The Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, has known about their entrenched sex abuse problem for at least a few decades now. Everyone else found out about it in 2019 with ‘Abuse of Faith.’ Since then, however, SBC leaders have done virtually nothing to reform their denomination.
The SBC’s biggest names have already decided their meager, inconsequential attempts at reform are finished. Their message to the flocks is clear: Stop asking for any changes, but definitely keep sending in your money, adding your presence to our membership numbers, and voting the way we like.
Today, we’ll check out the latest news over at the SBC and see what it all means for the future of sex abuse reform at this troubled denomination.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 3/21/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now! From introduction: Boz Tchividjian said repeatedly back in the 2010s that the evangelical sex abuse crisis would rival Catholicism’s child-rape scandal; The hilarious website of Intercessors for America.)
SITUATION REPORT: A lot of SBC abuse-related news happened all at once here
Just this past month, a lot of SBC abuse-scandal-related news dropped. Here’s our timeline:
On February 19, SBC leaders announced they were no longer working on an online database to track sexual predators in ministry. Jeff Iorg, the (Old Guard) leader of the SBC’s top-ranked Executive Committee, said, “At this point, it’s not a focus for us.”
However, I’m not sure it ever was a focus. For years, SBC leaders dragged their feet as much as humanly possible on that database. It’s obvious they didn’t want to do it—despite updating and maintaining a private one for many years. The shell of that database now sits abandoned like an old shopping mall.
On February 21, the SBC “disfellowshipped” seven churches based on reports to their sex abuse hotline. Out of 1008 calls to the hotline since its creation in 2022 (just over three years after the scandal became public knowledge), 674 involved abuse. Of those 674 abuse allegations, 458 involved SBC-affiliated people or churches. Of those 458 contacts, the Executive Committee referred 128 to their Credentials Committee, which investigates abuse allegations. And of those 128 referred calls, seven got disfellowshipped.
On February 28, Dallas Morning News denounced the SBC. Their writer criticized its “half measures and foot dragging” regarding abuse reform.
A bit later on March 13, a third party SBC site, Baptist Standard, called the SBC’s response to sex abuse “a slap in the face to abuse survivors.”
An SBC lawsuit that likely plays into the abuse foot-dragging
In addition, a couple of news stories likely have a lot to do with SBC leaders’ unwillingness to focus any more time or attention on their sex abuse crisis.
A couple of years ago, SBC kingpin Johnny Hunt launched a lawsuit against his denomination. Over the years, he’s made a simply unimaginable fortune operating a bunch of little “ministries” employing himself, his relatives, and their orbiters. For a while, he worked for the SBC’s North American Mission Board (NAMB)—where he claims they paid him USD$610k/year. (And oh boy, did that revelation come as an unpleasant shock to some of the flocks!)
But in 2023, Hunt launched his lawsuit against the SBC. In it, he accuses other SBC leaders of wrecking his reputation and career. He claims they did this to him by investigating allegations the year before about him sexually assaulting at least one woman. Hunt characterizes the assault as a consensual extramarital affair with another pastor’s wife. Believe that or not as you like. I sure as hell don’t. In my opinion, the man is pure sleaze. Either way, his cronies “restored” him to ministry.
(Related: The well-beloved farce of pastoral restoration.)
He still wants the SBC to pay him $100M for the loss of his NAMB gig, lost money from speaking engagements and books, and general reputational harm.
I strongly suspect Hunt’s lawsuit has a lot to do with the SBC wanting to wrap up this entire sex abuse crisis. It’s been incredibly messy and has revealed all kinds of things that embarrass the SBC’s leaders. A court scheduled the trial to begin on June 17 this year. That’s about a week after the denomination’s big Annual Meeting in Dallas!
If he wins this lawsuit, it will cause a lot of damage.
And the entire federal investigation thing
Another situation I think has affected SBC leaders’ willingness to do more with sex abuse reform is the Matt Queen case.
On March 5 a judge sentenced Matt Queen to probation, six months’ confinement at home, and a fine. Queen had earlier confessed to lying to federal investigators about a sexual assault at the SBC seminary he led as Interim Provost. In point of fact, the feds arrested only one person in that entire investigation: Matt Queen. They concluded their investigation on March 12.
I suspect that Queen was the SBC’s scapegoat offering in that investigation. He’s practically nobody. He has no real connections to any powerful cronies. Most of all, he lied about taking notes during an impromptu meeting concerning the assault. That sounds incredibly—even galactically—stupid.
The feds might be done with the SBC, yes. However, that means they found no other evidence of federal crimes. No, this scandal involves local churches and local crimes.
PS: The Bible the SBC idolizes and considers literally true and binding forever says Christians should not ever sue each other in court. And the Old Guard takes that idolization to 11. Despite their stated opinions, Johnny Hunt sure ain’t the first SBC leader who has ignored the Bible’s direct commands when they interfered with their own self-interest.
None of these SBC leaders’ behavior should surprise anybody
Indeed, SBC leaders have allowed self-interest to dictate their response to the denomination’s sex abuse crisis.
