Recently, I mentioned that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) had narrowly squeaked out of an intense investigation by the federal government over its huge abuse crisis. Guess what? The high-ranking SBC leader who said that just might have been speaking a bit prematurely.

(For writeup of the creeptastic evangelism app ‘Bless Every Home,’ see this bonus post!)

(This post went live on Patreon on 3/19/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available for public viewing! On the audio ‘cast, ‘Bless Every Home’ runs first in the audio file, with the DOJ info beginning around 9 minutes in.)

Whither the feds’ SBC abuse investigation?

In passing, I mentioned the other day that the SBC had just squeaked out of a federal investigation. The investigation examined just how much of their huge abuse crisis (named “Abuse of Faith” by the journalists who broke the story in 2019) had happened due to the actions the SBC’s leaders took to protect the denomination’s reputation and image.

I got that notion from a brief mention made by an SBC leader, Jonathan Howe. He’s the interim President and CEO of their top-ranked Executive Committee (EC). The EC makes the day-to-day operating decisions of the SBC, as well as setting budgets for denominational efforts like seminaries and missionary outreach. And on March 6, he featured large in a story about the successful conclusion of that federal investigation (archive):

The U.S. Department of Justice has concluded its investigation of the SBC Executive Committee, Southern Baptist leaders learned Feb. 29.

In a statement today, Jonathan Howe, interim SBC EC president/CEO, said the DOJ has told the EC’s legal counsel there is “no further action to be taken.”

The story immediately notes that “email requests for comment from the DOJ were not returned by time of publication.”

We’d soon find out why they weren’t, too.

History of the federal abuse investigation

As I mentioned, “Abuse of Faith” dropped in 2019. This report was an absolute bombshell that rocked the SBC to its core. SBC-lings were absolutely horrified by it. Since then, they’ve continually pushed their recalcitrant leaders to fix it. In turn, their denominational leaders have done every single thing they possibly can to prevent the substantial reforms the SBC would need to see real fixes to its sex abuse crisis.

By 2022, the feds had decided to take a peek into the possible criminality of the actions taken by those leaders. The denomination discussed this investigation in their 2023 Annual Report in a couple of different places:

The SBC Executive Committee recently became aware that the Department of Justice
has initiated an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, and that the
investigation will include multiple SBC entities. [p. 123]

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (“SDNY”) commenced a grand jury investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, including into the Executive Committee, during the year ended September 30, 2022. SDNY has expressed interest in publicly reported allegations of sexual abuse linked to SBC entities and any possible cover-ups, concealment, and/or mistreatment of sexual abuse survivors and how any of those issues might have impacted financial giving to the SBC Cooperative Program. [p. 283]

I don’t know what “recently became aware” means, but they mentioned the investigation as early as August 2022 (archive). That said, I really think it took them by complete surprise. They really sounded completely surprised that Jesus-flavored alleged misdeeds might actually get some very unwanted official legal attention. That impression led me to create a reaction image.

I suspect that the various liars-for-Jesus in our unofficial Cult of ‘Before’ Stories, like inaugural member Mike Warnke, would also be similarly surprised if their titillating testimonies about sexual assault, child sex abuse, drug dealing, theft, pet killing, and even corpse abuse and murder might draw the attention of their local constabulary. In evangelicalism, nobody never expects the Legal Inquisition!

Alas for SBC leaders, someone at the Department of Justice was listening when the denomination finally produced a comprehensive report in 2022 (archive) about how all too many of them had prioritized the protection of their ailing business over protecting sex abuse victims—and preventing more abuse from occurring.

Nothing to see here, folks, no criminal abuse-shielding and cover-up occurred, move along

I don’t think many people expected the feds to decide that nothing untoward had happened. But that’s what Jonathan Howe asserted on March 6.

The news rocketed across the Christ-o-sphere. Local news in Memphis, where the denomination has headquarters, quickly reported on the situation (archive). Julie Roys’ watchdog site reported on the story the next day (archive). Later the same day, the same site and same reporter would need to write a second story, which we’ll see shortly here.

One guy on Twitter, Robert Downen, noted that he’d seen all too many evangelicals celebrating the end of the investigation:

When news broke that the DOJ had closed its investigation, some celebrated it as proof that there was never a real abuse crisis – as if the last 5 years just didn’t happen.

Christianity Today, at least, noted some problems with Howe’s reassurances (archive):

Multiple advocates for abuse victims—including SBC abuse survivors Megan Lively and Tiffany Thigpen as well as attorney Rachael Denhollander, who has advised the SBC task forces charged with abuse reform—say they were told by officials that the case is still open and ongoing.

When those survivors spoke up, very quickly Howe’s reassurance came into question.

And the SBC’s various abuse survivors and protesters went WTAF

It must be very emotionally difficult for the SBC’s leaders to lack any way to silence the victims of their abusive ministers or to bottleneck communications from law enforcement. Because they can’t do any of that, various SBC abuse protesters and survivors spoke up immediately on social media. And they said that the Department of Justice had just told them something very different.

