-predators to easily find new prey. By washing their hands of it, they allow that many more kids will have their bodies and souls rent asunder by those they trust the most.

I don’t think there’s a wash basin in the world that’s big enough to take away their guilt.
____________________________

Thanks to Associated Baptist Press for publishing this column! And thanks to the Knoxville Daily Sun for the reprint!
See also FBC-Jax Watchdog's take on this column.

The Malignancy of Baptist Oblivion to Clergy Sex Abuse

2011-04-08T19:58:00.000-05:00

In Somerville, Tennessee, the March 2011 newsletter for Warren Community Church featured Paul Williams. In fact, the newsletter announced that Paul Williams “has recently been asked to serve as a Trustee” for the church.

This is the same Paul Williams who admitted to sexually abusing a kid when he was a minister at the prominent Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis.

This is the same Paul Williams for whom Bellevue’s senior pastor Steve Gaines kept quiet about his admission of child molestation and tried to sweep it under the rug.

This is the same Paul Williams whose wife kept the secret of his pedophilic behavior and for whom many others on Bellevue’s staff also kept quiet. (Incidentally, that’s Williams and his wife in the photo, which was in the church newsletter.)

For years, the people in Bellevue’s pews have acted as though all of this were no big deal. Despite the reality that pastor Steve Gaines knew about minister William’s sexual abuse of a kid, and kept quiet about it, Bellevue’s congregants have retained Gaines as their senior pastor, as if it were all a matter of little consequence. By keeping Gaines in the pulpit as senior pastor, this prominent church sends a clear message that, in Baptistland, a pastor’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse carries no significance to his purported role as a moral and spiritual leader.

All of that would be plenty disturbing enough, but now we see still another Southern Baptist church that is apparently willing to turn a blind eye with respect to Paul Williams.

Despite the lack of “Baptist” in its name, Warren Community Church is indeed a Southern Baptist church. It’s Southern Baptist affiliation is shown on the sbc.net website. (Lately, quite a few Baptist churches have been dropping the “Baptist” name – as though they’re ashamed of it – and yet they still retain the Baptist affiliation. E.g., Two Rivers Baptist Church rebranded to become the Fellowship at Two Rivers.”)

So, despite all the publicity that surrounded the Paul Williams/Steve Gaines scandal at Bellevue Baptist Church, Paul Williams had no trouble moving to another Southern Baptist church, where he is now being made a Trustee and is being presented in the newsletter as though he were a good Christian example to follow. If it’s this easy for an admitted clergy child molester like Williams to be accepted as a leader in another Southern Baptist church, can you imagine how much easier still it is in the average case? The case in which there was little or no publicity? The case in which the molester never admitted it but was simply allowed to move on with no one bothering to look into it?

The newsletter of Warren Community Church even shows a picture of Williams surrounded by children, and holding a child in his lap. Any parent or kid in that congregation would likely look at that newsletter and believe that Paul Williams is someone they can trust. In effect, the newsletter sets them up. It sets them up to trust a man who has already shown that he cannot safely be trusted with kids.

The newsletter also points out that Williams has made seven trips to help renovate a kindergarten classroom in Albania. His seventh trip was just a few weeks ago, March 19-27.

Should Baptists be sending an admitted child molester to renovate a kindergarten classroom in Albania? Why is there no one in Baptist leadership who sees the problem with this, and who will do anything about it?

Here’s why. A pervasive malignancy has enmeshed itself in the Southern Baptist Convention. It is the malignancy of oblivion to clergy sex abuse. It is the malignancy of a “no big deal” attitude toward clergy sex abuse. It is the malignancy of blind-eyed do-nothingness in the face of clergy sex abuse.

It is a malignancy that promotes the reputations of men rather than prioritizing the protection of kids.

ABC's 20/20 will spotlight the Tina Anderson story

2011-04-07T10:37:00.009-05:00

“Try to imagine the pain and humiliation of a teenage girl, just 15 years old, who says she was forced to stand in front of a New Hampshire church congregation and confess her ‘sin’ of being pregnant. She says not only was she forced to confess her pregnancy, but also to ask for their forgiveness – with no mention of the man she says sexually abused her.”

That’s the story of Tina Anderson, taken from ABC’s 20/20 press release. 20/20 will spotlight Tina's story this Friday, April 8, at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time and 9:00 p.m. Central Time. Check your local listings.
Meanwhile, you can read more about Tina’s story in my prior blog posts: “Alleged rape cover-up implicates multiple pastors, multiple churches;” “Police say girl raped, then relocated;” and "Stay away." This is a story that implicates Baptist officials and Baptist congregations in New Hampshire, Colorado, Indiana and Wisconsin.

If you’d like to better understand how abuse gets covered-up in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, I suggest Jeri Massi’s book, Schizophrenic Christianity.

The patterns of abuse in IFB churches are quite similar to what we see in Southern Baptist churches. Both types of Baptists claim that every local church is autonomous, and both types use that doctrine as a rationalization to avoid any oversight from outsiders or even from denominational entities.

For both types of Baptists, a central root of the problem is the absence of effective accountability systems for Baptist clergy.

Baptists zealous on prison violence, paralyzed on clergy violence

2011-04-06T11:37:00.004-05:00

In my March 29th post, I posed the question that Dee Miller asked over a decade ago:

“What is it that keeps people in the church zealous about confronting the evils of this world, yet paralyzed when confronted with the evils of violence in our own front yards?”

The next day, the Southern Baptist Convention provided a good illustration of the kind of duality that Dee was talking about. Writing for the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Doug Carlson published a column urging that the government should do more for the prevention of prison rapes. He requests that people submit comments to the U.S. Department of Justice as it considers standards for minimizing the incidence of sexual abuse in prisons and for providing assistance to those who have been abused.

"Protection from sexual violence” is “a basic human right,” he says.

I agree: Protection from sexual violence should be considered a basic human right. But what I don’t understand is why the Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t advocate just as forcefully for the protection of kids in its own churches against the sexual violence of its own Baptist clergy predators.

Why is the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission so zealous about sexual violence in prisons when it remains so mute about sexual violence in Baptist churches?

The “basic human right” to be protected from sexual violence is a right that should also extend to kids in Southern Baptist churches. At a minimum, Baptist church kids deserve at least the same sorts of safeguards against clergy violence as what kids in other major faith groups get. Yet, Southern Baptists do not even provide a safe place to which victims of clergy violence may make a report.

The SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission uses its Baptist-funded voice to urge that people should write to the U.S. Attorney General with this statement: “As a person of faith, I hold as sacred the basic right of all people, including those in custody, to be free from sexual abuse. . . . I believe some standards must be strengthened to better protect incarcerated adults and youth from abuse.”

Much the same could be said to the Southern Baptist Convention itself: “As a person of faith, I hold as sacred the basic right of all people, including kids in Baptist churches, to be free from sexual abuse . . . . I believe some standards must be implemented to better protect Baptist church kids from abuse.”

The SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission complains that immigration detention facilities and military facilities are exempted from the federal standards for protection against prison violence. Yet, the Southern Baptist Convention exempts itself from the basic standards that other major faith groups now apply for protecting church kids against clergy violence. Worst of all, it uses religion as its rationalization, claiming that because local churches are autonomous, the denomination has no obligation concerning the clergy who carry forth the Southern Baptist brand.

So nonexistent is any denominational oversight for Southern Baptist clergy that, if a pastor isn’t sitting in prison, he can probably find a Baptist pulpit to stand in. There is no denominational system that would prevent him. Yet, experts recognize that less than 10 percent of child sex abuse cases can be criminally prosecuted.

Other major faith groups attempt to deal with this reality, and to prioritize the safety of congregants, by implementing internal denominational mechanisms for assessing clergy abuse reports and for assuring that credibly-accused clergy cannot easily church-hop. Southern Baptists don’t bother.

That’s why Southern Baptist pastor Matt Baker was able to work as a chaplain at a residential treatment facility for emotionally disturbed youth, even though multiple reports of sexual abuse and assault had been lodged against him with various Baptist officials. There those kids were, confined in a treatment facility, and Baptists threw those kids a rattlesnake.

Where was the voice of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission with respect to this travesty on their own Baptist turf? I heard nothing but a deafening silence.

Despite multiple reports of sexual assault and sexual abuse, Baptist officials sat silent while Matt Baker hopped from one church to another and another and another, with nary a consequence. It took the murder of a young woman, and the unrelenting perseverance of her mother, for people to finally learn the truth about Baptist pastor Matt Baker’s long history of abuse and violence.

Matt Baker personified the evil of violence in Baptists’ own front yard. Yet, despite multiple opportunities, Baptist officials were paralyzed in confronting it. To this day, they remain paralyzed. They have given no indication of having learned any lesson from that horrific tragedy. The do-nothing system remains the status-quo for dealing with sexual violence in Baptists’ own front yard.

Finally, ask yourself this: Why is it that Baptist officials have no problem with using the pooled dollars of autonomous churches to fund a commission that advocates for protections against prison violence, and yet Baptist officials refuse to use those same pooled dollars for funding a commission that could provide their own churches with information about credibly-accused Baptist clergy?

Why does the doctrine of local church autonomy preclude a cooperative effort toward addressing the evil in Baptists’ own front yard when it does not preclude a cooperative effort toward addressing the evil in other yards?

_____________________________

Related post: "More talk from Mr. So-called Ethics," 3/18/08

Sh-h-h! You embarrass us.

2011-03-29T12:00:00.009-05:00

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about tragedies and catastrophes. One essay talked about the Oklahoma City bombing, which claimed the lives of 168 people and injured many more. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken in the rubble of the federal building where the bomb exploded. Afterwards, legislation was passed to increase protection around federal buildings; a memorial was dedicated on the site; and annual remembrance services are held.

This recalled to my mind an article by Dee Miller, a former Southern Baptist missionary to Malawi, who has done much work in trying to minister to clergy sex abuse survivors. Dee and her husband had strong ties to Oklahoma City, and many of their family members lived there.

Dee wrote this article in 1997, and tragically, very little has changed in Baptistland since then. Below are some excerpts; they still hit home.

“For my family and me, the Oklahoma City tragedy was an intensely personal wound. . . . We had to watch the heart-wrenching scenes on CNN. Unlike most Americans, we recognized two of the grieving family members. One of my cousins was among the rescuers. . . . We were in grief and shock. . . .

“Like many Americans, we watched the memorial service through tear-filled eyes. . . . How proud I was to be an Oklahoman. How proud to be an American. As the local disaster team was joined by others from around the nation, heroic efforts were made to look for survivors, to help everyone involved in processing powerful feelings, and to assure all Americans that every effort was being made to find those responsible. This tragedy happened in one of the most unexpected places in our nation. We were terrified, knowing that we were all vulnerable; yet none suggested we ignore that fact.

“As I struggled with the bombardment of emotion, it was impossible to ignore the stark parallels and contrasts between this acute crisis and the chronic one to which I have chosen to devote a major portion of the past ten years of my life.

“Perhaps it is difficult for persons outside of the survivor activist movement to understand, but my prayers and grieving for the sufferers in Oklahoma City mingled with my prayers and grieving for all of us within the institutional church -- those who are aware, those who are naive, and those who prefer to ignore what they know about violence in the profession which society wants to trust for moral leadership.

“In no way do I want to minimize the intense physical or emotional suffering of bomb sufferers. . . . It is never wise to compare the intensity of suffering in one group with that of another. It is wise, however, to examine ourselves and our responses in every situation of violence in the hopes of sharpening our awareness of challenges in our own midst. . . .

“In Oklahoma City the bodies of many survivors were buried beneath the rubble. We, in the community of faith, have thousands of unidentified living survivors who remain emotionally and spiritually buried beneath piles of debris. A few are crying out softly. Others cry silently, afraid to be found. . . . It is difficult to imagine parallels in reverse, but I believe it is helpful.

“Imagine an Oklahoma City rescuer, upon hearing the voice of an entrapped survivor, edging his way as close as possible to the survivor's tomb and whispering: "Sh-h-h! Please be quiet. We don't want to find you. You embarrass us. You remind us that America is not the safe place we want it to be."

"Imagine another survivor running from the scene -- unknowingly in the direction of a television camera -- only to be stopped, have his bloody face washed by a bystander, and advised to go home and forget what he has just witnessed.

"Imagine a family member being told by a counselor: "You are not to speak about your pain and loss. It will remind outsiders that federal buildings may not be the safe places they were once thought to be."

Ultimately, Dee Miller posed this question: “What is it that keeps people in the church zealous about confronting the evils of this world, yet paralyzed when confronted with the evils of violence in our own front yards?”

To this day, Dee’s question haunts me. But I know for sure that what Dee says is true: Thousands of survivors and their families have been buried in the rubble of systemic clergy sex abuse and cover-ups, and they remain entombed in the quandary of the faith community’s uncaring oblivion.

If Baptists were to allow themselves to actually see these many wounded people, and to hear their cries, then Baptists would have to confront the realization that their churches are not the safe places they imagine.

Pastors' Conference gets $141,549

2011-03-23T09:12:00.002-05:00

As reported by the Associated Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference is funded with $141,549.00 from the Southern Baptist Convention’s operating budget. This means that local autonomous Southern Baptist churches, which send money to national headquarters through the Cooperative Program, are helping to fund this bigwig pastors’ conference.

Those of you who are regulars here already know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?

If local autonomous churches can pool their resources to cooperatively fund a national conference for pastors, why can’t local autonomous churches pool their resources to cooperatively fund a national review board for the responsible assessment of abuse reports about pastors?

Why do Southern Baptist officials insist that the local churches are so absolutely autonomous that no cooperative effort can be made for the better protection of church kids against predatory pastors, and yet Southern Baptist officials have no problem at all with the local churches making a cooperative effort for the promotion of bigwig pastors at a national conference?

The Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference is known for being a “launching pad to the SBC presidency.” It’s where the rising stars of Baptistland go when they want to rise even further in their high-powered, high-profile careers. And local autonomous churches all across the country help to fund those pastors’ ambitions . . . to the tune of at least $141,549.

This budget item for the Pastors' Conference is shown in the records of the SBC Executive Committee. That's the top-dog committee of the Southern Baptist Convention -- the guys who actually run things in the denomination. This committee, which allows $141,549 for the Pastors’ Conference, is the same committee that didn’t budget a single dime to study the possibility of providing local churches with the resource of a denominational review board, similar to what other Protestant faith groups have, for the assessment of clergy abuse reports. And it didn’t budget a single dime to consider the creation of a denominational database of credibly-accused clergy so that predatory pastors would not be able to church-hop so easily.

Without even so much as a legitimate, funded study, the SBC Executive Committee completely rejected this sort of cooperative effort toward clergy accountability, and it did so despite the fact that over 8000 local church “messengers” voted to instruct the Executive Committee to conduct such a study. In effect, the Executive Committee simply thumbed its nose at the local churches and did what it wanted. . . which was nothing.

So, when it comes to instituting clergy accountability systems, the SBC Executive Committee ignores the expressed will of the local churches and sets aside a zero-dollar budget. But when it comes to promoting the bigwig pastors, the SBC Executive Committee doles out big bucks.

I think it says a lot about where their true values lie. They obviously care a great deal more about promoting their cronies than they do about protecting kids.

Incidentally, in addition to the $141,549 from the SBC operating budget, the Associated Baptist Press reports that the SBC’s North American Mission Board, Crossway, and LifeWay contributed at least $10,000 each in the form of “diamond-level sponsorships” for support of the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference.

Comment moderation info

2011-03-22T21:31:00.019-05:00

After four years of writing this blog, I started moderating all comments in December 2010 because of a growing stream of vitriol, venom, and incivility. I have considered shutting off comments completely, but I just don’t want to do it. I so greatly appreciate the insights, wisdom, thoughtfulness, and righteous anger of so many of you who comment here, and I wouldn’t want to give that up.

Commenters are always responsible for their own comments, and most of the regulars here probably don’t need to bother with reading this, but for those who may wonder, this is my attempt to provide a bit of information about my approach toward comment moderation.

I welcome anonymous comments, particularly from abuse survivors. Indeed, part of the original purpose of this blog was to provide abuse survivors with a place where they might, in small ways, begin to find their voice, even if it’s an anonymous voice. However, anonymous comments, and those from persons who don’t make their profile visible, will be moderated more rigorously than others. Anonymity can provide too many possibilities for meanness, and also for manipulation. So, if I don’t have some idea of who the comment is from, I err on the side of disallowing it. Many blogs don’t allow for anonymous comments at all; I’m doing the best I can to strike some sort of balance.

First and foremost, this blog is intended primarily for clergy abuse survivors, and it is my intent to maintain this blog as a safe place for clergy abuse survivors. This means that I will also err on the side of rejecting comments that I think may be too hurtful. In the past, I often tended to err on the side of allowing for an open forum. Then I heard from several clergy abuse survivors who told me they felt like they couldn’t even read my blog anymore because some of the comments were too upsetting for them. I say a heartfelt thank you to those survivors who shared those feelings.

My new approach toward moderating comments will necessarily involve more judgment calls on my part, and sometimes I may not exercise my judgment in the same way that some of you would. I hope you’ll bear with me. The bottom line is that I intend to keep my “first and foremost” audience in the front of my mind – i.e., clergy abuse survivors.

I can also tell you this: If your comment doesn’t get through, or doesn’t get through as quickly as you think it should, and you send me emails ranting about how terrible I am for not posting what you said, it’s probably not going to sway me to release your comment.

