Agape Boarding School’s longtime director won a court order Wednesday keeping his name off Missouri’s central registry for child abuse and neglect. The state has been trying to shut the school down over mounting allegations from former students that staff physically, psychologically, and sexually abused
More than four decades after sexual abuse claims against a Catholic priest first made national headlines, spurring accusations, lawsuits, a series of newspaper investigations and billions in settlements, the DOJ is investigating a religious group’s handling of sexual crimes by clergy and church staff. This
Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell contemplates the seemingly insurmountable task that looms over the Southern Baptist denomination regarding what to do about the recent release of an internal database of abusers. Each of the recommended steps to remedy this problem seems so minor, so insignificant —
Many still have a hard time seeing sexual misconduct by pastors as abusive. Particularly when the one abused is an adult, Baptists and other faith groups often view the survivor as the tempter — a sinner who led a holy man astray — rather than
After approving a series of reforms meant to address sexual abuse in their denomination, Southern Baptists at their national meeting approved a resolution apologizing to abuse survivors and asking for forgiveness. They also called on legislatures to create laws that make pastoral sexual misconduct a
The election was one of the closely watched aspects of the two-day meeting, during which messengers, or delegates, addressed a sexual abuse investigation. Barber received 61% of the votes in the second round of voting at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention on
Survivors of sexual assault in church settings and their advocates have been calling on churches for years to admit the extent of abuse in their midst and to implement reforms. In recent weeks #ChurchToo has seen an especially intense set of revelations across denominations and
Randy Davis, president and executive director of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, called on the SBC to “break all ties” with the investigative firm Guidepost Solutions, which produced the long-awaited sexual abuse report, after the company posted on Twitter its support for LGBTQ+ Pride month.
Contributing writer Christopher Dixon offers his perspective on the recent SBC abuse report. Those who are power-hungry suggest that any self-examination or reform is “liberal” or “ungodly” but that’s a smoke-and-mirrors tactic to disguise the most painful truth: some of the worst sinners have been
The Summit Church, whose senior pastor is Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear, has retained the services of an outside firm to perform an independent review of specific actions taken by one of the pastors at The Summit Church in his handling of 2010 sexual