Abuse of Faith
SBC churches and organizations share resources and materials, and together they fund missionary trips and seminaries. Most pastors are ordained locally after they've convinced a small group of church elders that they've been called to service by God. There is no central database that tracks ordinations, or sexual abuse convictions or allegations.
All of that makes Southern Baptist churches highly susceptible to predators, says Christa Brown, an activist who wrote a book about being molested as a child by a pastor at her SBC church in Farmer's Branch, a Dallas suburb.
"It's a perfect profession for a con artist, because all he has to do is talk a good talk and convince people that he's been called by God, and bingo, he gets to be a Southern Baptist minister," said Brown, who lives in Colorado. "Then he can infiltrate the entirety of the SBC, move from church to church, from state to state, go to bigger churches and more prominent churches where he has more influence and power, and it all starts in some small church.
"It's a porous sieve of a denomination."
Link to registry
Reminds me of the church I attended as a kid, whose pastor Bill Weber later started Prestonwood Baptist Church. He was caught cheating with 4 other women, and then started a new church up on Midway drive in North Dallas with the lady that started Mary Kay makeup. Even though Prestonwood Baptist changed hands, still had predators on staff and amazingly, the current pastor Jack Graham supports sexual predator Donald Trump.
