Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
An Evangelical Denomination won't deal with sexual abuse, but it will kick out churches that call women as pastors
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2026/06/an-evangelical-denomination-getting-its.htmlThe Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting will take place in Orlando, Florida on June 8-9. This denomination, considered the largest of American Evangelical and Protestant groups, with approximately 12.2 million members in 45,000 churches nationwide, has been dealing unsuccessfully with growing revelations of a clergy sexual abuse scandal that has been going on among its churches for quite some time. The scandal, exposed by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News in an expose called "Abuse of Faith" published in 2019, reached into the denomination's highest levels, including the discovery of multiple cover-ups of reports received by it's national Executive Committee.
When it was exposed, the scandal created an outrage among the membership of the churches. In response, the delegates elected by the churches to the annual meeting, known as "messengers," enraged by the revelations, began bypassing the cumbersome, deliberately slow denominational bureaucracy, to demand action directly from the floor of the convention. In spite of those demands, which resulted in the resignation of a dozen executive committee members and several personnel shake-ups at high levels, including the resignation of the executive director at the time, Frank Page, because of his own admission of marital infidelity, this convention body has been 100% ineffective at providing anything useful as a result.
When it was exposed, the scandal created an outrage among the membership of the churches. In response, the delegates elected by the churches to the annual meeting, known as "messengers," enraged by the revelations, began bypassing the cumbersome, deliberately slow denominational bureaucracy, to demand action directly from the floor of the convention. In spite of those demands, which resulted in the resignation of a dozen executive committee members and several personnel shake-ups at high levels, including the resignation of the executive director at the time, Frank Page, because of his own admission of marital infidelity, this convention body has been 100% ineffective at providing anything useful as a result.
They can't seem to get anything done about the sexual abuse running rampant in their churches, especially by those who have the title "pastor," but they are willing to entertain yet another proposal to make a permanent change to their constitution and bylaws denying membership to any church that calls a woman as a pastor. One of the denomination's insider elitists, the President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, Dr. Al Mohler, who fancies himself as the SBC's "chief pontificator", will bring a motion to add this restriction at this year's meeting.
Making this kind of permanent change involves getting a full two thirds of the messenger vote total at two subsequent annual meetings. The last time this effort was made, it was approved in the first meeting, then failed to get the kind of majority required the second year. A lot of the success or failure of motions like this depends on how many people on the SBC payroll actually get elected as messengers from their church and go to the convention. When the bureaucrats and employees of the bureaucracies outnumber the regular people from the churches, these things tend to do well.
Making this kind of permanent change involves getting a full two thirds of the messenger vote total at two subsequent annual meetings. The last time this effort was made, it was approved in the first meeting, then failed to get the kind of majority required the second year. A lot of the success or failure of motions like this depends on how many people on the SBC payroll actually get elected as messengers from their church and go to the convention. When the bureaucrats and employees of the bureaucracies outnumber the regular people from the churches, these things tend to do well.
5 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
