What Now?

With the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News investigative series concluded, the question now is "what now?"  How does the Southern Baptist Convention and churches under its banner proceed?  And how do its members as individuals proceed?

The Houston Chronicle has provided two supporting articles, covering how churches proceed to prevent sexual misconduct and how churches and parents proceed in protecting their children and youth from predatory youth ministers and volunteers.  Much of the information the articles is very straightforward.  Create and maintain the registry to track offense and offenders.  More in-depth hiring practices and background checks.  Education and training on sexual assault, sexual predators, grooming, and prevention.

For parents, the directives are similarly straightforward.  Education on the problem.  Preventing any direct contact between youth and an adult youth minister.  In other words, no one-on-one communication via phone or computer between a youth and a youth leader.  Too much opportunity for abuse.  Further, the reminder is to act on troubling information.  To trust your children's instinct regarding those who make them uncomfortable.

Thankfully, the response from the Southern Baptist Convention has been appropriate.  The current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greear, tweeted the following.

As a denomination, now is a time to mourn and repent. Changes are coming. They must. We cannot just promise to “do better” and expect that to be enough. But today, change begins with feeling the full weight of the problem. 9/9

— J.D. Greear (@jdgreear) February 10, 2019

 Hopefully the action will match the statements.

And if it needs to be reiterated why this is so important, it bears repeating.

• Every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted.
• And every 8 minutes, that victim is a child.
• 1 in 6 women have been sexually assaulted or raped.
• 3% of men have experienced sexual assault or rape (likely higher due to under reporting).
• An average of 63,000 children a year are victims of sexual assault.
• 9 out of every 10 rape victims are female.
• 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators will actually see prison.
• About 2 out of 3 sexual assaults go unreported.
• 7 out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.

If that statistic holds true with the Southern Baptist scandal, then the number is closer to 2,100 victims over 20 years instead of 700.  From general statistics of those who were assaulted and did not report, but offered a reason for not reporting

• 13% believed the police would not do anything to help
• 13% believed it was a personal matter
• 8% believed it was not important enough to report
• 7% did not want to get the perpetrator in trouble

While the most common reason was a fear of retaliation, the list of reasons above represent 41% that either did not believe anyone would help or did not want to trouble the perpetrator.  Because sadly, the perpetrator is most often someone they know and someone they think would be more believable than them.

Someone everyone else would think is a "good person."  Like the pastor, or the youth minister.  The "church man."

That's what we have to combat.

For churches looking for a place to start, consider Ministry Safe.

If you have been a victim of sexual assault or need to talk to someone regarding sexual assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is 800.656.HOPE (4673).  This is connected with RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network.  They also provide a list of local service providers for counselling and assistance.

The time for silence is over.  We can no longer turn a blind eye.  We can't pass the buck.

It's up to us.

More Than 100 Youth Pastors Charged

The third and concluding article in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News investigative series into the Southern Baptist Convention sexual abuse scandal has been posted.  And today's article centers on perhaps the most difficult part of the scandal.  The sexual abuse of children in the church.

The article focuses on the abuses perpetrated by youth pastors and youth ministers.  And the statistics are staggering.

More than 100 former youth pastors or youth ministers are now in prison, are registered as sex offenders or have been charged with sex crimes, the newspaper found.  To put that in context from the first article in the series, former youth pastors and ministers account for nearly half of the convicted abusers identified through the investigation.  And, as discussed previously, we can assume that number represents a small portion of the total number of perpetrators, both reported and unreported.

While the most common targets were teenagers, smaller children were also molested, sometimes in pastor's studies and in Sunday school rooms.

That's a horrifying sentence to type.

"You can't let your guard down," said Amanda Griffith, a federal prosecutor in San Diego who has handled dozens of sex crime cases, including those involving predatory youth pastors. "There's the belief that church is sacrosanct, but this can happen anywhere."

This is the part that falls on us.  The part that's hard and uncomfortable.  The reminder to start having conversations about appropriate touching and "swimsuit areas" with children as soon as you can understand them and they can understand you.  And it's way earlier than we might like to think.  The reason we don't keep "secrets" with Avalyn, we keep "surprises."  Because secrets hurt and are intended to stay hidden. Surprises are supposed to bring joy and are designed to be revealed at some point.  The reason Avalyn knows correct names for her anatomy, so she can appropriately discuss it.  The part where we trust her instincts when she is uncomfortable around people.  And why we'll do all of the above with Jude as well.

