In a recent op-ed for the U.K. Sunday Times, Douglas Murray observed that the reason the wheels have come off the #MeToo movement is that it discredited itself by overstating its case and conflating unmistakable instances of abuse with messy adult entanglements. “The MeToo movement had some cases that were very clear-cut. Others were not,” he wrote. “And the insistence that a historic reckoning was occurring made the line between the two uncomfortably easy to breach.”
The same line-blurring could describe what is happening in the second-largest religious denomination in the U.S. (and the largest Protestant denomination). Known for its theological conservatism that includes reserving the pastorate for men, the nearly 15-million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is currently undergoing what many major media outlets are characterizing as a reckoning over sexual abuse.

Indeed, some go further, with ex-SBC leader Russell Moore calling it an “apocalypse” and evangelical pundit David French calling it a “horror,” proof the denomination does not merely contain some bad apples, but is, in fact, a “diseased” orchard.

While purple prose has been flowing freely in regards to the SBC, little of it has bothered to detail what the apocalypse looks like in hard statistical terms. That’s likely because, according to the recently released report generating all the coverage, a total of 409 accused abusers were found over the course of 21 years in approximately 47,000 SBC churches.
Bombshell
Lyman Stone, demographer at the Institute for Family Studies, told me the actual data contained in the abuse report, the result of an eight-month investigation by Guidepost Solutions, does not come close to meriting the hyperbolic terms that are peppering coverage in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and CNN.
“Statistically speaking,” he said, “there were not that many cases. This is not actually that common of a problem in this church body.”
Stone went on to estimate that there are about 100,000 to 150,000 staffers in SBC churches, but many thousands more volunteer in their ministries. Of all the allegations that Guidepost investigators reviewed, they found only two  that appear to involve current SBC workers.
“If you wanted to argue that based on this report, executives of the SBC mismanaged the cases that were brought to them, then fine,” Stone said. “But if you want to say this shows that [the SBC] is corrupt, hypocritical, and rife with sexual abuse — the report doesn’t demonstrate that.”
Stone added that he was shocked that Guidepost investigators only found two current cases, given how many exist in the general population. “I mean, if I had been betting beforehand, I would have bet for a couple of hundred,” he said. “Because if you’re talking about 100,000 to 150,000 people who are disproportionately men, just your baseline rate of sex offenders tells you, you should have gotten a couple thousand sex offenders in there just by random chance.”
He concluded that while the report may show the need for reforms in responding to allegations, it does not show an endemic problem of sexual abuse, adding, “It is important to distinguish these.”
Corroboration
Advocates like attorney and Larry Nassar victim Rachael Denhollander have argued that misconduct within the SBC isn’t just a question of numbers. They also take issue with the executive committee’s resistance to creating a public database of the “credibly accused,” assembled by third-party investigators like Guidepost. But a deep dive into how Guidepost handled the most prominent allegation of abuse in its SBC report should set off alarm bells for anyone interested in maintaining a biblical standard of justice.
From the broad outlines of Jennifer Lyell’s story, it’s easy to understand why the members of the executive committee might have felt some hesitation to unquestioningly label her as a victim of abuse.
In 2004, Lyell was a 26-year-old master of divinity student when she met cultural anthropology professor David Sills, who is 23 years her senior, on the Louisville campus of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Shortly after, she became close with the entire Sills family, including David’s wife, Mary, as well as his college-age son and teenage daughter. She alleges that it was on a mission trip with Sills and his daughter that Sills first “sexually acted” against her.
That incident, she says, began a pattern of abuse that lasted 12 years until she was 38, continuing even as she moved to Chicago in 2006 and, later, Nashville, to further her career in publishing. During the time that Lyell was a publishing executive, she often worked with Sills, contracting with him for books, and, arguably, holding more power over his career than he did over hers.
In essence, Lyell was claiming that Sills was able to continue committing acts of sexual abuse against her even after she’d left the state because she would return to visit the family.
