Panel urges Baptists to address abuse with integrity and courage
By Aaron Weaver, Baptist History & Heritage Society
WACO, Texas — A panel conversation bringing together legal, theological, social work and survivor perspectives explored how Baptists can confront abuse with both courage and conviction during the May 20 afternoon plenary session of the joint annual conference of the Baptist History & Heritage Society, National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion and Association of Ministry Guidance Professionals.
Four panelists shared their lived experiences and professional insights on abuse within Baptist communities and urged systemic change grounded in integrity, not image protection. The 90-minute conversation titled “Breaking the Silence: Addressing Abuse in Baptist Communities” included Robert G. Callahan II, Rev. Geneece Goertzen, Chellee Taylor and Lucy Huh and was moderated by Jon Singletary, dean of the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University.
“This panel today is addressing one of the most painful realities in Baptist life and congregational life across the Christian faith—that of abuse,” said Singletary. “Whether it’s sexual, domestic or racialized spiritual abuse, churches just have not been willing to address it—or even consider it. For the most part, our collective desire to respond is beginning to shift I believe, and I certainly hope today’s panelists will help inspire us to envision that shift in new ways.”
Left to Right: Lucy Huh, Chellee Taylor, Geneece Goertzen, Robert Callahan and moderator Jon Singletary.
Panelists shared their personal journey and how it led them to advocacy.
“My experience was born from necessity,” said Callahan, a Waco-based attorney and author of Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming Our Wholeness. “It wasn’t that I wanted to become an advocate. But I had to, as I was searching for a way to navigate my own experience with betrayal and racialized spiritual abuse in the church.”
Callahan said he began finding vocabulary for what was happening to him through listening to women and people in the social work space. “There was a lot of material that talked about how did we get here, what went wrong—but not a lot that asked, how do we work our way out of this?”
Geneece Goertzen, an ordained minister, licensed master social worker and Ph.D. candidate at Baylor’s Garland School of Social Work, shared that she is a survivor of more than two decades of abuse.
“Despite meeting him in church, my abuser declared right after we got married that we could no longer attend church,” said Goertzen, author of Taking it Seriously: A Faith Leader’s Guide to Domestic Violence. “What do you do once you’re married? The church doesn’t exactly talk about relationship fraud. For the next 20-plus years, the domestic violence gradually ramped up until it reached daily death threats.”
Goertzen said she believed God both delivered her from the situation and placed a call on her life to advocate for others. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the last decade.”
Chellee Taylor, a former Baptist church employee for 14 years, described her post-disclosure experience as devastating and isolating.
“The abuse didn’t just devastate my life—it decimated it,” she said. “I was completely alone.”
Ten months after disclosure, Taylor hired an attorney who connected her with another survivor. “That’s when I realized this had happened to somebody else. I found healing in this group I never knew I even needed.”
Taylor now works with multiple nonprofits supporting survivors. “Ideally, adult clergy sexual abuse would be prevented,” she said. “But unfortunately, that’s not happening.”
Lucy Huh, a doctoral research fellow at Baylor University’s Center for Church and Community Impact, became an advocate after experiencing clergy abuse herself.
“I never thought I’d be a clergy abuse victim,” Huh said. “But I believe it’s preventable. With education about the imbalance of power—not just for churchgoers but the general public—we can prevent it.”
When asked what abuse looks like in Baptist spaces, Callahan said it often takes the form of spiritual and emotional abuse rooted in a culture where “masculinity is divine, whiteness is normative, and everything else is rebellion.”
“In clergy sexual abuse cases, survivors often don’t even realize they’ve been victimized,” Callahan said. “They’ve been told they were complicit or to blame.”
Goertzen added that while abuse in church may look similar to abuse elsewhere—about power and control—it’s especially damaging because “the church should know better.”
“So many times the church protects the institution or perpetrator above the survivor,” she said. “There’s often more outrage toward the victim for speaking out than toward the person who caused the harm.”
