The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the States is, after the Roman Catholics, the largest denominational church in the country. It claims a membership total of some 14 million members, mainly in the southern states. By British standards, the prevailing denominational structure is a very loose one. The Convention to which Southern Baptists congregations are affiliated, possesses no hierarchical structure as we would understand it. The SBC can best be described as a confederation of independent self-governing congregations, united only by their adherence to a common doctrinal statement. In practical terms this doctrinal unity allows all ministers in the denomination to train in one of the approved centrally funded colleges and also to cooperate in missional efforts overseas. Real power or authority is located within each local congregation. Somehow this loose confederation of what we would describe as conservative evangelical congregations has held together for 170 years. The ‘Southern’ part of its title emerged as the result of 19th century theological arguments over the position of the church with regard to slavery. Those in the southern regions of the States decided that they could not retain fellowship with the northerners who had taken up arms to abolish the institution of slavery.
In spite of what we in Britain would consider to be a very loose denominational structure, Southern Baptists have maintained over the decades some aspects of system of a centralised bureaucracy, based at their headquarters in Nashville Tennessee. SBC congregations send to the centre the dues needed to finance some administration, missions and educational projects. Representatives of the entire SBC family also gather annually in June for a huge assembly or Convention. Here doctrinal matters are discussed and voted on by congregational representatives known as messengers. Such a gathering is of course enormously cumbersome as a decision-making body, so it has not been difficult for an Executive Committee (EC) to control the agenda. It took considerable effort and lobbying for the issue of sexual abuse to become a topic for the Convention but eventually it broke through into the awareness of the entire gathering and an investigation ordered. It is this investigation by a professional body called Guidepost Solutions that produced a substantial detailed report in May this year. Although some of the story of cover-up and abuse had been earlier covered by the Press, notably the Houston Chronicle, the tale that is contained in the 288-page report is still shocking. One commentator described it as apocalyptic. I have skim read the entire document but much of what I write here, to be truthful, is more indebted to the excellent summary put out by the magazine Christianity Today.
In many ways the most predictable parts of the Guidepost Solutions report are the shocking and disturbing accounts of abuse. The common theme of powerful men, even a President of the entire organisation, exploiting their power in order to sexually abuse women and children is something that, tragically, we have often met before. It seems that nothing had prepared the SBC for these kinds of revelations. What is perhaps of more immediate interest to us on this blog is the way that some of the EC, especially its leaders, had known that something was going on. Those in the know had failed to deal with the problem over twenty or more years because of the legal advice they received. The frequent stories and disclosures of abuse had been received, but the lawyers working for the SBC at the centre warned the leaders against getting involved. The EC is a group of around 70 that met throughout the year, but it seems that there was an inner clique that exercised the real power in the committee. It was this small sub-group, headed up by an elected President that bears much responsibility for the cover-ups that took place.
The EC, encouraged by the in-house lawyers, was always keen to emphasise that they had no executive power over the SBC congregations. All the real authority in the SBC structure belonged to the individual congregations. This claim of official powerlessness provided a convenient excuse for doing absolutely nothing when disclosures were received about sexual abuse in Baptist congregations around the country. Briefed by their lawyers, the EC fended away complaints and disclosures by saying that they had no means to intervene with the affairs of local congregations. This failure even to make any record even when ministers were sent to prison for abuse offences meant that abusing ministers and lay workers were able to flit from congregation to congregation without anyone in a position of authority keeping an eye on them. In fact, the SBC did possess a secret list of reports of abuse committed by affiliated ministers and paid officers, but this information was never made available to congregations wanting to appoint a new member of staff.