Why we're appreciative of the background check process our church and Avalyn's daycare goes through for anyone who is connected with the children.

And while we're appreciative, why we're also not completely reliant on it, because we know what can slip through the cracks.  Because of how often these are covered up and passed on.

One of the key offenders discussed in the article is Chad Foster, a former youth pastor at Second Baptist Church in Houston.  His career as a youth pastor ended in 2013 with guilty pleas to three counts of sexual assault of a child and two of online solicitation of a minor.  Not yet 30, he was a fairly new Christian when hired with a history of hard drinking.  He lacked any formal training in how to teach or counsel adolescents in his youth group, but had been given the advice to "become friends" and "become popular" and let the parents know if children were actively suicidal.

Foster is just one example.  There are many others like him across the country.  Youth pastors who have little oversight or formal training and who use their position to groom and sexually abuse the children of their flock.

Second Baptist quietly fired him in 2010 after receiving complaints about lying and other inappropriate behavior.  Church leaders did not inform youth group members or parents that Foster had been fired or why.  Nor did they tell leaders of another church, the Community of Faith Church in Cypress, a non-SBC church that hired Foster to run its youth group.  Instead, they gave Foster a "great reference."  Second Baptist's statement remains that Foster was fired for other reasons and that they did not know of the sexual allegations until after he was fired.

This is the pattern we've seen in the articles and in the individual cases.  Southern Baptist churches are the nation's largest Protestant group, but they lack common hiring protocols or standard pastor training programs. They do not have uniform policies for sharing information about pastors fired or convicted of inappropriate sexual behavior, sexual abuse or assault — the kind of transparency that could protect churches and their congregants from sexual predators.

So parents, be vigilant.  Prepare your children.  Talk to them, early and often.  Seek out resources on how to discuss and approach these hard topics.  And listen when they say they are uncomfortable.  Look to get to the bottom of the reason.

Until there are better measures in place, and until long after they are established and routine.

And then even beyond that.

The Doctrine of Personal Infallibility

The second article in the Houston Chronicle investigation into sexual abuse and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention has been posted.  It's another harrowing read, this time delving more specifically into the pattern of predators being able to move between churches and continue the pattern of abuse.

One recurring refrain comes from the predators who refuse to acknowledge they did anything wrong and the congregations who similarly swayed.  The ability to be deceived to the point of ignoring warning signs. Or to turn a blind eye to consequences and allow a quiet and quick exit once the "impropriety" can no longer be ignored.

In my opinion, part of this problem comes from the obsession with being "right" and not being wrong that runs deep in our society and in the church, particularly within Evangelical denominations.  To go to the "right" church, with the "right" people, who believe the "right" doctrine and the "right" programs, with no room for doubt or questioning.

This obsession in and of itself is dangerous.  It's another adventure in missing the point.  Even at its most benign, it's the pharisee asking "who is our neighbor" or asking how many times to turn our cheeks.

The focus on being "right" is one of the most detrimental instincts in the church.  It is at the root at a number of church splits that we have seen, preventing God's universal Church from getting along with each other.    It's what puts doctrine over discipleship.   It's why the Calvinist and the Arminian cannot partake in the sacraments together despite little practical difference in their implementation in their adherents' lives. It's why Baptist have closed communions or why we'll fight over the type or importance of baptism.  While those are worthwhile discussions to have regarding identifying what you believe and why, and understanding the scriptural basis, it's something far different when it becomes the basis for exclusion from Christian fellowship or as the basis for decrying another group as heretical.

Far worse, any number of horrors can be justified under the banner of being "right."  The Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the propagation of the "curse of Ham" doctrine were all believed to be "right" and scriptural by their specific generation.  We can look back on them now and shudder, identifying them to be the twisted and mangled interpretations of scripture that they are, but that is cold comfort to those affected by their practice.

In a recent Patheos blog article, James F. McGrath discusses a variation on this idea.  He looks at a statement that his Facebook friend, Lars Cade made regarding a variation on the doctrine of papal infallibility.  Papal infallibility is the Catholic doctrine that states that the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error "when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church."  Put simply, it is the idea that the Pope can never be "wrong" regarding Catholic doctrine.  Even the possibility of him being wrong is impossible.  Cade takes this doctrine a step further.  Into the Doctrine of Personal Infallibility.

