Posted on 07/02/2008 5:03:25 AM PDT by Between the Lines
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have condemned sexual predators and are urging churches to flush out molesters using federal background checks.
But a simple search on the convention's Web site shows they have yet to purge their own house of predators.
SBC's MinisterSearch, a Web database for finding clergy members, contains the names of pastors both indicted and convicted of sexual abuse.
Among them is a former Cordova pastor charged in October with rape and sexual battery.
"It's a double standard," said David Brown, an abuse victim and coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests in Memphis.
Brown is also a Southern Baptist.
"They made the statement at the convention that they weren't going to let these pedophiles in, and they're still up on the Web site," he said.
Roger Oldham, vice president for convention relations, says the minister search, which has more than 10,000 names, is simply a directory and not an endorsement.
"All the information we have comes from the churches," he said.
Churches submit the information and the convention updates the database every other year, Oldham said.
Listed on the site is Steven Haney, the former pastor of Walnut Grove Baptist Church, now Gracepoint Baptist.
Haney is accused of having a long-term sexual affair with a teenage boy in his Cordova congregation.
He has since resigned his position, but the directory shows him on staff.
Haney's case is still pending, along with that of Tim Byars, who also turns up on the site.
A former youth minister at Springhill Baptist Church in Dyersburg, he was charged with raping a 14-year-old girl during a field trip nearly two years ago.
Byars is also charged in another case for sexual battery in Davidson County.
"These men have forfeited their right to be a minister," Brown said.
SNAP received about 40 reports last year of sexual abuse by Southern Baptist ministers.
Brown says keeping predators and alleged predators on the convention's Web site gives the impression these are safe ministers.
"We've got to do more to protect our children," he said.
Although the problem hasn't been as far-reaching as the sexual abuse scandal that shook up the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention has seen a rise in high-profile allegations against clergy in recent years.
The allegations have been numerous enough to prompt the executive committee to begin studying how to address them.
The convention voted last year to look into creating a database that would list clergy who have been accused or convicted.
At the annual meeting this month, the committee reported they would not create a database to identify predators.
Unlike Catholic churches, SBC churches are autonomous. When sexual abuse surfaces, it's up to individual churches to take action.
"The convention does not ordain or defrock ministers," Oldham said.
On the convention's Web site, there are links to the National Database of Sex Offenders and other abuse-prevention sites.
The recent attention the minister search site has gotten will likely lead to upcoming discussions on how to operate and update the search, Oldham said.
"Historically it was a directory, like a telephone directory," he said. "It had little notoriety until recently."
So? You can find plenty of sinners in church. Would be a small service without us.
Wait a minute...I thought only the Catholic church was guilty of coverups. This article must be incorrect.
Yes churches are full of hypocrits. But there’s always room for one more.
I don’t see how the SBC’s failure to screen names from their web-site’s minister search constitutes a cover up, but it is a terrible oversight that needs to be corrected.
From the article
"He has since resigned his position, but the directory shows him on staff."
There is a huge difference between forgetting to take their name off the directory and hiding the abuse and quietly moving the guy to another church. If the Catholic church had fired the priests and turned them in to law enforcement it would be the same. Churches are made up of people. people aint perfect.
Guess who was shunned? Your right the child.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2039542/posts
This is an article that shows rapists moved from post to post.
Oh, and they aren’t Catholic.
“Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.”
George C Patton
Did the Church know what they were doing and move them over to another church to cover it up?
Oh and did I mention that Churches are made up of people and people aint perfect.
I didn’t throw stones at the Catholic Church. Someone else brought it up.
The queers have invaded every denomination. Let us not forget what the 2-3% in the Catholic Church did to that religion—the cost has been staggering in many ways.
“So? You can find plenty of sinners in church. Would be a small service without us.”
So your a pedophile and child abuser? Nice. You must be Baptist, if you were Catholic or Mormon you would have something different to say.
You surely didn't miss this one, did you?
Get so used to seeing you on the Catholic threads that I just assumed you'd be here, but alas, no..........
