The meetings, Floyd said, “reflect leaders engaging in a scriptural process of coming together with others who have differing opinions on complicated issues and of discussing those differences honestly with a goal of how to best move forward.”
He called Bethancourt’s release of the audio recordings from the meetings an “attempt to mischaracterize them” as trying to avoid the reality of sex abuse.
Floyd also said Baptists want to care for abuse survivors but don’t agree on how to do that.
“However, the SBC is not divided on the priority of caring for abuse survivors and protecting the vulnerable in our churches,” he said.
Floyd apologized for any offense his remarks may cause. He also said the Executive Committee is responding to calls for an independent investigation into its handling of abuse allegations.
“Regardless of how some are attempting to characterize past action and future intent,” he said, “since last weekend the Executive Committee staff leadership has been in the process of talking with and potentially securing a highly credible outside firm with the intent of conducting an independent third-party review of the accusations recently levied at the SBC Executive Committee.”
The recordings also highlight a dispute over the Caring Well Conference run by the ERLC in October 2019, which dealt with abuse in the SBC. During that conference, attorney and abuse advocate Rachael Denhollander accused SBC leaders, and in particular the Executive Committee, of mistreating survivors of abuse.
In the recording of a meeting in October 2019, after the conference, Floyd talks about the pushback he received over the conference.
“How are we supposed to respond, in your minds, to people who say, why in the world would we have a conference and let people degrade the Southern Baptist Convention, attack its leadership, our churches — and all those things. How are we supposed to do that and say what they want to say and yet the whole entire sexual abuse study was funded by the Executive Committee.”
Moore defended his agency’s approach to the conference, saying the SBC was not part of a cover-up of abuse. He also warned that had the ERLC limited what survivors at the conference could say, news of those limits would have ended up in national newspapers.
Bethancourt was the first — but not the only — Southern Baptist to stand at a microphone on the convention floor and make a motion at the 2019 meeting urging denominational leaders to pay closer attention to sexual abuse issues.