"I often look at it as the unspoken doctrine of personal infallibility.  Many Christians think something like this: 'The Bible is True.  I believe the Bible.  Therefore, everything I believe is true.'

... With such a mentality, it simply does not occur to people that they may be wrong."

A broken syllogism that allows us to uphold our beliefs and customs through the guise of agreement with the scriptures. A byproduct of selling the Bible as a book that has an answer for every situation, hammering everything into black and white scenarios, instead of admitting that the Bible often raises more questions than answers.  That it can be tough to reconcile and can be a struggle to read and comprehend.  That there will be times and situations where there is no clear answer, that God is silent.  And that we should be seeking the Author who gives us wisdom and knowledge instead of treating His book only as an answer sheet.

McGrath would sum this phenomenon like this, "Is this your experience of what is at work in fundamentalism - that the reason for being concerned to defend the authority of the Bible is ultimately to defend the rightness of one's own views and those of one's community?  To be sure, the claim is always that it is one's own beliefs that are being conformed to the Bible rather than vice versa.  But that only works because, despite all the praise heaped on the Bible and its importance, the average conservative Christian does not know the Bible well enough to appreciate its diversity, reads it in a translation that hides discrepancies and differences from them, and knows only (or at least knows best) those parts that can be interpreted as supporting their stance."

We can see the doctrine of personal infallibility in the sexual abuse scandal and in its cover up.

The Chronicle released a video to accompany the series entitled The Abuse of Faith.  The Destruction of Innocence.  It's a disturbing video, but necessary.  It balances the video testimony of a seven year old girl, with prison interviews of convicted pastors, deacons, and volunteers, including an interview with her assailant.  I couldn't really hold it together when hearing her answer to the question who had seen or touched her private areas - "The church man," which was compounded with the descriptions provided from his testimony and interview regarding the "reasons" for his "temptation" and actions.

It devolves from there, as the assailant, Steven Livingston, a former deacon and volunteer, tries to paint himself as a victim in the end of his interview.  "All I did was touch and that was it.  She wasn't going to tell anybody.  She wasn't going to.  I'm the one that told the detective.  Stupid me.  It didn't matter that I had brought 400 or 500 people to a saving faith, or that I worked in the church for so many years.  I went through three churches, three churches and never had any complaints.  No complaints at all.  But in this one community, in 2007, things began to go wrong.  I just feel like I was the victim.  Is that fair?"

Personal infallibility.  To Livingston, he did so many other "right" things.  Surely that allows him to downplay this incident, right?

Dee Parsons, of  the Wartburg Watch has been documenting disturbing trends in the church, including sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and churches, since 2009.  She wrote in her reflections on the Chronicle article, "Most predators are not interested in learning that they have done something horrible because they don't believe that they did anything wrong."

And they are able to con others into believing it as well.  "Sexual predators don't "groom" only their victims to gain their trust.  They groom everyone around them so no one suspects a thing."  Wayne Spring, Medina County Investigator and father of one of the victims of John McCay at First Baptist Church in Hondo, Texas.   "They don't want to ever believe that they were manipulated into this thing.  Some of them don't ever get over it."

In his investigation, he found that in Hondo and the area, no one would say anything bad about McCay.  But when they left Hondo and went to other locations where McCay had served, the story changed.  "Once we started going into his past we started finding people that would tell us what he was like."  Often, the first question he would get when he asked someone from a previous location was "What did he do now?"

"That's the thing about sex offenders, they thrive on trust."  Scott Holden, Assistant District Attorney of Anderson County.  And in a position that is placed often in the highest trust that people hold, we see it can provide ample opportunity for a predator to thrive.  The Chronicle article has a map of several of the offenders who were able to move churches and congregations.  Some were suspected of misconduct but were allowed to leave quietly and work elsewhere.  Others had been arrested, had criminal records or even had to register as sex offenders but later found jobs at Baptist churches.  That's right, registered sex offenders were hired despite that information being known and or publicly available.  One church even went as far as barring children from the worship services where he was preaching due to the terms of his probation not allowing him around children.

