UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press
By Bob Allen
A Southern Baptist Convention official criticized bloggers commenting on a recent criminal trial for jumping to conclusions about allegations that a popular Calvinist speaker with ties to SBC leaders conspired to withhold reporting of child sex abuse to police.
Joe Carter, director of communications for the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, chastised bloggers in Twitter exchanges for slander and trying to exploit a tragedy by intimating that C.J. Mahaney — a co-founder of Together for the Gospel with Southern Baptists Albert Mohler and Mark Dever — was aware of unreported sex crimes while serving as senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Md., during the 1980s and 1990s.
Mahaney’s brother-in-law, Grant Layman, longtime executive pastor at Covenant Life Church, testified under oath that he failed to report sexual abuse by Nathaniel Morales, convicted May 15 of sexually abusing three boys at the church from 1983 until 1981, to police.
Critics said the admission supports allegations in an earlier civil lawsuit alleging that leaders of Covenant Life and other congregations affiliated with Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting network started and formerly led by Mahaney, repeatedly responded to reports of sexual predation of children by teaching that no Christian should bring a brother to court but that the church should mediate through a process called church discipline.
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