What’s not said
Friday Roundup for June 20, 2025
So many times when I write controversial articles, I wake up the next morning dreading to check email, fearing I’ve made a mistake or misquoted someone or misunderstood something. Surely, this couldn’t be as bad as what I wrote makes it appear.
And yet 99% of the time, that email or call never comes.
Today was one of those days. I woke up expecting someone to correct me on the article I wrote yesterday about Allen Jordan’s allegation that SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg agreed with him that the stories of abuse told by Christa Brown and Tiffany Thigpen are “not credible.”
For starters, Jordan is not a reliable source. He’s the guy from Houston who believes there is no sexual abuse crisis in the SBC. He’s an avid abuse denier. I can’t even count the number of crazy emails I’ve received from him in the past five years. He is as relentless as he is wrong. He is the Mike Lindell of the SBC.
But as they say around here, even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.
Still, I couldn’t believe Jordan’s assertion about Iorg being an abuse denier. Surely not. So I wrote an email to the Executive Committee media guy asking if this is true. I copied and pasted the relevant quote from Jordan’s email to me and other journalists — which was addressed to Iorg.
My expectation was that Iorg would deny ever saying any such thing. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I got a brief one-paragraph response in which Iorg said his focus is on the future and not the past.
“My expectation was that Iorg would deny ever saying any such thing. But that’s not what happened.”
He purposely ignored the question about what Jordan had said. He did not answer the question.
I’ve been around this business long enough to know if a public figure doesn’t at least feign denial of an accusation, the accuser has hit the target. And yet, this is too incredulous to believe.
As I point out in the news article, both Brown’s and Thigpen’s stories are well-documented. They have been corroborated. Allen Jordan is one of the few people who somehow thinks they’re lying to make the SBC look bad. Has the SBC Executive Committee elected a president who agrees with this conspiracy theory?
However you slice it, the optics here are horrible.
And yet, Iorg’s statement here echoes his general attitude on other issues facing the Executive Committee: “That was the past. I’m focused on the future.”
Nice try, but you can’t rebuild a house on a rotten foundation. You’ve got to address the rot first. No amount of cheerful optimism will overcome that.
“Nice try, but you can’t rebuild a house on a rotten foundation.”
As Christa Brown has noted in multiple columns for us, the SBC’s response to known sexual abuse has gone from bad to worse. And yet it doesn’t have to be that hard. My guess is that overly cautious lawyers are involved who don’t understand public relations. I’ve seen this happen in other places, including churches.
On the other hand, Iorg has come to the Executive Committee role with a strongarm approach unlike any I’ve seen before. As we noted in last week’s coverage of the SBC annual meeting, Iorg stood before 10,000 messengers and told outright lies about why the SBC entities cannot and should not be more transparent in their finances.
Ben Cole and I discuss this in more depth in the brand-new episode of our “Stuck in the Middle with You” podcast.
Today’s article on what Jordan claims Iorg told him highlights the importance of reading carefully what’s not said. Iorg’s response is upbeat but deficient. He doesn’t answer the burning question.
It’s not that different from Mike Lindell, who this week was ordered by a court to pay voting system executive Eric Coomer $2.3 million yet went on social media and claimed he had been completely exonerated.
To his credit, Iorg has picked up the pieces of a near-bankrupt Executive Committee and seemingly stabilized it. But at what cost?
It took the SBC a century and a half to own up to its racist beginnings. How long will it take the SBC to fully own up to the sexual abuse problem that is not imaginary but very real?
Meanwhile, in this very same week, there have been new developments in the case of pastor and sexual abuser Robert Morris of the nondenominational Gateway Church in Dallas.
And there’s a new development in the allegations of child sexual abuse at Kamp Kanakuk in Missouri.
We also wrote this week about Beth Allison Barr’s new podcast, “All the Buried Women,” that focuses in large part on sexual abuse in the SBC.
And Melissa Rogers explains what a clergy sexual abuse database can’t do.
Back to where we started, the overwhelming problem in the SBC is not what has been said about sexual abuse but what has not been said. Leaders of the convention — en masse — need to make a public statement affirming the reality of the problem. There should be no equivocation.
And those same leaders need to make a public statement denouncing abuse deniers like Allen Jordan. His nonsense has gone on far too long, and no one except me — and abuse survivors — has been willing to call him out publicly. It’s now time for SBC leaders to break their silence and say what they haven’t yet said.