A few additional points:

Comments that contain links to sites about social or political issues, or to sites for political candidates, will likely be deleted.
Comments that contain links to proselytizing sites will likely be deleted, as will comments that, in my judgment, are too over-the-top on authoritarian, evangelical-style talk. This is obviously a judgment call, and I’ll admit that I don’t quite know where the line is on this. After all, even I have been known to recite the occasional Bible verse. So, I would simply say that many clergy abuse survivors do not find it helpful to receive sermonizing on how they should be better Christians, how they should be more forgiving, how they can pray their troubles away, or how they should put it all in God’s hands.
Comments that libel me or call me names will be deleted. (You can disagree with me, but you can’t expect to say untrue things about me right here on my own blog.)
Comments on older posts are more likely to be deleted. (As with almost all things, there are exceptions.)
Comments that flat-out reflect ignorance, and particularly hateful ignorance, will likely be deleted. (For example, a recent attempted comment talked about how a 12-year-old girl was probably “in love” with the minister and so was partly to blame. I won’t allow such foul ignorance to be promoted and perpetuated on my blog. Rational, decent people don’t debate the “who’s to blame” question when an adult married minister admits to having sex with a 12-year-old.)

I expect that my comment moderation policy will result in less overall comments. I understand that.

I wish it were possible to have a completely open forum. However, I have finally concluded that, given the subject-matter of this blog, it is simply not manageable.
__________________
Related posts: Venom-spitters and bile-spewers, 12/17/2010; Meanness, 10/26/2010; Straight to Hell, 2/15/11

Réforme magazine article in English translation

2011-03-14T00:08:00.010-05:00

A reader asked about getting an English translation of the complete article that appeared in the March 10, 2011 issue of Réforme, the largest Protestant publication in France. So, I am happy to provide it below, with this simple caveat: It’s the work of a struggling French speaker, not a professional translator.

But here’s why I think this article is so important and worth reading in its entirety. It shows that other people around the world can readily see the horror in how this powerful faith group uses religion as a rationalization for turning a blind eye to terrible abuses. The article’s author, Alexis Buisson, called it the “wall of denial.” That “wall” is what other people are seeing about Southern Baptists. The reason most Baptists don’t see it is because they are blinded by their own indoctrinated orthodoxy and by the propaganda of their religious leaders. But others can indeed see it.

__________________

A Voice Against the Forbidden

Christa Brown thought of herself as a true daughter of the church. She was the pianist for her church choir in Farmers Branch, Texas; she went to summer camps for studying the Bible; she went to Sunday School. And she was raised with the strictest respect for pastors.

Her small church was a second home for her until the day when the pastor, who was in charge of youth actitivities, began flirting with her and telling her how beautiful she was. One day, he held her and kissed her. He reassured her by telling her that their relationship was the will of God. When she resisted, he reproached her for her lack of faith. The relationship between the married man and the minor girl was prolonged, culminating in the moment when Christa woke up naked and terrified on the bed of the parsonage after her aggressor had given her several glasses of alcohol. “Don’t worry,” he whispered to her. “You’ll still be a virgin.”

Even decades later, talking about this history is always painful for Christa Brown. But now at fifty-seven years old, an attorney, a wife and mother of a child, she knew how to give words to the unspeakable and committed it all to a book, This Little Light, in which she recounts the attacks upon her, her quest for justice, her personal torments, and the loss of faith that resulted from all of it.

Lack of record-keeping

Beyond all that, Christa’s book came out in 2009 and made of her the public face for an unrecognized plague: pedophilia among American protestants, and in particular, among Southern Baptists, the largest protestant group in the United States, with 16 million members, and the group to which Christa once belonged. “Some people have said that my writing of the book was an act of catharsis. But I think, instead, that it was an act of resistance –- resistance in the name of all the voices of all the victims that this powerful religious group has silenced.”

Christa Brown’s narrative offers a rare insight into the difficulties that those victimized by sexual abuse in Baptist churches have had to face in their struggle for recognition of the wrongs.

In particular, she recounts that her understanding of the nature of the aggression came too late to pursue justice for her aggressor through the criminal justice system. In general, the laws of limitation make 28 the maximum age for a person to make a complaint about being sexually abused as a minor. These laws often have the effect of penalizing the victims of rape and molestation, who sometimes need many years to understand what was done to them. There is also a lack of record-keeping in Baptist churches, which impedes the ability to trace presumed pedophiles several years after their deeds.

She decided to undertake a personal crusade to prevent the repetition of such abuse for others. She found her aggressor in a church, and she wrote to 18 Baptist leaders to inform them of the danger. In vain. She went several times to the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention, earnestly beseeching Baptists’ national representatives, only to be confronted by the same denial. Their response is that each church is administered in an autonomous manner and that a list of “sexual predators” would be contrary to this principle. But Christa affirms that this amounts to a maneuver for burying the problem. “That sort of autonomy doesn’t really exist in actual practice. All through their history, you can find examples showing that there has been cooperation for all manner of purposes among the churches and the regional and national authorities.”

Wall of denial

Faced with this wall of denial, she turned to the media, her last recourse. The Orlando Sentinel newspaper, ignoring the threat of a lawsuit, published an article with the name of her aggressor. He ended up quitting his pastoral position under pressure. “Abuse is difficult to accept in life, but what is even more difficult to accept is the attitude of Southern Baptist officials,” Christa says. When we hear them call us “evil-doers,” and question our mental state, “you get the impression that the victims are the people who should be beaten down.”

Since the publication of her book, she remarks that too little has changed in how Baptists treat reports about sexual abuse. Contrary to the Catholic Church, the powerful Southern Baptist Convention, which was created in the middle of the 19th century, has still not established any procedures for examining pedophilia accusations against clergy, arguing that their decentralized organization justifies their do-nothingness.

In June 2008, the Southern Baptist Convention requested that local pastor-search committees check criminal records on those seeking employment, but it voted against a motion for the creation of a centralized database of its own clergy who were convicted or charged with pedophilia. The well-known TIME magazine included this decision in its list of ten news stories that were underreported by the media in 2008.

Declining membership

Pedophilia has “always existed within this religious group,” according to Christa Brown, who says she has heard from victims who say they are now 60 to 70 years old. “I would like Southern Baptists to recognize and acknowledge that sexual abuse is a real problem, instead of saying that there’s only been forty incidents in fifteen years, as one of their leaders suggested. It isn’t true: I’ve heard the stories of hundreds of victims. And it’s still only the tip of the iceberg.”

“Until Southern Baptists take on their responsibility and undertake profound internal reforms, they will not have done enough about this problem. They should listen to the victims, not their lawyers,” intones Marci Hamilton, professor on law and religion at Yeshiva University in New York.

Christa Brown herself has created a website to inform the greater public and to collect the evidence of the thousands of “survivors” that Baptist leaders don’t want to see. “Their tactics have worked for a very long time, but they won’t endure. They think they can hide behind their walls, but those walls are tumbling down. This is a denomination in decline,” she says.

For the first time in fifty years, the Baptist family reports a declining membership.

“I have a good life and I am grateful for it. But I think it is impossible to completely heal from this sort of sexual abuse. We live in the light and the darkness. I am capable of talking about it, but many others are still paralyzed by it.”

____________________________

Related post: Réforme writes about Baptists' "wall of denial," 3/10/11

Réforme writes about Baptists’ “wall of denial”

2011-03-10T23:13:00.012-06:00

In its March 10, 2011 issue, Réforme magazine published a profile story about my book, This Little Light, and about clergy sex abuse among Southern Baptists. I’m told that Réforme is the largest Protestant publication in France. So, a whole lot of French-speaking people are now reading about the horror of the Baptist do-nothing response to clergy sex abuse. Kudos to Alexis Buisson, the journalist who wrote this article!

I’m guessing that most of you don’t speak French. So allow me to give you a translated version of a few passages. I’m not totally fluent, and so this is a mediocre translation that doesn’t begin to do justice to the beauty of Buisson’s writing, but hopefully, it will give you the gist.

The article begins by relating a few excerpts from my own story and by telling about my book, which Buisson describes as having “mettre des mots sur l’indicible” -- as giving words to the unspeakable.

Then he discusses the unacknowledged plague – “fléau méconnu” – of pedophilia among Protestants, and in particular, among Southern Baptists, the largest Protestant group in the United States.

He quotes me as saying: “Certaines personnes ont dit que l’écriture du livre etait un acte cathartique. . . . Pour moi, c’était plutot un fait de resistance au nom des voix de toutes les victims que ce groupe religieux tres puissant a tues.”

Translation: “Some people have said that my writing of the book was an act of catharsis. But I think, instead, that it was an act of resistance – resistance in the name of all the voices of all the victims that this powerful religious group has silenced.”

Buisson writes about “l’absence de registres” -- the lack of record-keeping -- among Baptists, which impedes the ability to trace presumed pedophiles. And he does an amazing job of succinctly explaining the position of Southern Baptist officials: “They say that each church is administered in an autonomous manner and that a list of sexual predators would be contrary to that principle. But Christa affirms that this amounts to a maneuver for burying the problem. ‘That sort of autonomy doesn’t really exist in actual practice,' she says. 'All through their history, you can find examples showing that there has been cooperation for all manner of purposes among the churches and the regional and national authorities.’”

Buisson explains how “la puissante SBC” – the powerful Southern Baptist Convention – doesn’t even have procedures for looking into clergy sex abuse accusations and how it contends that its decentralized structure justifies its “immobilisme” – i.e., its do-nothingness. He describes this as the “mur de déni” – the wall of denial. The very fact that Buisson's writing is so clear makes the story all the more chilling.

"L’abus est difficile à vivre, mais l’attitude des autorités de l’Union des baptistes du Sud est encore plus difficile à accepter, raconte-t-elle."

"Such abuse is difficult to accept in life, but what is even more difficult to accept is the attitude of Southern Baptist officials," she says.

Then, Buisson quotes Marci Hamilton, professor of law and religion at Yeshiva Univesity in New York: "Tant que les baptistes du Sud n’auront pas pris leur responsabilité et qu’ils n’auront pas engagé des réformes internes profondes, ils n’en auront pas fait assez. Ils doivent écouter les victimes . . . . ".

Translation: "Until Southern Baptists take on their responsibility and undertake profound internal reforms, they will not have done enough about this problem. They must listen to the victims…. "

Christa Brown says : "Leur stratégie a marché pendant très longtemps mais elle ne va pas durer. Ils pensaient qu’ils pouvaient se retrancher derrière leurs murs mais les murs sont en train de tomber. Cette dénomination est en déclin."

Translation: "Their tactics have worked for a very long time, but they won’t endure. They thought they could hide behind their walls but those walls are tumbling down. This is a denomination in decline."

"J’ai une bonne vie et j’en suis reconnaissante. Mais je pense qu’il est impossible de guérir complètement d’un abus sexuel, poursuit-elle. Nous vivons dans la lumière et l’ombre. Je suis capable d’en parler mais beaucoup d’autres sont encore paralysés."

Translation: "I have a good life for which I am very grateful. But I think it is impossible to completely heal from this sort of sexual abuse. We live in the light and the darkness. I am capable of talking about it, but many others are still paralyzed by it."
___________________

Réforme magazine's website is at http://www.reforme.net/. If you scroll down to the "Portrait" section, you'll see my picture and a link to the beginning of the article. I converted the whole of the article into this pdf: http://stopbaptistpredators.org/documents/reforme_une_voix.pdf

Rebranding needs more than name change

2011-03-08T12:52:00.022-06:00

“One of Nashville’s largest Baptist churches will have a new name that omits the word ‘Baptist’. Effective March 20, Two Rivers Baptist Church will become the Fellowship at Two Rivers.”

-- The Tennessean, March 5, 2011

Plenty of other Baptist churches have renamed themselves, but what makes the Two Rivers change particularly interesting is that Two Rivers has been “the home church” for many of the high-honchos of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has its headquarters in Nashville.

So do you get the picture? The home church for Southern Baptist honchos doesn’t want to call itself “Baptist” anymore. Ironic, eh?

That’s how tarnished the “Baptist” brand has become.

Two Rivers itself has had plenty of problems in recent years. This is the church that, in 2008, ousted a group of 70 members who sought access to church financial records. It took a second vote, with changed rules, to get the ouster accomplished, because on the first vote, the church membership didn’t do what church leadership wanted. It was such a debacle that The Nashville Scene did a scathing parody of the church’s voting process, saying “Two Rivers Baptist to advise Zimbabwe regime” on election tactics because “they know a thing or two about reversing an election that didn’t go their way.”

By some reports, these dictatorial tactics were apparently nothing unusual for Two Rivers. Its leadership preached, “There has to be submission and authority.”

All of this happened with senior pastor Jerry Sutton at the Two Rivers helm. He was a man who nearly won the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006. So he knew a thing or two about the tactics of power.

But things sure got ugly there at Two Rivers. Sutton himself fell under scrutiny as the Associated Press reported on troubling allegations, including an allegation that he had used church money to pay for his daughter’s wedding reception. Additionally, the Associated Press reported that “one of Sutton’s former administrative assistants has also said Sutton looked at pornography on his church computer and had an affair with a church staff member -- charges the church denies.” (If you want to see the original of the Associated Press article on this, for $1.50, you can retrieve it from the archives at ap.org by searching under the reporter’s name, Rose French.)

Meanwhile, even as Sutton was insisting that the 70 record-seeking members should “issue a written apology and promise never to cause disharmony again,” lo and behold, a stash of financial records was found in a dumpster behind the church.

As reported by WSMV-TV, a church member described those records as showing unusual items “charged to the church credit card,” including “tickets to an Atlanta Braves baseball game and a $300 deck hand fee for a lavish sport fishing outfit.” Reportedly, there were also “a number of handwritten notes indicating that a church staffer is to be ‘paid in cash’ and a note “that said to give her half in cash and half in a check.”

Lawsuits went back and forth, and as best I can tell, most of the civil claims against Sutton were dismissed based on jurisdictional grounds – i.e., because the judge “declined to become involved” in church matters – and not based on any review of the merits. Sutton himself eventually left Two Rivers and went to teach at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia. (Liberty was founded by Jerry Falwell and is described as “the largest Christian university in the world.”)

With such an ugly history, you might imagine that, if Two Rivers were going to “rebrand” itself, it would drop “Two Rivers” from the name. But no . . . they decided to “rebrand” by dropping “Baptist” from the name. I guess they thought the “Baptist” part of the brand carried even more taint than the “Two Rivers” part.

But of course, it’s all just a matter of appearances. The church is still “very solidly Southern Baptist.”

Speaking of appearances . . . those of you who followed the Ergun Caner scandal may find this further info interesting. When Jerry Sutton moved on to teach at Liberty, the school’s former president and dean, Ergun Caner, bragged that Liberty’s new professor was “a pulpit heavyweight.” Uh…. yeah …. I guess he sure knew how to throw his weight around, didn’t he?

Caner went on to praise Sutton as “one of the best preachers in the nation” and said “the Church is strong when the preaching is SOLID.” Uh… strong? After Sutton visited his style of leadership on the Two Rivers church, it dropped from 3000 in average Sunday attendance to about 650.

Finally, Caner resorted to military metaphors, saying that Sutton would help train ministry students for “the front lines” and help them understand “trench warfare.” Uh . . . it sure looked like “warfare” there at Two Rivers. But is that really the style of leadership that Baptists want to teach to the next generation?

Maybe that gets right back to the underlying reason for why Two Rivers feels the need to rebrand itself by omitting the word “Baptist.”

Too many Baptist leaders have tarnished the Baptist brand by making it into a faith about “warfare” and power rather than a faith about compassion and love.

After all, this is the faith group whose highest leader, Frank Page, wrote a column in which he publicly castigated the support groups for clergy molestation and rape victims as being “nothing more than opportunistic persons” . . . and he has never even bothered to apologize. And this is the faith group in which 100,000 other Southern Baptist ministers have sat silently in the face of such hateful rhetoric, refusing to even hold their own leader accountable. To the contrary, they promoted him.

Yes, the Baptist name has indeed been tarnished. But it will take more than the illusion of rebranding to solve the problem. It will take a widespread change of heart.

_______________________________

Photo from the now-defunct TwoRiversInfo.org website, which was the work of church members who sought Two Rivers' financial records.

Related posts:

"Submission and authority," 8/15/07

"Two Rivers in the dumpster," 4/30/08

"Nothing more," 3/16/09

Update:

"Sutton becomes interim dean and vice-president of academics" at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2/15/11

The Truth

2011-03-06T11:49:00.009-06:00

When it comes to clergy sex abuse, Southern Baptists can’t handle the truth.

Can’t. Won't. Won't even try.

Truth can be messy. So basically, Baptists just opt out. They refuse to deal with it.

Time and time again, we’ve seen this pattern. When a church’s minister is arrested on child sex charges, the pastor and other church leaders talk about wanting to wait for “the truth” to be made known.

We saw this pattern in the recent case in Port Orchard, Washington. “We want the truth to come out,” said senior pastor Jamie Greening, after another minister in his church was arrested on child sex charges and after police said he had “confessed on tape to raping a 12-year-old.”

So, in circumstances like this, what do pastors really mean when they talk about “the truth”?

As best I can tell, they mean that they want to wait to see whether or not the minister is criminally convicted. They want some other authority – such as the criminal justice system – to simply tell them what constitutes “the truth.”

But criminal conviction is not one and the same as “the truth.”

Just because a man hasn’t been criminally convicted doesn’t mean that he hasn’t sexually abused a child. In fact, many experts estimate that 90 percent of active sex offenders have no criminal record. This is consistent with FBI data, which indicates that only about 1 to 10 percent of child molestation crimes are ever even disclosed, much less prosecuted or convicted.

This reality is one reason why most of the other major faith groups in this country now have denominational systems for making their own assessments about whether it is more likely than not that a minister sexually abused a person. They take responsibility within the faith group for making an assessment about what they believe “the truth” to be, and they make that assessment based on standards that are less rigid than those of the criminal justice system.