If there are ‘villains’ to be found in the narrative of the abuses uncovered by Guidepost, they are numbered not only among the actual abusers and those ignored the abuse stories, but among the legal teams who advised the SBC and the EC over 60 years. One particular firm that was giving obstructive legal advice is named as Guenther, Jordan and Price. The lawyers in this firm were consistently advising against any action on the part of the EC. They feared that the EC might become legally liable if it in any way involved itself in any of the affiliated local Baptist congregations. Even when the incidence of sexual abuses in the SBC were becoming widely known across the nation, the same mantra-like legal advice was being put forward as sound legal counsel. It took the bravery of individuals like Rachel Delhollander to tell the church and the nation what was going on. http://survivingchurch.org/2018/02/02/the-rachael-delhollander-story-abuse-forgiveness-and-church-exclusion/ She and others had to endure years of vilification, shunning and shame for their valiant attempts to draw the attention of the whole country to the problem. The culture of the EC was one where any report of abusive behaviour was treated like a threat. Every episode was seen, not as a cry for help, but as an attack on the institution of the SBC. Thus, it had to be resisted by all means available. It was only when a chorus of voices from outside, shared through the internet, eventually became impossible to ignore, that something had to give.
The task of survivors and advocates in trying to bring accountability to the SBC was in many ways harder than for those undertaking the same task in Britain. Such whistle-blowers were constantly told that they did not understand the legal basis of the SBC or its organisational structure. Alternatively, they were accused of being out to destroy the denomination. Two lawyers in particular, Augie Boto and Jim Guenther were successfully peddling this narrative to successive presidents who, with their close circle, heard many abuse stories. Any intervention on their part would create massive liabilities for the whole denomination. Like the three wise monkeys, it was better for the presidents and their advisers neither to see, hear or speak anything on the topic of abuse. Ignoring the pain and harm that came to hundreds of abuse victims at the hands of their predators was considered a price worth paying for the protection of the reputation of this denomination. Time will tell whether this wickedly inappropriate advice has contributed a single thing of value for the SBC or whether it has fatally undermined the cause of Baptist churches, not only in America but right across the world.
I am sure my readers can think of a number of parallels in the UK. Legal advice is offered to protect an institution, like the CofE, but it ends up causing serious damage to individuals. The SBC scandal, if we can call it that, will take several decades to heal, if it ever does. In Britain too we have seen attempts to resolve issues relating to abuses of power by the use of ecclesiastical legal tools. These often do little to help individuals. The use of legal processes in church life may sometimes be necessary, but quite often they increase a sense of stress among all concerned. Many of us would like to feel that the legal cases that the church gets involved in will become fewer in number. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. The use of legal protocols and processes seem to increase, adding to the sense of fear and fragility among those who work for the Church in a variety of capacities.
In a final addendum, the BBC website reported that the SBC is to face an investigation by the American Department of Justice. One wonders whether our own Church will face the possibility of a secular judge-led investigation of its internal processes. Currently we are waiting to see if the Charity Commission will recommend any outside intervention in the Church’s affairs. Certainly, a sense of incoherence in church business over safeguarding and similar activities appears to be getting greater. Perhaps we are closer to the SBC situation of being investigated by outside authority than we might have thought possible.
Can a national Church ever recover from a deep set scandal like this?
Sat in near stationary traffic on the M23 this weekend for 2 hours, we discovered that the planned roadworks (groan) whereby 4 lanes became just one, had superimposed on them a road traffic collision completely blocking the remaining lane until the police could remove the mangled vehicles. Eventually we found our way past the removed vehicles. I make a point of not looking because the danger of rubber necking causing further collisions is well known, and having queued for ages we just wanted to get home. Not so our fellow drivers who were slowing down to enjoy the spectacle of other people’s misfortune (or bad driving).
Similarly I expect the C of E powers are enjoying a bit of respite from Parsons having a crack at the Southern Baptists. But to me the parallels are remarkable. In particular we have a pretend diffuse structure of unaccountability. And then we have lawyers.
There is a deep assumption that the Church can be repaired, amended, redeemed. Personally I believe it can’t. Few people here would have been avid readers of former newspaper, “The News of the World” but many knew of its infamy. Owner Rupert Murdoch, of whom I’m no particular fan, closed it down following the phone-tapping scandal.
Arthur Andersen, a top 5 audit firm was closed down following its exposure in connection with the Enron scandal.
Closures on such import and scale allowed a sense of justice and appropriate retribution. But is it fair to draw comparison between Church and Secular? In my opinion the Church is much worse. We are supposed to be representing the Body of Christ. Instead we conceal and enable abusers on an industrial scale. That’s evil in the kingdom of light.
