In recent weeks, state Baptist groups in North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Florida, and California have set up committees or task forces to address sexual abuse. Attempts to set up similar responses failed in Mississippi and Missouri.
Lawyers for Georgia pastor Mike Stone filed a complaint Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee accusing former Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore of defamation, false light invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Since 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention has lost a series of high-profile leaders whose tenures ended due to controversy or misconduct. The latest to depart is Ronnie Floyd, a former megachurch pastor who resigned as president of the SBC’s Nashville-based Executive Committee in mid-October.
A top committee of the Southern Baptist Convention agreed Tuesday (Oct. 5) to open up legally protected records to investigators who will look into how it handled, or mishandled, cases of sexual abuse within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination over the past two decades.
Amid debates within the Southern Baptist Convention over investigating clergy sexual abuse, a trustee of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission penned a letter attacking former ERLC President Russell Moore.
On Tuesday, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee called for a further week of deliberations with a special task force on sexual abuse after failing to agree on the ground rules for a third party review commissioned to study the denomination’s handling of abuse claims.
Members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee remain divided on whether to waive attorney-client privilege as part of the investigation — despite the fact that SBC messengers voted for such waving of privilege.
The Southern Baptist Convention task force on clergy sexual abuse has completed two key tasks: picking Guidepost Solutions to be the third-party firm conducting the probe, and asking the Executive Committee to waive attorney-client privilege for the purposes of the investigation.
The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention announced Wednesday (Sept. 8) it will require “IMB missionaries and their children ages 16 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19.”
Health officials in Tennessee have linked a small coronavirus cluster to a meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention last month. It was Nashville’s first large-scale conference after lifting restrictions on gatherings.