Friday, April 25, 2025

Bob Smietana

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New podcast: Those Southern Baptist sex-abuse battles are not just about Southern Baptists

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New podcast: Those Southern Baptist sex-abuse battles are not just about Southern Baptists

The Southern Baptist Convention’s ongoing fights about how to handle sexual-abuse claims against ministers and other church personnel and volunteers is a perfect example of the kind of story that drives newspaper editors crazy.

It’s big and complicated and it seems like something crazy or important (or both) happens every other day. But it also seems like it’s impossible to yank a big, dramatic headline out of this sprawling, complicated story.

The story never seems to end and the amount of background material needed — in story after story after story — makes it impossible to cover this stuff in tidy 500-word stories. But if a newsroom skips a few of the major developments, that makes it even harder to get back in the game and explain to readers what is happening. Oh, and did I mention that newsroom managers pretty much have to assign a reporter to this story full-time or near full-time? That’s expensive in this day and age. Obviously, this reporter has to have religion-beat experience and speak fluent Southern Baptist.

At the same time, in my experience, there will almost always be one or two editors who say (or think) something like this: “I know the SBC is huge and there are billions of dollars involved and we have lots of Southern Baptist churches (and maybe a college) in our news territory, but … I don’t ‘get’ why this story really matters to average readers. I mean, it’s not about sports or politics or something important (to me).”

As a Charlotte editor once told me, when I was poised to break a national-level SBC story in the early 1980s: Nobody reads this stuff but fanatics and every time you write about it we get too many letters to the editor.

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, which focuses on why the SBC’s struggles with sexual-abuse are important, and NOT just to Southern Baptists (click here to tune that in). The key is to identify major stories LINKED to sexual-abuse scandals that involve ethical, moral, legal and theological issues that can be seen in religious groups of all kinds (and many secular nonprofits and organizations as well). To illustrate this, let me tell you a story about an important evangelical counseling pioneer — the late Dr. Louis McBurney, founder of the Marble Retreat Center in Colorado.


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How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

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How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

Welcome to Nashville, Liam Adams.

Enjoy the journalistic whiplash.

Adams, The Tennessean’s new religion writer, has received quite an introduction to the Godbeat in Music City.

Upon starting his new job last week, Adams immediately found himself covering two days of high-profile meetings by the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee.

He’s back at it this week, reporting on the committee again delaying “action on a third-party investigation into the committee’s handling of sexual abuse claims.”

“So I’m going to take a guess that this isn’t normally what happens in the Southern Baptist Convention, right?” Adams joked on Twitter. “Asking for a friend who just so happens to be in his second week reporting the news on all of this.”

Elsewhere, Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana report that the “presidents of all six Southern Baptist seminaries have issued statements or tweets expressing their dismay at the Executive Committee’s unwillingness to act at the convention’s direction.”

According to Baptist News Global’s Mark Wingfield, new details have emerged about the committee’s handling of the investigation, “as outrage mounts among other Southern Baptist leaders.”

Read additional coverage by The Associated Press’ Holly Meyer (Adams’ predecessor at The Tennessean) and Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt.

For more context, see our past Plug-ins — here, here and here — focused on the Southern Baptist controversy.


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Southern Baptist sexual-abuse puzzle: Can Executive Committee act on its own legal authority?

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Southern Baptist sexual-abuse puzzle: Can Executive Committee act on its own legal authority?

I do not envy the journalists who are attempting to cover the current meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee.

The financial and moral stakes are huge. Many of the questions being debated have, from a congregational polity point of view, theological as well as legal implications. You have some activists who want the SBC to take steps that, under its system of governance, it can’t really take. You also have SBC leaders who don’t appear willing to take the actions that they can take, in order to be transparent on sexual-abuse cases.

This may sound strange, but I think it may help to look at the top of the Baptist Press report covering the opening day of the meetings in Nashville. Yes, Baptist Press is an SBC operation and its leaders report directly to the Executive Committee. That makes one statement here even more important:

NASHVILLE (BP) — In its first meeting since messengers to the June 2021 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting called for an independent, third-party review of the SBC Executive Committee, the EC responded to several routine motions and moved to fund the independent review but declined to waive attorney-client privilege for the time being.

After a three-hour extra session Tuesday afternoon, the Executive Committee ultimately rejected a proposal from its officers and instead adopted a temporary measure to move the sexual abuse review forward leaving the details to be hashed out between the officers and the Sex Abuse Task Force within seven days. One of the most significant undecided details was whether or not the EC will agree to waive attorney-client privilege as Guidepost Solutions, the independent firm chosen by the task force to conduct the review, has requested. In the motion passed SBC messengers in June, the EC was instructed to abide by the recommendations of the third-party firm, up to and including the waiver of attorney-client privilege.