On March 19, Baptist Press, the official site of the SBC, published a timeline of abuse-related costs to the denomination. They revealed that it’s cost them about $13M since 2021. This entire article stinks of ulterior motives—like making the flocks think sex abuse reform is simply too expensive for just ferreting out seven churches to disfellowship.
But the SBC’s leaders need to make sex abuse reform sound expensive and cost-ineffective.
A March 7 article from Baptist Standard revealed that the Executive Committee is effectively dead broke. In addition to that $13M they’ve already spent dealing with sex abuse, they think they’ll need another $3M this year. (A lot of that likely is earmarked for Johnny Hunt’s crisis-adjacent lawsuit!) To get that money, the Executive Committee seems to be looking to dip into the denomination’s Cooperative Program (CP).
That program usually pays for SBC-wide stuff like overseas evangelism and seminaries. More to the point, churches’ donations to the CP have been slowly declining in recent years. This decline accompanies the denomination’s other declines in membership and credibility.
So what is going on with the Southern Baptist sexual abuse investigation?
Over at a nonreligious site called Current on March 17, John Fea plaintively asked, “What is going on with the Southern Baptist sexual abuse investigation?”
What, indeed. To me, it’s obvious. The SBC’s entire song and dance about sex abuse amounted to nothing. It was always a pretense. SBC leaders always hoped the flocks would quickly forget all about it. So they dragged their feet for years over doing anything. When anything did happen, like a formal apology to one survivor and the creation of the hilariously-stupid CaringWell initiative, it didn’t affect anything. As of last year, barely half of SBC churches reported that they’d even begun doing background checks on all of their staff and volunteers.
And now, SBC leaders are freaking out over the cost of this pretense.
The Executive Committee members are having kittens over their money problems. They need this sex abuse thing to go away like yesterday. It threatens their entire money train.
Like evangelicals themselves, the SBC as a denomination uses Jesus-frosting to rationalize doing what they wanted to do anyway. The SBC itself is just a big, regressive country club with a worrisome political presence that Jesus—in the form the Gospels describe, at least—would have condemned out of hand.
Alas, those clubhouses don’t run on thoughts and prayers. They require real money, which Jesus isn’t handing them for free. That money comes primarily from at least a small percentage of the real people who unaccountably still warm SBC churches’ pews.
That’s why SBC leaders have always tried to silence allegations of sex abuse. That stuff harshes their Jesus vibe. Worse, those allegations severely contradict evangelicals’ claims about their god.
Seriously. Do not ever, ever believe that SBC leaders care about sex abuse
Hopefully, the flocks aren’t enchanted by such talk. Hopefully, they encounter quotes like this one from Johnny Hunt and understand what it means about their entire organization. Here’s what Johnny Hunt had to say about what he thinks would have happened had his sex abuse allegation come to light when it had occurred 12 years ago:
[Johnny] Hunt appeared to reject the notion that his inappropriate behavior was the cause of his financial and reputational harm. When asked “What would it have cost you if it had come to light 12 years before when you committed the sin?” Hunt replied, “Probably some speaking engagements with the Southern Baptist Convention, but I really don’t think it would have cost me my church. I think I could have led them through that.”
Hunt blames his downfall not on himself, but on the SBC’s sex abuse investigation for creating what he calls a “narrative” of him as sexually abusive. And he knows very well that in the SBC world as it existed before the 2019 journalistic unmasking of predatory SBC ministers, nobody of import would have cared at all about what he did.
The religion of accountability shows us once again how things really work in the Christ-o-sphere. Very obviously, Johnny Hunt hopes SBC flocks will stop caring about sex abuse soon. Unfortunately, that seems to have already happened—at least in the higher-up circles of leadership in the denomination. It’s obvious as well how SBC leaders feel: The sooner they can get the flocks over this entire sex abuse reform idea, the sooner they can get their money train back on track.
Sure, Hunt’s assessment and denominational leaders’ current focus on ending all pretenses of reform equate to a slap in the face of all abuse survivors and their allies. But nobody cares about them. None of them hold any power within the SBC. To dysfunctional authoritarians like the SBC’s leaders, the only opinions that matter are those of the powerful. Giving way to the less-powerful is, itself, an admission of weakness.
Sure, the flocks have told their leaders for years that they want meaningful action taken on sex abuse. But their denomination is like a deeply misogynistic boyfriend, while they are the girlfriend who constantly starts fights over unfair divisions of labor around the house. As long as the flocks pour their money into the SBC’s coffers, they demonstrate that they will stay regardless—which means their boyfriend of a denomination won’t ever change.
If being compassionate and Jesusy had ever been a priority for the SBC’s leaders in the first place, this entire scandal would never have become an issue. It would have been resolved decades ago, and reform would already be a thing. But it wasn’t. It never will be.
Those who are ready to understand, let them catch on at last.
NEXT UP: Hardline evangelicals seem to have finally noticed that Catholic evangelists are working hard to recruit them. Yes, them specifically! We’ll check out how that works next time. See you soon! <3
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