Sad News, times two: The Guideposts Report on SBC

 The report about sexual abuse (and more, the ways leadership tried to cover it over) in the Southern Baptist Convention dropped today. It's bad.  No way around it.  Very bad.

Will it cause a bleeding of members? Well, that's another question; there's been a bleeding since COVID, but that's a different reason. That was a bleeding of the noncommitted. This will be a bleeding of the concerned and in some cases horrified. 

But losing members (and money) is not the first question to ask. That is, how do we repent, find justice, and ensure this behavior ends? 

Each of us will have to consider our response. I don't want to write things about how statistically the number of abuse cases is pretty small and not representative of the denomination of 16 million.  That is nonsense; the correct number should be 0. And while that is probably unrealistic from a human standpoint, that in a group of 16 million there would be no cases of sexual abuse, the "statistics" are only part of the story. The efforts of certain parts of leadership to diminish justice and denigrate clear victims of nonconsensual relationships with pastors and youth pastors is like some sort of mathematical multiplier. 

At the same time, individual members in the pews are not responsible for the sins of others they couldn't have known about it. I just don't believe in guilt by several degrees of separation.  

The care and detail of the report by Guideposts prevents anyone from saying this is hatchet job. It's clearly something we will have to deal with. For those of us who really can't see ourselves as another denomination than Baptist, I hope we stand up for a reformation of processes. The denomination is big enough that there are lots of us wanting reform (racially and gender-wise) in whose voices are heard. While we are a long way, probably, from ordination of women (and I'm not on the front line of that and don't want to get into Beth Moore here), it's time for women's voices to be heard. For too long we've been been stifled in the SBC as not worthy of being heard because of our chromosomes. 

Addendum: Just listened to Rachael Denhollander on the Russell Moore podcast. Very important listen. She points out that the "hold up" on solving this problem (I'm being sarcastic) was "Southern Baptist polity" on the autonomy of churches. And they believed that?

Now, on to the two in times two.  If the Roe v. Wade (Dobbs) decision comes out, it's going to be a week of persecution against evangelicals. We don't protect victims, and we want women to give birth to babies they don't want. Double whammy, in eyes of the world.  Be prepared.