UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
A victims’ advocate says there is a glaring omission at this week’s summit for Southern Baptist pastors on sexual issues — any mention on the program about the church’s response to sexual abuse.
Amy Smith, a lifelong Southern Baptist who works with Catholics and people from other denominations in an advocacy organization called the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, found the subject “noticeably absent” among topics being covered in the April 21-23 “leadership summit” sponsored by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
“How can a summit on ‘The Gospel and Human Sexuality’ not include a topic on the pervasive, devastating, destructive issue of sexual abuse?” Smith asked April 22. “Sexual abuse ravages the lives and souls of people that we hope that churches would be trying to minister to, yet the ERLC doesn’t devote a session, or even a breakout session or panel, to cover how pastors and churches should properly respond to abuse allegations to pursue justice, heal the wounded and protect kids in their midst.”
Leaders of SNAP, a support-and-advocacy group begun in response to the abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church a decade ago, have questioned the inclusion on the summit program of a Mississippi Baptist pastor whose church was at the center of controversy about its long-time music minister who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse of multiple boys committed decades earlier.
Greg Belser, pastor of Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, Miss., agreed with other members of a panel at the ERLC summit discussing “The Gospel and Homosexuality” that the time has come for pastors to get rid of “redneck theology” — repeating clichés and claims about sexual orientation that aren’t backed up by the facts.
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