Did you catch that last sentence? That’s one of the most important facts in this standoff. The Executive Committee is charged with carrying on the work of the SBC when the national convention is not in session. However, in terms of authority, the EC’s powers come from the local church “messengers” attending the annual SBC national convention.

It appears that a majority of the Executive Committee think they get to debate whether or not to approve the waiver of attorney-client privilege as part of a third-party investigation of how the EC, or some of its leaders, handled accusations of sexual abuse. However, “messengers” at the national convention already voted to approve that step.


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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

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Plug-In: From life issues to gov't mandates, religious reactions to vaccines have been complex

Want to be smart?

Then avoid simple narratives in news coverage. That’s especially true on the still-timely subject of religion and debates about the COVID-19 vaccines.

For evidence, check out these recent stories:

• “As vaccine mandates become a reality, politicians, pastors and even the pope are speaking out against faith-based exemptions,” the Deseret News’ Kelsey Dallas reports.

But here’s the twist: “In many cases, those who claim a religious exemption are part of a denomination that doesn’t share their concerns, although many faith leaders do support making exemptions available.”

• “Does respect for human life mean vaccine mandates?” asks a story by the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein.

The answer? It’s complicated.

“In recent days, with a handful of organizations from Facebook and Google to the University of Virginia announcing vaccine mandates, religious leaders and organizations have considered their own teachings and values on the question of how to show respect for life,” Boorstein writes. “And their conclusions vary widely.”

• This news, via USA Today, jumps out at you: “Florida church vaccinates hundreds after 6 members die from COVID-19 in 10 days.”

"It's just been ripping our hearts apart,” the senior pastor says in the story by Marina Pitofsky.

It’s probably no surprise that social media pounced on the church for waiting until members died to promote vaccinations.

Except, as anyone reading the entire report learns, it didn’t: “The church vaccinated about 800 people in March at a similar event as COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in the U.S.”

While not religion related per se, Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal column this week makes some excellent points.


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Plug-In: Pastors and plagiarism -- why a very, very old story is making new headlines

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Plug-In: Pastors and plagiarism -- why a very, very old story is making new headlines

Two decades ago, while serving as religion editor for The Oklahoman, I investigated allegations of plagiarism and faked endorsements by a prominent Baptist pastor who had written a book.

I still remember how angry the 2002 story made some church members — at me for reporting it.

“One thing great preachers enjoy about traveling is that they can hear other people preach,” Terry Mattingly wrote in a 2003 “On Religion” column on plagiarism and the pulpit. “But the American orator A.J. Gordon received a shock during an 1876 visit to England. Sitting anonymously in a church, he realized that the sermon sounded extremely familiar — because he wrote it.”

While plagiarism by pastors falls under the category of “nothing new under the sun” (see Ecclesiastes 1:9), the subject is making timely new headlines.

Prominent among them: a front-page “Sermongate” story this week by New York Times religion writer Ruth Graham.

Credit questions over past sermons by Ed Litton, the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, for the fresh interest in the subject.

Last week’s Weekend Plug-in pointed to related coverage by Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner. Check out, too, Mattingly’s recent GetReligion podcast on the topic.

Even before the Litton controversy, Smietana produced an excellent story earlier this year headlined “‘If you have eyes, plagiarize’: When borrowing a sermon goes too far” with a related piece on “Why some preachers rely on holy ghostwriters and other pulpit helps.”


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New podcast: When preachers copy preachers -- is this an old story or something new?

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New podcast: When preachers copy preachers -- is this an old story or something new?

As longtime GetReligion readers may know, my father was a Southern Baptist minister, spending his whole career in Texas pulpits and hospitals.

I heard him, from time to time, gently correct people who called him “preacher.” He would note that he wasn’t a “preacher,” he was a pastor. Brother Bert’s life and ministry were not defined by his pulpit work, although I always admired his ability to teach the Bible to laypeople.

Like it or not, preaching is the crucial skill — almost a Darwinian performance art — in the world of megachurches and evangelical power. Superstar clergy, about 99% of the time, are known for their preaching skills, even in liturgical-church traditions. The styles may differ, from one church brand to another, but growing churches usually have orators who can pull people into the pews.

That was the subject looming over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a strong Religion News Service report about the #Sermongate controversy surrounding the new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention. The headline: “New SBC President Ed Litton apologizes for using JD Greear sermon quotes without credit.” Here is some crucial material right up top:

A video posted on YouTube Thursday (June 24) showed clips of a ­­­January 2020 sermon on the New Testament book of Romans from Litton and clips from a January 2019 sermon on the same Bible passage from J.D. Greear, whose term as SBC president ended in June.

At several points, the comments from the two preachers are nearly identical. … The two pastors also say very similar things about homosexuality, which both believe is sinful.

But they each say Christians have erred by treating sexual sin as if it is worse than other sins — and singling out LGBT people as the worst of sinners.

