The Southern Baptist Convention has relaunched a website dedicated to helping to fight abuse within member congregations of the United States’ largest Protestant denomination.
The SBC Executive Committee announced the relaunch of the Abuse Prevention & Response website, which now includes enhanced resources on reporting and preventing abuse.
These new resources will include an updated Essentials 2.0 curriculum and blog posts authored by anti-abuse experts, as well as providing a centralized platform for other resources from state and regional Baptist conventions.
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Jeff Dalrymple, SBC EC director of abuse prevention and response, told Baptist Press in comments published Tuesday that churches having “a response plan is critical to help pastors know how to respond when there’s an allegation of abuse.”
“We want to report it and to provide care for survivors and to work with available resources that they’ve identified in advance. And so I think that’s really, really important in our next level of abuse prevention and response, is getting churches prepared,” said Dalrymple.
“I would just emphasize that abuse response is not just internal abuse that has happened in a ministry setting, but it’s also external abuse that has happened in another context or environment, such as maybe a child’s home.”
Dalrymple added that he wanted “to encourage our churches to make sure that all of their staff and volunteers are trained to identify indicators that abuse may have happened and then to report it to the appropriate authorities.”
Next week, SBC member churches can register for two free webinar training events slated to begin in September, with one focused on recognizing grooming and another centered on how to properly receive convicted sex abusers into the church.
Dalrymple called such efforts a “careful grace,” noting that “we want to make sure that we safeguard the vulnerable and that we have certain measures in place to make sure that that convicted sex offender is able to also grow in Christ, but with certain parameters around his or her involvement.”
In 2022, Guidepost Solutions released a detailed report concluding that SBC leaders had mishandled some sexual abuse allegations against churches, intimidated victims and resisted efforts to make churches safer, chiefly in order to avoid legal liability.
Since the Guidepost report was released, the SBC has initiated various efforts to improve its responses to credible allegations of abuse among member congregations.
Last September, the SBC EC voted to create a department to tackle and prevent abuse, coming in response to a vote at the SBC Annual Meeting that June calling for the creation of a permanent entity to tackle abuse response and prevention.
The SBC also launched a hotline in May 2022 for individuals to report allegations of abuse. In February, SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg reported that seven member churches were disfellowshipped as a result of allegations reported via the hotline.
“Sexual abuse is a serious and real problem,” said Iorg. “And when it happens, it is devastating for the survivors, the church, the community, and every person who is involved.”
“Every church must make every reasonable effort to prevent sexual abuse and respond proactively when it happens. We are committed to these standards at the Executive Committee: no tolerance for abuse, and every church a safe place for the vulnerable.”
The SBC’s anti-abuse efforts have not always been positively received, as the convention is currently battling a defamation lawsuit from a former worship leader who claims to have been wrongly punished over abuse allegations that stemmed from the hotline.
