WASHINGTON (DC)
Christian Post
February 10, 2019
By Napp Nazworth
Southern Baptist leaders are thanking God and promising change in response to a Houston Chronicle report spotlighting sexual abuse in its churches.
“The voices in this article should be heard as a warning sent from God, calling the church to repent,” Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear wrote in response to the report on Twitter.
“This is a scandal crying out to heaven,” wrote Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethic & Religious Liberty Commission, in a blog post. “The church’s message to survivors should be a clear communication that they are those who have been sinned against, not those who have sinned, that they are not troublemakers in the church but those who are helping the real ‘trouble’ to come to light.”
The Houston Chronicle’s Sunday report, the first in a three-part series, found over 700 victims of alleged sexual abuse by 380 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers since 1998. 220 have been convicted. 100 are still in prison.
More disturbing still, many of the victims accused other Southern Baptist leaders, including past presidents, of concealing the abuse. Some of those who were accused of sexual abuse and left their congregations were able to find jobs in other Southern Baptist churches. Many of the victims were kids when the abuse occurred, as young as 3.
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