“This is incredible leadership by Danny Akin. He is serious about making a statement that sexual abuse will not be tolerated in the SBC & SEBTS,” tweeted Texas pastor Dwight McKissic. “SBTS Founders abused [African American] women & children. For the exact same reasons names are being removed at SEBTS, names ought be removed at SBTS.”
In 2020, SBTS trustees voted to keep the names of the pro-slavery founders of the school on buildings at the campus.
“We’re not going to erase our history in any respect or leave our history unaddressed,” SBTS president Albert Mohler said in a statement at the time. “We are seeking to respond to the moral and theological burden of history by being a far more faithful institution in the present and in the future than we’ve been in the past and in this central respect we acknowledge a special debt to African American Christians.”
While SBTS trustees created a multimillion-dollar scholarship fund for African American students at that same meeting, many were disturbed by the symbolism of refusing to rename the buildings.
As the annual meeting of the SBC quickly approaches, denominational leaders and local church messengers will be faced with decisions that are far from symbolic, with the Guidepost Solutions recommendations for sexual abuse reform looming as a major point of conversation, and likely contention.
In the interim, the denomination has already begun responding to the report in various ways, including the Executive Committee’s decision to release a secretly compiled list of sexual abusers, which was maintained by SBC Executive Committee legal counsel for years but was kept from others within the denomination.
The Executive Committee has also implemented a sexual abuse hotline, which will be facilitated by Guidepost Solutions.
“This hotline will be an important stopgap measure for survivors between now and the 2022 SBC Annual Meeting in Anaheim when the messengers can pass even more meaningful reforms,” the Executive Committee said in a statement.
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The annual meeting of the SBC will take place in June at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California.