It's infuriating that we seemingly have not and cannot do anything about this because of our "autonomy."  Parsons puts it, "SBC churches that have hired female pastors get booted .  We know that hell would rain down on any church which hired an LGBT affirming pastor.  But kicking out a church which has covered up for a known predator is impossible.  Why?"  For examples of the female pastor issue see the articles here, here, and here.  And for the LGBT issues, see articles here, here, and here.  Just a few examples.  But they beg the question Parsons raised - why can't we kick out and make examples of churches that cover up for known sexual predators?  That hire convicted sex offenders? That deliberately do not report abuse within their church, to maintain the churches reputation?

Are female pastors and LGBT inclusion that much more "wrong," to where we have to plant our flag and make sure people know we're on the "right" side of those issues?  Or are they that much more politically expedient?

Do we really fear the damage to our reputation so much that we'd rather be seen as clean than to actually do the job of fighting for the oppressed and abused and have that be our reputation?

Is the pastor shortage so deep that we are really willing to turn a blind eye to such serious faults just to have someone in the leadership role?  If so, that's a failing on the Church as a whole for its members not stepping up and being committed to the specific mission that God has for each of us.

Do we really think that forgiveness means a complete removal of consequences and a complete restoration as if nothing ever happened?  Do we think that it's un-Christian to say that such an offender should not ever be in such a position of high trust ever again?

Is this some form of patriarchy and misogyny, since most of the perpetrators are male and the victims female and children?  Or is there some code of secrecy between leaders in the church that is fostering this? In listening to a discussion on the Catholic cover up scandal, a culture of secrecy was discussed.  How every priest may have a secret that they didn't want out, though the levels of the secret were not all the same.  For one, the secret and shame might be the molestation of boys in their charge. For another, it might just be a mutually consensual sexual relationship with an unmarried woman.  Because both are forbidden (though not to the same degree), the secrets were a bit of mutually assured destruction.  If a priest threatened to reveal the abuse, then the abuser might threaten to reveal the other's sexual relationship, and so on and so forth, leading to the expulsion of both.  All secrets then were kept then essentially for self-preservation.

I'm really struggling to understand why our collective response has been a shrug and a sweep under the rug and I'm not really coming up with any justification.

We've got to start valuing being holy over being "right" and understanding the value of admitting "we don't know".  Of seeking wisdom together.

We have to be more concerned about actually fighting abuse and oppression even internally, instead of being concerned with being perceived as a Church that is squeaky clean and put together.

We have to stop misusing forgiveness to perpetuate a cycle of abuse.

We have to encourage transparency and openness.  To demystify the pastor and remind everyone in the church of their humanity.  Their fallibility.

Pastor search committees have to start including criminal background checks and sex offender registry checks as part of their selection process.

We have to create the database of known convicted offenders and those with credible allegations against them.  Ideally maintained by a neutral third party and paid for by the Southern Baptist Convention to prevent undue influence or tampering.

And that's just the minimum.  That's the start.

We have a long way to go.

"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.  What will you do on the day of reckoning when disaster comes from afar?  To whom will you run for help?  Where will you leave your riches?"

Isaiah 10:1-3

20 years, 700 victims

The blog title comes from part a headline released over the weekend regarding a sweeping investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News into years of sexual abuse perpetrated by hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders.  The victims were as young as three years old.

According to reports, there were approximately 380 church leaders and volunteers implicated in sexual misconduct allegations over the past twenty years. Their positions ranged from pastor, minister, youth pastor, Sunday school teacher, deacon, and volunteer.  Of those 380, only around 220 were convicted or took plea deals.  Nearly 100 are still held in prisons.  Many others cut deals and served no time.  Over 100 are registered sex offenders.

The report was able to document that at least 35 perpetrators who exhibited predatory behavior were still able to find jobs at churches during the past two decades.  Some of the registered sex offenders returned to the pulpit, including allowing an offender who assaulted a teenager to still work with a nonprofit that works with student organizations.

Several of the past presidents and leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are among those criticized by victims for concealing or mishandling the abuse complaints within their own churches or seminaries.  And that's the best case scenario.  In many others, the leadership encouraged victims not to report and to even forgive their assailants.  Others have been heard joking at the victim's expense.   I've already written about some of the horrible misogyny and victim shaming and blaming that was raised in light of the #MeToo movement.

