Southern Baptist leaders address reports showing decades of sexual abuse
“It’s time for pervasive change,” said SBC president J. D. Greear.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, vowed to improve the ways churches address sexual abuse as they responded to reports by two Texas newspapers of hundreds of such cases in SBC churches.
The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published an Abuse of Faith investigative series beginning in February that reports on 220 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct in the last two decades. Overall, they found about 380 Southern Baptists who faced allegations from more than 700 people in that time period, with dozens currently imprisoned across the country.
“Some still work in Southern Baptist churches today,” they reported.