Other major faith groups take that responsibility onto their own shoulders for the sake of better protecting kids and congregants. A faith group’s assessment of “the truth” will not function to put a man in prison, but it can function to assure that he won’t be able to use the mantle of ministerial trust as a weapon.

There’s plenty of room for debate about the standards and presumptions of the criminal justice system. But here’s the thing – whatever you may think of the criminal justice system, there is no reason why a faith group should rely solely on the criminal justice system for deciding whether a pastor is fit to remain in the pulpit.

Our criminal justice system is premised on the notion that it is better to let nine guilty men go free rather than to risk convicting an innocent man. This premise may make sense when the end result may be a deprivation of liberty . . . i.e., when the person who is convicted may be confined to a jail cell.

But does it make sense for deciding whether a pastor should remain in the pulpit?

Is it better to let nine child-molesting ministers remain as ministers rather than to risk the removal of one innocent minister from his chosen career?

Other faith groups have taken on these difficult questions and have developed their own standards for assessing “the truth” about clergy sex abuse allegations. But Southern Baptists still don’t bother. This makes lack of a criminal conviction into the de facto standard for clergy fitness among Southern Baptists. Basically, if a minister isn’t sitting in prison, he can probably find a Baptist pulpit to stand in. There is no Baptist denominational system that will stop him.

Sadly, waiting for “the truth” is also an excuse that many Baptist pastors use to avoid even the extension of care to those wounded by clergy sex abuse. We saw this pattern, too, in the Port Orchard case.

After immediately telling his congregation how important it was “to keep Pastor Dirk’s family in our prayers” (and after “the courtroom was packed” with supporters for “Pastor Dirk”), senior pastor Jamie Greening said nothing at all about care or concern for the victim in his initial “pastoral note.” (And I couldn’t help but notice that Greening still respectfully referred to the minister who “confessed on tape to raping a 12-year-old” as “Pastor Dirk.”)

Then, in two subsequent posts (here and here), Greening made these statements about the victim:

“If these allegations are true (and we don’t know that for sure yet) then she is in need of our prayers and support….”

“If these allegations are true, then our love, encouragement and support must be for the woman who has brought these charges as well as for Dirk and his family."

You’ll notice, of course, that he makes support for the victim conditioned on “if these allegations are true.” So, even though he has already publicly urged support and prayer for “Pastor Dirk,” senior pastor Jamie Greening still waits to see “if these allegations are true” before he will allow that the accuser may also need support. Then he goes an even further step of publicly casting doubt on the victim with his “and we don’t know that for sure yet” comment.

So, what exactly does pastor Greening mean by his “if these allegations are true” statement? Exactly what “truth” is he waiting for before he will allow that the victim, too, may need prayers and support?

As best I can tell, it’s the same old pattern. Even in the face of admissions, Baptists wait for the criminal justice system to provide them with “the truth” in the form of a criminal conviction.

When criminal conviction is a faith group’s only standard for assessing “the truth” about a minister, you can be sure that many ministers who rape and molest kids will remain in positions of high trust, and that kids will be at greater risk. That's the truth.
___________________

Related post: "Even in the face of admissions," 3/4/11

Even in the face of admissions

2011-03-04T11:12:00.011-06:00

In Port Orchard, Washington, a Southern Baptist pastor was arrested on charges of child rape. In recorded phone calls, police say that pastor Dirk P. Jackson admitted to having “sexual relations” with the girl, who was then a sixth grader, and to “having her perform oral sex on him while they were in the classroom.” When police told Jackson they had recorded copies of the phone calls, he said the conduct was “consensual.”

Even in the face of such admissions, the church’s senior pastor, Jamie Greening, told KOMO News: “This does not match. These allegations do not match the man we’ve known for eight years.” (You can see pastor Jamie Greening in this KOMO News video.)

Then, on his pastor’s blog, Greening made these mealy-mouthed minimizing statements to his congregation:

“This allegedly occurred before his tenure at our church. . . . Our congregation has not been indicated as a place where anything wrong happened. To our knowledge, Dirk is not being accused of any wrongdoing in his official capacity as a pastor at FBC.”
Huh???

The girl was a sixth grader at the time, and pastor Jackson was working as a teacher at Manchester Christian Academy.

Since 2003, Jackson has been “working with kids in youth programs” as a pastor at First Baptist Church in Port Orchard. “Detectives are concerned there may be additional young victims.”

Why doesn’t Pastor Greening express just as much concern for the likelihood of additional victims as the detectives do? And why isn’t he expressing just as much concern for the woman who made the police report as he has for pastor Jackson? And why in the world does he think it matters whether pastor Jackson committed these deeds in his “official capacity”?

Does he imagine that it would be okay for First Baptist Church to have a pastor who admitted to raping a kid in his unofficial capacity?

In the midst of this all-too-common craziness, ponder how this might have played out if it had been the more typical scenario. What if this woman’s claim were too old for criminal prosecution (as is usually the case), and the police had not been able to get a warrant to record her phone calls? What if there had been no possibility of pursuing charges through the criminal justice system?

That’s the more typical scenario because the very nature of the harm is such that it silences kids for a very long time, often for many years and even decades.

If the woman – worried that the pastor could be using his position of trust to hurt still more kids – went to Southern Baptist officials, they would wash their hands of it and tell her that she must take her report to the church of the accused pastor. They would recite their mantra of “local church autonomy.”

Can you imagine?

Even in the face of a pastor’s admissions in recorded phone calls, and even in the face of criminal charges against him, the church responds with overwhelming public support for the pastor. We have seen this pattern over and over again. So how can denominational officials even imagine that a local church could responsibly assess a clergy abuse report in the absence of criminal charges?

It is irresponsible and reckless for Southern Baptist officials to persist in promoting the notion that local churches can handle clergy abuse allegations on their own. They can’t.

For the safety of kids and congregants throughout the denomination, local churches need the resource of an outside review board to assess clergy abuse allegations that cannot be criminally prosecuted, to inform people in the pews about credibly-accused clergy, and to prevent credibly-accused clergy from church-hopping.

Other major faith groups now have such denominational resources for clergy accountability. Southern Baptists don’t.

Shouldn’t kids in Southern Baptist churches be entitled to the same sorts of denominational safeguards as kids in Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches?
_____________________

Update 8/16/11: This pastor, Dirk Jackson, has pled guilty and been sentenced to 41 months in prison for sexual abuse of a sixth grader. I received more "you're going to hell" hate-messages because of my posting on this case than I have ever received on any other case -- dozens upon dozens -- all from people who were so sure that Jackson was innocent and a great man of God. So much hate-spewing sure made me wonder about those people in that Port Orchard church. But even though Jackson has now pled guilty, I'm sure not gonna hold my breath waiting for any apologies.
"Former youth pastor gets 41-month sentence", 8/16/11
"Pastor pleads guilty to sex abuse of former student," 8/4/11

News reports on this:
"Port Orchard pastor charged with raping 12-year-old girl"
"Port Orchard minister admits on tape to rape of girl"
"SK pastor arrested on child rape charges"
"Child rape charges filed against South Kitsap pastor"
Related post: "Three-legged stool"

Thanks to Jeri Massi for bringing this case to my attention.

See also Bob Felton's related post on Civil Commotion.

Throw It Away

2011-02-21T13:14:00.005-06:00

There are times when so much religiously-fueled vitriol comes my way that I can hardly bear it. When those waves of hate arrive, music is often the best remedy. Thanks to the late great Abbey Lincoln for this breathtakingly beautiful song.

More of what's deplorable in Georgia

2011-02-16T11:10:00.007-06:00

Yesterday, a man who identified himself on Blogger as “Nathan Palmer” tried to post a comment to my December column about a former Arnoldsville Baptist Church minister who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for molesting a 13-year-old girl.

Palmer “signed” his comment as “The Pastor of Arnoldsville Baptist Church.”

Pastor Palmer ranted about my prior blog post and also ranted about the Athens Banner-Herald, which reported on both the 2006 case and the 2010 case against Norman Pugh, the former Arnoldsville Baptist minister.

Yeah – that’s right. This involved a former Southern Baptist youth minister who got criminally prosecuted on child molestation charges twice.

As reported by the Athens Banner-Herald, in 2006, church members “rallied around” Pugh; the pastor’s wife posted his bond; and ultimately, a jury failed to find Pugh guilty under the strict “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of the criminal law.

Several years later, Pugh was again arrested, and this time “on charges of aggravated child molestation, sexual exploitation of a child, electronically furnishing obscene material to a minor and making obscene telephone calls to a child involving a different victim.”

This time, Pugh didn’t get off. He’s now serving a 13 year prison sentence. Thank God.

But get this – Pastor Palmer still doesn’t believe it. He’s still proclaiming Norman Pugh’s innocence.

Even worse, he tries to publicly shame the kids.

In his comment, Pastor Palmer smears the 14-year-old who reported Pugh back in 2006. Then he identifies the 13-year-old victim whose case sent Pugh to prison.

Let me repeat that so it’s clear. In a comment that “The Pastor of Arnoldsville Baptist Church” tried to post on this public blog, he identified a 13-year-old child molestation victim.

It is utterly unconscionable. It is deplorable. It is beyond ignorance. It is mean and hateful. Words fail me.

No way, no how, will I allow such a comment to go up on this blog. I’m offended that Pastor Palmer would even imagine that he could use my blog to publicly post such ugliness.

But Pastor Palmer has surely answered the question I posed in my prior posting when I pondered whether Arnoldsville Baptist Church would now seek out that 14-year-old kid who reported their youth minister in 2006 and offer to pay for her counseling. Given that Pastor Palmer is now trying to smear the kid, it seems self-evident that he’s not likely to shepherd his church to do the right thing and pay for the kid’s counseling.

Are you sickened by this story? I hope so. But here’s the clincher.

“The Pastor of Arnoldsville Baptist Church” ends his ugly comment with this statement: “I agree that any clergy, pastor, priest or any person in authority should be held accountable for all actions. Especially hurting a child. It is deplorable. . . . but just because you read it somewhere doesn’t mean you have the whole story.”

Hold up a mirror, Pastor, because you yourself did something pretty deplorable. Your comment would have publicly identified a 13-year-old molestation victim and smeared a 14-year-old. If you’re even remotely capable of seeing the ugliness in your actions, then you should hold yourself accountable.

Furthermore, what good does it do for a Baptist pastor to “agree” in the abstract that clergy should be held accountable for hurting children if he can’t bring himself to see such hurtfulness in the real world, even when it’s staring him in the face?

Self-righteous platitudes will not protect kids. “The Pastor of Arnoldsville Baptist Church” has demonstrated why Baptistland is such a perfect paradise for predators: There are too many people who want to talk about how much they deplore clergy predators but too few who will actually open their eyes to reality.

Despite multiple allegations, multiple charges, a grand jury indictment, a guilty plea, and a 13-year prison sentence, “The Pastor of Arnoldsville Baptist Church” is still conjuring excuses for refusing to believe what is now beyond doubt: The church’s former youth minister was a child molester.

"Straight to Hell"

2011-02-15T21:06:00.004-06:00

From Childersburg, Alabama comes this lovely missive today:

“You are going straight to Hell. No doubt about it.

YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF. I hope that when you die, people smear your name in the mud and force your friends and family to sit there and listen to it.”

Then Mr. Childersburg himself proceeded to smear the men who have alleged that a now-deceased Alabama Baptist pastor molested them in childhood. Ugly stuff.

Of course, it’s people like this who prove my point. This is why Baptist churches need the resource of an outside independent review board to assess clergy sex-abuse allegations that cannot be criminally prosecuted (which is most).

No one who is trying to talk about the trauma of having been sexually abused by a Baptist minister should have to worry about encountering vitriolic fools like this. And there are far too many of them in Baptistland.

Clergy sex abuse survivors need a safe place to which they can report Baptist ministers with at least a reasonable expectation of being objectively heard. That does not exist in Baptistland.

It doesn’t exist for reports about ministers who are still standing in their pulpits, and it doesn’t exist for reports about ministers who are deceased either.

Baptists don’t want to know the truth of such ugly deeds as clergy child molestations. They don’t even want to attempt to know the truth.

That’s the problem. Denominationally, they don’t even try.

And as for this guy in Childersburg, Alabama who tells me I’m going “straight to Hell”? Well, what else is new?

Join the crowd, Mr. Childersburg, because you’re far from the first “good Christian” to tell me I’m going “straight to Hell.”

In fact, I’ve heard so much of your pseudo-religious style of hate-talk that it’s become flat-out boring and banal.

So here’s how I feel about it. If “heaven” is filled with bully Baptists like Mr. Childersburg, then I don’t want to go there.

In fact, Baptists like Mr. Childersburg make me think that maybe someone should put up a warning sign on heaven’s door: “Enter at your own risk – big bad Baptists are here.”

Of course, despite all the vitriol that arrives in my inbox, I know that not all Baptists are like Mr. Childersburg. Nevertheless, even the non-bully Baptists aren’t doing much of anything to systematically address clergy sex abuse.

That’s where the real shame lies.

"Louis" tells why Baptists need review boards

2011-02-11T19:49:00.003-06:00

Mike Hogan, a mayoral candidate in Jacksonville, Florida, testified as a character witness for a Southern Baptist pastor who was convicted in 2007 of possessing child pornography. To this day, Hogan still doesn’t believe the man was guilty; he said so just last Tuesday in the Florida Times-Union.

The convicted man, Richard Steven Sweat, was a youth pastor at Lake Shore Baptist Church in Jacksonville, and Mike Hogan was active at First Baptist Church of Jacksonville. Both churches are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Hogan didn’t attend the 5-day trial and didn’t hear any of the evidence. Nevertheless, after Sweat was convicted, Hogan testified at the sentencing hearing and swore to the judge that he didn’t have “any reservation whatsoever” about Sweat’s innocence.

So given that Hogan hadn’t heard any of the evidence, why was he so certain of Sweat’s innocence? According to Hogan’s testimony, it was because he had known Sweat for 15 years, because Hogan’s son said Sweat was a person “of great character,” and because Sweat “was unashamed of his love for and his commitment to his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Did I mention that Hogan didn’t attend even a single day of the 5-day trial? Twelve jurors actually did sit and hear all the evidence and they concluded that Sweat was guilty. The FBI reached the same conclusion based on a year-long investigation. But apparently Hogan didn’t think the evidence mattered. Hogan was more than willing to proclaim Sweat’s innocence based on his own gut belief that he “knew” the man.

So far, there’s not much of anything in this story that’s unusual, is there? We’ve seen dozens of these kinds of cases in which people insist that they just “know” a minister is innocent.

But here’s what grabbed my attention. When “Watchdog” blogged about this case, a frequent Baptist blog commenter named “Louis” posted this remark:

“This is a very common human trait. If we love something (an idea) or someone so much, we will ignore things or minimize things that show that idea or person in a bad light.

"Mr. Hogan's testimony is so illogical, there is no explaining it except to say that when the evidence contradicts a human's love for someone, that person will ignore the evidence or try to explain it away. . . . History is full of people who do this.”

“Louis” is exactly right: “This is a very common human trait.” But here’s why it’s so puzzling to see such words coming from “Louis.”

“Louis” is the same guy who has repeatedly denounced the notion of providing Southern Baptist churches with the denominational resource of a trained review board to more objectively assess clergy abuse reports that cannot be criminally prosecuted (which is most of them). He is an attorney; he is reportedly on an SBC board; and his blog comments often give the appearance that he is a Southern Baptist official. I’m only about 90 percent certain of who “Louis” actually is, and so I won’t state his presumed identity, but suffice it to say that I think “Louis” is someone who has likely done as much or more than almost any other individual to dissuade Southern Baptist officials from implementing denominational review boards to assess complaints about Baptist clergy sex abuse and to provide Baptist congregations with more reliable information about credibly-accused clergy.

So what in the world is “Louis” thinking? He knows and understands full well about this “common human trait” – i.e., that, as human beings, we tend to overlook, deny and minimize ugly information about awful conduct when the conduct involves someone we love and trust. Yet, “Louis" still proclaims that congregants in local Southern Baptist churches can responsibly assess clergy abuse reports, even when those reports involve their own loved and trusted ministers. Congregants can’t, and the reason they can’t is precisely because of the very “common human trait” that “Louis” himself acknowledges.

This is why other professional groups and other religious groups have accountability systems that seek to procedurally compensate for the reality of this “common human trait.” They have accountability systems that allow for ethical review processes to be conducted by those outside the accused’s immediate circle of influence and trust.

But Southern Baptists don’t bother. Baptist honchos like “Louis” know about this “common human trait” but they still sit back and do nothing to effectively deal with it. This institutional failure is part of what makes Baptistland such a perfect paradise for predators.

Rather than using the words of Jesus as a reason for protecting “the least of these,” Southern Baptists have used their “religion” of autonomy as an excuse to avoid accountability for the powerful. They have done so with the help and advice of men like “Louis.”
_____________

Related post:
Baptists must face fears and prioritize risks, 8/24/10

I remember

2011-02-08T23:22:00.005-06:00

Trish lived down the hall from me when I was 19 years old and in the dorm at the University of North Texas. She was a dear friend, but though we kept in touch for several years after college, we eventually lost track of one another. I hadn’t heard from Trish for about 30 years when, out of the blue, I got this email the other day:

“Christa:

Since I met you, I have admired you for your courage, intellect, risk-taking and compassion. What you have done in the past few years to openly confront the sexual abuse that you and others have suffered is so powerful! I am so proud of what you have done for yourself and many other victims of clergy abuse.