In the abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic church, the hierarchy was identified as a contributing part of the cover up, at least in the eyes of Protestants.  It's the celibacy, it's the church hierarchy and power, it's the seclusion, etc. etc. etc.  The unique features of the Catholic Church were pointed to as examples of why this could not happen in Protestant denominations.  Why it could not happen in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And yet, here we are.  A place that far too many people already knew we were at.  With coverups that go back decades before this current investigation could even imagine.  As Albert Mohler has put it in his entry The Wrath of God Poured Out - The Humiliation of the Southern Baptist Convention, from May 23, 2018, "our humiliation comes as a result of an unorganized conspiracy of silence.  Sadly, the unorganized nature of our problem may make recovery and correction even more difficult and the silence even more dangerous."

Mohler is partly true.  The generally autonomous nature of Southern Baptist Churches makes this into hundreds of individual cover ups and scandals.  Where he errs, is that there have been pushes at the larger Convention level to address this problem that have been ignored.  In 2007, victims of sexual abuse requested creation of a registry containing the names of current and former leaders of Southern Baptist Churches who had been convicted of sex crimes or who had been credibly accused.  It was denied.  It was left up to the local churches to be "more aggressively vigilant." The last time such a list was made available was the list by the Baptist General Convention of Texas containing eight names.

Victims and protesters again lobbied in 2018 for the registry and for mandatory training on domestic abuse and sexual assault for pastors and seminaries.  A resolutions was approved, but the resolution was a nonbinding statement, leaving the individual decision up to local church leaders.

The saddest part of this entire investigative series is that we all know this only covers those cases that were reported.  We all know there are untold multiples of the victims that never raised their voices.  That there are likely ministers, elders, and volunteers that are still serving today because they have never been caught.  That there are leaders who have convinced victims not to report because of the bad light it would bring on the church.  That there are churches that have said nothing when a pastor-search committee called because they were glad to be rid of that problem.  That there are known offenders who have been brought back into ministry because of some misguided notion of forgiveness and repentance should work.

Our church is currently in a series called Church Reimagined.  Yesterday, our pastor called for a second reformation.  He argued the first reformation was about getting the Word of God away from the leadership exclusively and to all people of God.  This second he argued was about getting the Work of God away from the leadership and out to all people of God.  A continual movement demystifying what the pastor or leader does and recognizing a truth of our faith.  We're all ministers and we all have flocks.  Some just have larger ones than others.

I think we need this second reformation as well, to address these scandals in the church.

The first reformation removed the leadership from having a perceived control over your soul and a real control over the knowledge of God that you had.  We see this as part of why the urge to protect the priesthood was so high.  If the priesthood was fallible, then several things fall apart.  Therefore the priesthood must be protected at all costs.  Or so the misguided thinking went.

The first reformation freed us in that it allowed each of us access to God's word and ultimately put our eternal outcome back in God's hands alone.  Without that control, it allows us to see the individual that is leading us and not the power of the "church."

We have a similar notion in Protestant churches that must be dismissed as well.  The idea that the pastor is holier than us, more special than us, more gifted than us.  That the pastor is called to God's work, which makes him unique.   That gets twisted in several ways, including into the idea that the pastor's work must be protected at all costs.  If the pastor is the one doing God's work, then he must be allowed to continue. After all, who else would do it - or so the misguided thinking would go again. I've even heard ludicrous statements like the pastor being subject to God's laws alone and not earthly authorities like the police.

We need the second reformation to really remind us that our pastors are human, just like us.  They are ministers, just like us.  They have a mission, just like us.  And they are going to fall, just like us.

When they fall so egregiously as has been outlined in the investigation and reports, they must be held accountable.  They must be reported to the proper authorities.  And that's just not the church.  That's the police.

Because, as we are seeing, the cover-up done in the name of "protecting the church" only ends up hurting the Church.  We know this, deep down.  Covering up sin only allows it to fester.  But we can also see this in a real way.  About 27 percent of former Catholics who no longer identify with a religion cited the clergy sex abuse scandal as a reason for leaving the church.  Among former Catholics who now identify as Protestant, 21 percent say the sexual abuse scandals were a reason for the change.

"The scandals make it difficult or even impossible to pass the faith on to our kids...I think about it every hour."  Paul Elie, a writer who lectures at Georgetown University's Berkley Center on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal.

We've got to do better.  Whatever form that takes, we have to do better.  For the 700 victims who spoke up.  And the thousands we know that never will.