Southern Baptist Sexual Abuse Scandal

It seems that every religious group has the same problem.
When will it ever stop?

actually, "seems" is the correct word. The percentages of sex abuse, pedophilia in church institutions is the same percentage of these acts in the general society.

Sexual predators look for easy opportunities. So, if they want to molest children, they become soccer coaches, ice cream vendors...and, of course...the clergy.

The clergy is basically perfect cover. Who would think someone in the clergy would do something like that?

And it is not limited to sexual abuse.

In the East, there have been problems with the Tongs (Asian Mafia) infiltrating Buddhist temples to use them as cover for heroin smuggling!!!

We can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Corruptions exist in every institution, touched by people.

That does not mean that we can just get rid of the institutions themselves.

My wife works for a major Catholic university. We are well aware of the pedophilia issues. That makes the press. What doesn't make the press are the endless, endless acts of charity, by the priest community...all over the world. Some of these folks literally go into war zones, risking their very lives to deliver food and medicine. And they stay there. And they live with them, at their economic level...living in poverty in order to respect them.

That kind of thing has been happening for the entire 2000 year history of the Church.

No institution is some kind of cartoonish bastion of evil.

Except New Jersey. That is a huge bastion of evil. I live here. I want out. Someone get me out of here! Please!
 
Just putting it out there. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church and it made me very doubtful that I needed to remain involved.



My evil friend Jay got caught smoking weed in high school. His probation officer was a minister in town. He was from the Southern Baptist Convention. He was, actually, an amazing guy.

Went over to Thailand, to help with the refugees from Pol Pot.

I think they were working just one mile from the border.

Sponsored 30 Cambodian folks to come to the US. Many settled in our town here, to be close to him.

Amazing guy. Lifetime of charitable acts.

And, yes..constant battles with the Southern Baptist hierarchy. They tried to get rid of him many times. Never succeeded.

Funny guy too. We had some kind of theological argument. George turned to me and said, "Jonathan, if you don't just shut up at this very moment, I am going to punch you square in the jaw...with Christian love."

George passed just a couple of years ago. His Cambodian friends were just openly weeping at the funeral. Something way beyond just crying. Great guy.

Jay...he is still evil. Musician. Actually has a big following in South Africa for some reason.
 
Just wondering, what is the penalty for protecting pedophiles from prosecution? Is there such a thing in criminal law?

That kind of act falls under the "obstruction of justice" statutes and can, indeed, be a criminal act.


Even though I do believe the Church does many positive things...I am all for prosecuting anyone who covers up criminal activity.

Period.
 
Jon is right that sexual abuse can happen in any group, It's the cover-up that really sheds the worst light on its structure.

Still, I have little sympathy for the SBC. The scandal couldn't have happened to a better denomination. The Southern Baptist Convention originally broke from its fellow Baptist churches in the north over the issue of slavery and a hundred years later reaffirmed their racism by their anti-integration stance.

From Wiki: The word Southern in "Southern Baptist Convention" stems from its having been organized in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, by Baptists in the Southern United States who split from the northern Baptists (known today as the American Baptist Churches USA) over the issue of African-American enslavement; citing biblical texts, the SBC strongly opposed its abolition.[4]

Are there many fine people in this denomination? Yes there are, in fact it's hard to live in the south and not be Baptist as there are far more SBC churches than any other kind. I just hope this scandal either sends the good southern Christians over to the other mainstream denominations or else the SBC takes a good hard look at itself and changes.
 
I wanted to mention some odder history of the Catholic Church and why cover ups have been happening.

For centuries, the Church had a policy of "sanctuary."

So this meant, if a Roman Centurion refused to murder children in a war, and the Roman army wanted to kill him as a deserter...people like that would often flee to monasteries to save their own lives. And they would be sheltered by the Church and often live their lives out as monks.

In the Middle Ages, if some evil duke wanted to murder someone that they did not like...some of those individuals would flee and take refuge in the Church.

So the Church has this history of sheltering fugitives. They also had a history of sheltering criminals from macabre tortures and prison practices.

And, they also had a history of sheltering alcoholic priests and trying to reform them.

The understanding that pedophilia is a much deeper kind of problem and mental illness and rarely is curable...that idea only came into the public consciousness relatively recently...maybe the 70s. Before that, it would have been reasonable to think that the Church itself could have reformed these sociopaths, rather than send them off to some jail. And, in the prison community, people who rape children are often targeted for death.

So, there would have been some reasonable ideas in trying to protect these people through sanctuary.

