J.D. Greear
President
Southern Baptist Convention
The Summit Church
Durham, North Carolina
Dear J.D.,
As I said to you the other night, you have my prayers as you go into your last Southern
Baptist Convention meeting as president in a historically longand even more
historically accomplishedpresidency. One of the great joys of the last eight years
has been working alongside you on issues of monumental importance for the witness
of the church.
Some of the letter below is almost verbatim what I said to my own board officers last
February. As I prepare to transition to my new role of ministry, I feel consciencebound
to put down in print for you what you and I have previously discusseda
matter that, in my opinion, is now a crisis for the Southern Baptist Convention. The
crisis is multi-pronged as you and I have discussed, as seen in the blatant, gutterlevel
racism that has been expressed to me behind closed doors along with the reprehensible
treatment of my African-American employees and our African-American
seminary professors by figures within the Southern Baptist ecosystem. In this letter,
though, I refer specially to the crisis of sexual abuse as it relates to the SBC Executive
Committee.
In February of this year, you and I discussed the unquestionable debacle that was
the Executive Committee meeting. Not only did this include an absurd and widely
ridiculed "task force" report on the entity I serve, but overreach by the Executive
Committee related to a number of entities, including the North American Mission Board and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Behind all of this, though, is
the larger question of sexual abuse within our churches, and the spiritual and psychological
abuse of sexual abuse survivors by the Executive Committee itself along
with a pattern of attempted intimidation of those who speak on such matters.
You know well the obstacles that both you and I faced from figures within the Executive
Committee in merely raising questions about sexual abuse, questions compellingly
raised by the Houston Chronicle, among others. You and I both, in seeking
to address this issuewith the full authorization both in terms of entity ministry assignment
and direct vote by the messengers to the SBC annual meetingfaced one
stonewall after another by leaders within the SBC Executive Committee. Simply
speaking to the press or, in your case, reading off the names of churches already
identified in the Houston Chronicle reporting by Rob Downennot in your case
as indictment, but merely as warranting an examinationresulted in backroom
and hallway threats of retribution and intimidation. These included possible
attempts to "censure" you to investigations and defunding, and all the rest.
You and I both heard, in closed door meetings, sexual abuse survivors spoken of in
terms of "Potiphar's wife" and other spurious biblical analogies. The conversations
in these closed door meetings were far worse than anything Southern Baptists knew
or the outside world could report. And, as you know, this comes on the heels of a
track-record of the Executive Committee staff and others referring to victims as
"crazy" and, at least in one case, as worse than the sexual predators themselves.
This led to the disastrous move by the Bylaws Work Group to "exonerate" quickly
and by fiat churches with credible allegations of negligence and mistreatment of
sexual abuse survivorseven leading to a call of apology from an Executive Committee
official to a church that had, at the time, a sexual offender on staff. You and I
were critical of such moves, believing that they jeopardized not only the gospel witness
of the SBC, but also the lives of vulnerable children and others in Southern
Baptist churches. Against constant backroom attempts to stop any forward momentum,
we were able to get across the finish line some very modest steps toward addressing
this crisis in our conventionthe Caring Well Challenge along with the
Caring Well advisory group, as well as the formation of a credentials committee.
Behind all of this was the undiluted rage that you and I faced from Executive Committee
officersincluding the then-chairman. This included but was hardly limited
to the tense meeting that you, Todd Unzicker, and Phillip Bethancourt from my
team had with Mike Stone and Ronnie Floyd in Atlanta in May of 2019. There Stone
vigorously insisted on delaying the formation of a credentials committee to assess
churches reported to be mishandling sexual abuse. Phillip concluded by telling
Stone that the question would not be whether or not Southern Baptists would be
presented with a motion in Birmingham for a credentials committee, that we would
see to it that such was done regardless. The only question was whether Southern
Baptists would see Executive Committee opposition to it.
Stone argued with Bethancourt at that point, suggesting that this approach was "unseemly,"
and said that such a move would be rushing the process. The chairman of
the Executive Committee did not want to risk "rushing" a process for churches who
mishandle abuse, and yet had no trouble leading an effort, in a two-day meeting, in
assembling an investigative review of the entity working to address the abuse.