I will always remember the bravado in your voice (probably due to our over-consumption of homemade Kahlua) and the pain on your face the night we sat on the floor of your Bruce Hall dorm room and you first told me about what you then referred to as ‘your affair.’ I know I was a naïve little twit and my jaw fell open, but I was still so shocked and sickened that you blamed yourself and not the married minister and that there was no one who could/would counsel or support you. I ached for you as you described how you felt you were unworthy of love and respect and were so distressed that you had lost your connection to God. Despite all of your academic achievements and global travels, you buried your victimization so deep, but I always felt this abuse was the reason for your despondent and sometimes suicidal phone calls. For years I was haunted by the loneliness that was revealed in those phone calls and prayed that you would never give up hope. That you have taken the damage that has been done to you to help others heal is so inspiring.”

I sat and wept after reading Trish’s email.

I remember that girl – the girl Trish is talking about – the girl who, for years, couldn’t find any meaning for much of anything.

I remember that girl -- the girl whose whole sense of self disintegrated after she was molested, sexually abused and raped by a Southern Baptist minister when she was a 16-year-old church kid. I’m grateful that Trish remembers her, too.

In truth, I have no memory of sitting on the floor in Bruce Hall and telling Trish about “my affair.” But I expect Trish’s memory is more accurate than mine. I was probably totally sloshed.

What I do remember is that, several years after college, Trish had the misfortune of calling me on the phone one night when I had the pills on the counter and was already half-drunk and was trying to get up my gumption to down them. Trish figured out what was going on and she stayed on the phone with me for hours. No telling how things would have turned out if she hadn’t.

I remember only that one suicidal phone call, but again, I don’t doubt that Trish’s memory may be better on this than mine. There were probably other calls.

And then there was the night I finally went through with it . . . and woke up in my own vomit.

I remember that young woman – a young woman whose life should have been full of promise but instead seemed so void of meaning that she saw no reason to continue it.

I remember that young woman – a young woman whose emotions were so deadened that the only thing she felt was disgust at the smell of vomit and anger at her own ineptness.

That’s what clergy sex abuse does to many of its victims.

For people who are raised with faith, faith and meaning become intertwined. The two are often so fused that, when faith gets twisted into a weapon, meaning itself is destroyed.

I was lucky to have a friend like Trish. Many other abuse survivors are not so fortunate.

My youth minister abused me. My music minister silenced me. My childhood church abandoned me. My faith betrayed me.

But my friend Trish was true.

I am profoundly grateful.

Voice of an FBC-Benton Survivor

2011-02-02T12:36:00.005-06:00

With former Southern Baptist minister David Pierce now up for parole, and with the parole board hearing closed to the press, I thought it was important to put in print the voice of one of the boys of Benton. Posted with the permission of a courageous survivor, here are his own words.

It’s a bittersweet thing, being able to remember in all the gory detail the exact moment your life went from normal, middle class suburban WASP to something far from normal. Everything. The car (or in this case, the truck), the spot in town we were driving, the questions being asked (including that one fateful question that would begin a downward spiral that would change my life forever). Everything was so benign up to that point that the shock I experienced from hearing that question uttered aloud, at hearing what would be the first of hundreds of prying questions (and looks, and measurements and suggestions), made me completely unable to respond with anything but the truth.

Of all the many moments in my life since then that I wish I could change, this is the one I keep coming back to. The only words I’ve never been able to get out of my head, but always wanted so desperately to forget. I still hear him flippantly ask (as if wanting to know my favorite football team or my opinion on the designated hitter) “you masturbate much?” I was a 13 year-old boy. What did he think the answer to that question was? Still, looking back, he didn’t care about the answer. It wasn’t the specific words that were important. For the first and only time in my life, I passed a test I shouldn’t have.

I was such a typical kid. Especially in the Bible Belt. I grew up in church, taught from an early age to regard ministers with the utmost respect, adoration, and awe. I wasn’t a loner, nor was I one of the “cool kids.” I was smart, musically gifted, and spiritually devout. I was one of those kids that adults loved. Overall, I was a happy kid and have generally fond memories of growing up. At age eight, I started piano lessons, and in doing so found one of the only things I’d ever truly excel at. And, of course, one of the many things he would eventually steal from me.

Growing up at the largest church in a small southern suburb, my family was at church every time the doors opened. I participated in children’s choir because it was a gateway to something bigger and better. Youth choir. But not just any youth choir. One of the largest, most talented, and well-disciplined youth choirs in the state. I couldn’t wait. A place where musical ability was fostered, encouraged, and celebrated. A place where I would finally be in my element. And even better, the chance to work with one of the most respected ministers and choir directors in the Southern Baptist Community.

Anyone who didn’t grow up in the Bible Belt will never understand the pedestal even below-average ministers are placed on. The “good” ones? Forget about it. These aren’t just men who made religion a job. These are men anointed by the very right hand of God. Men whose every action, every word is approved and ordained by the big man himself. Questioning these men out loud is complete and utter blasphemy. Thinking it in your head is reason enough to pray for forgiveness.

At the end of the 7th grade there was a “retreat” for new incoming youth choir members. It was great! We hung out with the older kids (most of them officers in the choir), we sang (sometimes as a group, sometimes in a room alone with him). Looking back, it’s so obvious now (as are many other things) that this was the beginning. This was where he picked his special guys. See, men like David Pierce are many things. Sick, twisted, perverse, evil? Yup. Ignorant? No. Remember, the actions of these “men of God” were not to be called into question, especially when they had a viable Biblical explanation for what would, outside of the church, be such suspect behavior. Like Christ, David always had 3 “disciples” he was closer with. Unlike Christ, David’s top 3 “disciples” just happened to always be 13-18 year old boys.

I often think about what it was that made David identify me as an easy target. I don’t have a good answer. Looking back at some of the other victims, there are some common traits and themes. All were devout Christians. Most had some musical ability. Most did not come from single parent households. Many of us, at one point or another at First Baptist, would commit ourselves to enter the ministry. These are the young boys that would worry about impressing someone like David Pierce.

Looking at many of those same young boys as men now, you see the exact opposite trends. Broken marriages, drug and alcohol abuse, atheism, etc. The wake that is left by a predator of this nature is one of destruction, desolation, and despair. It’s no different for me now, ten plus years later, than it’s been for any other victim. Am I an alcoholic? No. But I certainly have my addictions. My marriage is still intact (some days more than others). I am not an atheist, although I would not call myself a Christian (or a man of faith) either. I am, however, a completely different person than I was during my adolescence. A completely different person than anyone, including myself, thought I would be.

In high school, by all outward appearances, I was that guy. Never cussed, never ever drank. Kind, caring, joyful. Obviously, the time I spent with David had quite a bit to do with the way others perceived me. Anyone that spends that much time in “discipleship” with such a great man of God must truly have a great relationship with Christ, right? I surrendered myself to the ministry the summer after my sophomore year of high school. Initially I wanted to go into music ministry, just like my mentor. Slowly, the more I was able to detach myself from David, the more that changed, until now I am not even a church go-er, let alone a minister. But that’s touching on the end of my story. The beginning is back at that 7th grade youth retreat. David’s personal meat market.

I firmly believe David began grooming me and 2 other boys that very night. Stroking our musical egos, telling us what potential we had to be something special. That part, at least, was completely true. The three of us had the musical potential to be something special. Like so many other things, however, that was snatched from us by a monster.

The individual attention started that week. Time spent at the church during the day, lunches, long truck rides. After David felt his grooming was adequate, the “test”. From that point forward, everything changed. The questions. The places we went. Looking back, it should’ve been so obvious what David’s motivations were. But if I’d been able to recognize that then, David would’ve never chosen me.

One of David’s most frequently used tools was our accountability time. Under the veil of (yet again) a healthy, growing relationship with Christ, we had at least weekly accountability time with David. This was mostly comprised of the 4 s’es. Each one was a specific part of our lives, the whole encompassing our entire walk with God. It was the same every time. “How are you doing spiritually?” Get that one over with first. Who wants to talk about Jesus when you can talk about sex with a 14 year old? “How are you doing scholastically?” Right, because David obviously, genuinely cared about my grades. “How are you doing socially?” Or, are you getting too close to anyone that might figure out our dirty little secret? And finally, the best for last. “How are you doing sexually?” Always last because it took the longest and was the most detailed. Of course, at the beginning the focus was on thoughts (impure thoughts, lust, etc). Because these things are evil and should never ever enter our mind. Well, at first. But then, David’s special three learned that there are exceptions. Porn in the music minister’s office? That’s ok.

It was around this time that each individual child involved learned that 2 of their closest friends also had the good fortune to be one of the chosen few. David had no issues with disclosing information from one boy to another. Comparisons in measurements (David always had us ranked mentally in terms of penis size), how far someone had ventured sexually with a girlfriend, a special masturbation technique used by another. There have been very few things to come out over the last several years that have come as a surprise to me. That was part of the way David kept us from thinking what we were doing was wrong. If it was wrong, surely he wouldn’t have told us about what he did with other guys.

Eventually, like so many other things, sharing information turned into something else. There would be fishing trips where two of us or sometimes all three of us would go. We always went to Goober Heaven. It was a place of shallow shoals, half submerged logs, and large boulders in the Saline River. David often espoused the sexual benefits of Goober Heaven. Generally he brought along his special little kit on fishing trips. It had a seamstress tape and a bottle of lubrication of some sort. It didn’t matter if it was just me and him, or all three of us and him, measurements were taken and we masturbated.
__________________

Related posts:
"Benton, Arkansas: Minister's parole hearing is closed to press," 2/1/11
"Truth and reconciliation needed," 1/22/11
"Remember the boys of Benton," 9/13/09

Update: "Pierce parole delayed, for now," Benton Courier, 2/2/11

Benton, Arkansas: Minister's parole hearing is closed to press

2011-02-01T21:46:00.006-06:00

From the get-go, there was a lot that seemed not-quite-right about the case of Southern Baptist minister David Pierce at the prominent First Baptist Church of Benton, Arkansas. All sorts of things seemed wrong with the picture.

Now there’s even more that seems wrong.

Less than two years into a 10-year sentence for sexual indecency with children, Pierce is up for parole. And get this: The press was denied access to the parole hearing. Why? As reported by the Benton Courier, it was what Pierce and his attorney wanted.

I guess if you’re a prominent former Southern Baptist minister, you can still get special treatment even after you’ve been convicted on multiple child sex charges and even after it has come to light that you sexually abused church-boys for a couple of decades.

In fact, if you’re a prominent former Southern Baptist minister who sexually abuses church-kids, you can get the president of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention and “powerful citizens” to write letters to the judge, urging leniency for you in sentencing.

And if you’re a prominent former Southern Baptist minister who sexually abuses church-kids, you can apparently get your parole hearing closed to the press . . . even if it’s illegal.

Tom Larimer, director of the Arkansas Press Association, said the Parole Board violated the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act in closing David Pierce’s parole hearing.

“We have researched state law to find an exemption and contacted attorney John Tull of Little Rock, who is the foremost authority on the Freedom of Information Act in Arkansas,” Larimer said.

“There is no exemption in the Act for this kind of thing . . . John Tull cannot find any authority nor precedent for ever doing this before, and it’s his opinion that this was done in violation of the Freedom of Information Act.”

But hey . . . I guess if you’re a prominent former Southern Baptist minister, the law doesn’t apply. You can get what you want . . . even if it’s illegal, and even if you have a two-decade history of sexually abusing kids.
______________________

Related post: "Truth and reconciliation needed," 1/22/11

Southern Baptist churches get "group" tax exemption?

2011-01-26T19:29:00.005-06:00

I’m still pondering some of the things Morris Chapman said when he was trying to avoid a budget-cut for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee. That was when Chapman, the Executive Committee's longtime former president, went to town talking about the “enormous responsibilities” of the Executive Committee and about how it was “empowered to function” on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I wrote about some of it in a prior post, but as I said, I’m still pondering it. I know it’s pretty dry stuff, but bear with me.

In that same column, Morris Chapman says this:

“The Executive Committee maintains the I.R.S. group tax exemption on behalf of all cooperating churches.”

“Group” tax exemption?

When it comes to the problem of clergy sex abuse, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has repeatedly claimed that it is powerless to take action because each and every church is completely autonomous and totally independent.

But if each and every church were completely autonomous and totally independent, wouldn’t you expect that each and every church would file for its own tax exemption?

This seeming contradiction puzzled me so much that I finally went to the I.R.S. website and downloaded its Publication 1828, the “Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.” (Yes, folks, I’m a certifiable nerd.) According to Publication 1828, the I.R.S. allows that a church may be recognized as tax-exempt “if it is included in a list provided by the parent organization.” And “under the group exemption process, the parent organization becomes the holder of a group ruling . . . .”

“Parent organization.” Those were the words that caught my eye.

There are many circumstances in which a “parent organization” can be held legally responsible for harm done within an apparent subsidiary organization.

There are also circumstances when the “parent organization” is not legally responsible. So the term “parent organization” is not, in and of itself, determinative. But the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention is a “parent organization” for purposes of federal tax law certainly suggests that it has a closer connection to the 45,000 Southern Baptist churches than the “we’re powerless” connection that it claims whenever it gets confronted with the problem of Baptist clergy sex abuse.

In other words, whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention’s “parent organization” status may ever subject it to legal responsibility for the sexual abuse and cover-ups that occur in Southern Baptist churches, its “parent organization” status makes apparent that it has enough of a connection that it should at least carry a measure of moral responsibility.

So, I decided to plow further into Publication 1828. Toward the end, it has a table with the filing requirements for I.R.S. Form 990. That’s the form that most other non-profit organizations have to file so as to show how they’re spending the money they take in.

“Churches” don’t have to file Form 990. This means that “churches” don’t have to disclose how much they’re paying their top executives like other sorts of non-profits do.

Guess what? The national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention claims status as a “church.” This is what multiple journalists have told me, in expressing their frustration at being unable to obtain information about the salaries and compensation packages of the Southern Baptist Convention’s top honchos.

Again . . . this all seems a mystery to me. Why shouldn’t people in the pews – people who put hard-earned dollars in the offering plate -- be able to find out how many of those dollars the high-honchos who run the “parent organization” are paying to themselves?

The Internal Revenue Code does not specifically define the term “church,” but Publication 1828 lists “attributes” of a “church,” including these:

• “organization of ordained ministers”
• “ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study”
• “established places of worship”
• “regular congregations”
• “regular religious services”
• “Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young.”

So how exactly does the national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention display these “attributes” so as to qualify for the benefits of being considered a “church”?

For example, if the national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention is indeed a “church,” then who are its ministers?

And if the ministers of the national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention are the same people as the ministers of the 45,000 local Southern Baptist churches, then those local churches are not really as independent as the SBC claims, are they? In fact, those ministers are the very people who give the national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention its own status as a “church.”

To me, this all seems pretty mind-boggling. The same ministers who give the national denominational entity its status as a “church,” so that it can avoid federal non-profit disclosure laws, are the very same ministers for whom the national denominational entity claims it cannot possibly exercise any oversight.

Does this make sense to any of you? Can any of you explain it to me? I’m really struggling with it. To me, it looks like the national denominational entity of the Southern Baptist Convention gets to have its cake and eat it too.

Now here’s why I think this tedious tax-related stuff may be important.

These kinds of “have your cake and eat it too” inconsistencies are what may someday bring accountability to the Southern Baptist Convention. That’s what I believe.

Perhaps accountability will come in the form of legal responsibility. Or perhaps it will come in the form of moral responsibility, with a collective groan of disgust from church-goers who will finally refuse any further financial support for such an unaccountable organization.

Either way, someday, these kinds of “have your cake and eat it too” inconsistencies will break down the pretext of the Southern Baptist Convention’s “we’re powerless” charade. It’s a charade that leaves countless kids and congregants at risk, and so, that day cannot possibly come soon enough.

Truth and reconciliation needed

2011-01-22T12:16:00.004-06:00

In Benton, Arkansas, the former music minister of First Baptist Church is up for parole less than two years into a ten-year term on sexual indecency charges.

In 2009, former Southern Baptist minister David Pierce received a 10-year plea-bargained sentence “after he admitted to abusing 11 boys for his own sexual gratification.” Pierce was originally charged with more than 50 counts of sexual indecency with children, but his conviction was based on four counts that were within the limitations period for prosecution.

Now, with Pierce up for parole, “members of the church say they still can’t talk about what happened for decades behind closed doors.”

But if the church members “still can’t talk about what happened,” can you imagine how difficult it is for those whom Pierce sexually abused? For those boys, the betrayal of what Pierce did was not some mere abstraction. They absorbed the reality of it within their very bodies. A link between faith and abuse was embedded into their brains.

And how many of those boys were there? We still don’t know, do we? Is anyone even trying to find out?

Maybe part of the reason the church members “still can’t talk about what happened” rests in the fact that it “happened for decades.”

During those decades, there were almost certainly others in the church who received information on which they should have acted –- information that, if they had reported it to authorities, could have served to prevent the abuse of so many for so long.

At the time of Pierce’s sentencing, an Arkansas Times news article made apparent that Senior Pastor Rick Grant had information about music minister David Pierce’s conduct for at least six months before Pierce was arrested. Not only did Grant receive information from a boy’s father, but he also received information from a now-grown man who specifically told Grant about the sexual abuse Pierce inflicted on him as a kid. When Grant talked with Pierce about the allegations, Pierce didn’t deny them, and he even provided Grant with a list of boys "whom he’d had inappropriate contact with.” But Pierce explained the problem as a “one-time run of bad decision-making,” and Grant was apparently willing to accept that explanation. Not until still another man talked with Grant did Grant decide that Pierce should be fired from his position at the church. Even then, Grant didn’t tell all that he knew. He cast a minimizing slant on Pierce’s conduct by saying that Pierce was terminated because of “serious moral failures.”