So, let's dial this back to, oh, say 1985, where a 50 year old priest, born in 1935, is an administrator, dealing with issue. The psychological findings are relatively new. There is the looming reality that a pedophile sent to a regular jail could easily wind up being murdered...and you can see how the difficulties might have arisen.

And because of all those factors, yes, it has taken some of the administrators in the Church, quite awhile to break free from this old idea of sanctuary and protecting individuals from, well, being murdered in prison.

Now, personally, I definitely don't believe in sheltering these people. They are a clear danger to society. They belong in jail, or in a prison's mental health facility, safe from attack of other prisoners, but isolated in confinement so that they are not a danger to society.

And the priest community just shuffling them off to another parish? Sickening, disgusting and an absolute violation of the Church's own teachings. You don't endanger children. Period.
 
I have become extremely skeptical of people who wrap themselves up with religious fervor, and "righteous indignation".,
Two misconceptions I see:

1. "The Southern Baptist Convention" is entirely separate from the Baptist Church. Don't confuse the two. Big difference.

2. Righteous indignation is considered a positive thing when someone with this type of anger is on the right side...like when angry about a moral or unfair situation. It must not be confused with self-righteousness.

If something is happening against the laws of nature, acts of society, and laws of humanity and you are getting mad at it, then your anger is righteous indignation. Suppose you want to change that unfair treatment. Or you may be hurt because other people are not considering the unjust situations dangerous...but you wish to spread justice and righteousness, then your anger is a positive thing.

Here is the example: Mahatma Gandhi used his reactive emotion of anger for a productive purpose and used it wisely. India was under British rule for over 250 years. He used the positive power of righteous indignation to compel the British to leave India. It shows that righteous anger is a good thing if we use it as a positive power.
 
actually, "seems" is the correct word. The percentages of sex abuse, pedophilia in church institutions is the same percentage of these acts in the general society.

Sexual predators look for easy opportunities. So, if they want to molest children, they become soccer coaches, ice cream vendors...and, of course...the clergy.

The clergy is basically perfect cover. Who would think someone in the clergy would do something like that?

And it is not limited to sexual abuse.

In the East, there have been problems with the Tongs (Asian Mafia) infiltrating Buddhist temples to use them as cover for heroin smuggling!!!

We can't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Corruptions exist in every institution, touched by people.

That does not mean that we can just get rid of the institutions themselves.

My wife works for a major Catholic university. We are well aware of the pedophilia issues. That makes the press. What doesn't make the press are the endless, endless acts of charity, by the priest community...all over the world. Some of these folks literally go into war zones, risking their very lives to deliver food and medicine. And they stay there. And they live with them, at their economic level...living in poverty in order to respect them.

That kind of thing has been happening for the entire 2000 year history of the Church.

No institution is some kind of cartoonish bastion of evil.

Except New Jersey. That is a huge bastion of evil. I live here. I want out. Someone get me out of here! Please!
The percentage of sexual abuse by religious figures may be similar in other professions, but there is a big difference.
With other professions, perverts are not offered the protection & concealment that priests are. That's how they get away with it for so long.
 
Two misconceptions I see:

1. "The Southern Baptist Convention" is entirely separate from the Baptist Church. Don't confuse the two. Big difference.

2. Righteous indignation is considered a positive thing when someone with this type of anger is on the right side...like when angry about a moral or unfair situation. It must not be confused with self-righteousness.

If something is happening against the laws of nature, acts of society, and laws of humanity and you are getting mad at it, then your anger is righteous indignation. Suppose you want to change that unfair treatment. Or you may be hurt because other people are not considering the unjust situations dangerous...but you wish to spread justice and righteousness, then your anger is a positive thing.

Here is the example: Mahatma Gandhi used his reactive emotion of anger for a productive purpose and used it wisely. India was under British rule for over 250 years. He used the positive power of righteous indignation to compel the British to leave India. It shows that righteous anger is a good thing if we use it as a positive power.
Since FuzzyBuddy put righteous indignation in quotes, I believe he was speaking of people with self-righteous attitudes.
 
The percentage of sexual abuse by religious figures may be similar in other professions, but there is a big difference.
With other professions, perverts are not offered the protection & concealment that priests are. That's how they get away with it for so long.

That's not true.

So many perverts and predators have been protected in other professions for decades in Sports, Hollywood, in Governments of many nations, and the rich who "buy a wall of protection" like Jeffrey Epstein did. Bill Clinton (not just in the White House but also visited Jeffrey Epstein's island) and those of British royalty like Prince Andrew who resigned with a slap on the wrist.

