Johnny Hunt’s lawsuit is over. The SBC’s abuse crisis isn’t.

Faith & Reflection: Voices from the Black Church and Beyond

(RNS) — This week, a federal judge dismissed the final claim in an ongoing defamation lawsuit filed by former Southern Baptist President Johnny Hunt. Hunt, a former megachurch pastor in Georgia, was seeking over $105 million in damages and lost wages.

Hunt filed the suit after he was named in a 2022 report commissioned by the SBC on cases of abuse or mishandling of abuse claims by the Executive Committee of the SBC.

The report detailed allegations that Hunt sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife in a beachside condo in 2010, then denied the allegation and helped cover it up with church leaders. After the release of the report, Hunt stated that he engaged in “only kissing and some awkward fondling,” but denied it was assault or abuse.

The final claim in his defamation suit centered on a social media post made by then-SBC president Bart Barber expressing that Hunt failed to prove the malice required to constitute defamation. The judge also rejected Hunt’s claim that he — one-time president of America’s largest Protestant denomination, former megachurch pastor, frequent speaker and author with major evangelical institutions — was not a public figure. Hunt had tried to argue that the exposure of his sins by the SBC was a violation of his privacy.

Hunt’s is not a singular case. Nor is it some sort of outlier within the larger context of the SBC’s history and present. Hunt’s case arose in the middle of ongoing questions about a culture in the denomination that makes it easier for abusers to abuse in the first place, then easier for them to escape accountability.

Here is a brief recap of this bigger context:

• In 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published a series of reports called “Abuse of Faith,” which detailed 700 cases of abuse in the SBC — and the way that SBC leaders had refused to address the issue. 
• In 2019, Lifeway executive Jennifer Lyell went public with her story of suffering years of alleged abuse by former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor David Sills. Sills had gone on to serve in further ministry after being dismissed by the seminary after Lyell had shared her account privately with SBC leaders the previous year.
• In 2019, Baptist Press, the official reporting arm of the SBC, issued an apology for mischaracterizing the sexual abuse allegations by Lyell against Sills.
• SBC messengers at the 2021 annual meeting overruled the convention’s leadership and authorized an investigation into the handling of abuse reports by the SBC’s Executive Committee.
• That Guidepost report, released in 2022, found that SBC leaders had mistreated survivors and sought to downplay abuse. That report exposed the shocking account of Johnny Hunt’s alleged sexual assault.
• In 2022, Baptist Press issued another apology to abuse survivors for their mishandling of reporting on abuse cases.
• In 2022, Sills, accused abuser of Lyell, filed a lawsuit against the SBC, Guidepost Solutions, his alleged victim and other SBC leaders. (Lyell died in 2025, and Sills subsequently dropped her estate from the suit.)
• In 2022 and 2023, SBC messengers overwhelmingly approved reforms, including a database to track abuse pastors, but SBC leaders abandoned this plan in 2025.
• In 2023, Hunt filed his lawsuit against the SBC.
• By the fall of 2024, the SBC had spent more than $3 million fighting the suits in addition to the costs of the Guidepost investigation, draining the Executive Committee reserves.
• By 2025, the Executive Committee needed an additional $3 million added to its budget to pay legal fees.
• These expenditures led to a backlash. The voices decrying the campaign against abuse and cover-up of abuse won the day — and filled the current post of SBC president.
• One of the loudest critics was Willy Rice — who dropped out of the SBC presidential race in 2022 because a leader at his church had a history of sexual misconduct.
• In 2024, Rice did an interview with the Center for Baptist Leadership, saying Southern Baptists had been led astray about the abuse crisis. Rice was elected in SBC president in 2026 — he has called the abuse crisis a ruse and a snipe hunt — and has said SBC leaders were mistreated and falsely accused. 

Ask the average person in the pew of a Southern Baptist congregation about any of this and chances are they know little or none. The people in the pew that I know (and I know a lot of them) are focused on their local church, giving to missions through the SBC’s distinctive cooperative program (which pools resources to support missions work) and building flourishing congregations whose health is measured by attendance at worship service and Sunday school classes, Vacation Bible School enrollment, short term missions involvement and baptisms.

The people in the pew care about Jesus and gospel ministry. They assume their denominational leaders share their same concerns and values. They have forgotten, overlooked or perhaps never knew that when the SBC was formed in 1845, it was formed because the Baptist association they were part of denied the request of Baptists in the South to allow enslavers to be missionaries. Those Baptists said no to abusers nearly 200 years ago. But Southern Baptists decided they would start their own denomination, collect their own money and send slave holders to the mission field.

That is the complete context for today’s lawsuits, abuses, cover-up of abuses and refusal to make real changes. Many who are or were part of the SBC (myself included) who know this history have mistakenly believed it was just that: history. But even the brief, incomplete timeline above shows that the system itself was built on injustice and abuse, and the system still stands. 

Not long after the allegations of sexual abuse became public, Johnny Hunt — whose red flag was already waving when he participated in the grand opening of a massage parlor owned by his friend and alleged serial abuser Ravi Zacharias — went on to be “restored” to ministry by a circle of ministry friends. One of the pieces of evidence the judge unsealed this week was a series of text messages between Hunt and a pastor helping Hunt plan his return to ministry. As my colleague Bob Smietana reported, the messages included Hunt’s suggestion to seek public relations services. “I’m willing to pay,” Hunt wrote.

He is willing to pay to restore himself to his position of power and influence — but he is not willing to pay the victim who has paid the greatest cost.

This is an apt metaphor for the leadership of the SBC.

The SBC spent upwards of $6 million to protect itself. They did not spend that money (or enough of it) to protect the vulnerable, make predators accountable and support survivors. (Lyell did make an out-of-court settlement with the SBC, but sadly, in the end, it was not enough to save her life.) 

This is what the people in the pew need to know. And they need to reckon with it. The SBC is accountable for every dime given to the Lottie Moon missions collection. At some point, the people who put the dimes in the plate need to be accountable, too.

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