The SBC get’s #MeToo’d, sex abuse allegations for pronoun abuse, and military chaplains bring a lawsuit over forced vaccines… and more on today’s CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. My name is Toby Sumpter and today is Tuesday, May 24, 2022.
 
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/may/southern-baptist-abuse-investigation-sbc-ec-legal-survivors.html
 
Christianity Today, the failing flagship of lukewarm evangelicalism breathlessly broke a story over the weekend, alleging a massive cover up of abuse in the Southern Baptism Convention: “Armed with a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors, Southern Baptist leaders chose to protect the denomination from lawsuits rather than protect the people in their churches from further abuse.
 
Survivors, advocates, and some Southern Baptists themselves spent more than 15 years calling for ways to keep sexual predators from moving quietly from one flock to another. The men who controlled the Executive Committee (EC)—which runs day-to-day operations of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)—knew the scope of the problem. But, working closely with their lawyers, they maligned the people who wanted to do something about abuse and repeatedly rejected pleas for help and reform.
 
“Behind the curtain, the lawyers were advising to say nothing and do nothing, even when the callers were identifying predators still in SBC pulpits,” according to a massive third-party investigative report released Sunday.”
 
OK, people. Take a deep breath and think like a Christian. This is the same kind of language we’ve seen countless times over the last number of years, and you need to know that it is language that is calculated to get you worked up. I’m not saying anything yet about the legitimacy of any claims or accusations. I’m only talking about the set up. The set up is more #metoo outrage, which is not the way the Bible says to handle accusations of abuse or coverups. Don’t get dragged into the outrage mob. Click on the link to the so-called report, and what do we find? A trigger warning at the top of the report. Again, this doesn’t mean there isn’t anything in the report that needs to be addressed. I don’t know. I didn’t read the whole report. But what I will say is that we are living in a cauldron of hot outrage that far too many Christians are eager to jump into. And you need to know that the point of the outrage is to get you to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do, things you really shouldn’t do. 
 
In the same way that racial animosity has been weaponized to foment social unrest, so too are accusations of sexual abuse. Is racial animosity ever happening? Yes, of course. Is sexual abuse ever happening? Unfortunately, yes. But what we need are biblical standards of justice not outrage mobs and extra biblical committees, more civil government intrusion, and various other humanistic solutions. So here are some key things to be looking for as this story unfolds: are clear distinctions being made between sins and crimes? Sins are bad, but they are the jurisdiction of families and churches. Crimes are also sins, but they must be reported to the police for adjudication. The other thing to watch out for is the necessity of two or three independent witnesses. If you have one witness who accuses and an alleged perpetrator who denies the charges, there is nothing that can be done. You are required by God to presume the innocence of the accused. It is not a cover up to refuse to do anything with an accusation of sin that has no other witnesses. If the accusation is of a crime, you must report it to the police, but believe it or not, they often follow biblical guidelines of justice and if there is no credible evidence of wrongdoing, they will not bring any charges, and it’s not a cover up, if you’ve reported a matter and done everything you can to find evidence and decide to leave the matter there. 
 
Of course if this report has documented instances with multiple witnesses who are willing to testify and those accu