Southern Baptists asked to create independent nonprofit to combat sexual abuse, leaders told

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention say they intend to establish a separate nonprofit organization to handle sexual abuse claims, setting the stage for a denominational challenge about hiring personnel to deal with abuse charges that stretch over several decades.

A new Abuse Response Commission, independent of the SBC, would implement the long-awaited Ministry Check database, a listing of those convicted of a sex abuse crime or with a civil judgment from a sexual abuse lawsuit, officials said Monday at the start of the church’s annual two-day Executive Committee meeting here.

The database’s website currently says names of abusers will “soon” be posted.

The new commission also would take over the training of churches and ministers in dealing with and preventing abuse, said Josh Wester, who heads the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, which would be replaced by the new group.

With its 13.2 million members, the SBC is the county’s largest Protestant denomination. Over the past five years, it has dealt with the fallout from the revelation of hundreds of sexual abuse cases — many of which, critics say, were improperly handled or even ignored by church leaders and denominational authorities.

In 2022, Southern Baptists created the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, staffed by volunteers, to respond to the crisis.

Mr. Wester, task force director and lead pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, told SBC leaders that the independent group “will have more credibility with survivors, more flexibility to help our churches and more success in accomplishing the mandate given to us” by the church’s annual business meeting delegates, called messengers.

He said the SBC entities would be asked to provide funding and he hopes to tell the June business meeting that the new commission is “fully funded.”

Brent Leatherwood, president of the denomination’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said he would ask that organization’s board to make a “significant investment” in the new organization.

“Our churches have said, again and again, and in overwhelming fashion, that stopping predators from preying on the vulnerable must be a top priority for our Convention,” Mr. Leatherwood said in a statement. “The path forward is clear. Safeguarding our churches and serving survivors requires a cooperative response. And it is needed now. Vulnerable lives are at stake and inaction is not an option.”

Not all SBC pastors were impressed Monday.

Todd Fletcher, senior pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Tryon, North Carolina, posted on X: “I’m really concerned about how messengers will be able to hold an independent [organization] responsible for the way they do business.”

Last fall, tensions increased over the revelation of an SBC friend-of-the-court brief with the Kentucky Supreme Court opposing the extension of the statute of limitations for abuse lawsuits. The extension would allow victims to sue “after the defendant had lost the incentive to preserve evidence to defend against those stale claims.”

Critics said the SBC and Lifeway Christian Resources, the Executive Committee and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, all signed on to the filing without getting approval from trustees of the various entities.

In other matters during Executive Committee meeting, leaders said they had found a candidate for the denomination’s top decision-making board president. The position has been vacant since August, when then-interim president Willie McLaurin resigned after it was discovered his academic record was bogus.

Neal Hughes, who heads the search committee to fill the position, said they had found an “an excellent choice” for the post and hope to have a meeting of the denomination’s trustees on March 21 in Dallas to ratify the selection.