In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement and two years after her contact with Sills had ended, Lyell told her boss, Eric Geiger, at the Christian publisher Lifeway of the allegedly abusive relationship. Geiger, in turn, arranged a meeting with Southern Seminary’s president, Dr. Albert Mohler. In short order, Sills’ employment was terminated. A year then passed before Lyell provided her account to the Baptist Press for an article she hoped would present her as Sills’ victim.
As the house media organ of the SBC, the Baptist Press (BP) falls under the authority of the executive committee. When committee members read Lyell’s account, which did not contain any concrete description of violent behavior, in a March 2019 BP draft, they had doubts about framing it as she wanted, in part because they feared Sills might sue. They asked BP editors to replace the word “abuse” with “morally inappropriate relationship,” though the story retained a quote wherein Lyell accuses Sills of “grooming and taking advantage” of her. The editors informed Lyell of the change shortly before going to print.
Once the story was published, commenters on BP’s Facebook page criticized the fact that Sills had lost his job while Lyell had not, prompting her to demand BP restore the term “abuse” to the article or link to a statement from her rebutting their word choice.
Months of sporadic back-and-forth communications followed, in which committee members weighed options for coming to terms with Lyell. Then, at an October 2019 SBC conference on sexual abuse, Denhollander recounted Lyell’s story from the stage, identifying Sills by name and calling Lyell a “survivor of horrific predatory abuse” who was “cast away” by BP editors and the executive committee. Almost immediately after, Denhollander threatened the executive committee with a defamation suit on Lyell’s behalf.
Executive committee sources who agreed to speak with me anonymously say that the SBC’s insurance agency did not want to settle with Lyell, believing she did not have a strong case. But already facing bad press over Denhollander’s conference comments, committee members feared further fallout from dragging the issue out. In May 2020, the same sources say the committee paid Lyell just over $1 million, thinking that would be the end of the matter. It wasn’t.
When Guidepost issued its report on May 22, Lyell was by far the foremost accuser in it.
Again and again in the 35-plus pages that feature her case, Guidepost investigators claim Lyell’s version of events is “corroborated.” What that would mean in a police investigation is that witnesses offered other evidence against Sills. What it appears to have meant to Guidepost is that Lyell told her story to Geiger and Mohler, and both men said they believed it, according to the Baptist Press. In fact, Geiger, the first person to whom Lyell revealed the alleged abuse, told me Guidepost never even asked him to provide statements or evidence.
The report does briefly mention testimony from unnamed employees at Sills’ missions agency and his former pastor — referring to Dr. Bill Cook — but both Guidepost and the task force refused numerous requests to provide me with the agency staffers’ specific comments. And Dr. Cook told me that in his case, once again, all “corroborate” means is that he found Lyell’s story credible, not that he had any additional evidence to offer.
Guidepost defends its choice to refer to Sills as an “abuser” rather than an “alleged abuser” by noting that they didn’t find any evidence that “indicated that the interactions between Ms. Lyell and Professor Sills was anything but sexual abuse.”
Perhaps that’s because they weren’t looking very hard.
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Just as the mother crimson worm goes to the oak tree voluntarily to give her life for her children, so Jesus offered himself on the tree of the cross for your sins, according to the will of God (Gal. 1:4). Just as the crimson worm bleeds out a scarlet dye in the death she endures for her children, so Jesus poured out his blood in dying for you and all of those whom the Father gave unto him (John 17:9). 

The Bible’s first book tells us God saw everything he created, and behold, it was very good. You probably first think of big and exciting creations like the spectacular sun, majestic mountains, loud lions, or the mighty Mississippi River when you hear about creation. God uses all his creatures to direct us to his power and glory. But even tiny things that can go unnoticed are very good creations as well. Some living things, even ones we consider insignificant, can point us to the person and work of Jesus in surprising and amazing ways.
