The Houston Chronicle and the Southern Baptist Convention
If you haven’t read the Houston Chronicle’s investigative report on what is going on with the Southern Baptist Convention, then you ought to. It details the hundreds of cases of sexual molestation that have occurred by hundreds of various pastors and church leaders in the SBC. Even more outrageous, it demonstrates how the SBC has covered it up, attempted to shun the victims, and then kept the violating pastors and leaders in roles of leadership.
Clearly, this is not isolated to the SBC, we’re all aware of how this has been playing out in the Roman Catholic tradition as well. What we should know by now is that these sorts of sexual crimes are pervasive throughout all of the Christian traditions/denominations. It is wretched, and there should be an outcry against such filth as we saw taking place with the #metoo movement. These “pastors” and leaders need to be held accountable at the highest levels without any excuses from their representatives.
As a corrective, reading church history, on a negative side, provides for a positive or critical perspective when it comes to the “health” of the church. The church has always been an outpost for a heap of sinners gathered around the shining Savior who loves us even though we really shouldn’t be. This in no way gets people off the hook for heinous sin in the church, or any sin for that matter; but it does let us know who is Lord, and that He is in control not us.
Even so, as we look out at the rampant sexual sin savaging the churches, of all traditions, it ought to make us stop and confront such avarice and idolatry in the name of Jesus Christ; with all the force that comes with the One who said ‘the gates of Hell will not prevail.’ We ought to bear witness to this reality by our actions, and call out theology of glory (the type of theology where men seek the approval of other men and women rather than God) wherever we see it festering or beginning to fester. If we don’t we get situations like we have in the Roman Catholic sector, or now in the Southern Baptist Convention. It clearly isn’t isolated to these two traditions, we must know by now that such filth is pervasive throughout all sectors of the Christian churches. In no uncertain terms these vile and vainglorious theologians of glory need to be called out, named, and held accountable for their fleecing of the most innocent among us. We don’t need lip-smacking leadership at this point, but real leadership of the sort that fears God more than men.
The church is obviously filled with broken sinners, I mean what do you think the song “Amazing Grace” is about? But this is no excuse for allowing such criminal acts to be hidden just so we can ostensibly magnify the grace of God’s righteousness in the sinner’s life. It almost seems that these churches are so driven to maintain a facade of “victory in Jesus” that they will engage in all effort to “cover up” anything that might call that into question; as if the church’s reality is contingent upon its empirical merits. The church doesn’t bear this sort of pressure, only God in Christ can; this is why we need to have proper ecclesiologies that see the Triune life of God in Jesus Christ for us as the esse (or very being) of the Church itself. If we do this we won’t construct these false expectations where all sorts of heinous sins will need to be covered up; as if we can manufacture a righteousness of our own.
