Church Leaves Southern Baptist Convention after Abuse Allegation

By Robert Downen
Houston Chronicle
November 7, 2019

houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Church-leaves-Southern-Baptist-Convention-after-14818751.php

Debbie Vasquez holds a photographer of herself at age 14. Vasquez says she was raped by a Southern Baptist pastor as a teenager. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)Photo: Donna McWilliam, STF / AP

A Texas church led by a pastor accused of sexually abusing and impregnating a teenager has left the Southern Baptist Convention, a spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Bolivar Baptist Church in Sanger, Texas, north of Denton, is the latest to end its affiliation with the convention after being named in a Houston Chronicle investigation into widespread sex abuses within the faith group.

For years, Bolivar Baptist has been pastored by Dale “Dickie” Amyx, who could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Debbie Vasquez has accused Amyx of sexually assaulting her starting at age 14. She became pregnant at 18. Amyx admitted in a court filing that he fathered a child with Vasquez decades ago, but has maintained that she was a consenting adult at the time and that he never had sex with her when she was underage.

Vasquez’s abuse claims are outside of Texas’ statute of limitations. But she said she believes Amyx will one day be punished.

“He’s going to have to answer to God,” she said. “That’s fine with me. I just don’t want him anywhere near me.”

Vasquez has for years begged Southern Baptist leaders to revoke Bolivar Baptist’s membership and adopt policies that would prevent sexual abuses in the SBC’s 47,000 churches.

Her attempts at reform in 2008 were profiled in an ongoing Chronicle investigation, Abuse of Faith, that found roughly 400 SBC church leaders and volunteers have been credibly accused of sex crimes or misconduct in the last 20 years.

At least 250 of those cases came after 2008, when SBC leaders declined to implement some of the reforms Vasquez sought.

After the Chronicle’s report, current SBC President J.D. Greear said Bolivar and nine other churches — including Houston’s massively influential Second Baptist Church — should be scrutinized over their handling of abuses and potentially removed from the broader SBC.

Though Amy’x alleged assaults predated his time at Bolivar, the church was made aware of them in 2006 but continued to let him lead.

“They knew that he wasn't a sexual predator,” Amyx’s wife told Baptist Press earlier this year. “Our church is not hiding anything.”

Days after Greear’s request, a workgroup announced that seven of the churches merited “no further inquiry” — an announcement that was met with fury by abuse survivors, advocates and many SBC pastors or leaders.

Among those cleared by the committee was a rural Georgia church that retained a minister despite his confession to sexually abusing a boy. The man has since been fired.

Bolivar Baptist was one of three congregations that the workgroup said needed to face more scrutiny. Also included on that list: Houston’s Cathedral of Faith, which was pastored by a convicted sex offender; and Sovereign Grace, a Kentucky megachurch whose pastor was at the center of a recent and massive sex abuse scandal.

Cathedral of Faith’s affiliation with the SBC was ended earlier this year.

Sovereign Grace remains a member of the SBC, though top leaders have in recent months apologized for supporting the congregation and said it’s leaders have mishandled abuse complaints.

Unlike in the Catholic Church, SBC leaders don’t have the ability to dictate the affairs of any of the SBC’s autonomous and self-governing churches. In the wake of the Chronicle’s report, however, the SBC created a committee that can make “inquiries” into churches over complaints about their handling of abuses and, depending on the findings, suggest the church be stripped of its SBC affiliation.

Survivors and advocates have said that the new committee is a good step, but have called for a third-party database of abusive pastors that churches could check during hiring processes. The Chronicle’s found that the SBC’s loose structure allowed dozens of predatory pastors to find jobs at new congregations, sometimes tragic ends.

Multiple, prominent Southern Baptist leaders have recently expressed support for a similar idea, but say it’s complicated by the structure of the SBC.

Leaders said the same a decade ago, when Vasquez asked that they pursue the database idea. She reiterated that desire on Wednesday, saying it was heartbreaking to know that Amyx was allowed to lead a Southern Baptist church despite the fact that she warned top leaders about him.

“Stop letting these guys go church to church,” she said. “Someone should have stopped him. In the Bible it says you can’t be in the ministry if you are guilty of sexual abuse. It’s in the Bible, but yet they keep doing it.”