The crimson worm is one of these lowly but unique creations. It’s a bit different than the worms you find in your own backyard because it’s actually an insect with a shell and six little legs. About seven millimeters long, the crimson worm is barely longer than the width of a pencil eraser. You might call it minimal, minor, miniature, or minuscule. Maybe even gross. But God created the crimson worm to live in a specific area, the land of Israel, and have a life cycle that points us to one event: Jesus’ saving death on the cross.
When a mother crimson worm is ready to lay her eggs, she finds her way toward a specific type of oak tree. She then makes the difficult ascent up the side of that tree, knowing that she will never come back down again. She’s come there to give life to her children and then give up her own. Once she reaches her spot and secures herself against the wood, her shell turns into a hard, crimson shelter. It’s under this covering where her eggs hatch. For three days, she provides protection for her children. She also provides life for three days as the babies feed on her body until she dies. Once the mother dies, she produces a crimson dye that stains the tree and the children underneath her.
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Written by C. R. Carmichael |
Sunday, October 15, 2023
“All human systems fail because the trouble is within the people themselves, and external rules and laws and regulations cannot change them. It is not that we need better laws, but that we need better natures; not better instruction, but better spirits and better desires. And so all this human history comes to nothing. And yet these earthly authorities prohibit the preaching of the Gospel, the only thing that can save the situation.” Lloyd-Jones

How often do you think about the Roman Empire? Recently Forbes reported that, according to a bizarre new TikTok trend, men think about the Roman Empire more often than you would expect. As Conor Murray, a “trends reporter” for Forbes, explained this phenomenon: “TikTok users are asking their boyfriends, fathers or any other man how often they think about the Roman Empire—and surprisingly, some say they think about the fallen empire daily or even more often, sparking online confusion and launching a TikTok trend that’s garnered more than a billion views.”
Strangely enough, this peculiar focus on the Roman Empire was once also on the brilliant mind of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Many decades before TikTok, social media or even the internet, Lloyd-Jones was forcibly struck by the tragic similarities of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Christian influence in the West.
Sadly, things have only gotten worse for our Western society since Lloyd-Jones’ observation—and surely, if alive today, he would point to this current obsession with the Roman Empire to suggest that maybe the thoughtful men in our day are, consciously or not, harboring grave concerns about the similar trajectory of our failing society and wondering what they should do to stem the tide for the sake of their faith and family.
Here, then, is what the great Welsh evangelical minister would no doubt tell them, which is exactly as he addressed this issue during his many years of proclaiming and promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ prior to his death in 1981. Said Lloyd-Jones on various occasions:
“Why, in spite of all our efforts and endeavors and great advances, is the world still in trouble? Why is every advance followed by regression, every rise by a decline and fall? Why do our attempts to govern the world end in disaster? What is the matter? And there is only one answer. It is due to the fact that men and women have sinful and fallen natures; it is due to their estrangement from God; and, more, it is due to God’s wrath upon humanity in its sinfulness and arrogance. But the tragedy of the world is that it does not realize this.
“I was reading again, only the other day, and it struck me forcibly, the explanation given by that great historian Edward Gibbon, who was not a Christian, for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. And if his explanation is not also true of this country today, then I am completely ignorant!
“Here are the five reasons Gibbon gives:
One: The rapid increase of divorce and “the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.” Now that is not being said by me, a little evangelical preacher—that is the great Edward Gibbon, and, of course, he is right. The home is the fundamental unit in society and once the home goes, everything will go, sooner or later.
Two: “Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies on bread and circuses.”
Three: “The mad craze for pleasure and sport; sport becoming every year more and more exciting and brutal.”
Four: “The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy is within—in the decadence of the people themselves.”
And Fifth: “The decay of religious faith; faith fading into mere form which has lost all contact with reality.”
“The Roman Empire was a wonderful civilization. Those Romans were perhaps the greatest experts the world has ever known on local government and on legal systems. The Roman system—that was real civilization.
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