(RNS) — Davis Sills, a former seminary professor and missionary who was fired after admitting sexual misconduct, has filed a second lawsuit against a group of Southern Baptist Convention leaders and entities, claiming they conspired to defame him.
In a complaint filed Thursday (May 11), in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee, Sills and his wife, Mary, claim he was made a scapegoat for the denomination’s sex abuse crisis.
“After various mischaracterizations, misstatements, and contrived investigations by Defendants, Plaintiffs have been wrongfully and untruthfully labelled as criminals and shunned by the SBC and every other religious organization with which Plaintiff Sills has tried to associate,” the complaint alleges.
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Sills lost his job as a professor of missions and cultural anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2018 after admitting to an affair with a former student. In the complaint, Sills admits his conduct with the student, Jennifer Lyell, as inappropriate and says he was “repentant and obedient to the rules of the SBC.”
But the complaint alleges that the seminary’s president, Albert Mohler, as well as members of the SBC’s Executive Committee, the SBC’s former president, Lyell and others, then conspired to shame Sills, who alleges he has no longer been able to find work in Christian ministry.
Sills now runs a real estate business in Jackson, Mississippi.
Sills made similar allegations in a lawsuit filed in Alabama state court last fall, alleging then as now that the supposed conspiracy against him was intended to burnish the reputation of the SBC during a major abuse crisis.
“The plaintiff’s decision to refile this lawsuit in Nashville was to be expected,” said Gene Besen, special counsel to the SBC, in an email. “As I’ve said before, the SBC Executive Committee will vigorously defend ourselves from this troubling attempt to recast an accused perpetrator as the victim of an imaginary conspiracy. We look forward to our day in court.”
Sills also sued Guidepost Solutions, a consulting firm hired by the SBC to conduct an investigation into how the denomination’s leaders treated survivors of abuse. That report, published a year ago, found that SBC leaders had mistreated abuse survivors for decades and tried to downplay the issue of abuse.
The Guidepost investigation was initiated at the direction of local church delegates, known as messengers, who approved Guideposts’ involvement over the objections of top SBC leaders.
