A Southern Baptist Leader Hid Decades of Abuse

Paul Pressler has long been an eminent Texas Republican, having served as a state representative and judge in Houston. He also once served as the first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, but the title doesn’t capture his true place in the firmament of the SBC. As one of the architects of the “conservative resurgence” that reshaped the largest U.S. Protestant denomination beginning in the 1970s, he was been hailed for decades as a hero who helped rid SBC churches of a creeping liberalism. But recently, Gene Besen, a lawyer for the SBC, called Pressler, 93, a “monster” and “a dangerous predator” who leveraged his “power and false piety” to sexually abuse young men even as he was building his reputation as a conservative reformer. ...Pressler’s downfall also symbolizes a wider failure to deal with sex abuse in the SBC.