The Southern Baptist Convention faces some thorny issues as its annual meeting gets underway this week in Birmingham, Ala.
Widespread allegations of sexual abuse by clergymen and church staff members have roiled the denomination. Church membership has continued to decline, and the denomination continues to grapple with the role of women in the church.
Aside from that, this is the first annual gathering in which the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of Northwest Arkansas' Cross Church from 1986 until May 19, will serve as president and CEO of the convention's executive committee.
That committee handles matters pertaining to the convention outside of its annual two-day business meeting. Floyd is to deliver the executive committee report Tuesday in two installments.
The convention begins today, but its business sessions are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.
Earlier this year, reports by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News revealed that more than 700 claims of sexual abuse have been made against hundreds of pastors and other church members in the past 20 years, and that some Southern Baptist churches knowingly employed clergymen or staff members who had been accused of sexual misconduct in previous workplaces.
J.D. Greear, president of the convention and pastor of The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., responded to the reports, acknowledging the abuse allegations and calling for action to prevent such abuses.
[Read more: See the full report from the sexual abuse advisory group]
"What can easily be lost in the size of these numbers [in the news reports], which are grievously large, is the tragic fact that they cannot be the whole story," Greear said in a post on his website in February. "If you have been victimized by a church leader, we are profoundly sorry. We, the church, have failed you."
Greear's term as president ends this week, although he can be re-elected. Since the February post, he has commissioned a sexual-abuse advisory group, which released a 52-page report Saturday detailing "how Southern Baptists at every level can take discernable action to respond swiftly and compassionately to incidents of abuse, as well as to foster safe environments within churches and institutions."
At this week's convention, members of the sexual-abuse advisory group are to give a presentation, and a Monday evening panel discussion is planned on the topic, hosted by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the convention's public-policy arm.
Delegates are expected to vote on a constitutional amendment that is recommended by the convention's executive committee, which would place churches that fail to address sexual abuse in contradiction with the convention's values.
A similar amendment, also up for voting, would hold accountable churches that affirm racial discrimination. That comes after a Southern Baptist church in Georgia was booted from the denomination last year -- known as "disfellowshipping" -- over accusations of racial discrimination.
As for women's roles in the church, Greear wrote in March that The Summit Church was working on a position that would allow women, in a non-clergy capacity, to address men and women of the congregation. The activity, however, would be such that it would not imply that the women have the authority of clergy. Greear's writing received both praise and criticism from fellow Southern Baptists.
Members adhere to the belief of complementarianism: that men and women have equal but different roles in the church, and while a resolution was passed last year affirming the worth and dignity of women, women are not allowed to serve as clergy.
The nation's largest Protestant denomination is facing its 12th-consecutive year of declining membership. Southern Baptists lost more than 192,000 members from 2017-18, even though the denomination saw an increase in financial giving over the past year, according to the recently released Lifeway Annual Church Profile. The decline places membership at its lowest point in the past 30 years, which troubles Southern Baptist leaders, such as Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
"Southern Baptists are ardent counters," said Mohler on his website May 31. "Some of us are old enough to remember the six-point record-keeping envelopes for offerings that we brought to Sunday School each week, reporting and being graded on how many of us in the previous week had been present in Sunday School. We not only counted Sunday School students, we graded them."
Results of a Gallup poll released in April found that while 70% of Americans were members of a church in 1999, 50% now claim membership in a house of worship. Mohler said that decline in religious observers overall can account for some of the Southern Baptists decline, but he suggested other matters are also at play.
"Southern Baptists must face the truth and understand what faithfulness to Christ will demand of us now," Mohler said. "The numbers are just part of the story, but they reveal a multitude of questions that, one way or another, this generation of Southern Baptists will answer.
"It would seem that this is the right time to start answering those questions with both honesty and conviction," he said.
Metro on 06/09/2019