Why pace yourself when you can sprint? The Department of Justice, during a surprisingly busy week, is now investigating the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, for sexual abuse. That’s according to the SBC leaders themselves, who announced on Friday that an investigation was taking place and that they’d fully cooperate.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, it helps to go back to 2019, when the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News published their first article resulting from a six-month-long investigation into Southern Baptist churches. They found that, over the previous decade, more than 250 staffers or volunteers had been “charged with sex crimes” against more than 700 victims.

That included malfeasance with the International Mission Board, the SBC’s missionary arm with an annual budget of over $158 million (the result of tithe money from SBC member churches) and 3,600 members. The reporters found that several members of the IMB were credibly accused of abuse and several other members of the IMB helped cover it all up.

Unlike the Catholic Church, which has a hierarchy always looking toward the Vatican, Southern Baptists have autonomous churches that act independently in many ways. It’s much harder to control what each one does. It’s especially hard to force them to report problematic staffers to some central office. Not only does that make predatory pastors harder to track, it makes those churches magnets for abusers who know they’ll be able to get away with their crimes. ...