Then, when finally exposed, they end up getting released from prison like Jerry Sandusky. Many more were protected for so long like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, that Olympics Coach for the girls gymnastics. So please don't tell me that it's "only the religious institutions that "offer protection and concealment" for their own.
 
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Since FuzzyBuddy put righteous indignation in quotes, I believe he was speaking of people with self-righteous attitudes.
That was my point em.
That's like putting quotes around "Apples" because you really meant to say Oranges.
He should have said self-righteous if that's what he meant...and not "righteous indignation" because they are different entirely.
 
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Two misconceptions I see:

1. "The Southern Baptist Convention" is entirely separate from the Baptist Church. Don't confuse the two. Big difference.

2. Righteous indignation is considered a positive thing when someone with this type of anger is on the right side...like when angry about a moral or unfair situation. It must not be confused with self-righteousness.

If something is happening against the laws of nature, acts of society, and laws of humanity and you are getting mad at it, then your anger is righteous indignation. Suppose you want to change that unfair treatment. Or you may be hurt because other people are not considering the unjust situations dangerous...but you wish to spread justice and righteousness, then your anger is a positive thing.

Here is the example: Mahatma Gandhi used his reactive emotion of anger for a productive purpose and used it wisely. India was under British rule for over 250 years. He used the positive power of righteous indignation to compel the British to leave India. It shows that righteous anger is a good thing if we use it as a positive power.

good logical argumentation, but, you know, Gandhi had control over his anger. He acted out of love and compassion for people, not anger. Endless direct examples of that.

But, of course, what you say generally, about righteous anger, is quite true. Gandhi is just an odd example, because he was one of those very rare individuals with extraordinary control over his emotions and also extraordinary compassion for people.
 
That's not true.

So many perverts and predators have been protected in other professions for decades in Sports, Hollywood, in Governments of many nations, and the rich who "buy a wall of protection" like Jeffrey Epstein did. Bill Clinton (not just in the White House but also visited Jeffrey Epstein's island) and those of British royalty like Prince Andrew who resigned with a slap on the wrist.

Then, when finally exposed, they end up getting released from prison like Jerry Sandusky. Many more were protected for so long like Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, that Olympics Coach for the girls gymnastics. So please don't tell me that it's "only the religious institutions that "offer protection and concealment" for their own.

Extreme deviance is still a very rare phenomenon, in society, by percentage of the population.

There is no secret cabal of pedophiles.

Just does not exist.

The psychiatric community has long known the percentage of extreme deviance in society. It is very very low.

There are not serial killers around every corner. There are not pedophiles everywhere. Percentages are known, crime statistics are known, mental health treatment figures are known.

You can look up the Department of Justice figures yourself. I think much of that is online, the rest would be accessible through a library, like the Library of Congress.

Similarly, the mental health community has documentation on the statistics related to extreme deviance. I am sure if you contacted the reference department of any major city's library, they could direct you to the professional resources that contain that information.
 
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@JonSR77 I didn't say Gandhi's anger wasn't controlled.
I said anger is a good thing for the right reasons. Controlled or not...it's referred to as righteous indignation for the right reasons.
(Well, uncontrolled anger is never good of course...thought I'd better say that since y'all are cross-examining the finest of details lol)

How about another example...Martin Luther King's speech.
That was anger aka Righteous Indignation for the right reasons.
 
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People are people, Baptists, Buddhists, atheists and so on, pedophiles, predators, and bad actors in all groups. A small percentage I believe.

The problems seem to happen where unsupervised individuals develop personal relationships with kids. Preachers, priests, Boy Scout leaders etc... And when no action is taken to stop it once suspected or discovered.

In some places I believe improvements have been made, certainly the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts have done some good things to reduce this sort of behavior. Clearly more needs to happen. I hope it can be done without interfering with the beneficial relationships between adults and children. I think 99+% of the time those relationships are very good for the kids, and the adults too. Need to be careful to avoid witch hunts.
 
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That's not true.

So many perverts and predators have been protected in other professions for decades in Sports, Hollywood, in Governments of many nations, and the rich who "buy a wall of protection" like Jeffrey Epstein did. Bill Clinton (not just in the White House but also visited Jeffrey Epstein's island) and those of British royalty like Prince Andrew who resigned with a slap on the wrist.
Jerrfrey Epstein also maintained long-term relationships with various high-profile individuals, including Donald Trump, Leslie Wexner, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew, Duke of York. wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
 
That was my point em.
That's like putting quotes around "Apples" because you really meant to say Oranges.
He should have said self-righteous if that's what he meant...and not "righteous indignation" because they are different entirely.
I meant "righteous indignation", because where was it when kids were being raped.
 


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