Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

New SBC leadership offers little hope for change on addressing clergy sex abuse

Jun 30, 2024

In this video, newly elected SBC Executive Committee chairman Philip Robertson gives his thoughts on the clergy sex abuse problem within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Spoiler: He doesn’t think it’s much of a problem.

Robertson attempts to discredit and sow doubt about the 2019 Abuse of Faith series, which brought national attention to the pervasive sexual abuse and cover-up problem in the country’s largest Protestant faith group. That six-part investigatory series, jointly published by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, documented more than 700 people who were sexually abused by Southern Baptist clergy and church staff, nearly all of them children at the time of the abuse. This number was widely recognized as “the tip of the iceberg.”

Not only did the series disclose widespread abuse in local churches, it also implicated top SBC officials and leaders in the mishandling of abuse reports.

Abuse of Faith was an exposé that should have been a launchpad for institutional change. Yet here we are over five years later, and the needle has scarcely moved.

And now… Philip Robertson says this about Abuse of Faith: (30:48)

“Essentially this article claimed that there was systemic sex abuse taking place within the Southern Baptist Convention that was elevated to a crisis. Now, there’s a lot of problems with that article, and there have been numerous individuals who have done a lot of digging into that article and have found a lot of it to be very problematic… There were many, many people listed in that article who had no connection to Southern Baptists at all. In fact, there were only a very small… amount of the people named in that article who were part of the Southern Baptist Convention. But it was used to help create this idea that there was this systemic problem… that quite frankly in my opinion was not true.”

“Not true.”

His words are a slap in the face for survivors of SBC clergy sex abuse.

And if Robertson won’t even acknowledge the systemic problem—if he thinks it’s “not true”—then it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be working toward systemic solutions.

Robertson doesn’t tell us who the “numerous individuals” are that purportedly did “a lot of digging.” Personally, I suspect they aren’t really so “numerous,” and that they may be just a “lone ranger” or two.

Whoever they are, Robertson’s “numerous individuals” almost certainly don’t carry the skill and professionalism of the investigatory journalists—Robert Downen, John Tedesco and Lise Olsen—who wrote Abuse of Faith, because if they were professionals, we would likely know their names.

And I just can’t understand how, with a straight face, Robertson can contend that “only a very small” amount of the people named in Abuse of Faith were part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Anyone who reads the six-part series can readily see that it’s all about the Southern Baptist Convention.

So, if Robertson wants to talk about things that are “not true,” he’d do well to reflect on his own words.

Perhaps Robertson’s words are a balm for the SBC base—for the many people who donate dollars in Southern Baptist churches and who just don’t want to believe that the faith they love has a systemic problem of clergy sex abuse.

I get it. Clergy sex abuse is horrific; church cover-ups are deplorable. But pretending it’s all “not true” will never work for making things better. We’ve already been down this road of denial with prior SBC leaders.

Robertson also had a terrible take on the 2022 Guidepost investigatory report, which confirmed the horror of the SBC’s abuse crisis and documented that “some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers.”

But Robertson says this about it: (28:26)

“When Guidepost finished their investigation, they essentially found no evidence of sexual abuse.”

Then he described it as “a praise God moment”—as if the Guidepost report were something Southern Baptists should celebrate. (30:26)

It appears Robertson is effectively discounting the evidence in the Guidepost report related to Johnny Hunt and Paul Pressler, but more importantly, Robertson is wrongly treating the Guidepost report as if it were solely about whether Executive Committee members committed sexual abuse, even though it was about so much more than that.

The Guidepost report documented SBC officials’ decades-long practice of ignoring sexual abuse reports “even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry,” and their deceit in claiming a database was impossible even as, all the while, the Executive Committee was keeping a secret list of its own. The report also showed SBC officials’ cruel treatment of survivors with stonewalling and hostility. (My own name appears dozens of times in the report precisely because the Executive Committee treated me so terribly. So, I take it kinda personally to hear that documented meanness now described in “praise God” terms.)

Many survivors of abuse within the SBC have said that what did them even greater harm than the sexual abuse itself was how they were treated within the faith community. Yet, Robertson completely ignores the Executive Committee’s own documented maltreatment of survivors.

Next up, Robertson makes clear that he’s not in favor of a denominational database to track credibly accused clergy sex abusers. He says this: (34:36)

“There have been some controversial recommendations, particularly regarding a database of alleged offenders within the Southern Baptist Convention. What makes that problematic…is the legal liability associated with that… Whoever is in charge of that database, there would always be a danger of them potentially getting something wrong…of naming someone on that database who was ‘credibly accused’ but in reality they were innocent.”

The only thing good about Robertson’s remark is that it provides a window into what has always been true: SBC officials’ resistance to a database has never really been about local church autonomy (because providing local churches with a resource for information doesn’t intrude on their autonomy), but rather, has always been about trying to minimize liability risks to the institution. SBC officials fear the potential lawsuits that could be brought by their own SBC pastors who might be listed as “credibly accused.”

This meshes with the conclusion of the Guidepost report that, for decades, SBC officials had been “singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations.” Thus, Robertson’s view is simply more of the same. It is the continued prioritizing of institutional protection over the protection of kids and congregants.

It’s also fundamentally irresponsible. Liability risks are a part of operating a large institution, and responsible institutions work to ethically manage those risks. The Southern Baptist Convention is a tentacular, multi-billion dollar organization—akin to a Fortune 500 company—and yet, SBC officials are trying to operate this multi-billion dollar organization without taking on the inherent responsibilities that go along with it. They want the power of such a behemoth without the responsibility of it.

When new leaders express views like those of Philip Robertson, there is little reason to expect any meaningful reform for addressing sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention.

So, in the words of The Who, we “won’t get fooled again.”