Indianapolis

Why it conjures grief and why I'm going

Indianapolis holds special weight in the long saga of the Southern Baptist Convention’s recalcitrant history of refusing to protect kids and congregants against clergy predators.

That’s why I’m going there this June during the time of the SBC’s annual meeting. I’ll be just a couple blocks away from them, doing a book event with the fabulous

Sarah Stankorb

.

Call it an act of holy defiance, if you want. Despite all the awfulness the SBC has dished out—over the course of decades—I’m still here. Still standing. Still talking.

Together, Sarah and I will be discussing Disobedient Women, Baptistland, and the Power of Truth-Telling.

If you’re in the area, I’d love to shake your hand. The event is at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown Indianapolis, on June 10, starting at 3:00 PM. It’s free, but please pre-register. Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/4dOIFEs

So what’s the Indianapolis history I’m talking about? I wrote about it in Baptistland.

In 2007, after an ABC 20/20 episode on “Preacher-Predators”—one in which I invested heavily with energy, time, angst, and a personal interview—there seemed a flicker of hope. I showed up outside the SBC annual meeting in San Antonio that year, and together with other survivors, handed out over two thousand flyers urging Southern Baptists to create a database of convicted, admitted, and credibly accused clergy sex abusers. A pastor named Wade Burleson put a motion onto the floor of the convention, and delegates—called messengers in Baptistland—voted to instruct the SBC Executive Committee to conduct a study on the feasibility of creating such a database.

The SBC garnered a heap of press for that, but once the vote passed, no one bothered to bird-dog what the Executive Committee actually did. So, it was left to me to try to push the committee to conduct a legitimate study, and my efforts were to no avail. Under the leadership of Executive Committee President Morris Chapman, there was never even a budget allocated for the study, much less any process resembling what most ordinary people would call a “study.” Yet, no one in Baptistland questioned it.

The next year, the Southern Baptist Convention held its big meeting in Indianapolis.

In 2008, when the time came to report back on the results of the purported “study” about creating a database, Chapman stood before thousands of Southern Baptists and preached a powerful sermon:

“We shall not turn a blind eye . . . We shall protect the weak and vulnerable . . . We shall provide safe havens . . . We shall not allow predators to infiltrate our ministries . . . We shall not allow fear of reprisal to stifle the stories of those who have been abused.”

Then, in the next breath, he declared the SBC couldn’t possibly keep a database of clergy sex abusers because it would violate Baptists’ belief in local church autonomy. Shrouded in religious rhetoric, Chapman’s sermon was effectively a declaration that the denomination would do nothing. The throng of Baptist believers applauded.

Even Burleson, the pastor who had put forward the motion, reacted as though hypnotized by the hive, telling the press that SBC leadership had taken the abuse issue “very seriously” and that their response was “adequate.”

As it turned out, their response wasn’t even honest, much less adequate. SBC attorneys had specifically told SBC officials that they could indeed establish a clergy abuser database without violating their beliefs. And even as Chapman was declaring they couldn’t keep a database, the Executive Committee was already keeping a list of clergy sex abusers but holding it secret. This deception was something we didn’t learn about until years later, after hundreds more kids and congregants had been sexually abused.

Therein lies the grief.

Countless kids and congregants could have been spared grievous harm if only the Southern Baptist Convention had taken action in 2008—harm not only from clergy sex abuse but also from so many other church and denominational leaders who cruelly turned a blind eye, who stonewalled and demonized survivors, and who failed at even basic human decency in their treatment of survivors.

In these sixteen intervening years, many more kids have been raped by scripture-quoting preacher-predators, many more congregants have been sexually abused by purported men of God, and many more survivors have been brutalized by the betrayals of church and denominational leaders.

For me, they are not abstractions. They are real people. My mind conjures names, voices and stories, and I weep for them.

I am haunted by the realization of how many could have been spared if only things had gone differently at Indianapolis in 2008. If only SBC leaders had walked the walk instead of just talking the talk. If only they had actually cared about protecting kids and congregants.

But apparently, that realization doesn’t haunt many others in Southern Baptist life.

Even though the 2022 Guidepost report provided documentation of the SBC Executive Committee’s horrific handling of abuse reports and its maltreatment of survivors, there has been no consequence for Morris Chapman, the man who was at the helm for many of the years covered by that report.

I asked that the SBC Executive Committee impose a nominal measure of accountability by simply stripping Chapman of his honorary “president emeritus” title. But even that tiny consequence was apparently too much. Instead, when Chapman appeared at their February 2023 meeting, the Executive Committee applauded him.

“It felt as the continuing reverberation of the applause for his duplicitous 2008 speech in which he’d announced that the SBC couldn’t possibly keep a clergy abuser database.”

Now here we are in 2024 with the SBC once again holding its brouhaha in Indianapolis. The institutional tragedy continues and very little has changed . . . except that countless more lives have been decimated by clergy sex abuse and coverups.

I hope my presence in Indianapolis will at least serve, in one small corner, to speak truth about the grief of so many wounded.

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Thank you to First Baptist Church of Indianapolis for its support of this book event, which will be moderated by Rev. Evan Bever and Rev. Laura Harris-Adam. The congregation is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.

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My new book, Baptistland, is now available!