SBC Sacrifices Congregants on the Altar of Power

Christians came face to face with an alarming reality this week after America's largest denomination -- the Southern Baptists -- commissioned a third-party investigation into the handling of sexual abuse by their Executive Committee. The findings were described by Russell Moore -- former President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (the Southern Baptist Convention's official entity assigned to address social, moral, and ethical issues) -- as an "apocalypse." The report makes for hard reading, but here are some highlights: "For almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists" contacted its executive committee "to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff," but executive-committee leaders "largely controlled" the response and "were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations."