Sometimes We Don't Know the Impact of What We Do

But time can make change more visible

A favorite moment in Indianapolis was when a women told me that she had been working at the Baptist General Convention of Texas back in 2006 and how upset people there were when my Dallas Morning News op-ed piece was published about the BGCT’s secret file of clergy sex abusers.

“All up and down the hall, people were reading it,” she said. “Everyone was talking about it!”

This news came as such a surprise to me. You can see that from the look on my face, and on Sarah Stankorb’s, as this photo captures the moment she was telling us this.

Back in 2006, I had no clue that anyone had even noticed my op-ed piece. I was wholly ignored at the time, and as far as I knew, my op-ed piece had simply vanished into a black hole.

So here we are eighteen years later — eighteen years! — and for the first time, I’m learning that, actually, that op-ed really upset people a lot. They noticed.

Sometimes we don’t know the impact of what we do.

BGCT officials had chosen to ignore me, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t noticed what I wrote—what I put in print—what I told the world: They had a secret file.

They talked about it among themselves, and employees noticed them talking about it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all this in the aftermath of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Indianapolis. It was a total bust as far as any institutional progress on addressing clergy sex abuse and church coverups. That came as no surprise—I expected nothing more from them—but it was still disappointing.

And yet… while the SBC remains institutionally recalcitrant, that doesn’t mean change isn’t happening… because it is.

Change is happening in the lives of countless individuals—people who have told their stories of abuse and coverups in Southern Baptist churches, and in lots of other churches as well, and have moved forward with lives free from the tyranny and shame of such secrets.

Change is happening in the lives of countless churchgoers who have seen the truth of the SBC’s rot and have chosen to walk away, refusing any complicity with such institutional horror. The SBC’s membership numbers are dropping.

And change is happening on a broader level—culturally. When I think back to how things were in 2006, I can see it.

Back then, the dominant narrative was “it’s a Catholic problem.” People kept telling me that what I was encountering with Southern Baptists were just “isolated incidents.”

But now, the conversation has shifted. And that’s no small thing.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s crisis of sexual abuse and coverups is in people’s consciousness. The world knows.

So, nowadays, when people hear a Baptist clergy sex abuse story, instead of assuming that it can’t possibly be true, people tend more often to assume that it IS true and they want to know… What’s the latest? What have Baptists done now?

That’s what I encounter from people who are outside the narrow box of the SBC.

And that’s change.

My new book, Baptistland, is now available!