Entangled in a multifaceted sex-abuse crisis, the Southern Baptist Convention is preparing to host a high-profile conference on the topic that has kindled skepticism even among some of the scheduled speakers.
The three-day Caring Well conference opens Thursday at a resort hotel near Dallas, drawing hundreds of pastors and church officials from the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. for a program featuring victim advocates, attorneys, therapists and at least 10 survivors of sexual abuse.
Several of those survivors said they had mixed feelings about the conference -- hoping it represents a genuine desire for change but concerned it might come across as a public relations exercise.
The first survivor scheduled to speak is Susan Codone, a professor at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., who says she was abused as a teenager by the youth minister and pastor at her Southern Baptist Convention church in Alabama.
She is grateful that church leaders now seem to be taking the sex abuse problem seriously, but suggested progress would come faster if the denomination -- which espouses male leadership at church and in the home -- brought more women into leadership roles.
"The anger in the survivor community has been extremely valuable for instigating change," she said. "But changing the culture of the [Southern Baptist Convention] will take generations."
There's been some sharp criticism of the conference from several anti-abuse activists who were not invited to speak, including Christa Brown, an author and retired attorney who says she was abused by a Southern Baptist minister as a child. She suggested that organizers opted to invite survivors whose stories were deemed "risk-free for the [Southern Baptist Convention]."
The conference is being organized by the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which holds a national meeting every year in its role as the church's public policy arm. It decided in April to scrap its planned theme, "Gospel Courage," and instead devote the entire meeting to the sex-abuse crisis.
The commission's president, the Rev. Russell Moore, said he and his colleagues sought a diverse array of speakers, and are urging them to be "candid and forthright."
"I can understand skepticism from all sorts of people, given the track record of the church, especially over the past several years," he said.
The conference is not intended to produce new policies or recommendations. Its goal, Moore said, is to provide churches with expert advice on how to prevent abuse and support abuse survivors.
Due to multiple scandals, sex abuse became a major issue for the church in 2018. Its president, the Rev. J.D. Greear, formed an advisory group to draft recommendations on how to confront the problem.
The crisis intensified this year, in part due to articles by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News asserting that hundreds of Southern Baptist clergy and staff had been accused of sexual misconduct over the past 20 years. Many of them returned to church duties, the articles said, and more than 700 victims were left with little in the way of justice or apologies.
Among the most prominent invitees to the upcoming conference is attorney and activist Rachael Denhollander, the first woman to go public with sexual assault complaints against now-imprisoned former sports doctor Larry Nassar.
Another scheduled speaker is Boz Tchividjian, an attorney who is a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham and who heads GRACE, an organization working to combat sexual abuse in faith-based organizations.
Tchividjian has close ties with many abuse survivors and said he understands many of their concerns about the Southern Baptist church's resolve in combating this problem. He said he initially wrestled with his decision before agreeing to speak, but intends to be "constructively direct" about how the church is fueling such concerns among many people who were abused within its churches.
"I think the [Southern Baptist Convention] must go through a season of substantive lament, learning and changes if it ever wants to become a genuine leader in preventing and addressing all forms of abuse," said Tchividjian. "I want to remain hopeful for change, but time will be the true test."
Psychologist Diane Langberg, who runs a clinic near Philadelphia, will address the conference on how to help support abuse survivors. She's an expert on abuse and other traumas occurring in the context of Christian churches, and says she wants to provide "a strong voice" at the conference on behalf of victims.
A Section on 10/02/2019