Birmingham, Alabama, US
RNS
Southern Baptists, faced in recent months with hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse in its ranks, have overwhelmingly adopted changes to governing documents that will bring greater visibility to their desire to disaffiliate with churches that do not handle instances of abuse properly.
A new standing “credentials committee” also will consider whether churches are not “in friendly cooperation” for that and other reasons, including involvement in “discriminatory behavior on the basis of ethnicity”.
Messengers vote in favor on the amendment of SBC Constitution Article III, Section 1, on sexual abuse during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, on 11th June, 2019, in Birmingham, Alabama. PICTURE: Butch Dill/RNS
Delegates, called messengers, also voted on Tuesday at their annual meeting to amend the constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention so that it will make explicit that churches that mishandle cases of abuse or racial discrimination are not welcome.
“I believe this is a very, very significant moment in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention,” said new SBC executive committee President Ronnie Floyd.
He said the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has “given a clear signal not only about what we believe about sexual abuse, but we also stand against all ethnic discrimination in the United States and around the world”.
The constitutional amendments will need to be considered a second time at next year’s annual meeting before they can become official.
Moments after the votes, about 50 abuse victim advocates and media members attended a rally outside the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex where speakers declared that what Southern Baptists accomplished inside was not sufficient.
Cheryl Summers, the organiser of the second annual For Such A Time As This Rally, said much has happened in the past year to address abuse in the SBC. She noted a new report from a sexual abuse advisory group commissioned by SBC President JD Greear and new training, including a video series and a handbook on a “caring well” theme, released last week.
She credited the work of activists and victims of abuse for prompting the denomination to act.
“People stood up and spoke up,” said Summers. “What we are doing matters. It is making a difference, so keep standing up. Keep speaking up. We will continue to speak for those who imagine they are the only ones living a private nightmare.”
Still, she said, there is much more to be done.
She and other advocates would like the SBC to develop a database documenting convicted and credibly accused abusers and to provide mandatory training to help clergy and seminary students recognise and address abuse.
In February, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News published a joint investigation of sexual misconduct allegations against about 380 current and former Southern Baptist ministers and volunteers. In late May, the Chronicle detailed allegations of cover-ups of abuse by five male missionaries.
Sex abuse has dominated many of the discussions at events that have occurred around the SBC meeting.
Its Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission hosted a discussion on Monday in which survivors addressed how churches need to respect and assist survivors and report abuse allegations to authorities.
Matt Chandler, left, answers questions posed by Nate Akin during the Baptist 21 luncheon held during a break in the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham, Alabama, on 11th June. PICTURE: Adelle M Banks/RNS.
Meanwhile, in other news from the annual meeting, Matt Chandler, pastor of a Texas megachurch whose former youth minister has been charged with sexual molestation, addressed the scandal before a group of Southern Baptists and said his “imperfect church” takes abuse allegations seriously.
The church’s handling of the alleged abuse, which Chandler said occurred at a church camp more than six years ago, was the subject of a New York Times story this week. Chandler addressed the matter on Tuesday during a meeting of Baptist21, a group that held a luncheon between sessions on the first day of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual two-day meeting.
Chandler, pastor of the Village Church, listed some of the actions his church took after hearing from a church family in early 2018 that their daughter was molested.
“In September of 2018, we had a meeting with all of the parents [of children] that we could find that were at that camp six years ago,” said Chandler, adding that the police detective investigating the allegations was present at the meeting.
“I was dealing with it, not just as a pastor but as a dad,” Chandler said. “My oldest daughter was a cabin away from where this incident – this alleged incident – took place. We called a meeting with all the parents that we knew and could find.”
In January, Matt Tonne, a former associate children’s pastor, was indicted by a Dallas County grand jury on a charge of indecency with a child involving sexual contact.
Chandler said that Tonne, who was a family friend, had been fired from the church in 2018 because he had been repeatedly drunk, a violation of church rules. At the time, Chandler told the gathering in Birmingham, Tonne had not been charged with abuse. As soon as church officials became aware, Chandler said, they shared that information on the church website and with the congregation.
He noted that the church had been criticized for not releasing the name of the alleged perpetrator sooner than it did. Chandler said he was following the advice of law enforcement in not naming Tonne.
“The detective asked us not to mention his name for fear that it might obstruct the investigation,” Chandler said.
Chandler noted that the church posted information about the indictment when it was made public. Tonne has denied the allegations against him.
The family, according to The New York Times, questioned some of the church’s handling of announcements about Tonne. Chandler said an elder from the campus of the megachurch where the family attended was in touch with the family regularly and that communication continued as recently as last week.
“We just did the best we knew how to care for them,” Chandler said. “These issues are far more complex than one would imagine.”
But he said he is still trying to learn from the experience.
“I’m still in introspective mode about what I might have done differently, about how we might have approached this differently,” he said.
Chandler also admitted that the church has been accused of failing to care for a victim of abuse in the past. In 2015, he and other church leaders apologised to a former church member named Karen Hinkley, whose former husband had been fired as a missionary for allegedly viewing child pornography. When Hinkley sought to annul her marriage, church leaders threatened her with church discipline – an action they later referred to as un-Christian.
Just as he did last year when he addressed the issue of churches handling abuse at the Baptist21 group’s meeting, Chandler continued to say it was important for churches to get outside counsel, as his church did.
“We’re just not experts in this,” he said. “I was not trained in any of this.”
The Village Church, based in Flower Mound, Texas, is part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Ari Isaacman Bevacqua, director of communications for The New York Times, told RNS that the paper stands by its story.
