Guilty by reason of insanity: SBC plans to sell HQ, sheds members due to abuse but denies there’s an issue. Sounds painfully familiar.

The Episcopal Church is not the only denomination in which corrupt responses to abuse are causing financial and membership declines. Indeed, in a recent announcement, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) shared plans to sell its Nashville-based world headquarters following massive expenditures due to decades of ignoring abuse, silencing victims, resisting reforms intended to improve transparency and accountability, and litigation intended to avoid resolution of complaints.

Located at 901 Commerce Street, the seven-story SBC headquarters building was built in the 1980s at a cost of approximately $8 million. Recent appraisals value the property at almost $32 million, although recent nearby development makes the likely sale price much higher.

True to form, SBC officials report that the sale of the property has been under consideration for a while. As in, “nothing to see here, move along.” But the reality is that, in 2023 alone, the SBC shed almost a quarter million members.

Like the Episcopal Church, giving in the denomination remains relatively robust. But unlike the former, where decline is slowly accelerating, the SBC’s abuse scandal has caused a stunning increase in the rate of attrition.

The untold story

The SBC, much like the Episcopal Church, is trying mightily to do as little as possible, as late as possible, versus tackling issues of abuse head-on.

Per Christianity Today:

“In 2022, an independent investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions found the denomination’s leadership mishandled sexual abuse allegations, mistreated victims and advocates, engaged in an abusive pattern of intimidation and repeatedly resisted reforms aimed at making their churches safer largely to avoid liability.

“Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC’s response to these reports of abuse. They closely guarded information about abuse allegations and lawsuits, which were not shared with EC Trustees, and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC to the exclusion of other considerations,” Guidepost Solutions investigators wrote in their 288-page report to the denomination’s Sexual Abuse Task Force.

“In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy — even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation.”

Members of the SBC Executive Committee noted that the Guidepost Solutions report resulted in lawsuits and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, which caused them to spend $12.1 million on lawyer fees between October 2020 and July 2024. 

Of course, this reporting overlooks an inconvenient reality: the SBC went further — much further — than ignoring and disbelieving victims. Indeed, the denomination has repeatedly:

• Gaslighted victims.
• Referred to victims as “Potiphar’s wife,” after a Biblical character who lied about being raped.
• Claimed victims’ groups are as evil as the perpetrators.
• Tried to discredit victims by referring to them as mentally ill.
• Shunned, ostracized, and spiritually abused victims.

In these matters, the SBC is every bit as evil as the Episcopal Church, except that most Episcopalians neither know who Potiphar was nor do they care to find out.

On another level, however, the SBC is more honest than the Episcopal Church, which is its claim to be decentralized and congregational in polity. 

Of course, that argument is hogwash. Not only does the SBC make short work of churches that are inclusive or ordain women, but nothing requires a hierarchical structure in order to hold miscreants accountable.

On that score, of course, the Episcopal Church is a shape-shifter. Hierarchical when it comes to its claimed equitable interest in diocesan and parish assets, the Episcopal Church suddenly claims to be congregational every inch of the way when it comes to bishops who ignore clergy abuse. That’s the bishop’s responsibility, and don’t you forget it, is the claim of morally bankrupt nincompoops like Todd Ousley.

Yet, whether the denomination in question is hierarchical or congregational in polity, one element is constant: a coterie of attorneys and senior church officials blocks accountability. 

In that realm, insurance carriers play a vital role as the deep pocket that does its best to avoid accountability and strong-arm litigants.

In the case of the SBC, the preferred insurance carrier is Brotherhood Mutual, which is an independent entity founded a century ago by a group of Mennonite churches. 

When it comes to TEC, the insurance carrier usually is the Church Pension Group (CPG), a captive insurance carrier owned by the Episcopal Church. 

But in both cases, those hurt by the church should look elsewhere for a Christian response. 

CPG, for example, prefers to go to litigation and then settle for the least possible money versus actually making victims whole. Just look at Chilton Knudsen’s lies about reporting child sexual abuse, which resulted in a $750,000 settlement and major adverse publicity, but only after the church did everything possible to avoid resolving the issue without litigation. (Tellingly, the settlement was arranged just before Knudsen was scheduled to testify in court.)

That said, the SBC is every bit as deceptive and duplicitous as the Episcopal Church. Consider:

• The SBC has repeatedly claimed it could not develop a database of abusers due to the congregational polity of the denomination. Yet denominational headquarters maintained a 205-page list of abusers for more than a decade. 
• Although the SBC convention approved a formal database of abusers years ago, the denomination is ignoring this project. Indeed, the SBC has not added a single name to the purported database.
• The so-called abuse hotline, run by a group that is de facto part of the SBC, has done absolutely nothing to address abuse. Indeed, the only outcome we see is that the hotline appears to be compiling information for potential use in discrediting abuse victims. Similarly, Episcopal Church leaders continue to treat the Title IV church disciplinary canons — particularly the requirement for a pastoral response — as optional. That begs the question: why go to the trouble of canons, policies, hotlines, and procedures if they are nothing more than feel-good window dressing?
• Senior SBC officials and leaders at every level continue to gaslight church members and the public by pretending there is no crisis. All we can say in response is that reminds us of the scene in one of the Titanic movies in which diners in First Class look at each other anxiously when the ship first shudders, and staff murmurs reassuringly, “it’s nothing to worry about, Madam.” 
• While SBC’s delegates to the denomination’s annual meeting, known as “messengers,” continue to support efforts to end abuse and implement reform, a small coterie of insiders, including church attorneys, consistently acts to block reform. This pattern is endemic in the Episcopal Church, where feckless, narcissistic judicatories, with support from equally corrupt standing committee members and chancellors, block accountability? 

Abuse equals member exodus

While the definition of insanity may be doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, there may be another definition: ostensibly adhering to one set of goals while acting to guarantee the opposite result. 

In that regard, both the SBC and the Episcopal Church are guilty by reason of insanity. Time and again, we see church members heading to the door as a result of abuse, but both denominations strenuously avoid meaningful change. Yes, we see some frittering along the margins, but little beyond that.

Let us hope that both the SBC and the Episcopal Church soon recognize that all the outreach, inreach, and evangelism in the world are useless when accountability is absent. Indeed, reaching out to others to “spread the good news” is counterproductive when people realize that integrity is missing.

By their fruits, we know them.