Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting: Anti-Abuse Reforms Passed
ANAHEIM, Calif. — Southern Baptists on Tuesday approved a series of sex abuse reforms, including a way to track accused ministers, and elected a new president at one of the denomination’s most important annual meetings. for decades.
On the first official day of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting this week, voting delegates, known as messengers, chose Texas pastor Bart Barber to lead the SBC and voted for reforms aimed at prevent sexual abuse within the church.
Sexual abuse will be one of the biggest issues facing the nation’s largest Protestant denomination at its two-day annual meeting.
Guidepost Solutions, a third-party company, investigated the history of abuse reports and recommendations for reform from SBC executives, and presented its findings in a shocking report released in late May.
The Messengers on Tuesday voted in favor of two key abuse reform recommendations: a new abuse reform implementation task force and a “ministerial verification” database that tracks ministers credibly accused of abuses. sexual abuse.
The competitive presidential election, seen as an indicator of wider political divisions within the SBC, ended in a tight runoff on Tuesday night following the vote on abuse reforms. Barber beat Florida pastor Tom Ascol, getting 60.87% of the vote.
“We need a man who can guide us through the battleground of our disagreements to the common ground of our cooperation,” Matt Henslee, a South Texas Baptist pastor, said of Barber in a nomination speech.
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The set of recommendations on abuse reform, while important to the SBC, are the “bare minimum”, said Bruce Frank, chair of the SBC’s sexual abuse task force.
The task force oversaw Guidepost Solutions’ months-long investigation into two decades of SBC executives’ handling of reports of abuse and treatment of victims of abuse.
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“I beg of you, on behalf of survivors who love our convention and love our survivors, please let us begin the healing process today,” said Brad Eubank, an abuse survivor and pastor from Mississippi, during of the session.
The messengers voted after 40 minutes of deliberation with a few speakers opposing the measures. Several naysayers quoted a tweet posted by Guidepost last week to celebrate Pride month.
Other opponents felt the recommendations would run counter to the Southern Baptist belief in church autonomy.
“This is an assault on our political system,” messenger Mark Coppenger said.
But the majority of messengers felt the opposite. A sea of neon yellow ballots were raised in support of the recommendations.
Rachael Denhollander, an abuse survivor, lawyer and member of the task force, said at a press conference after the vote that she hopes that when survivors look back on this moment, “they see every ballot raised in the air and they know it was me believed.”
“My voice can now be heard because of what the generation before me did. I think the biggest benefit today is the tireless effort of these survivors: Debbie Vasquez, Tiffany Thigpen, Jules Woodson, Christa Brown, Dave Pittman,” Denhollander said.
In the press conference audience, survivors Woodson and Thigpen smiled and nodded, holding hands as Denhollander called their names.
“Because they didn’t give up, those ballots went up today,” Denhollander said.
After the recommendations were adopted, Woodson said she felt like she could “breathe” for the first time since stepping foot at the convention.
“I just feel like all eyes are on me and I don’t know who’s an ally or who’s against us,” she said. in support of the sexual abuse task force reforms was just incredibly empowering. I felt recognized and encouraged for the first time.
In the future, she hopes a change of culture in the SBC, which “does not happen overnight”.
But she is encouraged that there are steps in place with the appointment of the new task force.
“I think it’s a healthy step in a long process,” Woodson said.
The divisions are played out during the presidential vote
Intense political and social divisions among Southern Baptists were on display in Tuesday’s presidential election.
Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida and president of a Reform Baptist group, was backed by the more conservative wing of the SBC.
Often led by a group called the Conservative Baptist Network, the more conservative wing of the convention has rallied around a desire to combat what it sees as liberalism infiltrating the church through social justice, feminism, critical race theory, and other “woke” issues.
“To overcome the sin of racism, we don’t need worldly ideologies, we have a book,” said Georgian pastor Mike Stone in his nomination speech for Ascol, a rebuke of critical race theory.
Ascol has been a vocal opponent of what he sees as widespread adherence to critical race theory in the Nashville-based SBC and its seminars. He is also an abortion “abolitionist”, meaning he believes a woman who has an abortion should face criminal charges.
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Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, identifies as an “incrementalist,” or banning abortion through a step-by-step process.
Barber also disagreed with Ascol’s claims that “liberal drift” in the SBC was a serious problem in the church.
The two candidates condemned the sexual abuse crisis in the SBC following the publication of the Guidepost report.
While Ascol wanted to tackle abuses at the local level in an effort to preserve church autonomy, a key tenet of the SBC, Barber voiced support for some convention-wide measures aimed at tackling abuse, an approach widely supported by survivors of abuse.
Follow Liam Adams on Twitter @liamsadams.
USA Today