Tiffany Thigpen wrote on Twitter:

Megan and I separately called the lead investigator and she was as surprised by this news as we were.
The #DOJ case is open, active and ongoing

I want to know who told Jonathan Howe this information.
I believe that counsel told Jonathan and others and I want to know why

It is not true and therefore we need to know where it came from

Rachel Denhollander, an activist working to reform the SBC with its abuse survivors, said much the same thing.

So just after publishing a post about the investigation’s ending, Julie Roys’ site had to publish another (archive) by the exact same reporter asking “What is Happening with the SBC And the Department of Justice?”

As for Baptist Press, the official SBC news site that had reported on the supposed closing of the investigation on March 6, they’ve said absolutely nothing about it since. All I could find is a mealy-mouthed, weasel-worded post on March 7 (archive). It offers uncorroborated assertions about how the SBC totes for realsies still cares about abuse reform. Jonathan Howe isn’t super-talkative on Twitter, but he wrote a flurry of tweets around March 7 and did not mention the investigation at all.

The SBC’s leaders seem to be desperately trying to bury this entire story by ignoring it.

The Department of Justice might close this abuse investigation without charges

Despite the words of the SBC’s own reports and its own extensive, years-running abuser database, it’s possible that the Department of Justice won’t find federal charges to file in this case. According to that Christianity Today report, they don’t normally find charges in these sorts of cases. And if they don’t, then they’ll close the investigation. In such a case, the SBC escapes federal-level justice.

That doesn’t mean they escape all justice. As the Christianity Today report also notes, local- and state-level charges are still a big possibility.

So are lawsuits. Last month, Wartburg Watch did a deep-dive into a civil lawsuit filed by some SBC abuse survivors against the SBC as a denomination (archive). It’s just blistering. Here’s a bit of it from the document itself:

Because of the opportunities to develop deep relationships with its members, the 47,000 Baptist churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention attract many truly caring and giving individuals; however, at the same time, service in the Baptist Church attracts an extraordinary number of sex abusers, molesters and those who take advantage of their position of authority. [. . .]

Religious figures in the Church and even lay leaders are bestowed with an air of infallibility, and are cloaked with authority which creates opportunity and a pathway for these individuals to misuse their positions of trust and take advantage of the vulnerable.

Oh, and you want to hear one of the wildest parts of that lawsuit?

One of the churches named in it is Airline Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana.

Segue: Coercion leads to abuse, every time

Many years ago in 2015, I wrote about the religious overreach in Bossier City’s SBC-dominated culture. They were forcing Airline High School students to endure unwanted and constant evangelism pitches and evangelical pseudoscience at their public, taxpayer-funded schools. (The post is at OnlySky for now here.) In 2018, these complaints turned into their own lawsuit against the school district.

And now, it seems, Airline Baptist Church faces even worse charges.

Who’s surprised to hear that a bunch of domineering, lawbreaking, control-grabby evangelicals might also employ sexually abusive ministers? And who wonders, as I do, about what the local areas are like in the other named churches in this current lawsuit? Bet they’re all similarly coercive—and as equally blithely assured of their own dominance as the evangelicals controlling Airline High School!

Also, whoa. The Airline Baptist music minister named in the current SBC lawsuit, Roger Merritt, seems to have been bouncing around various Baptist churches. A Baptist news site briefly announced his hiring in 2015 at a Benton, Louisiana church (look under April 1st “Milestones“).

Merritt might have finally gotten drummed out of ministry, though. I found a Roger Merritt from the Bossier City area, but his extremely-sparse LinkedIn says he works at a call center now. The same guy also pops up in a YMCA Facebook post. I don’t know for sure that he’s the same guy. I could be wrong. But it seems likely.

Coercion leads to abuse, every time 23:00

The SBC’s current sex abuse crisis is a thing in the first place because too many of its leaders enjoy unwarranted, undeserved power over their local areas. Even if no charges ever get filed and no lawsuits succeed, we already know SBC churches are riddled with sex abusers in ministry. Worse, we have already seen for years now that SBC denominational leaders don’t really want to do anything about it.

This is why religious overreach must be slapped down each and every time it happens. No matter how mild or minor it seems, it has to end. If religious leaders are given authority and power over others that they don’t deserve, if any challenges to that power threaten the income and growth in power of the religious group, then it will always lead to overreach, which will then lead to abuse of some kind.

This association should be as solid in people’s minds as the scent of the air just before dawn and the slow rising of the sun right afterward, as certain as the ticking of a clock from 1 to 2 to 3: seconds, minutes, and hours.

It can’t go any other way. No gods will intervene to stop the inevitable piercing of that loosed arrow. Only humans can. And if they don’t, nobody will.

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Captain Cassidy

Captain Cassidy is a Gen-X ex-Christian and writer. She writes about how people engage with science, religion, art, and each other. She lives in Idaho with her husband, Mr. Captain, and their squawky orange tabby cat, Princess Bother Pretty Toes. And at any given time, she is running out of bookcase space.

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