Finally, a boy came forward with a report that was still within the limitations period for criminal prosecution, and Pierce was arrested. Thank God. But long before Pierce’s arrest, there were likely others in the church who had information, but who kept quiet and turned a blind eye.

That blind-eyed response is what the people at First Baptist Church of Benton need to examine. That means looking at themselves, and that’s something far more painful than merely looking at former minister David Pierce.

What about the other pastors and ministerial staff who served with Pierce during his 29-year tenure at First Baptist of Benton? Perhaps they, too, received information that they mentally minimized and dismissed without taking action. Prominent Southern Baptist pastors Greg Kirksey and Randel Everett were among those who served with Pierce.

Perhaps one reason the church members “still can’t talk about what happened” is because they still carry a vague sense that “what happened” has been hushed up and left “behind closed doors.” When so many are abused for so long, there is almost always more to the story than a single perpetrator. There are almost always others who knew things that should have been brought into the open at the time . . . and that should still be brought into the open even now.

Only when the people of First Baptist Church of Benton can face up to their own complicity, and the likely complicity of other church leaders, can they hope to find some measure of peace. They cannot talk about “what happened for decades” unless they are allowed to know “what happened for decades.”

I can’t help but think that what First Baptist Church of Benton needs is something akin to a “truth and reconciliation” commission. With such a commission, prior pastors, church staff and church members could be given the opportunity to make full disclosure of any and all information they might have about Pierce’s abuse of kids. The commission could make a national public outreach effort to try to gather the stories of others who may have been abused by Pierce. One victim said he thought there were probably “dozens – maybe triple digits” whom Pierce likely abused at the church. Many of those boys, who are now grown men, may be far-flung across the continent, but their stories should still be heard. The church owes them that.

Finally, the commission could work toward restorative justice for those who were wounded at First Baptist of Benton. With the provision of counseling costs and a commitment to hearing the survivors’ stories, the commission could take a small step toward affirming the humanity and dignity of those who were abused and abandoned by religious authority.

Reconciliation starts with truth. But in order to hold transformative power, the truth must be made transparent.

If the First Baptist Church of Benton wants to transform the hurt, betrayal and shame of “what happened for decades,” then it must first engage a process of truth-telling and truth-hearing.

______________

Dear Pastor Oliver

2011-01-19T21:12:00.006-06:00

In Georgia, a Southern Baptist “youth counselor” and Sunday School teacher has been charged with multiple counts of felony child molestation. The alleged victim is a 14-year-old boy.

James “Ben” Harris, age 33, met the boy in his Sunday School class at Lawrenceville’s Brookwood Baptist Church. That’s Harris in the photo. He’s married and has kids

According to the police report, “the boy’s mother found sexually explicit text messages… on a cell phone Harris had bought the boy for Christmas. Recent contact between the two included a church retreat in Macon last month in which Harris and the alleged victim slept in the same motel bed.”

As reported in the Gwinnett Daily Post, the senior pastor of the church, Dean Oliver, responded to all this with some remarkably unpastoral and mealy-mouthed statements.

“Pastor Dean Oliver of Brookwood Baptist Church said
Harris was not technically on staff at the church ….”

Dear Pastor Oliver,
Your church put this man into a position of trust and gave him access to kids. Whether he was “technically” on staff or not is immaterial. The technicality of a man’s staff position will not do anything to ameliorate harm to a kid who is molested. Nevertheless, when ugly allegations are raised, it seems that Baptists have all sorts of ways to minimize things – such as claiming a minister isn’t really ordained or making him a consulting minister instead of a staff minister. Now you’ve just demonstrated still another way – claiming that the man isn’t “technically” on staff. In the face of such awful news, couldn’t you manage to say something a little less weaselly than that?

Pastor Dean Oliver said Harris was subjected to “a very thorough process of background checks.”

Dear Pastor Oliver,
Background checks are important, but if you had educated yourself on this subject, you would know that the vast majority of active child molesters don't have a criminal record. (Some experts place those who have a criminal record as low as 3 percent; almost all place it at less than 10 percent.) It is pure ignorance for Baptist churches to persist in thinking that they’re doing enough by doing background checks. (And while your church may be exceptional, we have little reason to believe that most Baptist churches even bother with the bare bones minimum of background checks.)

Since this particular form of ignorance has been actively promoted by Southern Baptist officials, I can almost understand why you would say such a thing. But still . . . it’s ignorance. You owe it to the kids and congregants of your church to educate yourself on the realities of child sex abuse. It might also be nice if you could manage to say something pastoral instead of immediately launching into a defense of the church. And how about publicly reaching out to any other kids who may have been hurt?

Pastor Dean Oliver said “the church is reviewing policies and procedures … but leaders are confident no further safeguards could have been in place.”

Dear Pastor Oliver,
Open your eyes! If Harris and this boy were able to share a motel bed at a church retreat, as the police report indicates, then your church dropped the ball on supervision. Further safeguards could indeed have been in place – safeguards that could have precluded an adult Sunday School teacher from sharing a motel bed with a 14-year-old.

This “no further safeguards” statement is the most disturbing of your quoted comments. It indicates that the same thing could likely happen all over again in your church. Even in the face of a dreadful lapse, you are apparently unwilling to learn from it. Blind-eyed pastors such as you are the people who make so many Baptist churches such perfect places for predators.
_____________

Update: For more words from Pastor Dean Oliver, be sure to check out his comments on this post: parts one and two.

MLK brings thoughts on moderate Baptists

2011-01-16T17:25:00.004-06:00

From a Birmingham jail cell, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter to the “moderate” religious leaders of his day. He told of how “gravely disappointed” he was in them.

Of course, King had always known better than to expect support from men such as Bull Connor, but for a time, King apparently held some hope that “moderates” would stand with him and other black Americans in their struggle for justice. However, in his letter from the Birmingham jail, King said that he had almost reached the conclusion that the greatest stumbling block was “not the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” wrote King.

As I have watched so many clergy abuse survivors struggle against the dehumanizing effect of Baptists’ institutionalized injustice, I have often pondered the words of King’s letter. And I too have grown to the conclusion that, in Baptistland, the “moderates” may be the most frustrating of all.

Any fool will know that religious leaders who denounce clergy molestation survivors as “evil-doers” and “opportunists” will not be likely to extend compassion or care. Of course, that’s “any fool” except countless other Baptists who remain content to keep the men who spew such hateful words in high leadership. Nevertheless, for us mere mortals, the heartless cruelty of Baptist men such as that -- and there are many of them -- is at least transparent. So we don’t get our hopes up.

But it has taken me much longer to accept the reality of what King wrote about in his letter -- the reality that, with only rare exceptions, “moderates” are equally unhelpful. They are “more cautious than courageous,” and they remain “silent behind the anesthetizing security” of their status-quo do-nothingness.

In fact, with respect to clergy sex abuse, most “moderate” Baptists maintain the same status-quo do-nothingness as the “conservative” and “fundamentalist” Baptists.

In his letter, King complained of those “moderate” leaders who constantly said: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods….”

I have often heard virtually identical words from “moderate” Baptist leaders. But I, too, have seen that, though “moderates” may say they agree, they will not take steps toward actually implementing change because to do so would upset their status-quo power structures.

And the “moderates” put forward the exact same excuse as those other Baptists who call us ugly names. It’s the “all Baptist churches are autonomous” excuse.

They are more devoted to their “order” of autonomous churches – an “order” that they themselves define – than they are to justice-making, reconciliation, protection of the young, or care for the wounded.

Perhaps worst of all, they proclaim their “order” as religious doctrine, which only serves to twist religion into a tool for the further oppression of those who, at the hands of Baptist ministers, have already suffered more than enough from the perversion of religion as a weapon.

Sometimes I really wonder . . . do you think Baptist leaders actually believe the words they speak?

Do they actually believe that, despite the cooperative connectivity of Baptist churches, Baptist leaders are nevertheless powerless to do anything about clergy who are credibly accused of molesting kids? Or do they simply spout the Baptist party-line of “autonomy” to avoid rocking the boat, to protect their own careers, or simply to preserve the false-peace of the status-quo?

Do they actually believe that the New Testament prescribes the parameters of “local church autonomy” so precisely that it allows Baptist churches to cooperate for funding ministers’ retirements, for international missions, for keeping historical records, and even for investigating churches with gays in their membership . . . but NOT for responsibly assessing reports about clergy who molest kids?

How do intelligent “moderate” religious leaders arrive at actually believing such things?

If they can come up with such a contrived “autonomy” definition as that, why do they not go ahead and come up with a definition that will serve for the protection of kids and for ministry to the wounded? It’s obvious that, in practice, they’re defining it how they themselves choose. So why don’t they choose a definition more functional for the well-being of others?

How do intelligent “moderate” people convince themselves that providing critical information to congregations -- information about ministers credibly accused of sexual abuse -- will somehow take away the autonomy of churches to decide what to do with that information?

How do they not see the self-serving hypocrisy in such a radicalized view of “local church autonomy”?

And how can they possibly imagine that this abstraction of “autonomy” -- an abstraction that they themselves have defined for their own ends -- could possibly be more important than protecting real kids against clergy who molest and rape them?

I’ll never understand it.

Weighed against the reality of predatory clergy who church-hop through the porous network of Baptistland, the excuse-making of “moderate” Baptist leaders sounds hollow indeed.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., moderate Baptist leaders “stand on the sideline” mouthing “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”
__________________________________

This column is a revised version of my 2010 MLK-day posting.

SBC Execs Have the Power

2011-01-14T11:37:00.005-06:00

At the end of 2010, I was looking back at some of the year’s big Baptist stories, and I paused over Morris Chapman’s remarks about the Southern Baptist Convention’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.

The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force pushed proposals that they claimed would make Southern Baptists more effective in “winning the world” for Christ and that created a new revenue category called “Great Commission Giving.” The proposals were adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention at-large, and the net effect resulted in a drop in the budget for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee.

Morris Chapman, the former president of the Executive Committee, opposed the proposals and published his reasons. This is where it gets interesting.

Morris Chapman went on at some length about the “enormous responsibilities” and “enormous importance” of the Executive Committee. He explained that the Executive Committee was “a standing committee empowered to function (when appropriate) on behalf of the SBC.”

Compare these remarks to what was said in 2008 when the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee refused to implement safeguards for the protection of kids against Baptist clergy predators. The Executive Committee claimed it had “no authority to bar known perpetrators from ministry or start an office to field abuse claims.”

So which is it? An Executive Committee with “no authority” or an Executive Committee that is “empowered to function”?

And how can any entity carry “enormous responsibilities” of “enormous importance” if it is not also afforded “authority”?

The obvious answer is that the Executive Committee is indeed “empowered to function” on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention. If it wanted to, it could choose to implement strategies, similar to those in other major faith groups, to bar perpetrators from ministry and to assess abuse claims that cannot be criminally prosecuted (which is most of them). The problem is that the honchos who head-up the largest Protestant denomination in the land have not yet seen the “enormous importance” of protecting kids against clergy predators, and of ministering to those wounded by clergy abuse. So, whenever that topic is raised, the Executive Committee shifts into its self-serving “no authority” posture.

This is the denomination whose officials hold a crafty “now you see it – now you don’t” sort of power. But make no mistake about it – even when they choose to mask their power, the power is still there.

In proclaiming the “enormous responsibilities” of the SBC’s Executive Committee, Morris Chapman provided “some examples of things the Executive Committee undertakes and subsidizes for the benefit and health of the entire Convention.” In particular, he pointed to this responsibility:

“The Executive Committee houses and maintains SBC.net and all of its family of Web sites, including … Church Search and Job Search. The SBC is the only denomination to receive, completely free (paid for by the Executive Committee, CP-supplied budget) such comprehensive service in these areas. All cooperating churches have a web presence… and the ability to post open positions for qualified job applicants.”

So . . . the Executive Committee has the authority to provide “comprehensive service” for helping Baptist churches find pastors and for helping Baptist pastors find jobs. Indeed, Chapman brags that the SBC is the “only denomination” to provide such “comprehensive service.” Yet, despite its power to provide “comprehensive service” in this area, the one thing the Executive Committee claims it cannot do is to provide churches with a resource for obtaining reliable information about pastors who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse.

That’s where the Executive Committee chooses to wash its hands of the problem and claim “no authority.”

But make no mistake about it – the Executive Committee is making a choice with its do-nothing response. It’s not that it can’t; it’s that it won’t. It is, after all, “empowered to function” for the benefit of the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole.

Finally, Morris Chapman points out that, in 2010, the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force was given a designated budget of $250,000. Contrast this with the $0 budget that was allocated when 8,000 Southern Baptist “messengers” directed the Executive Committee to conduct a study on addressing clergy sex abuse. No budget at all was allocated when the mere messengers thought something was important, but $250,000 was allocated when the honchos thought something was important.

From the get-go, when it failed to even allocate a budget, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee made apparent that it didn’t think a denominational effort to protect against clergy sex abuse was important. As Chapman himself suggests, “adequate funding” is essential if work is to get done. But make no mistake about it – the Executive Committee made a choice. It wasn’t that the Executive Committee lacked authority to allocate funding for a legitimate study; it was that it didn’t choose to.

The Executive Committee is “empowered to function” for the benefit of the Southern Baptist Convention. If it wanted to implement strategies for better protecting kids and congregants against clergy sex abuse, it could readily choose to do so. The fact that it doesn’t means that it carries not only "enormous responsibilities" but also enormous shame.

Bill Zeller's suicide note

2011-01-09T18:46:00.007-06:00

Bill Zeller’s suicide note provides painful and tragic testimony to the long-lasting, soul-searing destruction of sexual abuse. He was a “brilliant” 27-year-old doctoral student, but he wasn’t able to escape the “darkness” that haunted him from having been molested and raped as a child. He never spoke about it until the note he posted on Facebook just before he hanged himself. Below, I have reprinted Zeller’s note in its entirety . . . because that’s what he requested.

Based on Zeller’s words, the abuse and the “darkness” of its aftermath seems, in some way, linked to the “fundamentalist Christian” faith of his parents. It’s a faith in which, as Zeller describes it, good people are doomed to Hell while “child molesters go to Heaven, as long as they were ‘saved.’” His parents went to a Bible church, which of course isn’t the same as a Baptist church, but it’s not so very different either.

Zeller’s note should be mandatory reading for the many religious leaders, including many Baptist leaders, and for many in the pews as well, who have repeatedly dismissed and minimized the pain of those who suffered such abuse, and who have attacked and smeared those who sought to report abuse.

Bill Zeller’s note:

"I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

"My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

"This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

"At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

"The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

"Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

"I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

"Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

"Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

"I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

"I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

"Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

"Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

"Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

"So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.

"I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

"I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

"I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.

"I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

"So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

"I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.

"I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

"There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

"You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

"People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

"Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.

"I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

"I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.
---

"I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead -- one with less hatred and intolerance.
If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

"They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

"A random example:
'I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist.' - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

"If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

"Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

"I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.

"Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

"I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.
---

"To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

"I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me."

Bill Zeller
---

"Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

"Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety."

What if it had been her own kid?

2011-01-03T21:35:00.005-06:00

That’s Sue and Tommy Gilmore in the photo. This is an update to yesterday’s post.

Take a good look at that woman: Sue Gilmore.

As a young church girl, I was made to apologize to her. And I did.

That’s right. Her husband, minister Tommy Gilmore, sexually abused me, repeatedly and severely, but in the end, I was the one who apologized. I stood there in front of Sue Gilmore in her husband’s office at the church, and I flat-out blubbered. I literally begged her to forgive me for what I had done.

“It was all my fault,” I said. That was what he had instructed me to say. And so I said it.

As a kid, I actually believed it.

But she was a grown adult. She was a mother. What in the world was she thinking?

She stood there stone cold. She glared at me and said only four words: “I’ll pray for you.”

And I just kept blubbering.

That pathetic image of my adolescent self is seared in my brain . . . along with so many other dreadful images. And all of them arrive with a soundtrack of Bible verses and religious chicanery.

That woman – Sue Gilmore – has a son and daughter of her own. If some minister had done to her own daughter what her husband did to me, what would Sue Gilmore have said then? I wonder.

Tommy Gilmore should have been criminally prosecuted. But because so many other so-called good Christians covered for him – other Baptist ministers and even his wife – he wasn’t. She herself was part of the cover-up.

The reason the two of them are spaced far apart in that photo is because I cropped out one of their grand-kids who was seated between them. So that raised another question in my mind. What if some minister sexually abused one of Sue Gilmore’s grand-kids in the way that her husband did me? What would Sue say then?
_______________________

Thanks to the person who directed me to this more current photo; thanks to the person who provided the info about Gilmore being shown on TV at FBC-Orlando; and thanks to all of you for your thoughts. The psychic pit of rot that is the residue of clergy sex abuse never really totally goes away, does it? But we carry on. We survive. And sometimes we even thrive. Now if I can just claw myself back out of this pit, I know the sunshine will stifle the stench.

To the people of FBC-Orlando

2011-01-02T11:08:00.008-06:00

This man, Tommy Gilmore, is in your church.

His full name is Thomas Edward Gilmore. His wife’s name is Darla Sue Dunagan Gilmore.

From time to time, I hear from people in the Orlando area who tell me about having seen him. Someone once told me they thought he might be teaching Sunday School. And recently, someone spotted him on television during one of Pastor David Uth’s sermons. He said that Gilmore was seated in the TV camera area at First Baptist Church of Orlando and speculated that this might mean Gilmore was becoming more brazen and that he might even try to move into another leadership role somewhere.

This was hard news for me to hear, even though I don’t know what the fact that he was shown on TV might actually mean.

But I know this: Tommy Gilmore is the man who sexually abused me when I was a church kid in Farmers Branch, Texas.

He was a trusted minister. He was married and had a kid. He was well over a decade older than me. He did it with words of God and in the house of God. He twisted Scripture into a weapon against me.

