The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, on Tuesday expelled one of its churches for employing a pastor who is a registered sex offender.
Church leaders voted at a meeting in Nashville, Tenn., to remove Ranchland Heights Baptist Church in Midland, Texas, from the denomination "because of its employment of a lifetime registered sex offender as pastor," a spokesman for the denomination's executive committee, Jon Wilke, said in an email.
The pastor, Phillip Rutledge, was convicted in 2003 of sexually assaulting two girls, ages 11 and 12, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety's website, which lists him as registered for life as a sex offender.
Local church officials told a CBS News affiliate in 2016 that they knew Rutledge was a registered sex offender before he was hired. A church deacon said at the time that the church believed that God had forgiven him.
Rutledge declined to comment on his church's removal.
"We have spoken against matters of sexual abuse, and we have taken some major, demonstrative steps as a convention of churches," Ronnie Floyd, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive leadership committee and former pastor of Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas, said in a statement.
"I'm grateful to see this step being taken," Rachael Denhollander, who advises the denomination in its sex-abuse study group, said of Tuesday's decision. "At the same time, this is only the smallest of first steps and the beginning of what is needed to make our churches places of safety and refuge."
A year ago, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News found that about 400 Southern Baptist leaders had been accused of sexual misconduct or crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998. Offenders included pastors, youth pastors and volunteers.
After that report, the denomination's president, J.D. Greear, called for 10 churches to be reviewed for how they handled abuse allegations. Top leaders cleared seven of the churches within days.
Asked whether it is a requirement that churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention not employ sex offenders, Wilke said the denomination does not have the ability to enforce employment standards for its member churches because it does not hire or fire pastors.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, meanwhile, have not publicly addressed an allegation at one of the denomination's most prominent megachurches, the Village Church in Texas. A woman who said she was sexually abused as a child by a pastor there sued the church last summer, accusing it of gross negligence.
National church leaders first received a request to examine the Ranchland Heights case in June, said Stacy Bramlett, who leads the committee responsible for reviewing churches. The church cooperated with the review process, she said, but she declined to share specifics about the interactions.
Ranchland Heights can appeal the decision to the full Southern Baptist Convention when the group meets this summer in Orlando, Fla.
The decision to remove Ranchland Heights on Tuesday was the first test of the denomination's new protocols established last summer to review allegations of misconduct. Victims can petition church leaders online to reconsider a church's association with the denomination, which will begin a review process followed by a decision from the church's executive leadership.
A Section on 02/20/2020