At the convention that year, Southern Baptists did, indeed authorize a Credentials
Committee, albeit a weakened version of one. If Stone had been able to delay its
formation as he wished, we would be here two years later without even the most
minimal mechanism to assess churches mishandling abuse, other than the Bylaws
Workgroup. While by no means a definitive solution to this crisis, the committee
could at least attempt to make recommendations to the convention outside of the
unilateral control of such groups as the Bylaws Work group.
As president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission for the past eight years, I
can speak to this directly and personally. The "task force" report initiated in February
2020 was headed by the then-chairman Mike Stone, who likewise participated
in a similar "task force" in Georgia in 2014-15. This was, of course, the second "task
force" set up by the Executive Committee in a span of three years. Both allegedly to
look into the numbers of churches said to be defunding the Cooperative Program
because of the ERLC. The first such task force showed no such defunding, and, as
we all know, the most recent investigation relied on fifteen "confidential" state executive
directors. More concerning though is that with this most recent "task force"
not only did Mike Stone facilitate its creation, but he drove the committee throughout
the process and managed the parameters of its scope. This was, of course, after
he somehow managed to make himself chair of the committee and with the power to
name its membership.
What most Southern Baptists do not know, but you and I do know, is how the issue
of sexual abuse lurks just below the surface of so much of the controversy of the last
few years.
As you know, the last ERLC National Conference was a piece of the strategy to address,
at long last, this crisis head-on, as we focused the conference around questions
of sexual abuse. We said from the beginning that we wanted a place for honest
dialogue around these issues and that we would not police anyone from speaking
what he or she thought or had experienced. At least one invited speaker harshly criticized
usincluding my entityfor not doing enough on this issue and not handling
it the way he thought we should. I invited him, specifically, knowing that he would
do so, because I thought his perspective was in good faith and reasonable, that it
should be heard and that we could, by hearing that perspective, learn how to do this
better. I welcomed that criticism and did indeed learn from it and was, and am, glad
the speaker felt the freedom to speak as he did.
The defining momentas it relates to the past yearof that conference was, of
course, the conversation that I had with Rachael Denhollander, the Olympic gymnast,
attorney, and advocate for survivors of sexual abuse. Rachael told me hours
before we were to go on stage that she had spoken with an abuse survivor we both
know well, and that the survivor had granted permission for Rachael to mention her
story as long as I approved of her doing so. I said that I would not at all censor anything
that she had to say. That would have been true about anything, but certainly
true about this survivor, a person Maria and I love and have walked alongside as she
has experienced not only the sexual abuse of her past, but the disparagement and
then bullying and intimidation by the SBC Executive Committee.
This survivor attempted to tell her story of abuse, through the channels of the Executive
Committee, and her own words were altered by Executive Committee staff to
make it seem as though this horrifying experience had been a consensual affair. I
saw, first-hand, the sort of abuse this brought upon this survivor, not only on social
media and through calls for her firing from her ministry position but even the word
"*****" directed to her in a corridor at the Southern Baptist Convention. We saw
the spiritual and psychic damage this did to her. As a matter of fact, at that very National
Conference where Rachael addressed the matter, Maria and I and many others
were ministering by phone to this mistreated and maligned young woman.
Before the conversation happened, I told Executive Committee staff members
present, Amy Whitfield and Jonathan Howe, that it was likely that Rachael would
address this issue. To be clear, as you know, Whitfield and Howe were, as always,
consummate professionals and Christlike believers, who never attempted to in any
way stop or alter the conversation in any way.
In the conversation, Denhollander did indeed raise the question of this survivor's
mistreatment by the Executive Committee (along with other instances of church and
ministry injustices against those who have lived through abuse). In fact, as I knew
then and know far better now, if anything, Rachael downplayed the horror this survivor
had experienced, and later would experience, at the hands of the Executive
Committee. She relayed through tears her experiences of bullying and intimidation
by figures all the way up the org chart at the Executive Committee, culminating in a
financial settlement by the Executive Committee but with a refusal by them to apologize.
This survivor asked to speak to the 2021 Executive Committee trusteessecretly
in executive sessionsimply to relay to them what she had experienced, so
that such would not happen to any other survivor. She told me that she had the support
of the chairman of the board, Rolland Slade, and relayed text messages demonstrating
such, but was told that her request had been denied.
