HOUSTON (TX)
Houston Chronicle
February 16, 2019
By John Tedesco and Robert Downen
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention vowed last week not to tolerate sexual abuse and to enact reforms after an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News revealed that more than 700 people had been molested by Southern Baptist pastors, church employees and volunteers over a span of two decades.
But the question remains: What will leaders of the largest coalition of Baptist churches in the United States actually do about the problem?
SBC President J.D. Greear, a North Carolina pastor, said he was “broken” by what he read in the newspapers. He hasn’t offered specific solutions, but he ordered a study of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches last summer and is expected to unveil proposals when SBC leaders meet in Nashville, Tenn., this coming week.
Other prominent SBC officials are calling for changes that include creating a registry of church employees and volunteers credibly accused of sexual misconduct and aggressively removing from the convention churches that knowingly hire predators.
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