And he has never shown a shred of remorse.

Other ministers knew at the time about what he did to me, and they simply allowed him to move on. So Gilmore went on to build a ministerial career in prominent Southern Baptist churches in Texas, Georgia and Florida; and no one in Baptist leadership stopped him from working with kids.

Tommy Gilmore can be part of a church and apparently feel quite comfortable. Why shouldn’t he? Baptist churches have been sanctuaries for him – a place where he was safe to do whatever he wanted with no consequence. Other Baptist leaders covered for him.

But I’m like a great many clergy sex abuse survivors. The idea of being part of a church is not even thinkable for me. How could I ever feel safe in such a place? I’ve seen the meanness that churches can do – even to kids. I saw it in my own life, both as a child and as an adult, and I’ve seen it in the stories of countless others. When a minister goes wrong, churches can display a mob mentality. It’s pretty ugly.

Clergy predators commit despicable deeds that wreak terrible havoc in the minds and souls of kids, but it is the faith community itself that commits the final savagery, tearing people limb to limb if they dare to speak of what the minister did.

There’s nothing unusual about me. Very few Baptist clergy abuse survivors feel any sense of safety in Baptist churches.

In Baptistland, ministers can molest, rape and sodomize kids, and still find a welcoming church. But for those whom Baptist ministers have abused – if they dare to speak about it – there is only heaped-on hate. Our stories are too awful.

Make no mistake about it – there were plenty in Baptist leadership who were informed about what Gilmore did. Moreover, they knew the allegations were well-substantiated – confirmed by another minister and also by the fact that the Baptist General Convention of Texas had placed Gilmore’s name in its secret file of ministers reported by churches for sexual abuse.

But there was absolutely no one in Baptist leadership who would do diddly-squat to assure the protection of other kids.

Despite all my efforts to get help from Baptist leaders – at last 18 of them in 4 different states and at national headquarters – Gilmore continued working in children’s ministry. At his last position (at least the last position I heard about), he was hired as a contract minister rather than a staff minister. I always wondered if that was part of an attempt to hide him. But though he didn’t appear on any church staff registry, there he was . . . still delivering a sermon (which was even posted online at the time), and still talking about his work in children’s ministry and his counseling work . . . and this was long after I had reported him to Baptist officials.

Despite the knowledge of so many in Baptist leadership, the only thing that finally got Gilmore removed from children’s ministry was my filing of a lawsuit, and the fact that the Orlando Sentinel reported it. The Orlando Sentinel reported that news, and included Gilmore’s name in the article, despite the fact that Gilmore’s attorney had threatened to sue the newspaper if it did so.

I thank God for the Orlando Sentinel. The newspaper did what no Baptist official would do. The newspaper at least gave parents a warning and the chance to decide for themselves about who they would trust their kids with.

Given the history, I have no reason to believe that Gilmore wouldn’t still be able to assume some other leadership role or ministry position in a Baptist church. Who would stop him?

So, if you’re a parent with kids at First Baptist Church of Orlando, be warned. And if Tommy Gilmore assumes a leadership role, please, take your kids elsewhere.
___________________

Related news articles:
"Book says SBC lacks system of preventing sexual abuse" (pointing out that the Orlando Sentinel reported Gilmore's name, "ignoring the threat of a lawsuit")
"SBC to consider national clergy sex offender database" (which, as we all now know, they didn't actually consider in any serious manner)
"Austin lawyer pushes Baptist churches to confront sexual abuse"

1/5/2011: Orlando News Center reprint of this posting

We all shine on

2011-01-01T09:45:00.003-06:00

Survivors: Shine on in 2011!

Columnists summed up Baptist clergy abuse story

2010-12-30T23:46:00.009-06:00

In 2010, the writings of four columnists gave a good overview of the Baptist clergy sex abuse story. The columnists are Norman Jameson (former editor of the Biblical Recorder), Douglas Sharp (dean of the American Academy for the Common Good), Robert Parham (executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics), and David Briggs (Association of Religion Data Archives). Here are their combined and excerpted words.

“It would be a mistake to give in to the convenient temptation that this is ‘a Catholic problem’.” (David Briggs)

“Sex-abuse cases also rock Baptist churches. Individually they are just as bad, and collectively we are doing a lot less than the Catholics about resolution.

"Southern Baptists as a national entity have nothing in place to prevent abusers from carrying their satchels of pain to another church or to yank credentials from an abusive clergyman.

"A motion to institute a national registry of abusers was rejected by the Southern Baptist Executive Committee in 2008 on the basis of church autonomy. The Executive Committee recommended instead that churches run background checks through an already available U.S. Department of Justice system. That system contains names only of those convicted of a crime and not those times when a church forces a minister to leave and keep the reasons unstated to avoid lawsuits or embarrassment.” (Norman Jameson)

"The sexual abuse of children is going on in Protestant churches, and it is social, sexual and religious irresponsibility to ignore it, camouflage it, minimize it or think one's faith community is immune from it." (Douglas Sharp)

“Since the late 1990s, denominational judicatories in the mainline Protestant traditions have taken formal structural, educational, ethical and policy steps to prevent and report all forms of sexual abuse in their churches. . . . These efforts are indicative of attempts to cultivate ‘safe’ and ‘hospitable’ churches for all, but especially for children. (See for example, American Baptist Churches, USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church, USA, United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church and Episcopal Church.)” (Douglas Sharp)

[Note that the largest Protestant denomination in the land – the Southern Baptist Convention – is not included in Sharp’s list.]

“Protecting the Baptist denomination and churches from public humiliation and discrediting has been a higher priority for many Baptist leaders than protecting children from the predatory ministers – ministers who move from church to church, state to state, without punishment, only to harm again. . . . The shield of local church autonomy is a false one that should not be used to protect predatory preachers. . . Baptist leaders know too well about the official church connectivity and ‘unofficial web of clergy connectivity’. . . .

"The biblical concept of church autonomy should not be used to override the biblical concept of protecting the vulnerable. . . .

"Catholic and Baptist leaders have more similarities than differences on the child-abuse front. Both have harmed church members and the Christian witness by not swiftly addressing predatory clergy and designing reliable protective systems. And both have covered up predatory behavior . . . .

"Sacraments may differ. But the systems, secrecy and spin are similar – and shameful.” (Robert Parham)

“We know it takes extraordinary courage for even one victim to come forward amid the shame associated with sexual abuse. Most clergy abusers are likely to have several victims, and should never again have access to children. Yet when the unimaginable happens, few are willing to believe the victim. Congregants remember the minister . . . as someone who visited them in the hospital or comforted them at funerals. Religious leaders tend to view them as friends and colleagues, and are likely to take their word over the victim’s word or give the abuser a second or third chance. Fear of lawsuits or damage to the institution hardens their hearts further.

“And the children suffer, many for the rest of their lives. . . . The most religious, those who are most likely to accept a cleric’s authority and most dependent on their faith . . . are the most vulnerable.” (David Briggs)

“While many other structures of modern life have heightened the protections offered to children, the churches have lagged behind – with disastrous consequences. The Baptist situation may be no better than the Catholic, only shielded more deeply from view.

“This situation demands reform, immediately, for the sake of the vulnerable and abused children among us – not to mention for the sake of the gospel witness . . . .” (David Gushee)

The situation demands immediate reform . . . but how much longer until reform actually happens? And how many more Baptist church kids will suffer?

My hope for 2011 is that Baptists will make protection of "the least of these" the most important thing on their agenda.

Bed Intruder Christmas Carol

2010-12-19T00:43:00.015-06:00

Humor is not my strong suit. I’ll be the first to admit it. So, whenever everyone else thinks something is funny, and I don’t, I tend to doubt myself. Watch this video. Tell me what you think.

This is the a cappella choir at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty is the largest evangelical Christian university in the world. It was founded by Jerry Falwell, and has close ties with Thomas Road Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here’s the gist of the story behind the video. In Huntsville, Alabama, Antoine Dodson spoke to the local news station, WAFF-48, after an intruder broke into his sister’s bedroom window and tried to rape her. He was clearly upset at the time. He himself had fought the intruder after his sister screamed. The intruder escaped, leaving behind a room that showed considerable evidence of the struggle.

Antoine Dodson was angry. He was on high adrenaline. He was authentic and real in expressing his feelings. You can see the video of Antoine's original interview here.

With almost lyrical phrasing, and with plenty of emotion, Antoine says everyone should lock up their kids and wives because there’s a rapist loose in the projects. Then he tells the intruder “you are so dumb” (because they have his t-shirt and fingerprints), and he says “we’re going to find you. . . homeboy.”

The Gregory Brothers put Antoine’s interview to music as the “Bed Intruder Song,” and you can see that music-video here. It uses the original video of Antoine himself, and as I understand it, the Gregory Brothers split the proceeds 50/50 with Antoine.

The “Bed Intruder Song” went viral, and as of yesterday, it had received over 52,000,000 views on YouTube, which listed it as the most popular video of 2010.

Then, a week ago, Liberty University’s choir performed their own Christmas carol version of the “Bed Intruder Song,” and put it up on YouTube. They used Antoine’s own words, except they substituted the word “taking” for “raping.” I guess a Christmas song about “raping” wouldn’t have been festive?

But isn’t that exactly the problem? Raping isn’t festive and raping isn’t funny. Antoine’s own words were authentic and real, but there is nothing authentic about this Liberty University production of his words. It makes an attempted rape and the brother’s reaction into a Christmas comedy, and it does so without any apparent interest in or concern for the context.

But hey . . . that’s just me talking. If you look at the YouTube comments, it’s obvious that a whole heckuva lot of other people think it’s “hilarious” and “awesome.” In one week’s time, Liberty University’s video captured 430,000 views on YouTube and has brought a whole lot of media attention to the school.

University chancellor, Jerry Falwell, Jr., said “the video helps break a stereotype about Christians not being able to show a side of humor.”

“It’s great that the world is able to see that Christian young people can have fun just like everybody else,” he said.

A parody about an attempted rape in the projects is “fun”? This is how Christian young people at a private university show humor?

Well . . . I said from the get-go that humor is not my strong suit. So tell me what you think.

______________________

See also: "The humor in attempted rape is (nonexistent)," BaptistPlanet, 12/19/10

Another perspective: "Antoine Dodson's sister: On invisibility as violence," 8/20/10

A tangential 2010 Liberty U story: "Former Liberty University professor sentenced on sex charge," The News-Advance, 3/5/10

Venom-spitters and bile-spewers

2010-12-17T10:56:00.008-06:00

“I happen to be a family member of one of the higher ups in this church.”

That’s how the comment began, and it deteriorated from there.

The church this “family member of one of the higher ups” is talking about is Eden Westside Baptist Church in Pell City, Alabama. It’s a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

What set-off this “family member of one of the higher ups” was this prior post I did about one of Eden Westside’s ministers who pled guilty to sexual abuse of a 14-year-old.

I’m always a bit amazed when people think they can come onto my own blog, call me ugly names, and flat-out libel me.

On my own blog.

And frequently, they spit their venom anonymously, as this “family member of one of the higher ups” did. Such courage!

So, since I can’t tell whether this person is male or female, I’ll just call him or her “Billie.”

Here’s the thing, “Billie.” You can’t use my own blog as a forum for libeling me and calling me names. If you want to do that sort of thing, you can surely find some Baptist blog on which to do it, and with your style of trash-talk, you’ll fit right in on some of them. But you can’t expect to call me names and say untrue things about me right here on my own blog. Got it?

Some of you other bile-spewers should take a lesson on this as well. I won’t let you use my blog as a spittoon for your venom. Besides, you really need to be more civilized.

I’ve been getting a lot of this ugly stuff lately, and some of it far worse than “Billie’s.” Mostly, I just delete it. But it really makes me wonder about a lot of Southern Baptists. Rather than letting their faith inspire them toward their best selves, some Southern Baptists seem to use their faith as an excuse for bringing forth their worst selves.

And those “worst selves” sure aren’t very pretty.

The bit of substance in “Billie’s” rant was his statement that the church deserves no blame because “the man had no record and no one could have known he was a creep.”

This is where I almost feel compassion for “Billie.” People like “Billie” have been so misled by Southern Baptist leaders that they actually believe that, if a guy doesn’t have a criminal record, then he’s automatically safe to be in a position of high trust as a minister.

It’s ignorance for sure, but it’s the sort of ignorance that Southern Baptist leaders have actively promoted. Forget about the fact that many experts say only about 3 percent of child molesters have any record (and almost all experts say it’s less than 10 percent). Forget about the fact that other major faith groups now have denominational review boards to assess clergy abuse allegations that can’t be criminally prosecuted. Forget about the fact that Southern Baptists are years behind on the bare-bones basics as compared to how other major faith groups are more pro-actively implementing safeguards to protect against clergy abuse. Forget about the fact that Southern Baptists don’t even bother with denominational record-keeping on credibly-accused clergy. Forget about the fact that Southern Baptists’ system of denominational do-nothingness allows many clergy predators to church-hop with ease, with no one at the new church even being warned.

That’s the sort of ignorance that Southern Baptist leaders have promoted. That’s the sort of ignorance that, as a practical matter, allows Baptist pastors to remain in pulpits so long as they’re not sitting in prison. That’s the sort of ignorance that leaves countless kids and congregants at risk.

Like “Billie,” most Southern Baptists seem to find it easier, and more psychologically comfortable, to imagine that each and every story (and there are now hundreds of them) is nothing more than the story of an isolated “creep.” That way, they can distance themselves from the “creep” and they don’t have to take a hard look at themselves. That way, they don’t have to bother with considering how their own institutionalized denominational do-nothingness contributes to the problem.

But as Rev. Timothy Bonney said: “Anytime an SBC minister commits abuse, the denomination carries some level of blame for not creating a system to deal with abuse.”

Baptists can’t just wipe that responsibility away by saying “the man had no record.”

And one last message for bile-spewing “Billie”: Ministers like the one that was at Eden Westside aren’t merely “creeps” – they’re criminals.
_______________________

Note to all: For the indefinite future, I plan to moderate all comments on this blog. Clergy abuse survivors are my primary intended audience, and several have written to me privately, saying they feel they can no longer read my blog because some of the comments have been so upsetting for them. Though I have always deleted the worst of comments, in hindsight, I wish I had deleted a great many more.

Survivors: You are, and always have been, right in your determination to protect yourselves against the meanness of what some of these know-nothings dish out. So . . . in the future, be assured that the pseudo-religious bile-spewers, venom-spitters, and pontificators of unfiltered ignorance will get no forum on this blog, not even for one second. It's bad enough that Southern Baptists have no system for extending any help to clergy abuse survivors, and I will NOT allow them to inflict even more wounds with their comments on this blog.

I hope this may mean that more survivors will eventually feel more able to participate. But whether you ever leave a comment, or merely lurk and read quietly, I want this blog to be a safe place.
___________________

Update: "Christa Brown: Restricted commenting," on Civil Commotion, 12/17/10

Feds investigate mortgage scheme with link to Baptist pastors

2010-12-14T10:35:00.017-06:00

In Atlanta, federal authorities are investigating a “controversial mortgage scheme” that allegedly preyed on financially troubled homeowners, and two Baptist mega-church pastors are linked to it.

As told by CBS Atlanta reporter Wendy Saltzman, at least a thousand people paid Matrix Capital a $1,500 upfront fee based on the company’s promise that it could get their mortgage payments lowered. But according to investigators, “most of them ended up in bankruptcy and losing their homes” instead.

Southern Baptist mega-church pastor Gary Hawkins was "the face of the company's promotional video," and he “vouched” for Fred Lee, the man behind the company. Many of the victims attended a Matrix seminar that was presented inside Hawkins’ Voices of Faith church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. With 11,000 members, Voices of Faith also claims to be “one of the fastest growing churches in the Georgia Baptist Convention.”

Independent Baptist pastor Eddie Long also allowed Matrix to present seminars at his prominent New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

People say they trusted the Matrix representative, Fred Lee, “because he made those promises in the sanctity of their local church.” Now, CBS News reports that people are asking whether these two mega-church leaders got “kick-backs to betray their flocks and expose their congregations to financial disaster.”

Police say that Southern Baptist pastor Hawkins was “less than forthcoming with records that would have shown if payments were made” either to him personally or to the church.

Independent Baptist pastor Eddie Long is the same pastor who is also embroiled in civil lawsuits alleging clergy sex abuse. Four young men have accused him of using spiritual authority to coerce them into sexual acts when they were teen church members.

Both Hawkins and Long refer to themselves as “bishops” – a title that is unusual in Baptist life. Nevertheless, both pastors are indeed Baptist.

When news of the Eddie Long scandal first broke, some Baptists tried to distance themselves by claiming that Long wasn’t really a Baptist -- despite the fact that his church is called New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. But the Southern Baptist Convention is about as Baptist as you can get, and the SBC’s own website lists pastor Gary Hawkins’ email address as emailthebishop@voicesfaith.org. So make no mistake about it, self-named “bishops” exist in Baptist life, and both of the pastors who are being investigated in this mortgage scheme are Baptist.

(For more explanation on “Baptist bishops,” see this article in Slate, recognizing that, nowadays, some Baptist churches do indeed have “bishops” and naming Baptist historian Doug Weaver of Baylor University – the largest Baptist university in the world – as one of its sources for the information.)

Without accountability, power corrupts. In Baptistland, we have repeatedly seen this truth manifested, not only in the context of clergy sex abuse, but also in the context of financial shenanigans.

For both types of corruption, the root of the problem is a systemic lack of accountability. This is the root that Baptists so desperately need to remedy.
________________________

Related posts on financial mismanagement and misdealings in Baptistland: "Almighty Dollar"; "Spending God's Money"; and "He could have been stopped."