The Denhollander moment at the Caring Well Conference enraged certain leaders of
the Executive Committee. Phillip Bethancourt and I were called to a meeting with
Executive Committee president Ronnie Floyd who told us that "you're going to have
to help me out here" because he was experiencing backlash from his chairman and
others over what we had allowed to happen. He said that these trustee leaders were
especially upset since the Executive Committee had contributed some money to
your efforts with the Sexual Abuse Advisory Group. In actuality, no money from the
Executive Committee was used to pay for the conference (which, even had this been
the case, would not have stopped us from doing what we believed to be morally
right). The financial amount given, $250,000, was raised repeatedly in that meeting
as a reason why it was inexplicable that we would allow Rachael Denhollander to say
what she said.
Ronnie's posture was as one who was himself under fire, but told us that his trustees
were not at all happy. That was less than three months before the 2020 Executive
Committee meeting where it was made very clear that there would be consequences.
As I told both Maria and my trustee officers at the time, the very clear message from
this sector of Executive Committee trustees was, "You've got a nice little Commission
there; it would be a shame if something happened to it."
Not only that, but it's noteworthy that the same people enraged by our efforts to
combat sexual abuse were also those enraged when you made the common-sense
statement to the press that, while you cannot tell a church what to do or with whom
to do it, you thought giving a "Defender of the Faith" Award to Paige Pattersonafter
his firing by a Southern Baptist entity over issues related to the treatment of vulnerable
womenwas not a good idea. Ronnie Floyd, and others, told me at that
meeting that these trustees were talking of both an "investigative task force" for me
and a censure for you. The censure, of course, did not happen. I was told this was
because there would not be enough votes for an action that had never happened before.
But the task force did happen, largely because the people raging behind closed doors
could couch the proposal in the bureaucratic language of "just asking questions" in
ways that could seem to Executive Committee trustees who did not know of such
things (probably the vast majority of them) to be non-hostile, at the time.
On the Monday of that meeting, I gave my report before the Cooperative Program
subcommittee, and was asked nothing but friendly questions, with no hostile or critical
questions at all. This is despite the fact that, as we now know, the decision was
made the night before, by the EC trustee officers, to launch this task force. They
went into a secret session, without ever talking to you or to me, to form yet another
secret task force.
The last time they did this I was "investigated" by the then-president of the Executive
Committee who was, at that very time, covering up his own use of pastoral authority
to sexually sin. The issues raised with me were why, for instance, I said that
prosperity gospel preacher Paula White is a heretic and a huckster not representative
of evangelical Christianity and why I did not include "the Bubba crowd" (his
words) in my conference programming, since they pay the bills.
This former president is now back in pastoral ministry, in a Southern Baptist
church. As you know, I asked Ronnie Floyd if the Executive Committee ever planned
to release information beyond the amorphously worded "moral failing" language at
the time of his resignation, about whether this former president had abused spiritual
and pastoral authority with the woman in question in this incident. I was told that
they would not.
Both the first and second "task force" initiatives were, as you and I know, about one
thing fundamentally. They know that the headlines will be "Russell Moore and the
ERLC Under Investigation for Hundreds of Churches Leaving and Defunding the
Convention," in a way that can both impugn our character and hinder our effectiveness.
They also know that when the final report emerges months or a year later,
showing the claims false (or avoiding the presenting claims altogether) that there
will be no similar press trumpeting those findings. That's because that's the point
to keep a cloud over me, and to attempt to get me to self-censor and be silent about
these matters. The tactic of "We gave you $250,000, why did you allow our dirty
laundry to be aired?" can then be morphed into, "We control your CP budget; why
don't you play ball?"
And they know that such "investigations" are draining of time, energy, and morale
for both me and my entire teamas well as the thousands of Southern Baptists
around the country, and Southern Baptist missionaries around the world, who support
us. But the strategy is clearan endless psychological warfare aimed at silencing
through intimidation.
And, indeed, if we wish to compare anecdotal accounts, I could marshal thousands
of anecdotes of the peopleespecially young and minority pastorsthat I have
spent hours talking into staying in cooperation with the SBC when they want to
leave. I cannot tell you how many pastors and leaders have told me that they either
keep or wish they could keep the word "Baptist" out of the name of their churches,
because they feel ashamed. When asked why they are ashamed, the reasons are not
as some might caricaturethe "bold" and "uncompromising" doctrinal witness of
Southern Baptists in a "darkening culture." These are doctrinally orthodox and conservative
leaders. They are talking about the sort of thing I am discussing hereand
they don't even know a fraction of a fraction of it.
