On Monday night, Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear outlined plans to improve how America's largest Protestant denomination handles sexual abuse, especially of minors. His proposals, presented to the Souther Baptist Convention's executive committee at a meeting in Nashville, include providing free training for pastors and other ministry leaders, encouraging member churches to revisit their sexual abuse policies, breaking fellowship with member churches that show "wanton disregard for sexual abuse," and taking a look at how Baptist ministers are ordained.
Greear's presentation follows a bombshell report by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News about widespread sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches, including by some ministers who are both registered sex offenders and active pastors. But Greear, elected president in June following the surprise resignation of a previous leader who stepped down amid sexual misconduct and a broader #MeToo furor, had commissioned a study on the topic months before the reports were published. "The reason I formed this group last summer was we have known there was a problem and whatever had been done in the past, clearly was not enough," he told his fellow Southern Baptist leaders.
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