No doubt there's an innocent explanation.
That was not nice and totally uncalled for. There is no need to get personal.
So your a pedophile and child abuser? Nice. You must be Baptist, if you were Catholic or Mormon you would have something different to say.
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As to your tagline, perhaps you should have lurked a bit longer.
Is it not fundamental to every Christian denomination that we are ALL sinners?
“You must be Baptist, if you were Catholic or Mormon you would have something different to say.”
Really, like what? Enlighten us. Then go back to lurking.
That is not a case of an abuser being moved from post to post as that implies that he remained within the same organization and under the same employer.
Since each Baptist church is autonomous, it IS a case of an abuser being dumped by one church onto another unsuspecting church with no warnings. They probably even gave him a high recommendation to the new church.
Before the priest sex abuse scandals, this was not an uncommon practice among Baptist churches. Many Baptist churches found that it was easier to dump the offender on to some new church and to remain silent easier than facing lawsuits and humiliation. But since the scandals churches have found themselves being sued for not reporting abuse to the authorities and for not warning prospective new employers. Thus they have rethought their strategies.
Just as moving an abusing priest from post to post within the Church has become rare, so to has the practice of dumping abusers on other churches among Baptists. While in the past reports of Baptist abusers was uncommon, the fact that there are now so many reports of Baptist abusers attests to how things are changing.
While painful to the Church, the Catholic sex abuse scandal has shown a light on how we deal with abusive priests and pastors and has changed how we deal with it. This is a good thing. Now we are showing abusers how their activities will no longer be tolerated in either of our churches, that they will be exposed and prosecuted. Something we should have been doing all along.
You make a good point, in fact THE point. Since perverts don’t wear a scarlet “P” on their forefeads it’s difficult to prevent their entrance into any denomanation but that was never the problem. The problem was and is that when the dogs come in to lie down they are allowed to stay until everyone is bitten by fleas. Those who had the means of chasing the dogs out refused to do so and saying “we’re all sinners” is simply a means of deflacting responsibility away from the “shepherds”.
Actually, I did.
Hey, did you see this line:
Although the problem hasn't been as far-reaching as the sexual abuse scandal that shook up the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention has seen a rise in high-profile allegations against clergy in recent years.
So what is it you want me to say? If this is true the SBC needs to tighten up in this area.
I have yet to see a Catholic here say what the priests have done was a horror, instead they like to accuse those of us who want to talk about the issue of being Catholic bashers.
The Boy Scouts have been fighting this issue for years and seem to be losing the battle. All that is necessary for the homosexuals to win is to find a homophilic judge to rule in their favor. The BSA have been vilified, not just by the deviant alliances, but also using the aid of the old media. Sadly, homosexuals had their way with little boys in ancient Rome and appear to be repeating their abusive ways in the contemporary world.
Oh, if only this denomination permitted their ministers to marry!!
Oh, wait...
I find that very, very, very hard to believe. Every single Catholic Freeper I can think of, myself included, have made numerous posts condemning pervert priests, our bishops and seminaries. Since you spend so much of your time on Catholic threads spewing diabolical venom I don't see how you could have missed these posts. You are being completely dishonest to say otherwise.
***spewing diabolical venom***
Pointing out that Catholic priests have been involved in molesting small boys is “diabolical venom?”
That is denial in and of itself.
And I suspect they do; very quickly unless the accusations are baseless.
I am not a Catholic, but your statement is accurate.
Whatever, the subject HERE is Baptists.
Not Catholics.
Baptists should be able to set a perfect example, seeing as how so many of them knew exactly what was wrong with the Catholic church. Baptists should NEVER have had sex abusers, because their ministers can marry. Baptists were clear on how Catholics should clean house, so theirs should be immaculate.
Evidently not.
"There is none righeous, no, not one."
"If a man says 'I have no sin', he is a liar"
Pretty much says it right there...Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, etcetera ad infinitum...We are ALL sinners, and ALL in need of Jesus' blood to cleanse those sins. It doesn't matter what denomination you are. We're all a bunch of screw-ups in God's eyes.