What does “nearly identical” look like?


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Plug-In: Lots of news about Southern Baptists, U.S. Catholic bishops and even a modern Jonah

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Plug-In: Lots of news about Southern Baptists, U.S. Catholic bishops and even a modern Jonah

One.

Two.

This makes three straight weeks that the Southern Baptist Convention’s big meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, has topped Plug-in.

Want an impossible challenge? Try highlighting the best coverage out of the plethora of headlines produced in Music City this week.

Some of the big news:

• The surprise election of “moderate” (if you’re OK with that term from the SBC past) pastor Ed Litton from Alabama as the SBC’s president.

Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana, the Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt, the New York Times’ Ruth Graham, The Associated Press’ Travis Loller and Peter Smith and ReligionUnplugged’s own Hamil R. Harris all offer insightful coverage on that. (Even the Los Angeles Times weighs in, via Atlanta bureau chief Jenny Jarvie.)

• The skirmish over critical race theory, which Chris Moody describes in an in-depth narrative piece for New York Magazine.

Also, don’t miss The Tennessean’s Wednesday front-page report by Katherine Burgess, Duane W. Gang and Holly Meyer.

For more on the CRT angle, see Adelle M. Banks’ RNS story and Greg Garrison’s Birmingham News coverage.

• The major action to confront sexual abuse in the denomination, as the Houston Chronicle’s Robert Downen, CT’s Shellnutt, the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Burgess and RNS’ Smietana detail.


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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

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New podcast: Is SBC President Ed Litton 'woke'? What is a 'conservative' stance on CRT?

It certainly was an interesting way to start a podcast (click here to tune that in) about press coverage of the 2021 national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Here’s the gist of what “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken wanted to know: If journalists were going to write that the Rev. Mike Stone — who lost his bid to become SBC president — was “right-wing” and “ultraconservative,” then why didn’t they pin “left-wing” and “ultraliberal” labels on Bishop-elect Megan Rohrer, the first trans/queer/gender fluid bishop in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America?

Think about it this way: Stone and the new Conservative Baptist Network — many flew pirate flags — set out to attack the already conservative (theologically speaking) leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, saying that it was not conservative ENOUGH on several issues. In other words, the goal was to move the SBC further right and away from recent pronouncements by the convention.

Meanwhile, Bishop-elect Rohrer is an open advocate of the CURRENT teachings of the ELCA. In the context of this denomination and its doctrines, Rohrer is part of the ruling class.

Now, is Rohrer “ultraliberal” in the context of American culture? How about liberal mainline Protestantism? How about other Lutheran bodies? Was Stone “ultraconservative” in the context of today’s SBC?

You can see the struggle here. Are journalists supposed to label religious leaders in the context of the wider culture or of their own flocks? I have argued that this depends: I go with the “flock” framing when discussing news events that are taking place inside a given “flock.”

As I argued the other day (#SBC21: Press wrestles with Twitter-niche labels as Southern Baptists choose a new leader), most of the religion-beat pros who gathered in Nashville tried to be very cautious when describing the various groups under the conservative SBC umbrella. The exception was the New York Times, which offered a kind of acid-flashback return to the SBC civil wars of the early 1980s.

The key was the labeling in this early headline — “Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Conservative Takeover” — and then this overture:


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Plug-In: How hot will SBC meetings get in Nashville? Sexual-abuse fights are Round 1

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Plug-In: How hot will SBC meetings get in Nashville? Sexual-abuse fights are Round 1

Look for a little thunder today, but I don’t see any rain in the Nashville, Tennessee, forecast for next week.

That’s probably a good thing because I’m not sure how many more leaks the Southern Baptist Convention can take.

The heat will be turned up, though, as 16,000 Baptist messengers converge on Music City for the denomination’s (yes, I’m going to use that word) biggest annual meeting in a quarter-century.

Last week’s Plug-in set the scene, but the headlines just keep coming.

The new developments start with Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s scoop last Saturday on a leaked letter detailing allegations that Southern Baptist leaders mishandled sex abuse claims.

Next up: That would be the leaked audio Thursday of SBC officials showing reluctance to take action against churches accused of mishandling abuse, as The Associated Press’ Peter Smith and Travis Loller, Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana and Adelle M. Banks and The Tennessean’s Holly Meyer report.

More to read:

• Pressure mounts for an independent investigation of SBC Executive Committee handling of abuse (by Bob Smietana, RNS)

• Tensions erupt among Southern Baptists ahead of their big meeting in Nashville. Here's why (by Holly Meyer, The Tennessean)

• Sexual abuse pushed to top of agenda for Southern Baptist Convention (by Terry Mattingly, Universal syndicate columnist)

• Southern Baptist pastors demand inquiry into handling of sex abuse cases (by Yonat Shimron, RNS)


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