What will it take for SBC reform on clergy sex abuse? Lawsuits.

Hierarchical power without hierarchical accountability won't fly.

In court documents, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee responded that it was currently involved in fifteen different lawsuits “relating to allegations of sexual misconduct.” That’s in addition to the case involving Paul Pressler and the investigation by the Department of Justice.

Fifteen. Hallelujah. I wish it were 100. But fifteen is a good start.

Most clergy sex abuse cases never make it to a lawsuit at all—often for no reason other than that they’re barred by short time limitations—and the few that do make it to a lawsuit have typically sued the local church and not the Southern Baptist Convention. This is what’s changing.

These fifteen cases are suing the SBC itself and thereby challenging the SBC’s longstanding (but still mostly untested) argument that it has no control over local churches—the argument it has historically stood behind as a wall to immunize denominational dollars against liability concerns.

And so long as denominational dollars aren’t at risk in lawsuits, denominational officials apparently aren’t motivated to engage with meaningful reforms for the protection of kids and congregants. To the contrary, they’re motivated to preserve the status quo so as to continue protecting the dollars… and the safety of kids be damned.

That’s how things have been for decades.

So bring on the lawsuits. That’s what it will take to bring change to this callous and recalcitrant institution.

Only when the cost of maintaining their craven status quo becomes greater than the cost of change will SBC officials finally “care” enough to implement robust reforms.

Will one of these fifteen cases be the first to hold the Southern Baptist Convention responsible, or at least partially responsible, for the harm of sexual abuse inflicted in one of its affiliated churches?

Maybe. If it doesn’t happen in one of these cases, it will happen in some other case down the road. The floodgates are now open, and I have faith in the creativity and doggedness of America’s trial lawyers.

In a South Carolina sexual abuse case, a court has already denied the SBC’s motion to dismiss, effectively rejecting the SBC’s effort to immunize itself from any responsibility for the harm.

Instead, the court recognized “that SBC plays a direct role in the presence of alleged sexual abusers in local churches and in…their undeterred migration from one SBC church to another.”

And here’s the cherry on top. To reach this conclusion, the court cited a (now deleted) blog posting of SBC president Bart Barber in which he 1) decried the way SBC officials have conflated “local church autonomy” with a legal argument against ascending liability, 2) declared that to be a “misunderstanding” of Baptist belief, and 3) expressly stated that the SBC could indeed affirm autonomy while still determining the truth about allegations and taking action.

(In Baptistland, Barber has been roundly criticized for that blog posting but I think it reflected what has always been true: The SBC twists “local church autonomy” into functioning, not as a theological construct, but as a tactic to protect against liability.)

Significantly, the South Carolina court relied on Barber’s blog posting despite the fact that Barber had also filed an affidavit with the usual “no authority” assertions, including the tired trope that the SBC “exists only in the form of an annual two-day convention.” The judge was not impressed: “The Court cannot accept on faith Mr. Barber’s assertions [in his affidavit] in light of the Barber Blog Post and other SBC documents tending to show SBC has a greater role in local church activities than Mr. Barber’s affidavit suggests.”

Thus, the court is allowing the lawsuit to proceed. The plaintiff will have a chance to engage further discovery and prove up her allegations, including her allegation that the SBC undertook a duty, for the protection of others, to control the handling of sexual abuse allegations, to distribute local church policies and procedures related to sexual abuse, and to investigate the accused pastor’s alleged misconduct.

In part, these allegations mesh with what the SBC has in fact already admitted. Its 2022 resolution “on lament and repentance for sexual abuse” stated:

“We have failed to educate and thus adequately prepare church leaders to respond to abuse…” and “our institutional responses have at times caused irreparable personal harm to survivors of sexual abuse…”

Further, the resolution publicly apologized for the SBC’s “failure to hold perpetrators of sexual abuse adequately accountable…” and for “the unspeakable harm this failure has caused to survivors through both our action and inaction.”

Let’s hope this South Carolina court will hold the SBC to the words of its public lament. Just because the SBC makes the performance of an apology doesn’t mean it should get off the hook for accountability. To the contrary, for far too long, the SBC has managed to avoid accountability in courts of law, and we have seen the result of that in countless decimated lives and in an institution inured to its own moral responsibilities.

Even now, we continue to see further evidence of the SBC’s recalcitrance. Institutionally, it undertook an obligation to create a database of convicted, admitted, and credibly accused clergy sex abusers. Yet, it failed to designate the necessary resources for the fulfillment of that obligation and failed to put in place people with the necessary expertise to make it happen. So, instead of a functional database, we get obfuscation and stalling.

In annual revenues, the SBC is the size of a mid-tier Fortune 500 company. So, imagine a Fortune 500 company facing a massive public scandal for a defective product that’s hurting thousands of people. Instead of dealing with it forthrightly and expeditiously—to remedy the defect and compensate the wounded—the company appoints a committee of volunteers, and then another committee after that one, who meet occasionally to talk about it. That’s akin to what we’re seeing with the SBC, and it’s why not a single abusive pastor has been added to any SBC database, not even those convicted of crimes.

Finally, in the midst of all this, let’s not forget that the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed a brief with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the SBC is a “hierarchy” and “the umbrella Southern Baptist governing body over all of the various groups of churches.”

When the brief came to public light, it gave rise to a Baptistland firestorm and the Commission amended it. But here’s the thing, as someone who has filed many scores of appellate briefs, I can tell you that filing a brief with a court of appeals is not an off-the-cuff sort of thing. And no good attorney would cavalierly use words like “hierarchy” and “umbrella organization.” So, I find it hard to believe the brief was just a mistake.

Instead, I think the brief reflects the reality that, for decades, SBC officials have treated “local church autonomy” as a malleable construct, ignoring it when it doesn’t serve their ends of power and invoking it when it serves their ends of protecting denominational dollars from liability. They’ve tried to have it both ways.

They want hierarchical power without hierarchical accountability. And that dog don’t hunt.

I expect the SBC still has plenty of stalls and dodges and tricks up its institutional sleeves. But while it doesn’t yet appear that it’s up against the ropes, it does appear that the SBC is bleeding at this point. And that’s a good thing.

To see even a drop of SBC blood is something that’s been decades in the making. I hope many more survivors will keep punching away at them with ever more lawsuits.

Consequences and accountability are what will eventually bring change.