And...He loves every...last...one...of...you.
I am not a Catholic and I do not know if "every" Catholic Freeper has done so, but I can testify that that your statement applies to most all of the Catholic Freepers I know.
I have yet to see a Catholic here say what the priests have done was a horror, instead they like to accuse those of us who want to talk about the issue of being Catholic bashers.
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That’s baloney. I have read Catholic posters condemning not only the priest but his Bishop. You have such a desire to smear this religion that you are starting to believe your own distortions.
Granted I don’t hang out on every thread that deals with the issue, but I constantly see comments made by FReepers blaming Catholic-bashers for posting such threads, blaming the homosexual agenda for this abomination and making statement like not in my diocese. That’s what I see around here..
no, any honest catholic admits there has been an epidemic of child molestation and high ranking officials were involved in covering it up and moving clergy around.
but you, on an almost daily basis, post the most ridiculous anti-catholic articles you can find.
Which explains why this discussion is on a thread about Baptists and I was pinged here by a gleeful Catholic
I agree with you 100%
Nobody spends more time judging others than Southern Baptists. I think they lie awake nights thinking about who they are better than.
That's only because they happen to outnumber the Calvinists!
Never go fishing with just one Baptist...he'll drink all your beer.
Something like that.
Never heard that one. Is that the whole thing, cause I don’t get it?
Hoagy, I’m not sure where you were when all our protestant FRiends came out on the Catholic sex abuse scandal threads, but trust me, they had a lot of “advice.”
Why do you always take 2 baptists fishing with you?
Cause if you take one he will drink all of your beer.
On the subject of sexual predators in the ministry. I would say that they are in every religion. The SBC doesn't hide them but leaves the Churches in responsibility to report them to the law and press charges if they are needed and not to hire Ministers with records that would show that they are pedophiles or sexual predators. SBC affiliated churches are autonomous.The churches have the power to take care of these issues. My church for example does a Background check on all Staff and every worker that would come in contact with children including lay-people. The SBC recommends all SBC affiliated churches doe the same but many do not.
Maybe if you posted some “news” (and not articles like you posted this morning regarding the Italian saint from Oct 2007) they wouldn’t be so upset with you.
Complete codswallop. Utter, unadulterated nonsense.
Don't push the line that Catholics don't want to talk about this. Catholics have written screeds about the huge amount of damage which the lavendar mafia has caused within the Catholic Church and the equally repugnant cover ups of their episcopal enablers. NYer has posted a multitude of threads. Where we differ is in the conclusions which we draw from the scandals. Catholics conclude that the "Judas factor" is with the Church still and probably always will be. You and your fellow travellers like to extrapolate a little and conclude that this shows the utter corruption of the entire Catholic edifice.
Just because we don't accept the idea that the Catholic Church is corrupt doesn't mean we don't want to talk about it.
You were pinged to this thread not by a "gleeful" Catholic, but by a Catholic who would like to see a little consistency. You've spent an enormous amount of man hours posting threads, many of them ancient, which deal exclusively with Catholic scandals. You wouldn't want us to get the impression that this was exclusively a Catholic problem, now would you? Nor that you and your fellow posters ignore Protestant cases, right? Nor that there was any intent to demonstrate that the scandals somehow show that the Catholic Church was utterly corrupt, right?
Having said that, kudos for actually answering my ping, showing up and not whining to the Mods either. My respect for you has increased. I'm not here to rub your or anyone else's nose in it but I would like you to take away one simple message.
It's that there has been a huge amount of damage done over the past three or four years by the one-sided portrayal of these scandals and the utterly implacable manner in which the debate has unfolded. It's turned the religion forum into an utter disgrace and a scandal for any non-believer or lurker who might wander through.
It is kind of like kids wishing for a disaster so they can get out of school and play.
” have yet to see a Catholic here say what the priests have done was a horror...”
That’s absolutely nuts. What they did was hideous in so many ways affecting the entire church.
Smearing us, the Catholics on FR as not condemning their actions is just another anti-Catholic rant.
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