I agree with you, Steve, that the C of E is probably broken beyond repair. The corruption is too entrenched, too systemic, to see how it can ever be remedied.
The Southern Baptists were powerful too, but at least they had the courage – and just enough integrity – to commission a truly independent, far-reaching review. The C of E won’t.
Yes, it was intriguing that SBC did, to their credit.
Closure of AA didn’t end the careers of tens of thousands of professionals they employed. Most were absorbed into other firms. The “big five” became the “big(ger) 4”. But AA had the reputation for arrogance and cockiness. They were considered brazen by many, as were their dubious accounting devices sold to Enron. In this blog’s terms, they were institutionally narcissistic. Working in the big 4 in later years, the sense of fear and ultra caution was palpable. Of course this didn’t put a complete stop to all egregious abuses, but concentrated many minds for the better.
I believe the Church needs a similar lesson.
I agree Steve
I read a report done while ago that researched the prevalence of CSA in various organisations, from the 60s to the 90s, in a variety of countries. It reckoned the prevalence of abuse was around 5% of teachers, 4% of Anglican/Episcopal priests (all male at the time), 4% of Catholic priests (Catholic Ireland was an outlier, it was higher).
We never hear people calling for the closure of our state schools because of abuse now, do we? The reason is there are now designed safeguarding officers, support available from children’s services, nspcc helpline numbers displayed, a deeply embedded culture of protecting children at all costs, and clear guidelines (eg open classroom doors) for teaching staff to follow, plus clear lines of reporting and an expectation that reporting leads to action.
There is a fairly high level of trust in the reporting systems and procedures
It’s all to do with OPPORTUNITY
And unfortunately the opportunity for clergy to abuse and the likelihood of cover up and protection from the upper echelons of the church is still far too high. Much higher than it is in comparable secular settings.
The church COULD have done what our state school system managed to do.
But it frankly doesn’t want to.
This reply is to your first post
The parallel with Andersen is interesting. (Disclosure: this is where I trained as a chartered accountant back in the 1980s.) As an international network of national, country-based accountancy partnerships, Andersen expected that they could pick and choose how everyone else regarded them, depending on the circumstances. One minute they claimed an international reach akin to that of the international businesses they hoped to gain as clients — the next, on the advice of lawyers and reputation-managers, they were disavowing oversea colleagues “The problems with Enron happened in the USA, that is nothing to do with us, we [in the UK, for example] are a completely different legal entity.” Ironically for a firm that offered business advice to its clients, they did not understand that, if you are operating in a line of business where reputation is everything, people aren’t interested in your legal structure, they are interested in the brand name you operate under, and whether it is ‘mud’ or not. The last I heard of this saga was that, in a strange twist, two different small accountancy firms both purported to have bought the rights to the Andersen name from the liquidators appointed to wind up Andersen’s affairs, and were suing each other.
Similarly I expect there will be self-styled ‘Anglicans’ somewhere on the face of this globe long after the Church of England itself has become one with the dust of history.
Interesting comment, thanks. And welcome to Surviving Church, if this is your first visit.
Stephen, you suggest that the loose non-heirarchical structure of the SBA is somewhat alien to British understanding. That’s possibly true in many church circles; but the British Baptists (Baptist Union, BU or Wales, BU of Scotland) would find it perfectly normal, as would the Congregational Federation and the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches. All of these are connexional churches whose “locus” is in the local congregation rather than in any episcopal structure. Having said that, functions such as the trusteeship of (most) church buildings, the accreditation of ministers, and safeguarding are handled centrally and/or translocally.
There are however some differences between these British churches and the SBC (the BU, by the way, severed contact with the SBC many years ago, I think at the time the SBC withdrew from the World Baptist Alliance). For instance, the Baptist Union of Great Britain does not have a detailed statement of belief but only a brief “Declaration of Principle” which can be found here: https://www.baptist.org.uk/Groups/220595/Declaration_of_Principle.aspx. Although in practice most BUGB churches are broadly evangelical (and many have elaborated their own statement of faith or adhere to the Evangelical Alliance’s), that is not true of all. The FIEC of course has a much more detailed statement of its beliefs; I can’t tell you what the BUW, the BU of Scotland or the Congregaionlists do!
