“Members of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee voted for the waiving of attorney client privilege within the scope of an independent third-party investigation of the EC concerning the handling of sexual abuse claims.” - BPNews
Related:
- C.Post: SBC Executive Committee waives attorney-client privilege amid sex-abuse investigation
- C.Today: Southern Baptists Agree to Open Up to Abuse Investigation
- RNS: SBC committee waives privilege after bitter debate, moving abuse investigation forward
- NPR: A Southern Baptist panel has voted to open legal records to investigators of abuse
- C.Leaders: SBC Executive Committee Says Yes to Waiving Attorney-Client Privilege
Discussion
NewGood move
It may risk a certain amount of financial loss in the short term, but over the long term, the SBC will know what patterns led to their current problems, and will be able to work to solve them. I’ve got a hunch about what they’re going to find—everybody seems to make about the same mistakes—but this is going to be, I pray, a “come to Jesus moment” where all in the SBC, and any of those of us outside who will watch, starts to see best practices.
Praise God that the SBC is not going full BSA or Catholic Church.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
NewUncharted waters
There’s no way to know what might happen as far as lawsuits go. Things may get a lot worse for SBC (in terms of conflict and damage to public testimony—and maybe expense) before they start getting better. But… (NKJV has better phrasing than ESV here): “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Matt 7:14)
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
NewLawsuits
I’m not a lawyer, but the SBC nor the Executive Committee has no authority, NONE, to hire or fire, recommend or unrecommend local pastors or ministers or church members. I am not sure what kind of liability they can have…
All the SBC can do is disfellowship a church.
NewSBC liability
Mark, the liability of the SBC as a whole is that when instances of sexual assault in SBC churches come before state and federal SBC boards, the disposition of those cases, advice given to local churches, and the like can be part of a civil case. So if a case was brought to SBC national/the EC, and really bad advice was given (“look up every nasty thing the accuser has done and humiliate her”), then there is liability.
It’s the same kind of indirect liability that churches which host BSA troops face, really.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
NewSBC
If you read some of the allegations, then you will realize that it’s not just SBC churches. It also involves malfeasance within SBC entities like seminaries and parachurch organizations, and that multiple victims have pleaded with members of the EC to act for literally decades. At least three members of the EC - Floyd, Stone, and Martin - are implicated in individual cases. This is on top of Moore’s explosive allegation (verified by Bethancourt) that members of the EC have said that they only care about “the base” or “the Bubbas and the rednecks that pay the bills” when the abuse of victims have been discussed. In at least one case, a woman’s violent rape by an SBC Professor was presented as a consensual affair in a press release by Baptist Press, which necessitated a lengthy correction and update years after the damage was done.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells