Southern Baptist Convention Internally Conflicted Over Creation of Abuse Response Commission

Jesus once said of Satan that a house divided against itself will not stand demonstrating how nonsensical the claims that His powers came from Satan were. But unlike Satan, the Southern Baptist Convention is divided against itself on the issue of whether and how to create a new entity unaccountable to Southern Baptists to police Southern Baptists on Me Too.

Very important announcement from Josh Wester and the ARITF tonight. They announced the formation of an independent organization to carry forward the work of abuse response in the SBC. He called upon me and others to help create a funding plan.

— Bart Barber (@bartbarber) February 20, 2024

The organization would be called the Abuse Response Commission or ARC, which would easily be confused with the Association of Related Churches among other organizations.

So Southern Baptist will create and fund an organization with zero accountability to the messengers while receiving Cooperative Program money to start up. It’s worth noting that the SBC will dispute the Cooperative Program detail because the money is likely slated to come from Send Relief which is not a Cooperative Program entity, it’s the joint project of the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board which are both Cooperative Program entities.

All of this is predicated on the false narrative that the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention concealed sex abuse in the denomination, which was unfounded after years of investigation.

Send Relief has since come out with a sharp rebuke of ARC in a joint statement by Kevin Ezell, Paul Chitwood, and Bryant Wright.

We are grateful for the work of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) and continue to be supportive of efforts to strengthen abuse prevention and response within the SBC.

While Send Relief has been privileged to make funds available to the ARITF to help care for survivors and assist churches in efforts to prevent abuse, those funds have never been committed to help form a separate organization outside the SBC, such as the proposed Abuse Response Commission (ARC).

While we share a desire to support abuse reforms, many details remain unclear about the proposed ARC’s mission, legal structure, leadership, and accountability. Though Send Relief funds are not available for a non-SBC organization, they do remain available to the ARITF for its assigned work within the SBC.

When we say at Send Relief that our mission is to provide help and hope in Jesus’ name, we absolutely include the help and hope needed to prevent abuse in the SBC, to respond to abuse in the SBC, and to care for survivors affected by abuse in the SBC.

The ARC project was reliant on $3 million from Send Relief, but this was erroneously reported by the ARITF that Send Relief would fund it.

This is a developing story.