Follow the Evidence of Paul Pressler

The SBC cannot hide from history

Screenshot taken from BNG’s February 19, 2024, article about Al Mohler’s comments on Paul Pressler. It shows Colin Smothers, Denny Burk, and Al Mohler at the recent Kenwood Institute forum.

I don’t have time to write this. I’m trying to complete the first 6 chapters of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife to submit to my editor this week. I’ve finished and edited the first four chapters (well, finished as in first draft and far from final copy) and am working on the final two. Not to mention my husband and I are closing on a house this afternoon (but that is a whole different story).

A friend alerted me to Mohler’s statement at a forum sponsored by Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, with Denny Burk and Colin Smothers that the accusations against Paul Pressler are “so horrifying that it’s actually very hard to imagine that they could be real.” To be sure, Mohler admitted that Pressler’s significant involvement with the SBC is “humiliating” and “clearly a scandal.” Yet he also seems to be trying to distance both himself and SBC leadership from knowledge of Pressler’s behavior. “I find it implausible that they knew anything like the truth of anything, like the allegations made in this report, in this lawsuit and just continued to do business as usual,” said Mohler in a quote rightfully highlighted in Mark Wingfield’s Baptist News Global article.

Of course, Al Mohler and the leaders of the SBC conservative resurgence couldn’t have known about what Paul Pressler has been accused of doing with young boys. Right?

Because if they had, and if they had let it continue while using Pressler to further their aims of hijacking leadership of the SBC and the six SBC seminaries and forcing adaption of a harsh fundamentalist interpretation of scripture that subjugated women and centered white male power, that would be the definition of hypocritical. Right?

I mean, if Al Mohler and other SBC leaders like Paige Patterson had known about Pressler’s alleged behavior, what would it say about SBC claims of “biblical authority” if their own leaders were flagrantly breaking what they themselves have claimed the Bible teaches—sexual purity & fidelity, humility, love of neighbor, and forsaking riches and power in this world for the better world that is to come?

What would it say about SBC claims that God ordained men to lead their families and churches with the love of Christ if their male leaders—their male heroes, even—were ignoring the cries of sexual abuse victims and harming both women and men in the name of Jesus?

What would it say about the recent actions of the SBC to disfellowship churches with female pastors and post a public list doxxing churches with women in pastoral roles if they had known about the rampant sexism and alleged abuse within their own ranks?

If SBC leaders had known about Pressler, if they had known the allegations about pastors sexually abusing women and men in SBC churches, and had ignored it to succeed in their own ambitions, then that would suggest biblical authority was not their motivation. It would suggest that furthering the kingdom of God was not their goal. It would suggest that power, not Jesus, had motivated the conservative agenda.

I’ve been in the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. I’ve been in the archives of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I’ve read the news stories and the scholarship recounting what happened with the conservative takeover of the convention. I’ve listened to the stories of survivors and eye-witnesses. And I’ve seen the names of Paul Pressler, Paige Patterson, W.A. Criswell, Jimmy Draper, and Al Mohler, among others, on correspondence, in conference reports, in news stories, etc., as the leaders who worked together to make the conservative take over of the SBC successful.

It is true that I have not seen evidence showing beyond doubt that these SBC leaders knew what Pressler has been accused of doing.

But I have seen enough to raise serious doubts about Al Mohler’s attempts to distance both himself and the SBC from knowledge about Pressler.

Only time will tell.

And I think that time is running out for the SBC.