Southern Baptists vote ‘bare minimum’ steps dealing with sexual abuse

Attendees hold up their ballots during a session at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., Tuesday, June 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) more >ANAHEIM, California — The Southern Baptist Convention voted Tuesday for what one official termed the “bare minimum” of reforms in dealing with decades of sexual abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The vote comes a little more than two weeks after a major independent report documented hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention’s associated churches and institutions.

The denomination’s now-retired general counsel had compiled a database of hundreds of known abusers some 15 years…