(11 Jun 2021) A prominent pastor at the Emmanuel Baptist in Georgia who is running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has denied accusations that he impeded attempts to probe churches' mishandling of sex abuse cases.
The claims against Mike Stone were made recently by Russell Moore, the longtime point person for the SBC on public policy, who resigned from his post as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Those meetings came in the wake of a 2019 investigative by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, revealing that about 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, victimizing hundreds.
"I find it somewhat outrageous that these kind of claims would be laid at the feet of someone who is himself - I am myself a survivor of child sexual abuse," said Stone.
He added that "the Southern Baptist Convention was not and to a large degree is still not set up today to do the kinds of things that Russell Moore wanted to see us doing."
The timing comes less than a week before the SBC's annual meeting, which is expected to draw its highest attendance in more than 25 years.
The meeting comes amid tensions over abuse, race and other issues, and amid growing calls for an independent investigation of the Executive Committee's response, though debate remains over who would do the investigating.
"The idea that the Southern Baptist Convention could literally physically do something to help protect children in more than 47,000 local churches is is a misleading concept," Stone said.
"What we need to be doing is resourcing and equipping those local churches to be safe places for God's children of all ages."
The denomination had previously said it was limited in how it could respond because it's a voluntary association of self-governing churches, but the report galvanized efforts to do more.
The convention, at its 2019 annual meeting, stated that congregations could be expelled for mishandling abuse cases and created a credentials committee to review such cases.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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