Southern Baptist leader resigns amid dispute over sex abuse investigation

Ronnie Floyd, a Southern Baptist leader, resigned on Thursday amid a dispute over how the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee was handling an internal sexual abuse investigation.

The executive committee launched an internal investigation after reports detailed by the Houston Chronicle indicated that a number of pastors, deacons and other Southern Baptists had sexually abused individuals. The committee has faced criticism for its handling of the abuse reports, according to the Associated Press. 

“While [my wife] and I have no idea where we are going and what we will do in the future, today I submit my resignation as the President and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. I will serve through Sunday, October 31, 2021,” Floyd, who had been the CEO and president of the Executive Committee, said on Thursday in a statement.

The committee had been involved in internal deliberations over whether to waive attorney-client privilege during the investigation, which opponents claimed could be risky financially and could negatively impact insurance policies, according to the AP.

The move, which would allow investigators to access the SBC’s records on legal issues, was first met with resistance by the executive committee, and they voted in September against waiving that privilege. However, by early October, their position changed, The Washington Post reported.

“The decisions made on Tuesday afternoon, October 5, in response to the 2021 Convention now place our missionary enterprise as Southern Baptists into uncertain, unknown, unprecedented and uncharted waters. Due to my personal integrity and the leadership responsibility entrusted to me, I will not and cannot any longer fulfill the duties placed upon me as the leader of the executive, fiscal, and fiduciary entity of the SBC,” Floyd said in his statement.

He claimed that the executive committee’s “commitment has always been to fulfill the desires of the messengers, but the deliberations were about ‘how to do this’ in the most effective way. There was a way it could have been done that fulfilled these desires without creating these potential risks relating to the Convention’s liability.”