The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, said Friday that the church was being investigated by the Justice Department for sexual abuse and that it would “fully and fully cooperate.”
Church leaders said in a statement that multiple branches of the denomination, which includes seminaries and missionary organizations, were under investigation and that the church continues to “grieve and mourn past wrongs.”
In May, church leaders published a scathing op-ed that said reports of sexual abuse had been covered up by senior church officials for two decades.
This investigation, conducted by an outside consultant, covers reports of abuse by women and children against male pastors, church officials and employees from 2000 to the present.
One of the report’s most startling revelations was the existence of an internal list of 703 people suspected of abuse that was compiled by an official on the denomination’s executive committee, its national governing body.
“For nearly two decades, abuse survivors and other concerned Southern Baptists have contacted the Southern Baptist Convention,” the report said, “to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or were employed as church staff.’
“They made phone calls, sent letters, sent emails” and showed up at meetings and held rallies, the report continued, “only to be met, again and again, with resistance, obstruction and even outright hostility.”
The church subsequently released a 205-page list of hundreds of ministers and other church officials it described as “credibly accused” of sexual abuse.
On Friday, church leaders pledged to continue reforms aimed at combating sexual abuse within its ranks. “We recognize that our reform efforts are not over,” they said. “Our commitment to working with the Department of Justice is born out of our demonstrated commitment to transparently addressing the scourge of sexual violence.”
Leaders included seminary presidents, executive committee members, and heads of missionary organizations.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s civil rights division would not confirm the investigation Friday and had no immediate comment.
Pastors and church members have been openly frustrated in recent years with what they described as inaction on the part of the Southern Baptist Convention. The crisis came to light in 2019 when an investigation by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News revealed that approximately 380 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers, from youth pastors to senior ministers, pleaded guilty or were convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998.
The Justice Department has investigated Roman Catholic dioceses for sexual abuse crimes in recent years, but has so far struggled to prosecute them. The FBI launched an investigation in June of the Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans, the Associated Press reported.
The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 when Southern Baptists split from Northerners over the issue of slavery, which Southerners at the time supported and Northerners opposed. The SBC now has almost 14 million members and more than 47,000 churches in all 50 states.
Glenn Thrush, Ruth Graham, and Elizabeth Diaz contributed reporting.
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