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Towering Baptist Figure Wants to Lead SBC Amid Strife, Sex Abuse Crisis

By Robert Downen
Houston Chronicle
November 2, 2019

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Towering-Baptist-figure-wants-to-lead-SBC-amid-14803730.php



One of America’s most prominent evangelical figures is running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, hoping to lead the nation’s second-largest faith group as it continues to grapple with a high-profile sex abuse crisis, longstanding race issues and questions over the role of women in churches.

Rev. Albert Mohler, the longtime president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said Thursday that he’d like to lead the faith group once current president J.D. Greear’s second term ends in June. SBC presidents are term-limited, and are elected each year by thousands of delegates at the faith group’s annual meeting in June.

If elected, Mohler would take the SBC’s helm at a time of increasing divide over race and gender issues, as well as the sex abuse crisis that’s been detailed in an ongoing Houston Chronicle investigation. The investigation, Abuse of Faith, found that hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have been convicted of sex crimes in the last two decades. They had more than 700 victims, most of them children.

The Florida pastor who nominated Mohler, leader the SBC’s flagship seminary since 1993, said he is “the statesman leader we need at this precise moment.”

“At this hour, it’s crucial that Southern Baptists come together,” said H.B. Charles, the pastor of a historically African American congregation in Jacksonville, Fla. “We need the conviction to stand boldly for Christ. We need the zeal to mobilize our resources to spread the gospel. We must do so together.”

Mohler, 60, issued a strong warning last year that the “wrath of God” was awaiting the SBC for its handling of abuse allegations. Since then, he’s been increasingly vocal and has backed two victims who recently came forward regarding abuses by former students or employees of his seminary.

“My heart has been broken by coming face to face with the reality of just how devastating sexual abuse is, and frankly how hidden it can be for so long,” he said Friday.

Yet some survivors of sex abuse said they had little confidence in Mohler. They pointed to his years of support of a church network that was accused of concealing abuses. The specifically cited his backing of C.J. Mahaney, whose church network Sovereign Grace was accused of concealing numerous sexual abuses in recent years. Mohler has since apologized, but that did not satisfy some critics.

His rhetoric is reminiscent of his predecessor’s, many of whom did not deliver on reforms, said Christa Brown, who raised alarms about abuses years ago and faced backlash from leaders.

“It’s not just enough to say you care,” Brown said. “There has to be action.”

SBC presidents don’t have the authority to institute sweeping reforms in any of the 47,000 local churches that voluntarily cooperate with one another. They are constrained by SBC’s structure, which is based on the belief that every church is autonomous and self-governing. Earlier this year, the convention approved measures that would make it easier to oust bad-acting churches, but the SBC’s president does not have the authority to institute sweeping reforms the way Catholic leaders can.

But what presidents make focal points of their tenure can reverberate across the faith group and broader evangelical world. The presidency of Greear, a 47-year-old North Carolina pastor, was largely focused on sex abuses that’ve been detailed in an ongoing Chronicle investigation.

Mohler applauded Greear’s leadership on Friday. He also declined to go into detail on some of the reforms he’d like to pursue if elected, saying it’d be unfair to Greear, whose presidency doesn’t end until June.

Mohler said the SBC can -- and should -- do more to track predators who’ve worked in affiliated churches. He also stressed the SBC’s need to reconcile past failures to address abuse or care for the “courageous” survivors who come forward afterward.

“Clearly, we have a moral responsibility to review our denomination’s past and, where there have been failures, to deal with these questions,” he said.

Some survivors said they were concerned that Mohler, who is friends with many prominent SBC figures, would be unwilling to criticize people in the so-called “good old boys club” that critics say has protected prominent people from scrutiny.

Mohler has “so much connection to the same old, same old,” said Tiffany Thigpen, who has been raising the alarm about SBC abuses for decades. “It’s time for something different.”

Yet Mohler’s established reputation and connections may actually prove useful, said Terry Mattingly, a senior fellow for media and religion at King’s College in New York City.

“This is not a guy given to flights of random rhetoric,” Mattingly said. “He is who he is. These issues of personal ethics and behavior are important to him.”

Mohler has established himself as a conservative theologian and a “one-man intellectual brain trust,” Mattingly said.

If elected, Mohler also will have to contend with the reelection campaign of President Donald Trump, whose presidency has caused controversy within the SBC. Mohler previously excoriated Trump’s campaign as an “immediate and excruciating crisis” for evangelicals, calling him a “sexual predator” after tapes surfaced of the president bragging about assaulting women.

Months after Mohler’s remarks , more than 100 churches threatened to withhold donations to the SBC’s public policy arm after its leader, Russell Moore, decried Trump in language that was soft compared to Mohler’s.

Yet Mohler told the Chronicle that he is confident that the SBC’s increasingly bickering factions can unite under a common, Gospel vision.

“I’m actually very confident that Southern Baptists are up to dealing with these internal issues prayerfully and faithfully and calmly,” he said Friday. “Calm is a good thing.”

Contact: robert.downen@chron.com

 

 

 

 

 




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