Taylor said clergy abuse uniquely violates both body and faith. “We’re not only having our bodies raped—we’re having our faith raped,” she said. “The institution often does the same thing the abuser did—using God’s word to justify it.”
Huh emphasized that clergy abuse often involves grooming and typically occurs in counseling contexts when congregants are at their most vulnerable. “Predators are usually very charismatic, very well-liked,” she said. “And the abuse doesn’t look like what people expect.”
Goertzen was asked why domestic violence is often spiritualized in churches. “Domestic violence is as common inside the church as outside,” she said. “If no one’s talking about it in your church, ask why. Do people feel safe enough to disclose?”
She urged churches to rethink messaging: “Do marriage sermons have disclaimers for domestic violence? Because ‘stay brave, forgive and forget’ only makes the abuse worse.”
Taylor offered her own personal account of institutional betrayal. “Leaders tried to silence me with Scripture and NDAs. I just needed someone to love me like Christ. Someone to sit with me and not make me defend myself.”
Huh explained that churches rarely have policies protecting adults from clergy abuse. “If adults are mentioned in policies, it’s always as ‘vulnerable adults,’ implying that unless you’re cognitively impaired, you can’t be victimized.”
She noted that while therapists and doctors are legally barred from abusing patients due to power imbalance, clergy often are not. “There’s no uniform legislation prohibiting clergy from sexually exploiting adults. It’s not even acknowledged.”
Singletary asked if institutional betrayal patterns extended beyond individual churches.
“Yes,” Huh responded. “There’s institutional resistance. The response is often to blame the victim. It’s cognitive dissonance—they can’t believe their pastor could do this.”
Taylor agreed. “When I disclosed my abuse, the lead pastor said, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ If they don’t hear it, they can pretend it’s not happening.”
Goertzen highlighted the need for institutional courage. “The antidote to institutional betrayal is institutional courage,” she said, referencing the work of psychologist Jennifer Freyd. “And that’s where the hope lies.”
Callahan offered a sharp critique: “Ignorance isn’t an excuse anymore—not in 2025, not after the Guidepost report. If you can’t fix it, burn it.”
Asked what institutional repentance looks like, Callahan was blunt: “Ministry is not a platform—it’s a cross. If your ministry has to die to support survivors, so be it.”
Goertzen described a rare example of church courage. A congregation that once failed her later changed leadership, educated themselves on domestic violence, apologized, paid for years of counseling, and welcomed her back. “They even wrote an internal guide on how to respond better. That’s integrity.”
Huh and Taylor agreed that accountability begins with centering survivors’ voices—not with committees focused on liability.
“When churches form abuse commissions, you never see survivors on them,” Huh said. “Just lawyers or people trying to protect the institution.”
Taylor added, “Agency is stolen from us in abuse. The first step in healing is giving it back.”
As the conversation closed, panelists offered final thoughts for churches that want to improve.
“Actually do something,” Taylor said. “Say less. Act more.”
“Churches trust God with everything—but not with protecting the church,” she added. “They’ll spend hundreds of thousands on lawyers, but won’t spend a few hundred on a survivor’s counseling.”
Huh urged churches to adopt clear policies. “Put it in writing. Remove the word ‘vulnerable.’ Say that clergy exploiting adults is abuse. It’s easy to do.”
Callahan concluded with a powerful affirmation of righteous anger as part of the healing journey.
“I had to learn that anger could be a catalyst,” he said. “Depression is debilitating. Denial is bargaining. But anger—righteous anger—can move you forward. If God is the God of the widow, the poor, the oppressed, then righteous anger is holy.”
The panel concluded with applause and a question-and-answer session.
The joint annual conference of the Baptist History & Heritage Society featured 27 paper presentations exploring diverse Baptist topics alongside four plenary sessions focused on the theme of Addressing Abuse in Baptist Communities.
Learn more about the Baptist History & Heritage Society and how you can become a member or church partner of our 87-year-old organization committed to “helping Baptists discover, conserve, assess, and share their history.”
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American Baptist Historical Society recognized for Outstanding Achievement in Assessing and Preserving Baptist History