The country’s largest Protestant religious organization says that Joe Biden’s administration is targeting several of its chapters.
On Friday, the Southern Baptist Convention announced a number of its entities were under investigation by the Justice Department following reports that the group allegedly mishandled sex abuse claims while also mistreating victims.
The organization did not provide a lot of details about the DOJ probe while the Justice Department also did not comment, according to Reuters. However, the convention’s executive committee noted in a statement that the organization will fully cooperate with the investigation and will “transparently address the scourge of sexual abuse.”
Reuters adds:
An internal report commissioned by the Convention and released in May found that complaints of sex abuse by pastors and staff were either ignored or covered up by top clergy, a practice that occurred over decades.
The Convention, which has 13.7 million members, has since issued a formal apology over the abuse and released a list of hundreds of offenders who have been criminally convicted, had civil judgments against them or confessed their actions.
In its statement, the executive committee said the DOJ inquiry “will include multiple SBC entities.” Each entity is resolved to fully and completely cooperate, the report continued.
“Leaders across the SBC have demonstrated a firm conviction to address those issues of the past and are implementing measures to ensure they are never repeated in the future,” it said.
While it’s not known the extent of any sexual abuse, what is known is this administration’s disdain for constitutional values and traditional legal mores.
No sooner than the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Biden’s DOJ uncharacteristically suggested that the department would help states find ways around the ruling while pledging to investigate and prosecute any other states who ‘illegally restricted’ a woman’s ‘access’ to abortion.
“Today, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and held that the right to abortion is no longer protected by the Constitution,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in June, shortly after the ruling.
“The Supreme Court has eliminated an established right that has been an essential component of women’s liberty for half a century – a right that has safeguarded women’s ability to participate fully and equally in society. And in renouncing this fundamental right, which it had repeatedly recognized and reaffirmed, the Court has upended the doctrine of stare decisis, a key pillar of the rule of law,” he continued.
“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision,” Garland added (our emphasis), in a virtually unprecedented statement.
“This decision deals a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States. It will have an immediate and irreversible impact on the lives of people across the country. And it will be greatly disproportionate in its effect – with the greatest burdens felt by people of color and those of limited financial means,” he added.
Of course, this is the same man who ordered the FBI to target parents for showing up to school board meetings and expressing their opposition to the teaching of divisive critical race theory and the inclusion of sexually inappropriate materials in school libraries.
Sex abuse cases can be handled by state law enforcement agencies and civil courts. But the allegations against the Southern Baptist Convention chapters provide the regime with another avenue to attack an otherwise traditionalist institution.
