Southern Baptist Cronyism

and how complicit abuse enablers stay protected

A new sexual abuse lawsuit says the Southern Baptist Convention has known for years that its churches are “a hunting ground.”

Yet, the SBC still fails to protect kids against abuse, and instead, says the lawsuit, SBC-affiliated Champion Forest Baptist Church “invited, encouraged, and enabled a predator to be part of their trusted inner circle.”

The lawsuit is brought by three women who say they were sexually abused as kids by a Champion Forest youth pastor named Timothy Jeltema, but the suit also alleges that Jeltema was “able to engage his deviancy … with 25 young women” at the church.

The suit names not only the church as a defendant but also the SBC itself. “This pattern is well known to the SBC” the suit states, but “SBC officials ‘decided’ to distract, minimize, avoid & often cover up.”

Sounds all too tragically familiar at this point, eh? So you can add this to the growing list of lawsuits that name the SBC, and you can bet there will be more.

SBC headquarters in Nashville (AP photo by Holly Meyer)

When one of the girls and her parents went to report the youth pastor’s crimes to the police, Champion Forest’s executive pastor, Stephen Trammell, allegedly tried to “intimidate the police officers into letting him be present” for the interview, telling them that his “church was a mega church, and that ‘they did not know who they were dealing with.’”

Trammell then went to the youth pastor’s apartment where he allegedly had some conversation, and afterwards, the youth pastor “destroyed his phone and his computer with a hammer, destroyed much of the evidence that would have uncovered the extent of his wrongdoing, additional victims, and the church’s entanglement.”

These are serious allegations. You might think this would be enough to stymie Trammell’s ministerial career, or at least to put it on hold pending a full independent investigation.

But of course, you’d be wrong. This is, after all, the Southern Baptist Convention.

Trammell moved on to become executive pastor at Houston’s First Baptist Church. Recognize the name?

It’s the church where the infamous Paul Pressler led a Bible study group and reportedly lured a devout 14-year-old to his home for sexual abuse. It’s the church in which other leaders knew about Pressler’s alleged abuses at least as far back as 2004 . . . but kept quiet.

In the very midst of all this awfulness coming to light, we get news that a guy named Jarrett Stephens has been chosen to receive a “distinguished alumni” award from the SBC’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Stephens is none other than the current senior pastor for Champion Forest Baptist Church.

Jarrett Stephens (X profile)

Doesn’t it seem, at best, a tad tone deaf that SBC powers-that-be would choose this moment in time to honor Stephens? To praise him and prop him up? There are still so many unanswered questions about what happened at Champion Forest. About who knew what and when did they know it.

Stephens wasn’t at Champion Forest at the time of Jeltema’s alleged abuses, but here’s what bothers me: Why did it take a lawsuit and media to bring his church’s abuse history to light? Why wasn’t Stephens up-front about this ugly history in his own church?

With allegations of 25 young women and girls who were hurt by one of Champion Forest’s pastors, wouldn’t you think that, as the new senior pastor, Stephens would have commissioned an independent investigation to get to the bottom of what happened in his church? To find out who knew what? Who turned a blind eye? Who enabled the abuse of so many?

Particularly since Stephens was appointed to the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, shouldn’t this abuse history in his own church have been transparently disclosed at the time he was appointed?

And why would SBC president Bart Barber even appoint someone like Stephens to the task force? In the whole of the SBC, couldn’t Barber manage to find task force members who hadn’t had a sex abuse scandal in their own church… or who at least had a track record of having dealt with it transparently?  

But of course, keep in mind that Bart Barber was the guy who authorized that awful anti-survivor amicus brief on behalf of the whole of the 13.2 million member Southern Baptist Convention. When you think about SBC leaders who have done enormous harm to sexual abuse survivors, Barber should definitely be near the top of your list.

So, given what Barber revealed of his own mindset with the craven act of authorizing that brief, perhaps he wasn’t really on the look-out for task force members with a history of bringing truth to light about abuse. Maybe that helps explain how Jarrett Stephens wound up as a task force member.

Moreover, Stephens was the guy who first nominated Bart Barber to be president of the Southern Baptist Convention. So maybe that too had something to do with it.

Are you starting to see the connections? The cronyism? The good-old-boy network at work?

Before Champion Forest, Stephens was a staff pastor for nine years at Prestonwood Baptist Church, another SBC-affiliated mega-church with allegations of a clergy sex abuse coverup in its history. Maybe Stephens learned a thing or two about keep-it-quiet tactics from Prestonwood senior pastor Jack Graham.

Stephens also served on the board of the SBC’s North American Mission Board, yet another SBC organization in need of independent investigation. What was the NAMB’s role in supporting and enabling the “restoration” of “fallen ministers” through the City of Refuge program? How many of those ministers described as having “moral failures” were actually ministers who were abusive of kids and congregants? How much money did the NAMB spend supporting and restoring them?

And importantly, as a board member, what did Jarrett Stephens know about it all?

The SBC’s systemic sexual abuse crisis is as much about the countless complicit enablers as it is about the abusers. And so long as no one cares about ferreting out the enablers and cover-uppers — so long as cronyism prevails — you can be sure the predators will persist.