This report of the independent commission investigating sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—"Uff da," my mom would have said. If you have time and a strong stomach, the full report is here. In a box at the top of its title page there is printed the following—
WARNING: This report contains information and descriptions related to sexual assault. This may be triggering to readers who have had similar experiences. We encourage you to care for your safety and well-being. The content of this report is not appropriate for children.
—but I'm not sure this adequately prepares readers for what's coming. Maybe the best summary is by David French, in The Atlantic, here. One way of conveying the generalized corruption, without discussing the details of any particular case, might be to describe how the Report came to be. For years, pew-sitters, ordinary members of Baptist churches, had been making complaints about sexual predators in the pulpit, at church camps for young people, on church staffs, etc. Nothing ever came of their complaints, but over time victims and their families, who knew what had happened in their own lives, spoke up enough, including with each other, so that a kind of critical mass of suspicion built up. At the denomination's 2021 national convention, delegates voted overwhelmingly to commission an investigation by an independent group. The purpose was to settle the question about what might be going on—whether there was actual trouble or just a web of mostly false whisperings. It's on the initiative of these delegates, mostly laypeople, that the Report that landed yesterday exists in the first place.
And it's brutal. If you're an English major, the Report reads a bit like an exaggeration of a Nathaniel Hawthorne tale concerning some Puritan who, sallying forth into the woods at night for corrupt purposes, discovers that no one is at home in bed like they're supposed to be. Nothing came of all the complaints because the people who should have done something did nothing. To be more precise, they investigated enough to become informed about what needed covering up: a long list of known or suspected abusers was compiled, but nothing happened to the people on the list. They just continued about their business. Frequently the person who might have delivered consequences was himself sexually compromised—not molesting campers, but boffing the secretary on the side, say. I know I'm a bad person because the details sometimes seem to me almost comically lurid.
Inevitably I suppose there will be comparisons to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. I should be careful, since I'm not an expert, but I think the differences might place the Baptists in an even worse light. The Catholic Church is more hierarchical, so some bad apples high up, like John Nienstedt, can create a pervasive stench. (Though the question arises: how is it that the very worst people seem to be the ones who advance up the chart?) The SBC, which has around 14 million members in the U.S., is comparatively decentralized. It follows, I think, that all these complaints coming in from church members spread across the country were dealt with independently by a local big shot, and none ever did the right thing. It's not a case of corruption seeping downward from the top. The wide base was already thoroughly rotten. Terrible crimes were committed. Nobody called the cops. They made a list, did nothing with it.
Reading the accounts of various news organizations, another thing that seems to me sort of comical is the manner in which the supposed liberal media tiptoe around an obvious point, which is that these losers have been quite loquacious about the alleged depravity of people who mark their ballots differently from them on Election Day. Again, not an expert, but I believe their Bibles have red-lettered instructions not to worry about a speck of sawdust in their neighbor's eye when there's a plank in their own.
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