Sex And The SBC

 

 

The Southern Baptist Convention recently hired a group called Guidepost Solutions to investigate several sexual scandals if you haven't been following along.

The group issued a report and revealed a consistent pattern.

1) Somebody did something wrong to somebody else.

2) Somebody else told a Baptist big wig.

3) The big wig hemmed and hawed

4) The bad guy left the church and went to another church.

5) If it made it into the Baptist press, it was a big story, and if the victim were a woman, someone would walk up and call her a whore.

6) Repeat.

Part of the mess is that the Southern Baptist Convention has a hierarchical structure that theologians call "Loosey-Goosey."    Despite what some of their Preachers think, there is no Pope in the Southern Baptist Convention. Things are left up to the local church and they can hire anybody they want to hire. Sometimes they hire people who have "issues" that are never "dealt with" because they work at the church.

The report also contained an investigation of a local Baptist preacher, Johnny Hunt. Until 2018, Hunt was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia.

First Baptist is a big old church. I have inlaws that have been members there for years. I have friends that have been members there for years. 

Until last week, I had never heard of a bad thing about Johnny Hunt as a person.

I mean, Hunt was one of those hellfire and brimstone types of preachers, at least the times I listened to him. He would shout. He would stomp his foot. He would clap his hands. He would give alter calls that lasted for days, if not weeks. 

Despite this, his church grew and grew. The people I met there were amiable, and outside of the pulpit, Hunt seemed like a nice, personable guy. But there was something about him I just couldn't put my finger on.  I chalked it up as he wasn't my cup of Joe. A lot of people would talk about Hunt's positive influence in their lives. Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong.

He would hold weekend retreats for men. I went to one. The sermons were about being a good Christian man.  A lot of it was about avoiding temptation because men can resist anything but temptation. I remember one sermon in which Hunt described turning on the TV and learning the cable had a free HBO weekend. So he said,  "I called the cable company and said I didn't want that filth in my house."

Keep that in mind as you read this narrative from the report. 

"Dr. Hunt then moved towards Survivor and proceeded to pull her shorts down, turn her over and stare at her bare backside. He made sexual remarks about her body and things he had imagined about her. During this time, Survivor felt frozen. Survivor said these were some of the longest moments of her life. She mustered the courage to ask him could she turn back over, and Dr. Hunt said yes. When she turned back over, she began to pull up her shorts. Dr. Hunt then pinned her to the couch, got on top of her, and pulled up her shirt. He sexually assaulted her with his hands and mouth. Suddenly, Dr. Hunt stopped and then stood up. Survivor pulled down her shirt. Survivor said she did not want him to ruin his ministry, at which he responded he did not want to ruin hers. But he then forced himself on her again by groping her, trying to pull her shirt down, and violently kissing her. Survivor did not reciprocate, but rather stood eyes open and very stiff, hoping he would just stop and and leave. He finally stopped and left."

Well.

I'm sure that was hard to read because it is at least sexual assault.

I don't know how you can go from telling men that you can't watch movies that have dirty parts to pulling down a woman's pants. 

Of course, there's two sides to every story.

For his part, Hunt has admitted to a light kiss, touching the woman's breasts over the clothes and trying to pull her shorts down. However, he calls the report "sensationalistic."

Come on guys, he just lightly kissed a woman, copped a feel, and merely tried to pull her shorts down.

I don't know how you write a report about a former President of The Southern Baptist Convention pulling down or trying to pull down a woman's shorts and not be sensationalistic.  It is pretty wild stuff.

Hunt has his defenders.  One on Facebook didn't like the terminology of "survivor" to describe the woman.   The woman has to share some of the blame because she let a MAN that was NOT HER HUSBAND in her condo.  Yadda, yadda.

Whatever. I'm not one of those "believe all women" types.  Women lie, just like men lie.  But her story sounds credible me. 

But only two people know what really happened.

Is it too much to ask for a preacher to keep his hands to himself. 

Amen?!