The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to oversee further reforms in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
Also Tuesday, the delegates debated but didn't vote on whether to kick out one of its biggest and best-known churches — Saddleback Church, the California megachurch headed by Rick Warren, author of the blockbuster bestseller"The Purpose Driven Life" — because it ordained women pastors. The denomination's statement of faith says the office of pastor is for men only.
But Bruce Frank, who led the task force that recommended the reforms, made an emotional plea for church representatives to accept them as their two-day annual gathering got underway. He called the steps the"bare minimum," adding it will take time to change the SBC's culture. Abuse survivors Tiffany Thigpen and Jules Woodson, shedding tears, said they were overwhelmed to see the messengers' hands go up in support of the task force's recommendations."It's not perfect, but a small step and a healthy, healing step in the right direction," Woodson said.
"We have a group that celebrates sexual sin, advising us on how to handle sexual sin of abuse," said Indiana pastor Tim Overton."That is a problem." Brad Eubank, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Petal, Mississippi, urged messengers to approve the recommendations. Eubank, who is included in the Guidepost report, was sexually abused as a child by a minister of music at a Southern Baptist church in Mississippi.
As though that's an accomplishment.