KNOXVILLE (TN)
Knoxville News
April 6, 2019
By Curtis Freeman
The Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, the two largest religious bodies in the United States, are both embroiled in a crisis of trust.
For years the public has learned in horrific detail the abuses by Catholic priests who preyed on parishioners and bishops who covered it up.
It is now clear that for decades, the Southern Baptist denominational leadership has systematically ignored, suppressed and denied the right of sexual abuse survivors to be heard. Rather than addressing this problem, church leaders hid behind the excuse that congregational autonomy precludes denominational oversight.
While plenty of new details, based on court documents, published accounts and public records, have been unearthed recently, this sordid tale has been an open secret for decades. Southern Baptist leaders disregarded warnings and dismissed reports.
Even more troubling is that the more than 300 ministers and lay leaders identified in recent news accounts are only the tip of the iceberg. That’s because many survivors of abuse have never felt free to tell their stories, and the church’s power structure shielded countless abusers from facing the truth of their actions.
Southern Baptist clergy, like other Baptist and non-denominational ministers, lack accountability beyond the local congregation that ordains. Clergy are poorly vetted before being ordained, and are rarely evaluated after ordination. Sometimes when an abusive minister is forced by a congregation to resign, he is not prevented from serving in another congregation because unlike many other professions, there is no cumulative list of abusive ministers. It is a structure easy to exploit and abuse.
But Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists have something else in common. Each are controlled by all-male leadership and power structures that exclude women from decision-making and oversight. Only men can be Roman Catholic priests and bishops. And only men can be Southern Baptist pastors. It should not be surprising, then, that men dominate the oversight processes that could demand accountability and honesty.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.