NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist Global News
Dec. 17, 2019
By Christa Brown
With its recent rollout of an online reporting process, the Southern Baptist Convention and its Credentials Committee have once again failed clergy sex abuse survivors and given them yet another reason to distrust the SBC as an institution.
As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse committed by an SBC pastor, I’ve been doing advocacy work related to Baptist clergy sex abuse for over 15 years. During this time, I’ve seen countless examples of institutional and individual betrayals and failures within the SBC, often accompanied by hollow words or duplicitous chicanery. So I’ve become a skeptic.
Over the past year I’ve seen many younger advocates and survivors in Baptist life also become skeptical.
While I whole-heartedly applaud their eyes-wide-open savvy and feel such gratitude for their energy and commitment, I also feel sorrow. When I began this work, I did so in the hope that younger people might be spared the re-traumatizing institutional recalcitrance that I had encountered. But tragically, the cycle seems to be repeating itself.
“The risks of such an unprotected process will almost certainly mean that many survivors will forego reporting.”
Like me, many of these younger survivors started out with some hope that they would be heard and that things would change. But in light of what they have seen at this year’s annual SBC meeting in Birmingham, the uncaring “Caring Well” conference, the ignoring of known survivors, the propping up of known enablers, the image-polishing PR tactics – and all without meaningful denominational action – many are becoming every bit as skeptical as me.
The SBC has effectively trained another generation to be rightfully wary of everything its leaders say about addressing the persistent problem of clergy sexual abuse.
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