Now, as I said to my trustee officers last year, through all of this I have tried to smile
and pretend that everything is alright with me personally and to refrain from revealing
the horrific actions you and I have experienced behind the scenes. For one thing,
I didn't want to defend myselfas I think Jesus forbids me to do (Matt. 5:11-12; 38-
42). And part of it is because I don't want the vast majority of Southern Baptists who
are good and godly and seeking to be on mission to grow weary and leave.
In every one of these incidents, some of the people involved will say, "We don't want
Dr. Moore (or J.D. Greear) to leave." And I believe they are telling the truth. They do
not want us to leave because they do not want the constituencies to which we speak
to leave. What they want is for us to remain silent and to live in psychological terror,
to protect them by covering up what they do in darkness, while asking our constituencies
to come in and to stay in the SBC.
Everywhere I goeverywhere I goI am greeted by former Southern Baptists. Almost
none of them are angry or bitter. If anything they are nostalgic and want to
reminisce with me about words we would share that others in their new church
communions wouldn't know"Lottie Moon" and "Annie Armstrong" and "RAs" and
"GAs" and so on. I have had more conversations about "Training Union" and "Centrifuge"
after speaking to other denomination's annual meetings than I ever have at
our own. They love their Southern Baptist past. That's where they found Jesus, and
where they found a way to be on mission.
None of these people, before they left, called the Executive Committee, threatening
to defund anything if they didn't get their way. The thousands of young people I encounter
on college campuses who are now non-denominational or of another Christian
denomination don't do exit interviews with their association Director of Missions.
Instead, they just look at the rage and the cover-ups and shrug their shoulders
and say, "I guess they don't want people like me."
In all those situations, I want to scream (and sometimes I have!): "But that's not
who Southern Baptists are! The people in our churches, and the overwhelming majority
of pastors, are kind and loving and gospel-anchored and mission-focused.
They are not part of all this you have seen!" But my generationtaught implicitly
that being Southern Baptist is a kind of moral obligationis the last for whom that
is true. Regardless, that's not what's important right now. What's most important is
what happens to vulnerable children and adults in our very own churches.
You and I both know how leadership in the Executive Committee, at the trustee level
with Mike Stone and his allies, and at the staff level by former Executive Vice-President
Augie Boto, have stonewalled many attempts at reform for the sake of the sexually
abused. You know that this has happened even after they have given publicly
what appeared at the time to be very good and open statements about the matter.
And you know that when their stonewalling has failed, you and I have not called
them out publicly on what they did privately. We simply focused on the results, of
trying to achieve measures to mitigate sexual abuse.
Now, though, other questions have come to light that demand serious investigation.
You and I both know the involvement of Paige and Dorothy Patterson, through their
allies, in these tactics of retribution and revenge. Indeed, videos made for the group
aligned with Mike Stone and Rod Martin, were geo-tagged to the Pattersons' home.
Websites for their subsidiary groups are demonstrated to have been created by a nativist
political group.
We now know that Augie Boto and others, at the very time we were trying to convince
them to do anything on this matter of sexual abuse, were colluding with the
Pattersons to divert funds from Southwestern Seminary and Baylor University for
their own causes, and with appointments on a board enriching those involved by six
figure payments every year. We do not know this from anecdotal rumors of some
task force; we know this from court documents in the state of Texas.
What we do not know is what the involvement was of SBC Executive Committee attorneys
in advising these moves against one of our own entities. What we do not
know is what communication the Executive Committee and its trustee leadership
have had on matters of intimidating other leaders and entities who are seeking to
address sexual abuse from a man who was fired for, among other things, saying that
he would "break down" a rape victim, and for making shockingly inappropriate public
comments about abuse victims and underage girls.
Alongside this, we have allegations circulating on social media and elsewhere that
even while we were contending with Mr. Boto throughout 2018that he was testifying
personally as a character witness in court for an alleged sexual predator. This
charge may or may not be true. I have been asked about it repeatedly and have repeatedly
said that surely it couldn't be. But this certainly warrants finding out and
thus either clearing Mr. Boto's name or in seeing a very disturbing conflict of interest
that should have, and never was, disclosed.