Related post on "Another Eddie Long controversy."

This Little Light reaches France

2010-12-06T20:09:00.010-06:00

“L’Église baptiste, paradis des pédophiles”

That’s the headline that people in France are reading when they open the December/January edition of the Paris publication, Books magazine. In English, it says:

“The Baptist church: Paradise for Pedophiles”

The headline is for a review of my book, This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang. It's a book that not only tells my personal story, but also documents the denomination’s do-nothing response to the problem of clergy child molesters.

The review, written by investigative journalist Patrick Lindsay Bowles, is “fantastique.” In the space of a page, he illuminates the irrational arrogance of many Baptist leaders and their "systematic persecution of victims." And amazingly, Bowles even manages a touch of humor, as when he talks about former Southern Baptist president Paige Patterson, whose hobbies include “hunting dangerous game” and who is shown on his website “kneeling behind the much-dreaded zebra.”

Ooh-la-la. Think about what this means. There are now people in France who are reading about the ugly reality of America’s largest Protestant denomination. They are learning of how the “Convention Baptiste du Sud” offers no compassion or care for those wounded by clergy sex abuse, and no accountability or consequence for clergy who commit abuse.

It’s awful stuff, but it’s real. So I’m glad that at least some people are learning the truth.

After all, the Southern Baptist Convention is an evangelical faith group that is intent on going to “all nations” and “teaching them.” (Matthew 28:19-20) So it certainly behooves those in other nations to consider exactly who these “teachers” really are and to assess the sort of values that they actually manifest.

Why should people in other nations care about the teachings of a faith group that turns its back on protecting “the least of these”? Why should people in other nations care about the teachings of a faith group that allows clergy predators to church-hop without anyone imposing accountability? Why should people in other nations care about the teachings of a faith group whose own institutional integrity is so utterly tainted?

Bowles’ review was published earlier by the Times Literary Supplement of London (which is sort of like a British version of the New York Times Review of Books). Now it has been translated into French and republished in this Parisian magazine. Bravo to Patrick Lindsay Bowles!

Here is the original English version of Bowles' review from the Times Literary Supplement. And here is a pdf of the French version from Books magazine.
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Related post: “In the London Times!” 4/17/2010

See also: "Church honors advocate for abuse victims," ABP, 12/7/10 ("A translation just out in the Paris publication Books magazine carries the headline, 'L’Église baptiste, paradis des pedophiles,' French for, 'The Baptist church, paradise for pedophiles'.")

Menorahs' lights bring thoughts on denial and evil

2010-12-03T23:57:00.003-06:00

Elana's father was smuggled out of Germany as an 8-year-old boy. Her grandparents and other paternal ancestors were all annihilated in the Holocaust. Many on her mother's side were slaughtered as well.

Once a week, we walk a loop together around Town Lake. Though Elana is a decade younger, she often seems centuries wiser than me. Maybe it's because she has long pondered the dark side of humanity. Or maybe it's because she carries an ever-present awareness of mortality -- the result of facing down cancer in her 20s. Or maybe it's just in her genes. Whatever the reason, I feel graced by Elana's pragmatic, eyes-wide-open sort of wisdom.

Amidst talk of kids' colds and Texas politics, we also weigh in on weightier matters. Elana was one of the first people to whom I dared mention that I was sexually abused by a Baptist minister as an adolescent girl.

Elana came to a stand-still on the trail. She immediately saw the significance of my small statement and of the fact that I had never previously spoken of it.

Through the pink crepe myrtles of summer and the red sumacs of fall, Elana continued to listen as my story unfolded. While we fended off angry geese, she watched me work at coming to terms with the blasphemous brutality of what a Baptist minister did to me as a kid.

Elana kept on listening. She heard about my efforts at reporting the perpetrator to church and denominational leaders, and about my frustration at their grotesque oblivion.

Finally, she saw me unravel when I learned that, despite all my efforts, the man was still working in children's ministry. That's when Elana started tossing books my way.

She knows my weakness. I'm a bookaholic.

But the kinds of books Elana was tossing made no sense to me. It was all Holocaust literature -- essays, poems, and memoirs. I couldn't imagine how any of it could possibly have any bearing on the problem I was encountering.

"Denial," she said. "You need to understand a whole lot more about the dynamics of mass-scale denial."

I kept reading, but I resisted the analogy. I was uncomfortable with any comparison to the Holocaust because it seemed to trivialize the incomprehensible horror of it.

But Elana insisted. "The most important lesson of the Holocaust is about denial in the face of evil," she said. "If people think they're going to wait to see a genocide before they apply the lessons of the Holocaust, then the lessons of the Holocaust are lost."

Evil is a shape-shifter. Recognizing it with the benefit of hindsight is not so hard. The trick is seeing it when it's there in front of you, and finding a way to confront it at the time.

Why do good people do nothing in the face of evil?

That's the question posed by the Holocaust. It is an ancient question that has arisen in countless other contexts.

Incomprehensible evil is done by trusted ministers who use spiritual authority to violate kids' bodies for their own depraved ends.

Baptist leaders clearly have the power and the resources to cooperatively confront this pervasive evil. Yet they collude through silence and denial.

They blind themselves behind a self-made wall built with a perversion of autonomous polity and a faulty forgiveness theology. It is a wall that shields clergy predators and leaves kids in harm's way. No amount of labeling it "religion" will change what that wall really is.

It is moral and spiritual cowardice. It is denial in the face of evil.

As menorahs begin to light the night, I thank God for the goodness of Elana's life and for the courage of a few individuals who saw evil and took action to smuggle a small boy to safety.

And I wonder how many more seasons will pass before Baptist leaders open their eyes to the evil of clergy sex abuse and take action to keep kids safe from horrible harm.
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This is a reprint of my guest column published in EthicsDaily on December 14, 2006. Despite all that I have encountered in Baptistland, I still believe that, ultimately, light will prevail over darkness.

"Deplorable"

2010-12-01T11:11:00.006-06:00

In Georgia, a former Southern Baptist minister pled guilty to molesting a 13-year-old girl. As reported yesterday in the Athens Banner-Herald, Norman Anthony Pugh was sentenced to 13 years in prison with another 7 years on probation.

In 2005, Pugh was arrested on similar charges when he was working as a youth minister at Georgia's Arnoldsville Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. At that time, he was charged with molesting a 14-year-old church girl.

Church members rallied around Pugh after that 2005 arrest. His bond was posted by the wife of the senior pastor, Nathan Palmer. (Do you think they used offering plate dollars to post Pugh’s bond?)

The case went to trial, and Pugh was acquitted in November 2006. Church members lined up in the courtroom to hug him.

How do you imagine that 14-year-old felt when she saw her whole church publicly supporting the minister?

And if any other kids were molested, how do you imagine they felt? Almost certainly, they would have squelched any possible thought of speaking up when they saw how the church rallied around the minister.

And it surely didn’t help the prosecutors any for the church to rally around the minister.

It is often very difficult for child molestation victims to have to testify in court. That’s just one of the reasons why so many of these kinds of cases are resolved with a plea bargain – prosecutors seek to spare the victim the additional trauma of testifying. But often, the way a prosecutor gains the negotiating leverage needed for a plea bargain is with evidence of other victims who speak up after the first one. But by publicly rallying around its minister after his 2005 arrest, Arnoldsville Baptist Church helped to assure that there likely wouldn’t be any others who would speak up.

So Norman Anthony Pugh went free. At that time, prosecutors were unable to prove his guilt by the strict “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of the criminal law.

Now, four years later, Pugh has been convicted of molesting a 13-year-old. He was no longer working at the church.

Do you think the people of Arnoldsville Baptist feel even a shred of remorse? Do they give any thought to how their own conduct may have helped to allow Pugh to go free and may have thereby enabled him to molest that 13-year-old in 2009 . . . and no telling how many others? Do you think they’ll seek out that church kid who reported Pugh back in 2005 and offer to pay for her counseling?

Do they even give a hoot? And if they do, what will they now do about it?

On a related note, I received an email just nine days ago, on November 22, from a guy who signed off as “William J. Tarbush,” and whose email address was for “Jeremy Tarbush.” He told me it was “deplorable” that I had posted Norman Pugh’s name with a link to the news article about Pugh's 2009 arrest.

Tarbush ranted a bit and made this complaint: “Norman Pugh is not even on the list of sex offenders in the State of Georgia for sex crimes.”

I guess Tarbush thinks the only people we should be concerned about are people who show up on a sex offender registry . . . even though virtually all experts recognize that the vast majority of active child molesters have never been criminally convicted and won't show up on a sex offender registry.

Ordinarily, I would ignore an email like the one from William J. (Jeremy) Tarbush. But since his timing was so poor – just 8 days before Pugh’s guilty plea -- I'm going to respond a bit.

Tarbush closed his email with “In His Service.” I don’t think so. That’s just Tarbush’s own no-thought-required religious rationalization for his rant. Heck . . . I once saw a letter in which a prominent Southern Baptist official was threatening to sue a blogger, and he signed the bullying letter “In His Name.” It would be comical if it weren’t so pompously pathetic.

In any event, I believe that “In His Service” would mean looking out for “the least of these.” But when it comes to clergy sex abuse, Southern Baptists are far too wrapped up in looking out for the ministers. “The least of these” seem to be “the least of” their concerns.

And as for what’s “deplorable?” It’s churches like Arnoldsville Baptist when they turn their backs on kids who report clergy sex abuse. It’s Southern Baptist officials when they choose to do nothing at all about ministers who are reported for clergy sex abuse. It’s the Southern Baptist Convention when it persistently refuses to institute the bare-basic safeguard that other major faith groups have of allowing outside review for clergy abuse reports and when it refuses to even keep records on credibly accused clergy sex abusers.

All of that is what’s “deplorable” … along with the fact that the news reports of Baptist clergy abuse and cover-ups keep growing, and the denomination keeps doing nothing.

Another Eddie Long controversy

2010-11-28T13:56:00.007-06:00

Gospel Today magazine is catching a lot of flak for its decision to feature the scandal-plagued pastor Eddie Long on the cover of its December issue. It has the appearance of being little more than a public-relations fluff piece for a prominent pastor who is currently embroiled in lawsuits alleging clergy sex abuse.

Long is the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta. Four young men have accused him of using spiritual authority to coerce them into sexual acts when they were teen church members.

Long is also Chairman of the Board of Advisors for Gospel Today magazine. Therein lies a big part of the problem. The conflict of interest seems obvious to a whole lot of people . . . but apparently not to the people at Gospel Today.

As reported by CNN, Gospel Today owner and editor Teresa Hairston went on the magazine’s website to defend the article, after readers complained. Personally, I applaud those astute Gospel Today readers who cared enough to voice their concern; it’s a shame Gospel Today didn’t take its readers’ criticisms to heart.

For those who have followed other Baptist clergy sex abuse cases, Hairston’s remarks will carry an eerie air of familiarity. She took aim at the press for how it has covered the Long scandal, and she claimed that Gospel Today had chosen to present a “biblical perspective.” She also said this:

“The Word of God teaches us that God is love; and far too many times we have been unbalanced and unloving — all in the name of a God who not only loves, but loves unconditionally and restores sinners — us included. Whether Bishop Long is guilty or not; whether the young men are guilty or not, the BODY OF CHRIST must handle this situation according to the Word of God! The mainstream press has painted a hideous picture; some have even called for Bishop Long’s resignation! They’re not even members!!”

My response: You don’t have to be a member of the church to know that power without accountability leads to abuse of power. You don’t have to be a member of the church to know that it’s wrong for faith groups to allow men into positions of high trust without also assuring that effective oversight systems are in place. You don’t have to be a member of the church to know that such a failure of oversight is a travesty that puts huge numbers of trusting kids and congregants at risk, not only in independent Baptist churches, but also in Southern Baptist churches and many other sorts of Baptist churches. You don’t have to be a member of the church to speak out about this sort of travesty. Indeed, it’s a shame that, so often, it is outsiders who must speak out, because, so often, it is the “members” who try to cover it up.
____________________

Related posts:
Eddie Long: The Real Scandal Is Even Bigger, 9/28/10
Denominational Double-talk, 9/29/10
Independent Baptist Eddie Long, 10/2/10
Our selective curiosity on sex scandals, 10/10/10
Where’s the Discipline? 10/13/10

News updates:
Bishop Eddie Long agrees to mediation, Huffington Post, 12/6/10
Another "I'm innocent" guilty case of sex abuse, Thoroughly Anderson Cooper blog, 12/8/10 (In video, expert says, "Mediation would be the last place you'd think he would wind up.")

Pastor told member to "keep his mouth shut"

2010-11-26T08:56:00.007-06:00

In New Hampshire, Southern Baptist pastor Timothy Dillmuth and two church elders, Richard Eland and Robert Gagnon, were found guilty of failing to report child sex abuse. As reported yesterday in the Union Leader, the men will be sentenced on December 21st.

According to the judge’s written ruling, pastor Dillmuth “had met with the parents of a child who had been molested by a member of the church, which he later confirmed after talking to the child.”

“The information was shared with other members of the board of elders in September 2009,” and was discussed at some meetings of the church board.

A month later, when another member of the church urged the child’s parents to report the matter to authorities, pastor Dillmuth talked to the concerned church member and told him to “keep his mouth shut.”

“That church member subsequently left the church after belonging for over five years.”

Testimony showed that, at least into November 2009, the matter continued to be discussed at meetings of the board of elders, and “it became contentious.”

However, it was only in February 2010, after another church member heard about the abuse and threatened to go to the police, that pastor Dillmuth finally agreed the matter should be reported. Then, as stated in the judge’s ruling, church officials “put pressure on the parents… to do what the elders had a duty to do months before, report the child abuse to authorities.”

As police began to investigate, they turned their attention to the church officials’ conduct in failing to report the abuse. In a police interview, church elder Richard Eland justified their failure by saying that they “respond to a higher authority.” Thus, he used religion as a rationalization.

Because of this, the judge observed that “they would do it again.”

It was "deliberately attempted" to keep it within the church, wrote the judge.

The prosecutor described it as "a conspiracy" that was "not only unlawful, but shameful."

The church in which this shameful “conspiracy” took place is Valley Christian Church in Redstone, New Hampshire. According to its website, the church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Why should anyone be surprised at such keep-it-quiet conspiratorial conduct among the leaders of a local church when we have seen so much in the way of collusion, complicity and cover-ups extending even to the highest levels of Southern Baptist Convention leadership?
_____________________

Updates:
N.H. Baptist minister, elders found guilty of failing to report abuse, ABP, 11/30/10
Southern Baptist pastor told member to "keep his mouth shut," BaptistPlanet, 11/30/10

Thanksgiving "Firsts" at Cornerstone

2010-11-21T22:47:00.017-06:00

It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving and my heart is filled with gratitude. At the invitation of Rev. Dwight McKissic, I spent the morning in a joy-filled worship service with the people of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

This was the first time that any Baptist church has actually invited me to speak. So this 3,000 member congregation is something special, and they have a pastor who carries a genuine concern for the problem of clergy sex abuse.

For over 4 ½ years, I’ve been writing and talking about this subject that a whole lot of Baptist officials, Baptist pastors, and Baptist people seem to not want to hear about -- Baptist clergy sex abuse and cover-ups. It’s not a pleasant subject -- I know. But I also know that, if kids in Baptist churches are going to be made safer, we need to do a whole lot more talking about it.

That’s why I was both surprised and glad when I received Dr. McKissic’s letter of invitation. He also said that Cornerstone wanted to honor me with its “Phoebe Award.” It’s an award that Cornerstone gives out every 3 to 5 years “to a person who has made a difference in our world; someone who stands up for truth and right.”

For a moment, I confess I was flat-out dumbfounded. I looked again at the name on the letter. Sure enough – he was talking to me.

This was something dramatically different from all the ugly-talk that I’ve gotten from so many others who carry the “Baptist” name. So I decided to accept their gracious invitation and to go visit the people of Cornerstone.

They were warm and welcoming, attentive and caring.

Many people have told me that “Baptists are hopeless” when it comes to dealing with clergy sex abuse. I have had many moments of believing it. But when I meet Baptists like Dwight McKissic and the people of Cornerstone, it renews my hope.

I yearn for a future when kids in Baptist churches will be a great deal safer.

I yearn for a future when Baptist clergy abuse survivors will be received and heard with compassion and care.

I yearn for a future when clergy accountability systems will seem as "right as rain" in Baptistland.

I know that we still have a very long way to go before these dreams become reality. And perhaps it won’t happen in my lifetime. But like many others who have gone before and who will come after me, I feel as though we are working to plant seeds of change.

Today, I was very happy to be able to plant those seeds, standing side by side, with the people of Cornerstone. Someday, perhaps many years yet into the future, those seeds will grow into strong trees whose wide and sheltering branches will give safe sanctuary for the kids and congregants of Baptistland.

On a more personal note, today was a “first” in another way. Except for funerals, this was the first time I have set foot in a Baptist church in more than 30 years. I am grateful to the people of Cornerstone for welcoming me.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!
___________________

In the top photo, that’s Dr. Dwight McKissic and I. The bottom photo shows the lovely award that Cornerstone presented to me. The plaque on the base reads: “A servant of the church … a helper of many.” Romans 16:1, 2.
___________________

Updates:
Church honors advocate for abuse victims, ABP, 12/7/10
Positivity: Christa Brown rewarded for helping abuse victims, Ex Times, 12/22/10
Cornerstone's press release, 11/30/10

Update 3/5/11:
I packed away the award into a box and put it in storage. It became too sad to even look at it. I have come to the belief that, with only the rarest of exceptions, Southern Baptist pastors simply will not hold their own accountable. Cronies protect cronies. Why should anyone expect Southern Baptist pastors to hold other pastors accountable for sexual abuse when they won't even hold their highest denominational officials accountable for harsh, cruel written public rhetoric? On this issue, Baptist pastors are plagued by fawning tepidity. That's how it is in Baptistland.