Why? Because every time Jordan and others like him deny the reality of sexual abuse, they heap coals on those who have been abused and whose stories are disbelieved yet again.
It’s time for the truth.
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In national news, the “big beautiful bill” is the topic of much conversation. As you’ve probably heard, some House Republicans are having buyers’ remorse already, and some Senate Republicans want to make a bad bill even worse.
It’s hard to count the ways this awful bill does damage. Here’s a new one to the list: The bill would tax remittances non-citizen legal residents send to family overseas.
Speakers at a BJC webinar explained some of the ways the “big beautiful bill” is actually ugly.
It’s not surprising that a majority of Americans say they oppose the bill.
Last Saturday, millions of Americans took to the streets to march in “No Kings Day” protests.
I asked Facebook friends to tell us what they experienced, and a whole bunch of them responded.
Sam Williams tells us how she imagined picking up the baton from the Civil Rights Movement as she marched in Florida.
Brad Bull introduces us to some of the people he met at the rally in Nashville.
Steven Harmon explains Saturday’s events to those outside the U.S.
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In other news:
The Upper Room devotional turns 90 this year.
The U.S. Supreme Court abandoned science, fairness and common sense in its June 18 decision upholding a state’s banon gender-affirming care for transgender youth, civil rights and legal experts said.
William Moses Summerville has been named executive director of Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.
A series of small grants were transformational for congregations affiliated with Great Rivers Fellowship, theCooperative Baptist Fellowship regional organization made up of communities in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“Family values” groups say they and the GOP are fighting the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”
Nearly all the 381 books pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy Library in April are back on the shelves after the Pentagon instituted its own criteria for banning books.
Trump’s attempted ban on international students at U.S. schools will severely damage a Methodist-affiliated school in El Paso.
The Trump administration has begun terminating temporary legal status for more than 500,000 migrants awaiting immigration proceedings.
The first meeting of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission was an exercise in airing conservative evangelical grievances, much like the first meeting of his Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, according to observers.
Baylor University and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have announced a joint venture that will place three CBF field personnel on campus to guide students in responding to God’s call to ministry.
The Minnesota man accused of shooting two state legislators and their spouses may have been driven by anti-abortion views shaped by some of the nation’s most radical and potentially violent Christian movements.
The COVID pandemic facilitated a greater sorting of churchgoers into more ideological groups than before, according to new nationwide data from Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
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In other analysis:
PRRI’s Melissa Deckman explains how American politics is increasingly gendered.
Rick Pidcock says the meanness we see in evangelical politics today begins in the home.
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In other opinion:
Stan Hastey says no one should be called “illegal” on stolen land.
Rhys Turner-Moore urges us to build a community free of sexual harm one small step at a time.
Ginny Brown Daniel says ICE agents kidnapping immigrants while wearing masks are no different than the KKK.
Bill Leonard has some thoughts on drowning Anabaptists and tarring and feathering governors.
I attempt to tear apart Josh Howerton’s crazy Instagram post in which he defends Trump’s anti-immigration policies as biblical.
Lovett Weems calls us to speak truth on behalf of the Charleston Nine.
Martin Thielen outlines five possible paths for 21st-century churches.
Edmond Davis recalls the history of Juneteenth.
Matt McGee says his disillusionment with the Michael Tait abuse scandal is causing him to take a break from Christian media.
Will McCorkle writes about what Oscar Romero teaches us about our current moment of civil unrest.
Brad Bull questions whether “God’s hand” actually guides the things some people say.
A final word
If you don’t read anything else we’ve published this week, please, for the love of God, go read this excellent piece I just posted from Riley Taylor, a pastor in residence at First Baptist Church of Pasadena, Calif., with outstanding photos by Leroy Hamilton.
I just cannot stop tearing up reading and rereading this piece. Not only is it exquisite writing, the message of what’s really going on in Los Angeles needs to be spread far and wide. And Riley’s confession of fearing what his family back home in South Carolina might think is spot-on.
Rarely do I beg you to read something we publish. But this is one of those times.
I look forward to seeing many of you next week in St. Louis for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. Please say hello when you see me walking down the hall. I’m a severe extrovert who likes to talk to everybody.
Mark Wingfield
Executive Director and Publisher
Baptist News Global