What I know, but Southern Baptists do not, is the bullying and intimidation of at
least one sexual abuse victim by the SBC Executive Committee and the attempted
intimidation of at least one SBC entity president. If Southern Baptists decide that
these are the sorts of tactics they want employed, and that the primary problem for
them is not sexual predators but those who call for justice against sexual predators,
then that is certainly their right. Autonomous churches and the people in them can
then decide if that's what they wish to support. But it is not right for Southern Baptists
to vote over and over and over again in their annual meetings for sane, reasonable
approaches to this, and other crises, only to see such things frustrated by mafialevel
intimidation tactics between meetings.
The tactics are as simple as they are ungodly. They wish to caricature media who report
on sexual abuse as biased, sexual abuse victims as, at best, mentally disturbed
and, at worst, as sexually-promiscuous sinners, and those who stand with those victims
as "liberals" or as dedicated to a "godless and secular MeToo movement." What
is punished in these circles is asking for accountability for abuse, asking why one
leader we once lionized for "biblical conviction" has such reprehensible attitudes
about rape and abuse and why another is currently in court on charges, himself, of
molestation. We are not allowed to ask why a recent president of the Executive
Committee is in the pastorate despite a misuse of spiritual authority and why a highranking
former member of the Executive Committee is in the press for allegations of
a cover-up of sexual abuse at his own church.
At this year's 2021 Southern Baptist Convention, I had planned to speak to the messengers
and ask for an independent third-party investigation of these activities by
the SBC Executive Committee, similar to the independent investigation into Ravi
Zacharias International Ministries. This outside inquiry would collect and examine
whatever documents, records, communications, or other material that might exist
revealing any transactions or discussions between Executive Committee trustees,
staff, or attorneys with the aforementioned individuals who have been allegedly involved
in the financial defrauding of Southern Baptist entities, as related to investigations
or intimidations of those calling attention to abuse and related matters.
This past February's Executive Committee meeting was clarifying for me. My fifteen
year-old sonhearing just the hubbub about "investigations" of measked whether
or not I had had a moral failure. As I told you the other night, I am usually resilient
and calm about such things, but I was filled with anger, especially because not only
had I not had a moral failure but I knew of the immorality of some of the very people
initiating and carrying out the "investigations" meant to cast aspersions on my
character. I did what I had never done before and asked him to attend the Executive
Committee meeting with me, so that he could see and hear for himself. I'm glad I
did. But as I watched his face in that meeting, I concluded that I would never have to
answer that question to him again as a result of intimidation by these figures.
Now, for me, that's simply a matter of a different ministry and the personal grief
over almost fifty years of continual Southern Baptist identity and life. For you, it's
simply the matter of presiding over this year's convention and returning to the global
ministry of your church. But for a lot of peoplelike the sexual abuse survivors I
talk to almost every daythe stakes are infinitely higher.
The vast majority of Southern Baptists care about the abused and want accountability
for abusers. They have made that clear, especially at the last annual meeting in
Birmingham. The sorts of obstacles to such reform laid out here represent, I believe,
a tiny minority of Southern Baptists, which is why, at least to the present moment,
they have lost every vote on the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention. But sooner
or later the majority of Southern Baptists will have to decide whether this sort of
wickedness can continue to go on under their name. This tiny minority wants me to
be afraid of them. They want you to be afraid of them. I am not afraid of them, and
neither are you.
But there will be future SBC presidents and future entity presidents who will seek to
lead in these areas. Will they too be subject to these sorts of tactics to silence them?
And, more importantly, there will be Southern Baptists who will one day wonder
whether they are just statistics, or if people even care about those who are raped and
molested and then defamed as though they were adulterers. We cannot simply
count on generational change. If there is not a radical culture change in this denomination,
this will happen over and over and over again.
Again, I write this letter mainly because I feel conscience-driven to put down in
writing what we have seen, if only so that I can be reminded of it myself if ever I find
myself in a similar environment. I don't even know what I am asking you to do, if
anything, other than to continue, as you have, to valiantly stand up for the victims of
sexual abuse and to continue to work for churches that are safe for them. I pledge to
do the same in the broader evangelical world. Ultimately, hearing "Me Too" is a necessary
addendum to singing "Just As I Am," or else all our altar calls are in vain (Isa.
1:11-17).
I am grateful every day for your friendship and your leadership through such tumultuous
times, especially since you, unexpectedly, ended up serving three years instead
of two. You have led with excellence and integrity. I hope you and Veronica
can get away for some well-deserved rest after this year's convention meeting.
For the Kingdom,
Russell D. Moore
President
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
Southern Baptist Convention
(June 1, 2013-June 1, 2021)
RDM/