"That's how you get a Jim Jones"

2010-11-19T10:07:00.004-06:00

November 18th marked the 32nd anniversary of the Jonestown massacre. Over 900 people lost their lives when Rev. Jim Jones exhorted his followers to “die with dignity.”

By faith and by force, hundreds swallowed the cyanide-laced Kool-aid that was served up by the leaders of Jones’ church.

It was an event that left a permanent mark in our lexicon with the expression “drink the Kool-aid.”

Nowadays, people almost always describe Jim Jones’ church as a “cult.” Yet, what is often overlooked is that, for years, Rev. Jones was actually a very politically-connected preacher. It’s not as if he wore a sign saying “wacko.”

To the contrary, as reported by longtime religion writer Terry Mattingly, Jim Jones carried the credibility of being “a minister in good standing of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), an absolutely normal denomination….”

The Disciples of Christ are a denomination with congregational polity, similar to the polity of Baptists. But after Jonestown, the Disciples of Christ saw the importance of plugging the safety gaps in their polity, and they took action.

The people of Jim Jones’ congregation weren’t fools. Many were highly educated. Yet, when things turned terribly wrong, the sheep couldn’t rein in the shepherd. And no one in denominational leadership intervened.

It was only after 900 people died that Disciples of Christ leaders saw how their lack of clergy oversight made them vulnerable to horrific abuse perpetrated in the name of faith. So they created a process by which a regional body can consider the continued “standing” of ministers who carry the Disciples of Christ name.

One ordained Disciple explained the change this way: “In the dark light of Jonestown, it’s hard to argue that you can go back to an entirely decentralized structure with a general identity. That’s how you get a Jim Jones.”

Yet, that’s what Southern Baptists still have. Despite their shared general identity, they have a decentralized structure, and their leaders refuse to plug the safety gaps.

Baptist historian and religion scholar Bill Leonard describes Baptists as having a “radical congregationalism.” (Baptists in America, 2005, p. 153) I think those are apt words, not merely in theory, but also in practice.

When a faith group places the perfection of its man-interpreted polity above the protection of kids against clergy predators, then yes . . . they have stepped into the realm of being “radical.”

When a faith group fails to meet the standard of care that is now found in virtually every other major faith group in the country through the use of outside review on clergy abuse complaints, then yes . . . they have stepped into the realm of being “radical.”

Many people in the pews make the erroneous assumption that, because they share a “general identity” as Southern Baptists, the denomination provides a measure of safety. But with its “radical congregationalism,” Southern Baptists don’t prioritize safety. They afford no denominational system for effectively dealing with those who abuse the trust of the shared identity.

Thirty-two years ago, the congregationalist Disciples of Christ put in place an accountability process to try to plug the safety gaps in their own decentralized system. When over 900 people lost their lives, leaders saw the power of faith as a weapon, and they realized that the denomination itself carried a moral responsibility to intercede.

It’s a moral responsibility that Southern Baptist leaders still haven’t recognized.
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For another account of what happened at Jonestown, read “Town without Pity,” by Charles A. Krause, a journalist who was shot while trying to cover the story there.

Note: Parts of this post were from a prior 12/1/08 column, "Jonestown Anniversary."

$3,504

2010-11-16T22:17:00.008-06:00

How an organization spends its money can tell you a lot about what it thinks is important.

So I decided to take a look at the 2011 proposed budget for the largest statewide Baptist organization in the country, the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

It’s a budget that allocates a total of $38 million for net expenses.

How much of that do you imagine they allocated for addressing “clergy sexual misconduct”?

$3,504.

That’s three thousand five hundred and four dollars.

I’m guessing that amount is just enough to allow the BGCT to reprint some of its glossy brochures and put them on a table at the next annual meeting.

That’s it. Nothing more. That’s how little they care.

It's a tragic number that gives substance to the reality of the BGCT's institutionalized blindness to clergy sex abuse. (And the very fact that their budget labels it as “misconduct” only furthers the evidence of how the BGCT persists in minimizing this conduct. But I digress . . . this posting is about numbers.)

The Baptist General Convention of Texas once bragged that it was doing more than any other statewide Baptist organization in the country on the subject of clergy sex abuse. So there isn’t much reason to think the Baptist budgets in other states have allocated anything more.

A budget of $3,504 makes apparent that no one at the Baptist General Convention of Texas is even taking the first tiny baby step toward trying to responsibly address clergy sex abuse. And they sure aren't doing anything to minister to the wounded.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas should have allocated at least 10 times that amount for the sole purpose of conducting a study to assess their own institutional failure in the case of minister Matt Baker, who was convicted of murder last January. The BGCT needs to work toward understanding how and why a minister with multiple sexual abuse and assault reports was able to move so easily through so many of the BGCT’s affiliated churches and organizations, without anyone stopping him. They need to work toward understanding why it took a murder before those abuse and assault allegations were brought to light.

They need to work toward understanding how a Baptist minister with multiple abuse and assault reports was still able to get a job working as a chaplain at a residential treatment facility for emotionally troubled youth. Doesn’t the BGCT do credentialing for Texas Baptist chaplains?

They need to work toward understanding how, even at the end of his career, just before he was hauled up on a murder charge, a minister with multiple abuse and assault reports was still able to get a job working with college kids at a Baptist Student Union. It was a job funded by the BGCT. Didn’t anyone check his background? How could they have overlooked so much?

In most other organizations, an institutional failure of the Matt Baker magnitude would lead to a lot of questions. Leaders would try to understand how things went so wrong. They would try to figure out what they should do to assure that it wouldn’t happen again.

But at the Baptist General Convention of Texas, so-called “leaders” just hunkered down and stayed silent . . . as though it simply wasn’t their problem.

Kids and congregants in Texas Baptist churches are the ones who pay the price for the BGCT’s institutionalized blindness toward clergy sex abuse.

$3,504. That’s how little the BGCT cares.

The BGCT’s proposed budget is 177 pages long, and for me, it was an eye-numbing exercise to look at it. But if you’re someone who likes numbers, or if you just want to peruse it for yourself, here it is: http://www.bgct.org/documents/pdf/2011_Proposed_Detail_Budget.pdf

Meanwhile, I’ll point out just a few other items that caught my eye.

The “Ministers’ Wives Retreat” gets $9,000. The office of the Chief Financial Officer gets $61,882 for “Tax Seminars.”

Thinking about the fact that Matt Baker was able to work as a chaplain, I noticed that the BGCT’s budget allocates $2,248 to the “Chaplaincy Endorsement” program, and a total of $113,029 to “Chaplaincy Ministry.” But of course, that doesn’t count the salaries and benefits for the BGCT people who work in the program. (Once you start looking at some of the compensation packages for BGCT officials, you start to understand real fast about where a lot of the offering plate dollars go.)

"Counseling and Psychological Services" gets $115,148. (You can read more about that program here: “Therapy for perps but not victims.”)

Finally, the “Ministers’ Protection Plan” gets $1,300,000. I’m told that this is how the state conventions help to assure that Baptist ministers are provided with disability benefits. Of course, I’ve got no problem with ministers being able to get benefits when they become disabled. But here’s what I don’t understand: Why can denominational officials use the pooled money from autonomous churches to provide Baptist ministers with disability benefits, but they can’t use the pooled money from autonomous churches to provide Baptist congregants with the resource of a trained review board for objectively assessing clergy abuse reports and for informing people in the pews about credibly-accused clergy?

Kids and congregants would be a whole lot safer if the Baptist General Convention of Texas cared just as much about protecting them as it cares about protecting ministers.

But $3,504 is all they allocated.

Remember that number. That’s how little the BGCT cares.
____________________

Related post: "Once every two weeks for Texas Baptists"

See also: "How much do Southern Baptists budget for dealing with clerical sex abuse?" Baptist Planet, 11/17/2010

He was a Baptist pastor, not a priest

2010-11-11T10:06:00.011-06:00

“Pervert priest faces 80 years in US jail.”

That was the headline in the November 5th Oxford Times.

One big problem: Robert Dando was a Baptist pastor, not a priest.

It’s bad enough that news reports sometimes don’t even mention the fact that a charged or convicted child molester is a Baptist pastor. Now we have a news story whose headline transforms the pastor into a priest.

The text of the story got it right, but of course, a whole lot of people just scan the headlines.

This is a dreadfully disturbing case, and in my view, it warranted a whole lot more media coverage than it got.

After all, consider these facts:

Dando was very closely connected to the highest levels of Baptists’ worldwide leadership. He previously served as executive assistant to the president of the Baptist World Alliance. This was a guy who ran with the big dogs.
Dando “was embroiled in another child sex abuse scandal when he was a minister at Orchard Baptist Fellowship” in the United Kingdom. In 2001, when the leader of the church, Dr. Anthony Gray, was convicted of serious sex offenses against a 14-year-old boy, Dando said this: “All our youth work is carried out within proper guidelines.” Yet, we now know that Dando too was sexually abusing kids, and had been since at least as far back as 1995. (Do these guys run in packs?)
At the time of his arrest, Dando was the prominent senior minister of Worcester Park Baptist Church in suburban London.
Dando pled guilty to repeatedly abusing 2 boys in Virginia, starting when they were 7 and 8 years old. Virginia prosecutors said that, under questioning, Dando also admitted to sexually abusing boys in the United Kingdom.
Dando had plenty of access to kids. His wife was a national vice-president of the Boys’ Brigade, a Christian youth organization with more than 500,000 members in 60 countries. Dando also worked for a children’s charity in India.
Dando previously worked as a magistrate on a family court panel, which dealt with child care and child access proceedings.

It’s awful to even think about how many kids this Baptist pastor may have wounded. Baptists ought to be making a far-ranging public outreach effort to try to reach those kids and help them. But I haven’t seen anything like that.

Meanwhile, in other news, a Baptist pastor in Missouri is charged with murdering the husband of a woman in his congregation with whom he had been having a sexual relationship. The pastor, David Love, even performed the man’s funeral.

According to the Kansas City Examiner, pastor Love had a longstanding "habit" of instituting sexual encounters with a female congregant. So this raises a question similar to the one raised with Southern Baptist pastor Matt Baker, who was convicted of murder last January: Why didn’t Baptists bust him sooner?

It shouldn’t take a murder for a pastor’s sexual abuse and assault reports to come to light. But tragically, that’s what it took with Baptist pastor Matt Baker.

Now we see yet another Baptist pastor charged with murder. And in the process, we learn that he reportedly had an ugly prior pattern for which no one held him accountable. Again . . . it shouldn’t take a murder charge to bring this stuff to light.

_____________________

Related post: "Baptist World Alliance needs common voice on clergy sex abuse," 8/12/10

Updates:

"British police investigating minister who confessed to abuse in U.S.," ABP, 11/11/10;

"Worcester Park Baptist minister facing UK child sex abuse investigation," The Guardian, 11/11/10.

Why education isn't enough

2010-11-03T18:00:00.009-05:00

Baptist leaders often say that, in order to prevent sexual abuse in churches, congregants should be educated to recognize the signs of potential abuse. But what do you do when you see the signs, and no one else wants to see them?

What do you do when what you see involves the minister, and everyone else just wants to ignore it?

That’s what happened to Nancy at her Southern Baptist church in Georgia. Her story is a good illustration of why educational efforts will never be enough. There must also be effective accountability systems that include a process by which clergy conduct can be reviewed by those outside the minister’s circle of influence.

Nancy is plenty educated. She’s a college psychology professor. In the past, she has worked as a counselor for sexual abuse survivors, and she herself is an abuse survivor. She’s also a mom. So when Nancy saw signs of potential abuse, she knew something needed to be done.

I have changed some of the details of Nancy’s story in order to protect the young girl’s sense of privacy. However, in reality, there is nothing unusual about this story. The elements are far too familiar. We’ve seen similar stories in countless other Baptist churches across the country – churches in which ministers with troubling allegations were simply allowed to move on.

For Nancy, it started about a year ago when she noticed on Facebook that one of their ministers, Steve, was being very flirtatious with a 15-year-old girl. He was also overly friendly with her at church.

Minister Steve is married and has kids of his own. He usually preached the sermon on Sunday evenings and Wednesdays. He also served as a Sunday School teacher.

As things progressed, minister Steve started posting more and more Facebook comments about the girl. He posted pictures of himself and the girl together on a church trip, and the pictures had inappropriate captions. Then he posted a comment about how she had given him a great massage.

Nancy recognized these things as “red flags.” She also knew that minister Steve had been accused of sexual harassment at a company he worked for previously. The accusations were corroborated by another employee who had witnessed some of Steve’s conduct; the company began an investigation; but Steve simply resigned in the middle of it.

Nancy went to talk to the girl’s mom. She’s a mom who is on her own with three kids, one of whom has special needs. Her only source of income is her part-time secretarial job at the church.

The mom immediately told Nancy that she had the same concerns, but was afraid to even think about it. The mom then told Nancy about still more of minister Steve’s disturbing conduct. He had been texting and calling the girl, having unsupervised workout sessions with her, giving her skin-tight workout clothes, asking for massages, and “accidentally” touching her during workouts. He had also given the girl a car.

After talking with Nancy, the mom sent minister Steve a short note asking that he not have further contact with her daughter. She said she felt uncomfortable. The note was honest and direct, but all it asked was for Steve to leave the girl alone.

Minister Steve responded by rallying his forces. He told people at the church that the girl’s mom was spreading lies about him. A deacon cornered the girl’s mom and told her that, if she were a better mother and had spent more time with her daughter, this wouldn’t have happened. (If this is the sort of thing a deacon says to the mom, I wonder what he may have said to the girl?)

After that, as Nancy describes it, “all hell broke loose.” Minister Steve started raging and retaliating in emails, on Facebook, in phone calls, and at the church. He figured out that Nancy had supported the mom, and so he also targeted Nancy and her husband. He cursed and yelled and threatened to sue people.

Ultimately, the deacons held a meeting, but they decided not to do anything.

So, for a while, minister Steve kept right on at that church, smiling and shaking hands as though nothing had happened. Meanwhile, Nancy and her husband became outcasts. Some church members won’t even look at them or speak to them. People say they are “gossips” and “trying to bring the church down.” All of this has affected Nancy’s own kids. This was, after all, their longtime church home.

The senior pastor and deacons have made it clear that the matter is not to be discussed. No one has tried to reach out to the girl. She seems “scared and ashamed,” says Nancy, who is understandably concerned that the girl has not told everything that happened.

But the mom has now gone back to her quiet ways. As Nancy says, she has learned that, if she doesn’t want to jeopardize her job, “she should simply keep her mouth shut.” So the mom isn’t interested in talking to the police or to an attorney.

Nancy says she knows there were originally other church members who had concerns, but in the face of such abysmal leadership, no one else was willing to stand up. So they just went back to their “singing, preaching, programs and donuts.”

It now appears that minister Steve has left the church. He just stopped showing up. So this one girl is now safe. But Nancy knows the pattern. Minister Steve will probably move on to some other church and other kids will be at risk.

That’s how it works in Baptistland. A single church can make a man a minister based on the lowest of possible standards, or based on virtually no standards. But once he’s a minister, he can easily migrate to other churches.

Nancy is deeply troubled, but she doesn’t know what more she can do. Here are her questions, in her own words.

1. “How do we let the next unsuspecting victims know? The girl’s mother isn’t going to do anything. Our Baptist Association won’t do anything. Our church won’t do anything. I don’t trust the leaders of the next church to do anything. So what can we do?”

2. “Do you stay in a church that refuses to hold people who hurt others, especially children, accountable? Do you stay in a church with poor, weak, and even ungodly leadership that is only concerned with covering things up and making the whole thing go away?”

3. “If you DO choose to leave the church, do you find ANOTHER Baptist church where leadership probably wouldn’t step up to the plate either? I am feeling so disillusioned about churches and their leadership in general. I have begun to feel that many of them are playing church and this isn’t real.”

4. “Everyone we know is happy with the status quo. If it doesn’t affect or concern them (or even if it does), they seem content to sweep it under the rug. We were very active in our church, along with our children, but this has caused us so much hurt, discouragement and disillusionment. I now have so many questions and concerns about things I’ve never questioned in my 41 years of being in Baptist churches.”

Autonomy doesn't trump kids' safety

2010-11-01T23:37:00.007-05:00

“Anytime an SBC minister commits abuse, the denomination carries some level of blame for not creating a system to deal with abuse.”

Those are the words of Rev. Timothy Bonney, written today on the BaptistLife forum. Bonney is now a pastor at a United Methodist Church, but he spent many prior years as a pastor with the American Baptist Churches USA. So, Bonney knows about Baptists.

The American Baptists are a much smaller Baptist group, but like all Baptists, local church autonomy is central to their polity. However, for American Baptists, autonomy doesn’t preclude a system for clergy accountability.

The Southern Baptist Convention may be a lot bigger, but they could sure take a lesson from the American Baptist Churches.

Kudos to Rev. Timothy Bonney for his clear, true words! Here they are in context:

“The SBC could do as the ABC has done and create a clergy registry which would allow them to recognize clergy or blackball offenders when necessary. They are the largest non-Catholic denomination in the U.S. They could do it. They just won't do it. And so anytime an SBC minister commits abuse, the denomination carries some level of blame for not creating a system to deal with abuse.

I know local church autonomy is a very high value belief for Baptists. But I have a hard time seeing local church autonomy trumping the safety of children and the overall well being of the church.”
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Related post with more words from Timothy Bonney and others: “Essence of the problem.”

See also "Iowa church illustrates low standards of Baptistland."