Messengers in several states request review of sexual abuse response

As Southern Baptists convene for their annual state meetings, messengers are calling for reviews of current policies and procedures for preventing abuse and responding when abuse occurs.

Several states, including Alabama, have yet to hold their annual meetings. But Baptist groups in Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Florida and California have set up committees or task forces to address sexual abuse in response to calls from state convention messengers. Attempts to set up similar responses failed in Mississippi and Missouri. North Carolina leaders announced plans to proactively review their state convention’s response to the issue of sexual abuse.

The statewide responses follow on the heels of a vote by messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention 2021 annual meeting in Nashville calling for an independent investigation into the SBC Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse in recent decades. A national task force to oversee that investigation was set up in response to that vote, but members of the Executive Committee disagreed about how transparent the investigation would be and how many details would be made public.

EDITOR’S NOTE — TAB Media is compiling a comprehensive review of state convention actions on this issue later and will release that report later this year. Read full coverage of the Executive Committee’s deliberations and the aftermath at The Baptist Paper.