HOUSTON (TX)
Chronicle
Dec. 20, 2019
By Robert Downen
He was well-aware of the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal and, during his 13-year tenure as pastor of Houston’s Memorial Church of Christ, helped guide the church as it adopted safeguards to protect children from sexual predators.
But the reports in the Houston Chronicle were different. They hit particularly close to home.
The series, Abuse of Faith, found that hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have been convicted or credibly accused of sex crimes in the last two decades. They left behind more than 700 victims, most of them children.
The structure of the SBC, a collective of 47,000 autonomous and self-governing churches, enabled predators to move undetected and stifled reforms to prevent abuse, the investigation found.
Duncan’s denomination has a similar organizational structure based on local church autonomy. And so, as the SBC’s abuse crisis came into public view, he came to a realization: No person or place is safe from predators.
“It made me sick,” Duncan said. “I just didn’t want to believe that it could be that rampant, that widespread.”
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