Former Southern Baptist Lobbyist Calls the Sexual Abuse Crisis "The Southern Baptist Apocalypse"

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-southern-baptist-convention-is.html

Dr. Russell Moore was the executive director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention up until this past winter. The ERLC is the lobby and public policy arm of the SBC, and primarily deals with religious liberty issues on behalf of the convention. Dr. Moore was a never-Trumper on moral and ethical grounds. He was one of the few individuals within the executive leadership of Southern Baptist entities to step up in response to the revelations of sexual abuse among ministers and church staff members by the Houston Chronicle/San Antonio Express News investigation that exposed it. He was pressured by members of the executive committee and subjected to unjustified and unauthorized "investigations." According to the report by GuidePost Solutions, released Sunday afternoon, there was also resistance and opposition to his push for transparency and a resolution for the victims because, as is now known, they were covering up and protecting denominational assets, and their own power and position, by avoiding action.

Dr. Moore was raised in Southern Baptist churches, educated in its institutions and served in its churches, but after this, has left a ministry career and local church home behind, joining a non-denominational congregation and the staff of Christianity Today. The article that is linked to him is from that publication.

[Haggard Celine]

1. Good article.

I was raised Southern Baptist, too. When I was was really young, the Southern Baptists were not as RW as they are now. In the 80s they started this ultra-conservative movement and it went downhill from there. They became more and more tied to Republican politics as well. They started firing professors at seminaries and made life difficult for liberal professors at other SBC-owned colleges. I hope that denomination sees a return to some sanity. It's hard for kids who grow up in these churches to make sense of life, and when they see all this hypocrisy that we're seeing displayed now, it sours them on all religion in general and makes them maybe a little more cynical than they should be.

[wnylib]

2. He was interviewed on NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/23/1100655643/investigation-shows-how-southern-baptists-responded-to-reports-of-sex-abuse