Leading US theologian, ethicist, and preacher Russell D. Moore has responded to the abuse scandal that has recently rocked the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Moore resigned from his post as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC last summer and quit the denomination completely at the same time.
His response was prompted by the findings of independent investigators Guidepost Solutions into the culture of cover-up, retaliation and stonewalling by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee over sexual abuse within the church and the mistreatment of sexual abuse survivors, and the advocates and whistleblowers who stood with them. It emerged that SBC leaders had a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors, but chose to protect the denomination from lawsuits ahead of protecting those in their churches from further abuse.
A few months after Moore left, a reporter stopped him when he was defending Southern Baptists about something and asked why – to which he said: ‘I love them, and 90% of them are great people.’ The reporter replied: ‘I think your math is off.’
He commented: ‘Maybe. But it’s also, if not entirely accurate mathematically, true. There are a lot of sweet people in those pews. The vast majority of them would never imagine that anyone would carry out mafia-style tactics in their name—and, even more so, they would never countenance mistreating sexual abuse survivors in the name of Jesus.
‘I still believe that. But it doesn’t matter if people don’t recognise that the mafia business is going on behind the scenes and understand how it works.
‘The primary way it works is through the fear of exile, removing somebody from the tribe – to marginalise that person so that for anyone to listen to them on anything would mean to face the threat of exile themselves.
‘This works even more effectively in local churches. If a survivor comes forward to talk about what she experienced, she may be told that she’s sowing division and hampering the witness of the church. Those who stand with her may quickly find themselves considered ‘controversial’. From there, people find other – more popular – ways to show others that those calling for reform aren’t really ‘one of us’.
‘In a church context, any sort of reform on real issues can become difficult because they cannot be addressed by either insiders or outsiders. Those who stay will be told – especially if they hold positions of responsibility – that they cannot be disloyal by going public with their concerns. So, they try to work through the system, because, if they don’t, that – not the abuse – will become the issue.
‘They often encounter obstacle after obstacle – often against imaginary or exag-gerated issues – so that others may accuse them of being troublemakers.
‘After every stonewall, they are told: “Be patient. Trust the process. We don’t want new approaches to this very new, sudden problem we only discovered 20 years ago.” Behind that is an appeal to responsibility – “You are church leaders and you cannot foment disunity. You need to respect the other leaders and move this along.”
‘When nothing happens, they might try to tell the congregation, politely, that there is a problem. And when people continue to ignore that, they might then venture to say explicitly what they’ve experienced.
‘But then the problem will be the “way” they approached the issue. They shouldn’t have done it that way. If they go public, they are told they are “blowing everything up in order to take everyone down with you”. If they say it privately to the leadership, and others find out, they are accused of saying it privately – knowing that it will eventually become public.
‘At that point they conclude there’s nothing they can do. So they leave. Now, those who previously said it would be inappropriate to speak up because they have responsibilities on the inside are now told that it’s similarly inappropriate to speak up because they are on the outside – “You left; you don’t get a say in this”. That even happens after what they have said is proven to be true.
‘But how much worse is it for the powerless, voiceless ones who suffer the crimes or abuse? They might even start to believe that the abusers and their protectors are right and that they are ungodly or satanic or just crazy.
‘This is not a uniquely Southern Baptist problem. It can happen in any church, in any congregation, in any institution. It can happen anywhere.’
