NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to create a task force to oversee an independent investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual abuse.
Separately, the convention approved its most absolutist statement yet in opposition to abortion, a resolution calling for its immediate banning without exception and calling it a “crime against humanity that must be punished equally under the law.”
The measure calls for the newly elected SBC president, Alabama pastor Ed Litton, to appoint the task force, which will head up a review of allegations that the denomination's Executive Committee mishandled abuse cases, intimidated victims and advocates, and resisted reforms.
It also would investigate the work of a credentials committee that was created in 2019 with a mandate to identify congregations that fail to respond to sex abuse cases.
It was a sharp turn of events for the SBC's largest gathering in decades.
The SBC’s business committee had planned to refer the proposal to its Executive Committee — the same entity alleged to have failed in its response to abuse cases — but church representatives voted in the morning to put the matter before the convention floor and then approved it against minimal opposition.
The task force was proposed by Tennessee pastor Grant Gaines following leaked letters and secret recordings purporting to show some leaders tried to slow-walk accountability efforts and intimidate and retaliate against those who advocated on the issue.
Executive Committee president Ronnie Floyd has defended the body’s response, but last week he announced that the panel had retained an outside consulting firm, Guidepost Solutions, to investigate the claims. On Wednesday, he told the convention that he accepts the proposal for a more independent probe.
“I hear you,” Floyd told the gathering, drawing out his words. “This will make our convention stronger, and that is what I want.”
During a brief floor debate, Georgia pastor Troy Bush said the committee failed to investigate adequately a case involving a minister accused of abuse in multiple churches including his own.
“We believe the Executive Committee does not have the ability to handle this task force and investigation alone,” Bush said.
Before the vote, critics said it would be a conflict of interest for the Executive Committee to oversee a probe of itself.
Abuse survivors “brought their cases to (SBC authorities) only to feel that they were brushed off, disregarded and turned away," Gaines said. "These are not the kind of allegations we can sweep under the rug.”
Rachael Denhollander of Louisville, Kentucky, a prominent advocate for survivors of abuse in the SBC, applauded the move toward a more independent probe: “No one should ever fear the truth and wise counsel,” she tweeted. "The truth is never in opposition to sound theology."
The vote is the latest action in response to a landmark 2019 report by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting hundreds of cases of abuse in Southern Baptist churches, with several alleged perpetrators remaining in ministry.
Debate over the investigation came on the concluding day of the two-day gathering of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination with 15,726 voting delegates in attendance, the most in at least 25 years.
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