Tag Archives: Southern Baptist Convention

The Christian Post reports: The executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware has resigned after the organization became aware of “marital indiscretions,” also leading to his termination as a vice president with a Southern Baptist Convention’s missions agency. The Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware leadership sent a letter to the network’s member churches Friday informing them that Michael Crawford resigned …

The Christian Post reports: At their fall meeting last week, the trustees at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, unanimously approved a resolution encouraging the seminary’s administration to continue theologically training both men and women, “but with men alone reserved for the office and function, and thereby title of pastor.” “It is further resolved that this Board encourages …

Religion News Service reports: A Southern Baptist task force has asked the denomination to set up a “Ministry Check” website to track abusive pastors, church employees and volunteers and to spend millions on reforms to prevent abuse and care for survivors. Most of the suggested reforms are voluntary. Some could involve years of study and preparation, prompting a skeptical response …

The Associated Press reports: In response to an explosive investigation, top Southern Baptists have released a previously secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. The 205-page database was made public late Thursday. It includes more than 700 entries from cases that largely span from 2000 to 2019. Its existence became widely known Sunday …

Religion News Service reports: A former Southern Baptist Convention leader stepped inside the Florida beachside condo of a pastor’s wife, 24 years younger, pulled down her shorts, pinned her to the couch, got on top of her and pulled up her shirt. The assault on July 25, 2010, is one of the more graphic descriptions of sex abuse in a …

The Washington Post reports: The report describes how key Southern Baptist leaders engaged in a pattern of ignoring, stonewalling and even “vilifying” sex abuse survivors. The report details multiple instances when Southern Baptist leaders shot down requests by survivors and other concerned members to maintain a database of abusers. Publicly, the leaders said they couldn’t because of “church polity,” or …

The Washington Post reports: Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational …

The Christian Post reports: Two days after the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee rejected a motion to create a task force to oversee a third-party investigation of allegations SBC leaders mishandled a “crisis of sexual abuse” in the denomination, messengers overwhelmingly approved a motion to do just that on Wednesday. Attorney and abuse advocate Rachael Denhollander, who has spoken freely …

The New York Times reports: The election of the pastor, Ed Litton , was the result of what was effectively a three-way standoff for the leadership of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In the first round of voting on Tuesday afternoon, Southern Baptists rejected a prominent mainstream candidate and onetime favorite for the presidency, Al Mohler Jr., who received 26 …

The New York Times reports: Next week more than 16,000 Southern Baptist pastors and leaders will descend on Nashville for their first annual meeting of the post-Trump era. It is their most high-profile gathering in years, with attendance more than double the most recent meeting in 2019, after a pandemic cancellation last year. It caps months of vicious infighting over …

The Christian Post reports: A year after reporting the largest single-year membership decline in more than 100 years, churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, lost more than 400,000 members in 2020 and set a new record for the single-year decline amid the coronavirus pandemic and a bitter culture war. The Annual Church Profile report shows …

The Christian Post reports: The Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly voted on Tuesday to expel churches accused of racial discrimination and mishandling cases of sexual abuse. On the opening day of the largest protestant denomination’s annual meeting, held June 11-12 in Birmingham, Alabama, messengers — the delegates selected from SBC member churches to attend the meeting — cast their votes in …

The Christian Post reports: LifeWay Christian Resources announced today that it will be closing all remaining 170 stores this year and focusing on online sales. Carol Pipes, director of corporate communications for LifeWay, posted the announcement on the company’s website, explaining that it was “a strategic shift of resources to a dynamic digital strategy.” Dates for store closures will vary …

The Houston Chronicle reports: Hundreds of people who worked or volunteered in Southern Baptist churches have been charged with sex crimes, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News reveals. It’s not just a recent problem. In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. …

The Christian Post reports: Vice President Mike Pence’s speech before the Southern Baptist Convention is being criticized by many as being too focused on politics and President Donald Trump. At a speech before the SBC annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Dallas Convention Center in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday, Vice President Pence gave remarks that centered heavily on touting the …

The Christian Post reports: A resolution submitted to the Southern Baptist Convention for its annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, has called on the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to reject “homosexual identity politics” and state bans on conversion therapy. Titled “On Ministry and Counseling to Lead People from Homosexuality to Heterosexuality,” the resolution, among other things, asks the SBC to “offer …

The Tennessean reports: A Texas seminary fired a prominent Southern Baptist leader earlier this week for mishandling allegations from two students who said they were raped. Paige Patterson, who was terminated from his top post at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told the head of campus security that he wanted to meet alone with a student who told him she was …

The Birmingham Herald reports: Frank Page, president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, announced his immediate retirement in the wake of what he described as a “personal indiscretion.” Page, an author and frequent speaker in Baptist churches, served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2006 to 2008. He issued a statement to the Baptist Press …

The Associated Press reports: A national meeting of Southern Baptists will consider condemning the political movement known as the “alt-right” amid an uproar over the denomination’s commitment to confronting prejudice. Leaders of the faith group initially refused to take up a proposal that they repudiate the political group that emerged dramatically during the U.S. presidential election, mixing racism, white nationalism …

Peter Montgomery reports at Right Wing Watch: Evangelical seminary president Richard Land told the American Family Association’s One News Now today that Donald Trump could help himself “enormously” with social conservatives “if he were to hold a press conference and say that if he is indeed elected president, that he will nominate Ted Cruz to replace Antonin Scalia on the …