The other big difference as I understand it – and this may be crucial where mattes of malfeasance are concerned – is with regard to the organisation of local churches. The “bedrock” of British Baptist and Congregational churches is the Church Meeting of members. Although this doesn’t always work well (it may not attract a large proportion of the members, it may get preoccupied with trivial matters or get caught up by internal church politics), at its best it hold the lay leaders and Ministers to account. ISTM that the American model is far more structured and heirarchical, with the Senior Pastor standing at the top of a pyramid of authority. But I stand to be corrected.
I’ve read the SBC report (well, the executive summary) – it makes for sad reading indeed.
Yes; I think only the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church – and, I suppose the Orthodox – are really hierarchical. I attended churches from a wide variety of denominations in my nonconformist days, both in the US and in England. None of them was hierarchical.
We left the US in 1974, so my experience there isn’t recent. But Southern Baptist churches were usually evangelical to the point of fundamentalism. There were outliers, however. At one SBU church in Florida, the pastor based an entire sermon on the cushion Jesus slept on during the storm on Galilee! That was definitely untypical.
The difference between the BUGB and SBC is more down to some of the larger SBC churches adopting management from industry and business rather than some inherent difference between the governance structure of the two. Add in the centralisation created by the greater amount of resources available for central functions like seminaries, missionary agencies and so on. and the tendency for seminary heads to go on to work in other central functions with all the associated potential for patronage that such practices bring.
In smaller churches the Church Meeting was equally central in SBC. The late Michael Spencer writes about this humorously here https://imonk.blog/2004/04/30/the-pope-needs-a-business-meeting/ This is an impression matched in the recollection of numerous US Baptists I’ve talked to over the years.
Whilst they are not as large, a closer parallel would be to the evangelical wing of the CofE; who are generally fairly independent of their local diocesan structures, have only a loose and informal accountability structure within their own organisations, are highly hierarchical locally, with a smaller set of associated institutions that can be used for patronage or to park difficult cases (one recalls the story of John Smyth).
Lawyering up has become a major complicating factor in senior disputes and crises. In the U.K. we tend to lag a decade or more behind the U.S. in our trends, but we are catching up fast.
Many years ago I used to work with a surgeon who had lost his nerve. Pioneering a new stapling machine (don’t ask) for a delicate operation, he was in the habit of asking the rep from the manufacturer to pull the trigger. Naturally she was unwilling to do so, but he wanted her to take at least some of the responsibility for work that was properly his.
Lawyers are often highly skilled and highly intelligent, and the increasing tendency, even in the Church, is to let them take over. I believe this to be an abrogation of responsibility at times verging on the gutless. Advisors should be our servants, not masters.
The business of church is to be the Body of Christ. And our Lord’s ways are a million miles away from much of what we are reading about and seeing firsthand. Even our atheist friends can see it. It’s completely obviously not Christian.
It’s time for Church leaders to stop hiding behind lawyers, and a barrage of other advisors and take back their original authority. Or resign.
“Lawyers are often highly skilled and highly intelligent, and the increasing tendency, even in the Church, is to let them take over”
While I wouldn’t necessarily contest this; I’d emphasize that the difference often lies in articulacy born of practice rather than raw intelligence. Senior lawyers often spend the vast majority of their working day among people who automatically defer to their expertise, and often this does not lend itself to the formation of character and humility required to operate within a more collegiate environment.
With narcissism, or institutional narcissism, the features we see are disturbing. There is little if any self awareness. The narcissist sees only his own image, which he basks in. There’s no concept of how others view them. It’s not merely dismissing others’ views, it’s more that the others don’t exist for them.
Wm Arthur was probably right about the persistence of affinity for the Anglican brand long after it may have perished.
One of the challenges we face in our Churches is the inability for many to look outside and see how the world sees us. It acts as a closed system. As Janet points out, at least the SBs engaged independent reviewers. I wonder if they anticipated the impact this is having on them.