So much for the theory that this problem would not exist with married clergy.
Churches I’m familiar with have taken to doing background checks on people who will work with children. Its a shame you have to do it, but you have to do it.
I’ve known of situations involving pastors, and key people in churches. Usually its handled at a low level and you’ll never hear of it. A problem with that, of course, is that he may reenter the ministry down the road.
There is simply no substitute for real holiness in pastors, preachers, ministers, and real holiness in the elders who are supposed to watch over them. And a willingness to act forthrightly when something is awry.
Our Church music director is doing time for assaulting his stepson...
If 220 of 380, over twenty years, were convicted of sex crimes or made plea deals, then the issue has not exactly been ignored or swept under the carpet. It’s terrible that sexual abuse happens in most every institution where people associate, but there are millions of Southern Baptists and a few thousand churches.
Nothing will eliminate this problem entirely and at least many were punished under the law.
Wait a minute! I thought only Catholic priests are the ones committing these crimes! Surely others with authority in other walks of life do not do the same thing! ONLY CATHOLIC PRIESTS ARE THE PROBLEM!!
</sarc> tag
Is that really necessary?
CORRECTED FOR TYPOS. What they don’t tell you.....15mm Southern Baptists, 50mm total Baptists....2,000 churches....and amongs all that, 700 cases over a 20 year period....35 a year? Across 15mm.....a .0002% incident rate vs .002% for the general population. SoBaps are 10x better.
They desrve a medal.
More anti Christ bigoted bullshit written by the ass bandit press.
380 over 20 years? I am surprised it is not more. Certainly not all of these cases involve pastors buggering little boys.
In contrast there were 3,400 sexual assault cases referred to the Vatican over a 10 year period (2004-2014).
Where there are people there is sin. All churches have sexual misconduct problems.
Not a surprise
“The newspapers reported that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) largely treated the accusations as isolated issues”
The SBC has zero authority. Despite it’s PR effort, there is no hierarchy above the individual congregations. SBC is a cooperative missionary association. 47,200 Baptist Churches out there and this study accuses 19 preachers per year. That is around .0004%. Compare that to a minimum of 15%-20% of priests. Also, the entire leadership of the RCC is filled with homos who HIDE and relocate pervert priests.
The problem with the RCC is unique. It isn’t CAUSED by celibate priests, but that does make the problem worse today. RCC priests were celibate for centuries. But in the past, a priest breaking that vow was usually chasing skirts.
In the 1900s, the homos moved into the priesthood. They advanced and provided cover for the ones coming in after them. Now you have the entire hierarchy filled with them. It isn’t BECAUSE of celibacy, but that has been fertile ground for the homos.
Until you can admit the problem, you cannot fix it. Quit pretending everyone else it just as bad. They aren’t.
My mid-size SBC church background checks everybody - but a lot of smaller churches probably do not.
I’m sure Satan sends his homos and pedos to infiltrate all churches, not just SBC and RC. They have to be carefully weeded out at the least suspicion.
Out of a population of HOW MANY PRIESTS, DEACONS, ELDERS, YOUTH LEADERS, and COUNSELOR?
Where's that Iowahawk piece about the violence committed by reporters?
How many are Democrat and “liberal”? I mean that.
The Baptist church in the South has a long association with the Democrat Party, the party of racism and immorality.
I have been in ministry, and have had personal interactions with many laity and clergy from many denominations.
My experience with Baptists is that they tend to be traditional rather than conservative. The two are not the same! (Think Jimmy Carter!)
accused
Maybe it is a “man” problem. How many women leaders in churches have been involved with sexual misconduct?
it bothers me to see one Christian denomination apparently pitting itself against another. if that wasn’t the intention of your post, then i apologize. i can’t know your motives.
though having read this piece, i couldn’t draw any credible conclusion from it other than there is some small percentage of southern baptist ministers committing sexual assault. haven’t got a clue how you could draw yours from this “report.” the enemy press would of course like to trumpet any failure of Christians, thus diminishing all Christians of every stripe.
anyway to perhaps shed some light for myself, as i sometimes do on this site when i see a post containing apparent nonsense, i did some research on my own with the following results:
1. from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics 2016 (2015 - 2016): “During the same period, rape or sexual assaults declined from 1.6 to 1.1 victimizations per 1,000 persons.”
so about 1 per 1000 in the general pop. that’s a standard that an honest reporter should use to compare Christian ministry workers to the general population imo, at least according to BJS stats.
2. according to wiki there are about 15 x 10^6 So Baptists in the US so if there were 700 assaults / 20 years = 35 assaults / yr, that’s about a 1 in 428571 chance of being assaulted in a southern bapt church per year by a ministry worker. again these are “mythical average” probablity calculations; just trying to get an honest assessment of risk here. that is a lot less than in the gen pop. like 400 times less!
3. looking around further i found a report on Catholic parishes in PA claiming 1000 assaults in the last 70 or 1000 / 70 = 14 assaults / yr. the internet claims about 3 x 10^6 Catholics in PA. so we again do a rough calculation for PA and find that we have a 1 in 3000000 / 14 = 214285 chance of being assaulted in a PA parish by a ministry worker.
so a few back of the envelope calculations of my own leave me very assured to me as a Christian in a denomination different from both Catholic and So Baptists that i and my family would be far less likely to be assaulted by a ministry worker in the confines of a Catholic parish or a Southern Baptist Church should we be visiting than in the general population of secular America. we are talking 100s of times less likely in the case of either denomination.
The newspapers reported that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) largely treated the accusations as isolated issues,
Congregational polity. My understanding is, the SBC exists to cooperatively support missions. In a sense, these are isolated instances. A whole bunch of them.
L8r
At least with Baptists, the congregation can fire the preacher.
I’ve noted it’s been said before, but the churches are totally independent of SBC control. It’s a voluntary association on both sides. The SBC could kick the churches out, and have done so in some cases.
That said, I don’t see how creating a database of convicted sex offenders would hurt.