Why does the Southern Baptist Convention wait?

The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in support of slavery in 1845 and waited until 1995 to offer an oblique apology for “condoning and perpetuating individual and systemic racism.”

In his letter smuggled out of Birmingham jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mourned of his fellow clergymen how, “too many have been more cautious than courageous.” He wrote of how he had watched "churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.”

Christa Brown of Stop Baptist Predators says today in her memorial to Dr. King:

Much the same could now be said about Southern Baptist leaders’ lack of courage in stepping up to the plate to effectively address clergy sex abuse. Instead of taking action, they stand on the sideline, mouthing “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities” about “autonomy” and “polity” … as if any of that could possibly be more important than protecting kids against clergy who molest and rape them.

If Southern Baptist leaders expect others to view them as champions of morality, then they need to start acting like champions and go to battle to clean up the mess in their own ranks.

Where are Southern Baptist leaders when standing up for those oppressed by their own clergy would mean actually doing something?

Where, in the face of very large numbers of active predators and as a result rapidly growing numbers of victims? Where are they, indeed? And why do they believe present and future victims can somehow wait?