A few more notes on the SBC Guideposts sex abuse report, now that the SBC annual meeting has come and gone:
- MinistrySafe (our partner in child safety at TPC) has given a helpful evaluation of the report, pointing out some of the sloppy language it uses.
- Megan Basham’s article and interview are helpful resources to understand the issues and what’s at stake. Basham might be the last true journalist left in America. She asks good questions, pursues sources, and aims at objectivity in her reporting.
- It is not surprising that complementarianism keeps getting blamed for the SBC’s failures. We knew all along the sex abuse report would be used as a wedge issue to pressure conservatives into abandoning biblical sex roles. But to put the SBC sex abuse problem into perspective: Statistically, kids are much, much safer in SBC churches than they are in the public school system. And SBC churches are patriarchal (= male leadership) while the public school system is largely matriarchal. So which system actually poses a greater risk to children, patriarchy or matriarchy? But an outcry over abuse in the public school system would not help further the progressive agenda, so it gets ignored. As with so many other issues, the “narrative” is more important in the media than actually helping people.
- It is not surprising that the SBC has had to form a committee to study “What is a pastor?” SBC polity has always been a sub-biblical mess. But now the question of pastoral office is tied up in gender politics. While the culture cannot answer the question “What is a woman?” (hat tip to Matt Walsh), the SBC cannot answer “What is a pastor” because it cannot answer “What is a Man?” It does no good to argue that the pastoral office is masculine in nature if no one can define what a man is.