Feckless Leadership Fuels SBC Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis

Allen Jordan has conducted a decade-long smear campaign, and Southern Baptist leaders have let him do it.

On June 18, in what is only the latest in a long saga, Jordan wrote to Southern Baptist Convention CEO Jeff Iorg, urging that “there never was a clergy sex abuse crisis in the SBC,” complaining that Iorg hasn’t adequately refuted the crisis, and attacking the Houston Chronicle’s Abuse of Faith series that documented the crisis.

Jordan copied numerous other SBC leaders, including SBC president Clint Pressley, Executive Committee chair Philip Robertson, director of Sexual Abuse Prevention Jeff Dalrymple, and some other Executive Committee members, along with various journalists. That’s typical of Jordan’s missives – he blasts them to heaps of people – which means that plenty of Southern Baptist leaders have long known about Jordan’s unfounded (and sometimes unhinged) claims. (And if you’re wondering why I say “unhinged,” consider this: In 2022, Baptist News Global documented that Jordan sent 15 emails early in the year and then followed those up with 27 more emails in just a five-week period after release of the Guidepost report in May.)

Attached to his most recent email, Jordan included a copy of my prior column, The Charade of SBC Abuse Reform, and a copy of an interview that survivor Tiffany Thigpen did with ChurchLeaders – both of us critical of the SBC’s nearly nonexistent abuse reform “efforts.” (Along with his despicable attempts to discredit his own daughter, Amy Smith, Jordan’s smear campaign against me has been ongoing for many years, as he has repeatedly attempted to discredit me as “a provocateur and troublemaker.” I’m now wondering if the reason he added in Tiffany this time was because I quoted her – sorry, Tiffany.)

Jordan told Iorg this about Tiffany and me:

“Both of their stories are fabricated. They have fooled and misled a lot of people in the SBC for many years.”

That’s extremely hurtful – and “documentably false” – and don’t think for one second that, because I move past it as I write, I’m minimizing it. It’s just that I’ve experienced Jordan’s cruelty so many times before.

And what’s really interesting this time is what Jordan said next:

“What is most troubling, Dr. Iorg, is that you acknowledged to me in January 2025 that you knew both Brown and Thigpen’s stories were not credible and requested my help in exposing both the AOF and the GP report before the convention. At that time, you felt that the SBC world needed to know the factual truth that there never was a clergy sex abuse crisis in the SBC…”

Did you get that? Jordan is asserting that 1) Iorg said he knew our stories were false, and 2) Iorg requested Jordan’s help in discrediting the Abuse of Faith series and Guidepost report.

Thankfully, Mark Wingfield of Baptist News Global (which is NOT affiliated with the SBC) honed right in on that statement and immediately contacted Iorg through his media spokesperson to seek a response. Specifically, Wingfield asked whether Iorg agreed with Jordan that the abuse stories of Tiffany and me are not credible.

And here’s where things get even more weaselly.

You might imagine that the top CEO of the largest Protestant faith group in the country would be quick to denounce Jordan’s assertions. You might imagine that he would stand with and support a couple clergy sex abuse survivors whose stories are extensively documented. Or you might imagine that he would at least say “Yay” or “Nay” to the journalist’s question.

But you would be wrong on all of that.

Iorg “did not deny Jordan’s assertions.” Instead, he side-stepped the question and gave mush for an answer. “Past accusations,” he said, are not his focus.

As a journalist, Wingfield saw right through that, saying:

“I’ve been around this business long enough to know that if a public figure doesn’t at least feign denial of an accusation, the accuser has hit the target.”

Bottom line: Iorg was willing to let Jordan’s assertions stand.

SBC Executive Committee president Jeff Iorg (BP photo)

This is the kind of conduct that feeds the SBC’s culture of impunity: the cowardly complicity and feckless leadership of men like Jeff Iorg.

It’s also why the SBC’s culture of cruelty toward survivors is so entrenched – the cruelty is normalized by men who do nothing. It’s a dynamic that causes long-continuing and exacerbated harm to clergy sex abuse survivors.

Men like Jordan heap coals on those who have been abused – again and again and again – while powerful men like Iorg sit back and do nothing.

When Southern Baptist leaders refuse to stand with survivors, and when they won’t denounce an abuse-denier like Jordan, it creates a permission structure for countless others to ignore abuse, and to treat survivors with contempt.

And when a know-nothing like Jordan can conduct a decade-long smear campaign and SBC leaders stay quiet – and even allow Jordan to think they agree with him – then there’s no need to wonder about why sexual abuse and coverups are rampant in the Southern Baptist Convention.

The reasons are on full display.

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In related news, at the Southern Baptist Convention’s meeting a couple weeks ago, Jeff Iorg deflected on abuse reform by saying that the Executive Committee would instead “refer churches to existing databases of sex offenders and focus on education about abuse prevention.”

This is the same deflection that prior SBC CEO Morris Chapman made in 2008. Institutionally, almost nothing has changed within the SBC. They aren’t making kids and congregants safer. They’re just making their glossy brochures glossier.

For more on the ruses and maneuvers of the Southern Baptist Convention, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.